Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
ance in WWII. There are statues dedicated to both women in Spetses Town, and
Bouboulina's home is now a private museum.
The Modern Greek Nation
The Greeks, meanwhile, had been busy organising the independent state they had pro-
claimed several years earlier. In April 1827 the Greeks elected Ioannis Kapodistrias, a
Corfiot and former diplomat of Russian Tsar Alexander I, as the first president of the re-
public; and chose Nafplio, in the Peloponnese, as the capital.
However, there was much dissension within Greek ranks. Kapodistrias was assassin-
ated in 1831 after he had ordered the imprisonment of a Maniot chieftain, part of a re-
sponse to undermine rising discontent and rebellion among the many parties (including
leaders of the independence movement) whose authority had been weakened by the new
state.
Amid the ensuing anarchy, Britain, France and Russia declared Greece a monarchy.
They set on the throne a non-Greek, 17-year-old Bavarian Prince Otto, who arrived in
Nafplio in January 1833. The new kingdom (established by the London Convention of
1832) consisted of the Peloponnese, Sterea Ellada, the Cyclades and the Sporades.
After moving the capital to Athens in 1834, King Otto proved to be an abrasive ruler
who had alienated the independence veterans by giving the most prestigious official
posts to his Bavarian court. However, by the end of the 1850s most of the stalwarts of the
War of Independence had been replaced by a new breed of university graduates (Athens
University was founded in 1817).
The poet Lord Byron was one of a large group of philhellenic volunteers who played an
active role in fanning the independence cause. Byron's war effort was cut short when he
died in 1824.
The Great Idea
Greece's foreign policy (dubbed the 'Great Idea') was to assert sovereignty over its dis-
persed Greek populations. Set against the background of the Crimean conflict, British
and French interests were nervous at the prospect of a Greek alliance with Russia against
the Ottomans, especially as in 1862 Otto had been ousted in a bloodless coup.
British influence in the Ionian Islands had begun in 1815 (following a spell of political
ping-pong between the Venetians, Russians and French). The British did improve the is-
lands' infrastructure and many locals adopted British customs (such as afternoon tea and
