Was Greece created by Germany?

By: | Post date: 2016-12-27 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: History, Modern Greek

Minority view here, and I’m astonished noone’s picked up on it.

The Modern Greek state was established in 1829; and while Greeks like to think they won the Greek state with their sword, the Greek War of Independence had pretty much been quelled by 1827. It was the Great Powers’ intervention at the Battle of Navarino that guaranteed an independent Greek state, because the Great Powers thought that would be handy. Don’t take my word for it: First Hellenic Republic – Wikipedia.

The Great Powers were Britain, France and Russia. The major political parties of independent Greece, for decades, were the British party, the French party, and the Russian party. There was no Germany, and Germany did not create independent Greece.

There was, however, Bavaria, and the Kingdom of Greece was established in 1832 under a Bavarian king, Otto of Greece. Otto brought Bavarian administrators with him, and they ran the country for the first five years of the kingdom. Per Wikipedia:

During the early years of his reign a group of Bavarian Regents ruled in his name, and made themselves very unpopular by trying to impose German ideas of rigid hierarchical government on the Greeks, while keeping most significant state offices away from them. Nevertheless, they laid the foundations of a Greek administration, army, justice system and education system. […]

The Bavarian Regents ruled until 1837, when at the insistence of Britain and France, they were recalled and Otto thereafter appointed Greek ministers, although Bavarian officials still ran most of the administration and the army. But Greece still had no legislature and no constitution. Greek discontent grew until a revolt broke out in Athens in September 1843. […] Power then passed into the hands of a group of politicians, most of whom had been commanders in the War of Independence against the Ottomans.

So Germany did not create Greece; but the Kingdom of Greece was certainly initially set up by Bavarians.

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