Wednesday, March 25 the Greek nation celebrates its Independence Day. This year the country has been enjoying 205 years of liberty as a sovereign state. Traditionally the day is celebrated with militaryand historical parades and people of all ages dressing up in historical costumes. For the background we must delve back into the history of the 1821 Revolutionary War of Independence from Ottoman rule. It was the height of the liberal Enlightenment and the European Romantic era that saw aristocratic and sensitive young men of leisure from Western Europe travelling to the south and the east of the continent on what was called the 'grand tour'.
March 20, 2026 Memory Eternal: The Independence Shaped By Orthodoxy | The Greek Revolution 1821.
These young, revolutionary adventurers also reached Greece in increasing numbers. Being Modernists they were not attracted to the country as the remnant of the Christian Eastern Roman Empire based on Constantinople, but rather the pagan Classical Golden Age of Athens and Hellenism.
To this day there is this weird hiatus in our consciousness: we associate Greece with the pagan Classical period, the 200 years from the mid-5th century BC to the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC; on the other hand, Western historical institutions did a disappearing act on the Roman period, particularly the Christian era, spanning from Apostolic times to the Fall of Eastern Rome.
It is evident that this period lasted far longer than the few centuries of Classical paganism. In AD 285 Emperor Diocletian split the vast Roman Empire into two administrative regions, the East with the capital in Byzantium, later Constantinople and the Western part with the capital at Milan.
Two hundred years prior the Apostles of Jesus Christ had established the first Christian communities in the East. Saint Peter founded the Church in Antioch, Saint Mark founded the Church in Alexandria and Saint James the Just, the stepbrother of Jesus, became the first Bishop of Jerusalem, as Saint Paul evangelized much of the Eastern Mediterranean world in general.
The post Apostolic period produced the giants of early Christian doctrine in the region, Ignatius of Antioch, Athanasius of Alexandria, Saint John Chrysostom in Constantinople, Cyril of Alexandria and the Cappadocian Fathers Basil the Great, Gregory of Nazianzus and Gregory of Nyssa.
Due to its location between Europe, Asia and Africa the Empire spent the next thousand years fending off invasions, raids and skirmishes by a myriad of tribes and empires: Sassanid Persia, invasions by Germanic tribes, the Huns, Slavs and Avars, the Arab Caliphates, the Bulgars, the Normans and yes, the Crusaders and finally the Turks.
After the collapse of Constantinople in 1453 the Greek speaking intellectual and merchant diaspora spread all over Europe. They ended up in countries like France, Switzerland, Italy, Russia, England and many other centers of the Enlightenment. Many of their descendants and earliest supporters of Greek independence found themselves in European capitals.
Adamantios Korais lived in Paris where he devoted his life to the purification of the Greek language. The young Count Capo d'Istria (Capodistrias) from the Ionian island of Corfu played an important role in the founding of the state of Switzerland and Spyridon Trikoupis served as Lord Guilford's Secretary in London.
All men of the Enlightenment and revolutionary to a more or lesser degree. As is typical for the period, these men saw education as the key to the development and elevation of their countrymen. Modernists thought in these terms in the class ridden societies of the time. Nationalism was not yet a dirty word.
By that time the Ottoman Empire was so corrupt and decadent that it went down in history as 'the sick man of Europe'. But at that point it was by no means sure that an independent Greek state was the answer to the question, what would happen after the demise of the Ottoman Empire.
The Greek War of Independence can be seen as a run up to The Great Game, a geopolitical rivalry that sprang up between the British Empire and the Russian Empire. The latter sought to extend its territory and influence southward. The conflict stemmed from Britain’s fear of Russian expansion into the power vacuum left by the Ottomans, threatening British India.
If you consider the present state of Britain, France and Russia, it's clear that their standing on the world stage has changed considerably since the 1820s. We may not think it possible or even ethical at present, but at the time these 'Great Powers' determined what countries had a right to exist and which did not. It explains their current behavior to a large extent.
To this day, the Kurdish people are still spread over parts of Turkey, Iran and Iraq and an independent state is still as far off as it was two hundred years ago. States like Jordan, Syria, Lebanon on the other hand were carved out the Ottoman Empire, later also Israel. These states exist to the present day.
In the meantime, the ideal of the Enlightenment, that every nation has the right to national sovereignty and self determination, has been replaced by a form of quasi imperialism, otherwise known as globalism. But at the time national independence was still seen as a collective 'right'.
There were two reasons why the British opposed Greek independence. The Greeks were seen as too friendly with Russia for comfort. The two nations of course shared a religion. And London did not want to give up the Ionian islands, a British protectorate since 1814 after they wrested the islands from the French. Napoleon had been defeated in 1813.
The Greeks had contacts with the Whig Party rather than with the Tories. The fact they were astonished to find that there were Greeks living in Greece, is testament to the deep seated European psychology that wants to erase every trace of the Eastern Roman Empire from Western consciousness.
Emblematic is what the Dutch Humanist intellectual, Desiderius Erasmus did to the Greek language, declaring it 'dead' mere decades after the fall of Constantinople. He revised the pronunciation, apparently not being able or willing to trace anyone in the Greek diaspora for guidance. No Greek today recognizes the made up, Erasmian pronunciation as the language alive today, or at any other time in the past.
The Congress of Vienna established the United States of the Ionian Islands under British protection. Prior to the outbreak of the Greek revolution, the British appointed as Governor, Lord High Commissioner Thomas Maitland. He made himself exceedingly unpopular in Corfu.
Maitland governed with an authoritarian approach, aiming to enforce British order on the islanders and suppressed nationalist movements. His early actions included dissolving the elected Senate and dismissing several Senators. He also cracked down on press freedom, allowing only one government controlled printing press. The Ottomans had banned Greek printing presses altogether. Greek books at the time were often printed and published in Venice.
Maitland clashed often with Count Ioannis Capodistrias, the aristocrat residing in Corfu. Capodistrias was the subject of a recent biographic movie (link). When I looked into his life, I found that under Ottoman rule, many of the factions that made up the revolution, Klefts, seafarers, merchants, armatoli and ship owners had been a law unto themselves under Ottoman rule.
There was no reason for the factions to cooperate, to create a culture of 'we'. Having lived as virtual outlaws for four centuries under the Turks, it was exceedingly hard to recognize a central authority. As a result they did not accept each others authority, necessary in a power sharing coalition.
These were local and regional power bases. It took three or four civil wars to forge a national unity that could be called a nation. On top of that, each of the Great Powers had their own ties and affinities. They supported different factions within the revolutionary effort.
The British supported Mavrokordatos and Petrobey Mavromichalis because they knew them from their piracy sideline back in the day against Napoleon. Kolokotronis had the support of the Russian Czar, whereas Kolettis had ties to the French.
October 1827 saw the Battle of Navarino in which the combined fleets of Britain, France and Russia decisively defeated the Ottoman-Egyptian fleet in Navarino Bay, crippling Ottoman naval power and turning the tide of the war. Following the Russo-Turkish War, the Ottoman Empire was forced to recognize Greek autonomy through the Treaty of Adrianople (1829).
On 3 February 1830, the Great Powers formally signed the London Protocol, recognizing Greece as an independent, sovereign state under a hereditary monarchy. This marked the official end of the war and the birth of modern Greece.
That event will be celebrated in a few years time, in 2030.
Dec. 2, 2025 Not Nostalgic History: Freedom or Death: How Greece Defeated the Ottoman Empire (Greek War of Independence)
- Read also our series on the various revolutions (link). The Greek Revolution is contained in part 2 (link).
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