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Greeks all over the world to celebrate Independence Day March 21, 2007

Greeks all over the world, in Athens, in Nicosia, in Melbourne, in New York City, will celebrate Greece’s Independence Day on March 25.

Parades and speeches will mark a struggle which began early in the 19th century and continued well into the 20th, fueled by the desire of the Greek Nation to follow the traditions of self-government of the world’s first Democracy.

The 1821-1832 rebellion of Greeks within the Ottoman Empire resulted in the establishment of an independent Kingdom of Greece. The rebellion originated in the activities of the Philikí Etaireía, “Friendly Brotherhood”, a patriotic conspiracy founded in Odessa, now in Ukraine, in 1814. By that time the desire for some form of independence was common among Greeks of all classes whose Hellenism, or sense of Greek Nationality, had long been fostered by the Greek Orthodox Church, by the survival of the Greek language and by the administrative arrangements of the Ottoman Empire. Greeks’ economic progress and the impact of Western revolutionary ideas further intensified Hellenism.

The revolt began in March 1821 when Alexandros Ypsilantis, the leader of the Etairists, crossed the Prut River into Turkish-held Moldavia with a small force of troops. Ypsilantis was soon defeated by the Turks, but in the meantime, on March 25, 1821, the traditional date of Greek independence, sporadic revolts against Turkish rule had broken out in the Peloponnese, in Greece north of the Gulf of Corinth, and on several islands. It was on that date, March 25, when the Bishop Paleon Patron Germanos, blessed the flag at the Monastery of Agia Lavra, near today’s Kalavrita town. Within a year the rebels had gained control of the Peloponnese, and in January 1822 they declared the independence of Greece. The Turks attempted three times from 1822 to 1824 to invade the Peloponnese but were unable to retrieve the area.

Internal rivalries, however, prevented the Greeks from extending their control and from firmly consolidating their position in the Peloponnese. In 1823 civil war broke out between the War of Independence leader Theódoros Kolokotrónis and Geórgios Kountouriótis, who was Head of the Government that had been formed in January 1822 but was forced to flee to the island of Hydra in December 1822. After a second civil war in 1824, Kountouriótis was firmly established as leader, but his government and the entire revolution were gravely threatened by the arrival of Egyptian forces led by Ibrahim Pash, which had been sent to aid the Turks in 1825. With the support of Egyptian sea power, the Ottoman forces successfully invaded the Peloponnese, captured Messolonghi in April 1826, the town of Athens in August 1826 and the Acropolis in June 1827.

The Greek cause, however, was saved by the intervention of the European powers. Favoring the formation of an autonomous Greek State, they offered to mediate between the Turks and the Greeks in 1826 and 1827. When the Turks refused, Great Britain, France, and Russia sent their naval fleets to Navarino, where on October 20, 1827, they destroyed the Egyptian fleet. Although this severely crippled the Ottoman forces, the war continued, complicated by the Russo-Turkish War of 1828-29. In 1828 a small, independent Greek State was formed with 800,000 inhabitants. It was a penniless state of extremely small size, consisting of the Peloponnese, Central Greece and the Cyclades. It would take another century of struggle before all the Greeks were freed.

A Greco-Turkish settlement was finally determined by the European powers. At a conference in London, they adopted a protocol on February 3, 1830, declaring Greece an independent monarchical state under their protection. By mid-1832 the northern frontier of the new state had been set along the line extending from south of Volos to south of Arta; Prince Otto of Bavaria had accepted the crown and the Turkish sultan had recognized Greek independence and signed the Treaty of Constantinople in July 1832.

The first man to govern the country was a Greek former Minister of the Tsar, Ioannis Kapodistrias. His first task was to organize the state, its internal administration, the army, the questions of the National territories and independence and the border question. However, his clash with the local aristocracy provoked intense reactions which led to his assassination in 1831 in Nafplion, which at that time was the first capital of Greece.

The 19th century was a long and trying time for the Greeks. It was a period during which Greek society, through myriad difficulties, was trying to define its National image and bring about its National fulfillment. The liberality and democracy of the first Greek Constitutions were replaced by an absolute monarchy guided by foreigners. In 1843 Otto, under popular pressure, granted a conservative Constitution (1844) which, however, was often ignored. Otto was finally driven out of the country in 1862.

With the Constitution of 1864 the regime of a constitutional monarchy was established. The new King was George I, a scion of the Danish Dynasty of the Glucksburgs. In the same year, the Ionian islands were united with Greece and progressive political customs and organized social frameworks for Greece’s political and social life introduced.

There was relative calm during the period that ensued up to the end of the century. Political battles were often relegated to the Chamber of Deputies while public opinion was more occupied by National and Balkan affairs. These were the Cretan Revolution of 1866-69; the establishment of a Bulgarian Church that was independent of the Patriarchate, the Bulgarian Hexarchy of 1870, and which, in turn, created a Macedonian problem when the limits of its authority had to be defined; the Russian-Turkish War of 1877-88 and the rise of panslavism; the establishment of a large Bulgarian state which stretched into Greek Macedonia by the Treaty of San Stefano in 1878, the invasion of Thessaly by the Greek army and its annexation in 1881 and new uprisings in Epirus and Crete.

The new ideology which took root in the decade of the 1840s and which dictated Greece’s foreign policy for a long time was the concept of the Megali Idea, “Great Idea”. It aimed at freeing all the Greeks who were still under the Ottoman yoke and creating a greater Greece. It started as an ideology of the urban middle and lower-middle classes, passed through various phases and several ups and downs before becoming at the beginning of the following century the ideology of the urban upper class, acting as an inspiration for the liberation of enslaved Greeks and ending, finally, in national disasters and most acute internal conflicts.

Related Links > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_War_of_Independence