Return To Greece
Kapodistrias retired to Geneva, where he was greatly esteemed, having been made an Honorary Citizen for his past services to Swiss unity and particularly to the cantons. In 1827, he learned that the newly formed Greek National Assembly had, as he was the most illustrious Greek-born politician in Europe, elected him as the first head of state of newly liberated Greece, with the title of Kyvernetes (Κυβερνήτης – Governor).
After touring Europe to rally support for the Greek cause, Kapodistrias landed in Nafplion 7 January 1828 and arrived in Aegina on 8 January 1828. It was the first time he had ever set foot on the Greek mainland, and he found a discouraging situation there. Even while fighting against the Ottomans was still going on, factional and dynastic conflicts had led to two civil wars which ravaged the country. Greece was bankrupt and the Greeks were unable to form a united national government.
From the first capital of Greece, Nafplion, he ushered in a new era in the country, which had just been liberated from a 400 year Turkish occupation. He founded schools, established Foundations for young women to work and inaugurated the first university. These Institutes educated the first teachers of liberated Greece.
Read more about this topic: Ioannis Kapodistrias
Famous quotes containing the words return to, return and/or greece:
“The mother as a social servant instead of a home servant will not lack in true mother duty.... From her work, loved and honored though it is, she will return to her home life, the child life, with an eager, ceaseless pleasure, cleansed of all the fret and fraction and weariness that so mar it now.”
—Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935)
“... in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever approaching thunder, which will destroy us too, I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquillity will return again.”
—Anne Frank (1929–1945)
“Tell Greece that her spring has been taken out of her year.”
—Herodotus (c. 484–424 B.C.)