Greeks Break Ottoman Chains: Independence After Centuries of Rule

Greek revolutionaries raised the banner of independence against the Ottoman Empire in March 1821, beginning a war that combined genuine national liberation with Great Power interference and brutal atrocities on all sides. The uprising drew on centuries of Greek resentment against Ottoman rule, the influence of Enlightenment ideas about national self-determination, and the organizational efforts of secret societies like the Filiki Eteria that had been recruiting members throughout the Greek diaspora. The early years of the war were chaotic and savage. Greek rebels massacred Turkish and Muslim civilians in the Peloponnese during the initial uprising. The Ottomans retaliated by hanging the Ecumenical Patriarch Gregory V from the gate of the patriarchate in Constantinople on Easter Sunday 1821 and slaughtering the Greek population of Chios in 1822. The Chios massacre, immortalized in a painting by Delacroix, shocked European public opinion and generated enormous sympathy for the Greek cause. The war might have ended in Ottoman victory had the Great Powers not intervened. Russia, Britain, and France all had strategic interests in the eastern Mediterranean and ideological reasons to support Christian Greeks against Muslim Turks. Lord Byron's death at Missolonghi in 1824 turned the Greek cause into a romantic crusade. The decisive moment came at the Battle of Navarino on October 20, 1827, when a combined British, French, and Russian fleet destroyed the Ottoman-Egyptian navy, effectively guaranteeing Greek independence. The London Protocol of 1830 formally recognized Greece as an independent state, the first nation to break away from the Ottoman Empire through revolution. The new country was tiny, comprising only the Peloponnese and a strip of central Greece, and was saddled with a Bavarian king imposed by the Great Powers. But the principle of national self-determination it represented inspired liberation movements across the Balkans and beyond throughout the nineteenth century.