So, in 1832 the Turkish Ottoman Empire was
forced to sign the Treaty of Constantinople which ended the Greek War of Independence
and created the Kingdom of Greece. But modern Greece is not a kingdom, so
how did today’s 3rd Hellenic Republic acquire its current borders and why
did Greece decide to ditch its king? Well, the first King of Greece was actually not
Greek, instead he was a Bavarian prince, named Otto von Wittelsbach, who had been made Greece’s
monarch by the Great Powers that guaranteed its independence. He was also the first, but
not the last Greek king to be overthrown. Otto of Greece tried to rule as an absolute
monarch, but he wasn’t very good at it. So in 1844 his people forced him to sign a constitution
which limited his power, but it didn’t save Otto in the long run; his failure to make much
headway in solving Greece’s economic problems, combined with his inability to secure
the monarchy by producing an heir and Greece’s humiliation at the hands of Britain
(who stopped them from attacking the Turks during the Crimean War) all contributed to
Otto’s general lack of popularity. The King was also a Catholic, something that
didn’t sit well with a mostly Orthodox population. So in 1862, while Otto was holidaying in the south
of Greece, a coup took control of the capital, Athens, and at the urging of the Great Powers the
now former-king didn’t resist it. He returned to Bavaria aboard a British warship and died there
three years later. But the coup, which created a new National Assembly, didn’t result in a
republican government for Greece, far from it. Quick side note: for the purposes of this video
a republic is any state which lacks a monarch; it doesn’t necessarily have to be a democracy,
it just must not not have a royal ruler. So instead of instituting a republic, the Assembly
called a referendum to decide on a new king from a new dynasty for Greece. The Greek people
overwhelmingly chose Alfred Duke of Edinburgh, a son of Queen Victoria, to succeed Otto
in the hopes of getting Britain to hand over the Ionian Islands to Greece. The islands
have a majority Greek population. But Alfred, at the urging of his mother and at the insistence
of the governments of all three Great Powers said no. So instead the Assembly crowned
King George I of the house of Glucksburg. Like Otto, George I wasn’t born in Greece; he
was the son of King Christian IX of Denmark. But unlike Otto, George I made it very clear to
his people that he actually had an interest in them. He learnt Greek soon after arriving in the
country in 1863, and he himself was a Lutheran but he married an Orthodox Russian Grand Duchess and
had their children raised in the Orthodox faith. He also willingly appointed Greek advisors
and accepted a Greek constitution, while Otto had retained exclusively Bavarian ones
until his constitution forced him to do otherwise. Subsequently George I had a long
and fairly prosperous reign. His reign also marks the beginning of Greek
territorial expansion. As a gift to the new King, who was something of an Anglophile, Britain did
decide to hand over the Ionian Islands to Greece. Interestingly marking the first time in history
that Britain voluntarily decolonized a territory. In 1877 Russia, along with a coalition of
rebellious Ottoman Balkan tributaries, attacked and defeated the Ottoman Empire in, yet another,
Russo-Turkish War. Greece didn’t participate, though they very much wanted to as the Ottomans
still controlled most of the Greek speaking world, not to mention that George I’s sister had
married the future Tsar Alexander III. They only didn’t join in because of the
interventions of both Britain and France. Still at the Congress of Berlin in 1878 Greece
laid claim to large chunks of Ottoman territory, and eventually, they received Thessaly
and part of Epirus on the mainland. Notably, just like in the Treaty of
Constantinople they didn’t get Crete. But the Greeks of Crete weren’t overly happy
about that. They had already revolted against the Turks in 1841, 1858, and 1866, and in doing so
had won some privileges, including the equality of Christian and Muslim worship on the island.
On paper, anyway. Not being made a part of Greece once again only angered them further and
sporadic revolts in the 1880’s kept tensions high between Greece and the Ottoman Empire. In 1897 the
Cretans revolted once more, but this time Greece sent an army to support the rebels, beginning
the Greco-Turkish War of 1897. Also known, in Greece, as the Unfortunate War or Black ‘97,
which tells you something about it how it went. It went badly for Greece. In just 32 days
Ottoman troops pushed the Greek army, commanded by their Crown Prince, Constantine,
almost completely out of Thessaly, to the point that they threatened Athens. An
armistice was signed between the two states, and the resulting peace treaty saw Greece lose
land on the Turkish border and have to pay war reparations to the Ottomans. However, at
the insistence of the Great Powers, Crete gained significant autonomy within the Ottoman
Empire, as the Cretan State, the next year.
Their loss to the Turks caused social upheaval in
Greece which culminated in the 1909 Goudi Coup. The coup eventually brought Eleftherios
Venizelos, leader of the Greek Liberal Party to power as Greece’s Prime Minister in 1910.
Venizelos reformed much of the Greek economy, as well as, importantly, both the army and
navy. Two things that came in handy in 1912. Why? Well because in October of that year
the Kingdom of Montenegro declared war on the Ottoman Empire and it was joined by its allies
Bulgaria, Serbia and Greece. This time around, the Greek Army, 200,000 strong, decimated the
Ottoman one and they quickly advanced north into Ottoman territory. On November 9th, Greek
forces took Thessaloniki, the largest Greek city, bar Constantinople, ruled by the Ottomans.
Which sounds great for the Greeks, and it was, with one caveat. After the city’s capture George
I, Crown Prince Constantine, and Venizelos all travelled there, but the King never
left. In March 1913, shortly before the 1st Balkan War’s conclusion he was shot
by a Greek socialist and died instantly. His son, the now King Constantine proved to be
a much less successful monarch than his father. He did lead Greece to victory against the Ottomans
and then the Bulgarians in the Balkan Wars, in the process expanding Greece almost to her
modern borders, but he came into conflict, the National Schism, with the Prime Minister
over Greek participation in WW1. Venizelos was pro-Entente and saw the war as an
opportunity to take more Greek-inhabited land from the Ottomans. Constantine, having
married the sister of Kaiser Wilhelm II, was sympathetic towards the Central Powers, though
he wanted Greece to remain neutral in the war. For three years Constantine withstood
pressure from Venizelos and Britain and France to join the war on their side, but in 1917 the
Russian Empire fell to revolution and they had been the only Entente power that was willing to
back Constantine remaining on the Greek throne if he wasn’t going to join the war. So, he
was forced to abdicate and fled into exile with his eldest son, another George. His
second son became King Alexander and Greece entered the war. They mostly fought
against the Ottomans and Bulgarians. Which from a territorial standpoint was a great
idea. The Entente’s victory in WW1 saw Greece gain Western Thrace from Bulgaria and Eastern Thrace
and Ionia from the Turks. Another side note: the name Ionia has nothing to do with the Ionian
Islands and in Greek the names are distinct. Those last two gains never actually ended up
becoming Greek territory though, because the Ottoman Empire was in the process of collapsing
and being replaced by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s Republic of Turkey. Ataturk wasn’t interested in
keeping to the old empire’s treaty obligations and so the 2nd Greco-Turkish War broke
out over Eastern Thrace and Ionia in 1919. In 1920 King Alexander was attacked by a
monkey and later died of sepsis. At roughly the same time Venizelos was voted out as Prime
Minister and with his son dead, Constantine briefly returned to the Greek throne. He lost
it again in 1922, after an army revolt, the same year that Greece lost the war to Turkey and
Ataturk’s republic kept Eastern Thrace and Ionia. This time Constantine’s eldest son did come to
the throne as George II, but he didn’t really rule the country. The monarchy itself had
become more and more unpopular after it at first refused to have Greece join WW1 and then
led it to defeat against Turkey. So in 1924, it was abolished and the 2nd Hellenic Republic
was proclaimed. But the republic was unstable and eventually, a military dictatorship took power
and, after a rigged plebiscite, it restored the monarchy and George II. Who, in 1936 appointed
a nationalist, authoritarian government, the 4th of August Regime. It lasted until Germany, Italy,
and Bulgaria occupied Greece in 1941 during WW2. George II led a government-in-exile from
London for most of the war, but the Greek resistance back home was largely fought by the
National Liberation Front, which was backed by the anti-monarchy Communist Party. When the
King returned to Greece in 1944 the country was plunged into civil war between Communist and
Royalist forces. By 1949 the Royalists had won, saving the monarchy, though George II died and
he was succeeded by his brother Paul in 1947, the same year that the defeated
Italians ceded the Dodecanese to Greece. Under Paul, Greece functioned democratically,
albeit a bit dysfunctionally, but in 1964 he died and was succeeded by King Constantine II,
the last Greek King. What finished him? Well, in April 1967 a group of middle-ranking
officers staged a coup, and Constantine, who was Commander-in-Chief of the Greek military,
made two errors that doomed the monarchy. 1. He failed to act decisively and order loyal troops
to put down the coup out of fear of bloodshed, and 2. He then led a bungled counter-coup against
an already entrenched military junta in December. Constantine was forced to flee the country, but
the junta nominally retained the monarchy until 1973. In that year a sham referendum was
held on its abolition, for a second time, which of course went in the junta’s favour and
a Third Republic was proclaimed. A year later, the junta was forced out and democracy returned
to Greece, but a new referendum confirmed that Constantine and the monarchy would not. Greece
remains a democratic republic to this day. If you enjoyed this video don’t forget
to subscribe and hit the notification bell below so you don’t miss the next one.
Also if you want to know more about Greece, find out how it became independent from the
Ottomans in the video on the Greek Revolution to the left, and as always, I’ve been James
and thank you for watching Look Back History.
