In the London Protocol, the three protecting powers (United Kingdom, France and Russia) establish the borders of Greece.

The borders drawn in London did not include Athens. When Britain, France, and Russia sat down on March 22, 1829, to establish the boundaries of an independent Greek state through the London Protocol, they created a country smaller than Scotland, limited to the Peloponnese and a few nearby islands. The capital of ancient Greek civilization lay outside the new nation's borders. The Greek War of Independence had been raging since 1821, when Greek revolutionaries rose against Ottoman rule. The conflict drew volunteers from across Europe, Lord Byron among them, and generated enormous public sympathy in western capitals. But the great powers were less interested in Greek self-determination than in managing the decline of the Ottoman Empire without destabilizing the European balance of power. The London Protocol established Greece as an autonomous state under Ottoman suzerainty, not full independence. It would be governed by a Christian prince who could not be from the ruling families of Britain, France, or Russia. The borders excluded Crete, the Aegean islands, Thessaly, Epirus, and Macedonia, regions with large Greek populations that would not be incorporated for decades. Leopold of Saxe-Coburg was offered the throne but declined, having concluded the tiny country was ungovernable. A revised protocol in 1830 finally granted full independence, and Prince Otto of Bavaria eventually became king in 1832. Greece spent the next century fighting to expand beyond the London Protocol's cramped borders, absorbing territory through wars and treaties until the Megali Idea of a greater Greek state was finally extinguished at Smyrna in 1922. The 1829 borders were never meant to contain a civilization that old.