Greek War of Independence - Aftermath

Aftermath

The consequences of the Greek revolution were somewhat ambiguous in the immediate aftermath. An independent Greek state had been established, but with Britain, Russia and France claiming a major role in Greek politics, an imported Bavarian dynast as ruler, and a mercenary army. The country had been ravaged by ten years of fighting, was full of displaced refugees and empty Turkish estates, necessitating a series of land reforms over several decades.

The population of the new state numbered 800,000, representing less than one-third of the 2.5 million Greek inhabitants of the Ottoman Empire. During a great part of the next century, the Greek state sought the liberation of the "unredeemed" Greeks of the Ottoman Empire, in accordance with the Megali Idea, i.e., the goal of uniting all Greeks in one country.

As a people, the Greeks no longer provided the princes for the Danubian Principalities and were regarded within the Ottoman Empire, especially by the Muslim population, as traitors. Phanariotes, who had until then held high office within the Ottoman Empire, were thenceforth regarded as suspect and lost their special, privileged status. In Constantinople and the rest of the Ottoman Empire where Greek banking and merchant presence had been dominant, Armenians mostly replaced Greeks in banking and Bulgarian merchants gained importance.

In the long-term historical perspective, this marked a seminal event in the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, despite the small size and the impoverishment of the new Greek state. For the first time, a Christian subject people had achieved independence from the Ottoman rule and established a fully independent state, recognized by Europe. Whereas previously only large nations (such as the British, the French, or the Germans) were judged worthy of national self-determination by the Great Powers of Europe, the Greek Revolt legitimized the concept of small ethnically based nation-states and emboldened nationalist movements among other subject peoples of the Ottoman Empire. The Serbs, Bulgars, Romanians and Armenians all subsequently fought for and won their independence.

Shortly after the war finished, the people of the Russian-dependent Poland, encouraged by the Greek victory, started the November Uprising, hoping to regain their independence. The uprising, however, failed and Polish independence had to wait until 1918. The newly established Greek state would become a springboard for further expansion and, over the course of a century, parts of Macedonia, Crete, Epirus, many Aegean Islands and other Greek-speaking territories would unite with the new Greek state.