On 25 March 1821, the Greek War of Independence began.
It would become one of the great
independence movements of modern history and would inspire many other movements elsewhere.
However, the Greek state that emerged a decade later
was very different from the Greece that exists today.
Instead, over the course of the next century,
the country would go through a remarkable series of expansions.
So, how did Greece become independent? And how did it assume its current borders?
[MUSIC]
Hello and welcome. If you're new, my name is James Ker-Lindsay and here I take an
informed look at international relations, conflicts and the origins of countries.
We tend to think that countries become independent within
fixed and internationally accepted boundaries.
While this is certainly the case for most the states that have emerged over the past 70 or
so years, especially those emerging from the process of decolonisation,
there have been many cases where a country has become independent
within borders that don't meet its territorial aspirations.
In many cases, the goal of unifying
these lands - a concept known as irredentism - remains unfulfilled.
Good examples include Albania's independence in 1913, which saw many Albanian-inhabited
territories remain beyond its borders, or the emergence of modern Hungary at the end
of the First World War, when the country lost vast parts of the land it claimed.
Sometimes, though, countries have eventually managed to expand to incorporate some,
most or even all of the territory that it claimed as its natural national boundaries.
One of the best examples of this is Greece.
When it emerged as an independent state in the first half of the 19th century it did so within
borders that incorporated a mere fraction of what it considered to be its rightful territory.
But, unlike many other countries, it eventually managed to incorporate much of this land.
However, it was neither a quick nor an easy process.
Indeed, it only assumed its final shape in the second half of the 20th century.
So, how did Greece become independent and how did it achieve its current borders?
Greece lies in southeast Europe.
At 132,000 square kilometres, or 50,000 square miles,
it's the 95th largest of 193 members of the United Nations.
In addition to the mainland, the country also includes around 230 inhabited islands
and as many as five and a half thousand further uninhabited islands and islets.
Its population currently stands at about 10.7 million people.
Although Greece has a long history - and most people will be very familiar with the Ancient
Greek legacy - our story really begins at the end of the 13th century and the rise of the
Ottoman Empire in the Anatolian peninsula - an area that now makes up modern Turkey.
Over the course of the next 150 years, the Muslim,
Turkish-speaking Ottomans expanded into the territory of the Christian Orthodox,
Greek-speaking Byzantine Empire, which at the time controlled most of Greece and southeast Europe.
This process reached its apogee in May 1453, when the Ottoman forces overran
the capital of the Byzantine Empire, Constantinople - present-day Istanbul.
While parts of Greece held out against Ottoman rule,
or remained under the control of other powers, such as Venice, by the start of
the 18th century all of mainland Greece and the islands of the Aegean were in Ottoman hands.
Indeed, just one region of modern Greece never came under Ottoman
rule - the Ionian Islands in the far west of the country.
The path to statehood began at the start of the 19th century.
As ideas of nationalism and the nation-state swept Europe,
a group of Greeks began plotting the liberation of their homeland from Ottoman control.
On 25 March 1821, the Greek War of Independence officially began
as revolts broke out in various parts of mainland Greece and the islands.
Despite taking control of the Peloponnese,
the southern region of the Greek mainland, the prospects for the rebels soon began to fade.
A civil war between the Greek factions provided an opportunity for the Ottomans
to retake territory and led to the fall of Athens.
However, Greek fortunes changed with the intervention of
three key countries: Britain, France and Russia.
After their call for the establishment of an autonomous Greek state was rejected by the
Ottoman Sultan, their combined naval forces destroyed an Ottoman and Egyptian fleet
at the Battle of Navarino on 20 October 1827.
The battle turned the tide of the war.
On 3 February 1830, it was decided that Greece would become a wholly independent state.
Two years later on, 21 July 1832,
the borders of the new country were demarcated under the terms of the Treaty of Constantinople.
While this marked the establishment of the Greek state, the new country
incorporated a mere fraction of the territory it saw as its own.
Its ambition was nothing less than to reclaim the Greek-speaking territories of Byzantium,
including areas in the Aegean, Asia Minor,
the Balkans, the Black Sea, as well as the large Mediterranean islands of Crete and Cyprus.
At the heart of this ambitious policy - a policy that came to be known as the Megali Idea,
the Great Idea - was the recapture of Constantinople.
It would be 30 years until the first territorial expansion occurred.
This came with the addition of the Ionian Islands.
Having fallen to Napoleonic France in 1804, the Islands became a British protectorate in 1814.
However, in 1864 Britain ceded them to the Greek Kingdom as a gift to
mark the coronation of a new Greek monarch after the first king, Otto, was deposed.
Interestingly, the new ruler - King George I, who came from Denmark - took the title
King of the Hellenes, rather than King of Greece,
thereby underscoring the aim of uniting all Greeks within a single state.
The second expansion came 18 years later.
A war between the Ottoman Empire and Russia provided
an opportunity for Greece to demand more territory.
At the Congress of Berlin, which saw Britain awarded control of the island of Cyprus,
Greece claimed Crete and a number of territories to its north.
In the end, however, and after pressure from the large powers,
it scaled back its demands and in 1881 the Ottoman Empire ceded the region of Thessaly,
in what is now central Greece under the terms of the Convention of Constantinople.
The third and largest expansion came in 1913, when Greece more than doubled its size.
However, this expansion had its roots and events almost 20 years earlier.
In 1896, there was a major uprising on the island of Crete.
Seeing an opportunity to seize the prized island,
Greek troops landed on Crete at the start of 1897, sparking a war with the Ottoman Empire.
However, Greece was badly mismatched and within a month it was defeated by the Ottomans.
But, yet again, Greece was aided by the European powers.
They now make Crete an autonomous protectorate of the Ottoman empire
under the governorship of Prince George, the second son of the greek king.
And although the Cretan State unilaterally declared union with Greece in 1908,
it would be another five years before this would be formally recognised.
In 1912, Greece allied with Serbia, Montenegro and Bulgaria
to drive Ottoman forces out of the Balkan Peninsula.
Over the course of the First Balkan War, Greece pushed north
capturing Epirus and a large chunk of Macedonia.
But despite having pushed the Ottomans out of Europe, relations soured between the allies.
Although it had now secured an Aegean coastline in Thrace, Bulgaria also
wanted Macedonia and so attacked Greece and Serbia - thus sparking the Second Balkan War,
a war that in fact allowed the Ottomans to retake a portion of territory in Europ.
In August 1913, a ceasefire was announced.
Under the terms of the Treaty of London and the Treaty of Bucharest,
Greece was formally awarded Epirus, Macedonia and Crete.
Meanwhile, in 1914, under the Protocol of Florence,
Greece was also awarded a number of islands in the eastern Aegean.
Over the course of almost 90 years, Greece had grown from the heartland of the Peloponnese
to incorporate the Ionian Islands, Thessaly,
Southern Epirus, Macedonia, Crete and the eastern Aegean islands.
But there still lays several prized territories beyond its control,
including Constantinople and Asia Minor.
The chance to try to take these came following the end of the First World War
and the defeat of the Ottoman Empire, which had sided with Germany.
On 15 May 1919, Greek forces landed at Smyrna, what is now Izmir in Turkey.
From there, they pushed inland.
In 1920, the victorious powers unveiled their plans to carve
up the Ottoman Empire under the terms of the Treaty of Sevres.
As well as awarding territory to Armenia in the east, and creating the possibility
of a Kurdish homeland, the treaty also proposed granting Greece Asia Minor and eastern Thrace.
Determined to resist what they saw as a national humiliation, Turkish nationalist forces mobilised.
In October 1922, the Greek army was expelled from Asia Minor.
The campaign, known in Greece as the Asia Minor Catastrophe,
ended any Greek hopes of regaining land in Anatolia or retaking Constantinople.
In July 1923, the current boundaries between Greece and Turkey were officially demarcated
under the Treaty of Lausanne.
In addition, and in one of the most significant acts of legalised ethnic
cleansing of modern times, the two countries also agreed to a population transfer
that saw more than one and a half million Christians and Muslims
uprooted - a process that ended a Greek presence in Asia Minor stretching back thousands of years.
If there was one consolation from this era, Greece was awarded Western Thrace from Bulgaria,
which had also sided with Germany in World War One.
Originally seated under the terms of the 1920 Treaty of San Remo,
this change was also confirmed under the Treaty of Lausanne,
when the region's eastern boundary was officially recognised as Greece's land border with Turkey.
This became the fourth expansion of the greek state.
The fifth and final enlargement came after the Second World War
when Greece acquired the Dodecanese Islands.
Lying at the far south east of the Aegean Sea, and predominantly inhabited by Greeks,
the islands had been seeded to Italy by the Ottoman Empire in 1911.
However, on 10 February 1947,
Italy formally passed the islands to Greece under the terms of the Treaty of Paris.
As a result, Greece finally assumed its current form.
But that wasn't quite the end of the story.
There was still one final and important unredeemed territory
that remained outside the Greek state: the island of Cyprus.
Having come under British control in 1878, in 1955 the island's Greek community,
representing around 80 percent of the population, launched an armed uprising for union with Greece.
Fearing this could lead to a civil war with the island's Turkish community,
Greece and Turkey eventually decided in 1959
that the island would instead become an independent country in its own right.
And, in August 1960, the Republic of Cyprus came into existence.
Despite this, one final disastrous attempt was made to incorporate it into Greece.
In July 1974, the military junta in Greece overthrew the Cypriot Government as a
prelude to attempted unification - thus prompting Turkey to invad.
The resulting division of the island, which the United Nations is still trying to resolve
to this day, marked the final end of any idea of incorporating Cyprus into Greece.
The two countries now exist as separate independent members of
the United Nations and the European Union and the borders of the Hellenic Republic,
as Greece is now officially known, are now well and truly settled.
While we tend to think that countries become independent at a precise moment
within defined borders, this hasn't always been the case.
Greece is one of the best examples of this.
Having come into existence in 1832 with a mere fraction of the land that it saw as
its rightful territory, it underwent a series of five expansions over the next 120 years.
In so many ways, it's a remarkable story.
And yet, while it must be recognised that the Greeks fought and won their independence,
their success often relied on not just a little luck;
both in terms of wider events and having the support of key powers at key moments.
Likewise, while this was a process that was enormously successful in so many ways,
and has led to the Greece that we know today,
it also has to be accepted that it was a process that wasn't without its tragic consequences.
I hope you found that interesting.
If so, here are some more videos that you might enjoy.
Thanks so much for watching and see you in the next video.