The Greek Revolution: How Greece Was Freed From the Ottomans

One of the 19th century’s most pivotal events, the Greek Revolution (or War of Independence), remains relatively unknown. What began as an uprising in March 1821 led to a decade of warfare and institutional creation. Greece emerged as one of Europe’s new nation-states, pioneering a pattern that defined the 19th and 20th centuries. Concepts that defined later conflicts, like public opinion, humanitarian intervention, and state building, appeared during the Greek Revolution. While marking a new beginning for Greece, it was a key step towards the end of the Ottoman Empire.

By 1821 parts of the Greek world had lived under the Ottoman Empire for four centuries. As with life under any empire, the experience was uneven with some Greeks enjoying a privileged role as Ottoman officials and others struggling in subjectivity. Being Orthodox Christians the Greeks kept their faith and an administration that maintained a separate identity (Bialor, 2008, 478) but they were second-class citizens in a Muslim empire.

Several long-term trends resulted in the revolution at the start of the 19th century. In contrast to previous centuries, the Ottomans were clearly weakening in the 1800s. Regional separatism saw rebellions and breakaways in Albania, Egypt, and Serbia (Kostis, 2018, 25). Beyond the borders, the Russians were a particular menace and in a series of wars threatened the violent end of the empire.

Many Greeks had long looked to their fellow Orthodox Christians in Russia as potential liberators. Previous Greek revolts sought to coincide with Russian advances but these produced little benefit and came at a huge cost. However, the Greeks did benefit indirectly from Russian victories over the Ottomans. Commercial concessions to the Russians aided the growth of Greek shipping and spread merchant communities around the Black Sea. As well as generating wealth this created a Greek diaspora connected to the courts of Europe and intellectual trends. Greek traders and intellectuals transmitted elements of the European Enlightenment to the Balkans raising expectations. The coming of the French Revolution sparked new hopes.

One man who tried to capitalize on the revolutionary moment of the 1790s was the protomartyr of the Greek Revolution, Rigas Feraios. A merchant from central Greece active in Vienna, Rigas translated the ideas of the French Revolution for the Balkans and promoted a vision of a multi-ethnic republic ousting the Ottoman Sultan. Rigas was betrayed and handed over for execution to the Ottomans before he could put his plans into motion. However, two decades after his death a combination of Ottoman weaknesses, the growing power of European states, Greek development, and the spread of Enlightenment and revolutionary ideas created the movement for Greek liberation.

Having failed to find a liberator from the outside in 1821 the Greeks took the initiative and fought for their own liberation.

At the time, Greek communities were found around the Balkans and Asia Minor with a diaspora extending much further. Among this diaspora, the first moves to prepare for the revolution were made. In 1814 a secret revolutionary society, the Filiki Eteria (Friendly Society), was founded in the Ukrainian city of Odessa. Though never more than a thousand members, this society promoted the idea of a Greek revolt and started preparations. A Greek in Russian service, Alexandros Ypsilantis, headed the society and crossed the Russian border into Ottoman lands to raise the flag of revolution in early 1821. This invasion floundered in modern Romania amidst a lack of support and poor leadership but sent the signal for more promising efforts elsewhere.

March 25th is still celebrated every year as the beginning of the revolution, though attacks on Ottoman positions began the week before. The Peloponnese in southern Greece was the heartland of this revolt and Ottoman forces in the peninsula were quickly confined to several fortresses. Uprisings spread from Crete and Cyprus to northern Greece but many were suppressed and the insurgent area was reduced to the Peloponnese, central Greece, and the Aegean islands by 1822.

The Greek insurgents were mostly formed out of armed groups known as klephts and armatoloi who during the Ottoman occupation had been outlaws and militia respectively. Men like Markos Botsaris, Theodoros Kolokotronis, and Georgios Karaiskakis were skilled leaders of these irregular soldiers Between 1821-1823 the insurgents enjoyed considerable success. Ottoman positions were overrun in 1821 and a large army was trapped and defeated in the mountains in 1822 as Ottoman counter-offensives failed. On the sea too the insurgents were successful. An outmatched and outgunned Greek navy of converted merchantmen and pirate ships disrupted the Ottoman navy and destroyed several ships in daring raids.

Massacres accompanied the battles. When the town of Tripoli fell to the Greeks in 1821 as many as 8,000 Muslims and Jews were murdered (Beaton, 2019, 82). In one of the war’s most infamous incidents, the Ottomans killed tens of thousands on the island of Chios and sold more into slavery in the following year (Brewer, 2001).

In the first three years of the revolution, the insurgents liberated several islands and most of central and southern Greece. They had done it with minimal outside support and after fending off several Ottoman responses. The next question was what the Greeks would do with their liberated territory.

The question of what would replace the Ottomans in the free territories was difficult to answer. There had never been a large-scale independent Greek political entity and few had experience of anything beyond local politics. Freedom from an oppressive empire, a growing sense of national identity, and a religious war pitting Christians against Muslims united a range of social groups. At the same time, religious affiliation was not always enough to determine which side someone joined and local identities, different languages, and class tensions meant that a collective identity had to be forged. Removing Ottoman control was one of the only common goals.

Broadly the leadership of 1821 can be divided into three main groups; Primates, Captains, and Westernizers (Brewer, 2001, 127). The Primates as the local landholding Greek elite were previously part of the Ottoman administration and tax collection system (Petropoulos, 1968, 28). A continuation of the Ottoman system, with only themselves now at the top, would have satisfied many Primates. The Captains had considerable support from the general population having lived as folkloric outlaws in the mountains under the Ottomans.  They were not now willing to surrender their independence lightly and their own local identity and interests frequently determined their actions. The Westernizers brought with them strong connections to Western Europe and Russia having lived as merchants, diplomats, and administrators around the continent. They were prominent among those proposing the creation of a centralized state in Greece similar to those growing in Europe.

Creating an entirely new state in wartime conditions and amid significant social divisions was not straightforward. Quickly a provisional government declared Greece’s independence and drafted a constitution. The creation of this central state, while a necessary act to communicate with the outside world, increased political tensions. The new country fell into bouts of civil war in 1824 and 1825 pitting the nascent central state against local interests and military leaders. While the course of events was tending to strengthen the position of the central state these divisions were never fully overcome as the threat of an Ottoman return intervened in 1825 and brought the revolution to its moment of crisis.

The Greek Revolution was from the start an international cause and crisis, a factor which would prove to be decisive.

The 1820s were an inauspicious time to launch a revolution. The Napoleonic Wars had only ended in 1815 and the conservative victors wished to preserve the balance of power established at the Congress of Vienna guaranteeing any insurgents a cold reception. Having started the revolution the Greeks found themselves largely isolated as support from western Europe and Russia was lacking.

In contrast to the hostility of governments, the revolution received a warm reception among the peoples of Europe. For generations, the elite of Europe, and an increasing part of the population, had grown up with the history and art of ancient Greece drilled into their imagination. The sudden emergence of a fight for freedom in those same lands held an irresistible appeal.

The movement to support Greece, philhellenism, was an early example of a modern, successful, international solidarity campaign. The Greek cause was promoted and defended and money was raised across Europe and America with Germany, France, and Britain at the forefront. In a precursor of the famous International Brigades of the Spanish Civil War a century later a steady flow of individuals made their way to Greece to volunteer for the fight. The most prominent arrival was the celebrated poet Lord Byron whose death in the town of Missolonghi in 1824 made him a martyr of the revolution and brought renewed attention to Greece.

War-torn Greece could never match the vision of perfection these volunteers held and their enthusiasm and idealism rarely brought practical results. However, this groundswell of public opinion contributed to shifting the attitude of the Great Powers, especially when the Ottomans carried out massacres such as on the island of Chios. The loans arranged by the philhellenic London Greek Committee in 1824 and 1825 were of dubious practical benefit but they contributed to the recognition of Greece as a new political entity.

The longer the Greeks kept fighting the more the position of the Great Powers shifted. Their initial reluctance to back a revolution was placed against the possibility of allowing the Ottomans a free hand to carry out reprisals. The more likely it became that someone would intervene the more each Great Power could not stay away for fear of a rival gaining influence.

The moment of crisis came when Sultan Mahmud II called on Egyptian support and a French-trained Egyptian army and navy reached Greece in 1825. The divided Greeks put up renewed resistance, most famously at Missolonghi which fell after a heroic defense in 1826. However, the insurgents soon faced defeat.

Unwilling to allow the Greeks to be crushed a combined British, Russian, and French fleet entered the war. This early form of humanitarian intervention proved decisive as the combined fleet sunk the Ottoman navy in the last great clash of the age of sail at the battle of Navarino in 1827 guaranteeing that a Greek defeat would not be permitted (Simos, 2021, 347).

The Battle of Navarino ensured the Greeks would not be crushed but the eventual shape of a future Greece remained unclear.

The persistent divisions between local and personal interests and an emerging central state returned with the rule of Ioannis Kapodistrias. After a distinguished career in the Russian diplomatic service, Kapodistrias had a high profile in Europe. Though keeping a distance from the early stages of the revolution he was elected head of state, Governor, and arrived in January 1828 earning him the reputation of the first leader of the new Greek state.

With the war still ongoing Kapodistrias set about building state institutions. He began the construction of an education system, created a national bank and Greece’s first currency, and used a reformed military to expand the borders. However, his personal rule required a degree of authoritarianism and setting aside the new constitution. After clashing with a powerful family he was assassinated in the first capital of Greece, Nafplio, in 1831.

Kapodistrias’s death threatened more instability but by this point, the future of Greece started to become clearer. The war with the Ottomans ended in 1829 with a Greek victory at the Battle of Petra. In the years following Navarino the Great Powers issued a series of decisions which first granted Greece a degree of autonomy before upgrading this in 1830 to full independence.

In 1832 the Great Powers agreed amongst themselves that this new Greece would be a kingdom ruled by a carefully chosen member of European royalty. The Powers, of course, would be responsible for the choice. Having lived through a decade of war and faction fighting, enough people in Greece were willing to accept the choice and so the Greece that emerged from the revolution in 1833 was the Kingdom of Greece under King Otto, a Bavarian prince.

Having risen up in unfavourable circumstances in 1821 the achievement of liberation from the Ottoman Empire and an independent state was remarkable.

Many of the issues raised during the revolution remained unresolved and would shape Greek life for decades. This new Greece was only a part of the Greek world. It would take more than a century for the state to reach its current borders and in the process, the Greek world which once spread across the Mediterranean was reduced to a state on the Aegean coast.

The new king faced revolutions demanding, first, a constitution, and then his overthrow in 1843 and 1862. The need to fund the war effort and the new state created a dependence on foreign loans which were given on predatory terms and could not be repaid. Defaults and isolation from capital markets followed. A centralised state did emerge but it was weak and poor and often the vehicle of an elite. While the revolution was undoubtedly a success it set in motion a pattern of state crises which two hundred years later is yet to be fully resolved.

Suggested Further Reading

Bialor, Perry A., “Chapter 2, Greek Ethnic Survival Under Ottoman Domination” (2008). Research Report 09: The Limits of Integration:Ethnicity and Nationalism in Modern Europe. 1.

Kostis, Kostas. History’s Spoiled Children: The Formation of the Modern Greek State (2018). tr. Moe, Jacob. Hurst. London

Beaton, Roderick. Greece: The Biography of a Modern Nation (2019) University of Chicago Press. Chicago

Brewer, David. The Greek War of Independence: The Struggle for Freedom from Ottoman Oppression (2001) Overlook Press. Woodstock

Petropoulos, John. Politics and Statecraft in the Kingdom of Greece 1833-1843 (1968). Princeton University Press. Princeton

Simos, Nikitas. The emergence of a state: Greece 1821-1832: The ambitions of the Powers and the will of the people (2021). Papazissis Publishers. Athens