Ioannis Kapodistrias
Ioannis Antoniou Kapodistrias, sometimes anglicized as John Capodistrias, was a Greek statesman who was one of the most distinguished politicians and diplomats of 19th-century Europe.
Kapodistrias's involvement in politics began as a minister of the Septinsular Republic in the early 19th century. He went on to serve as the foreign minister of the Russian Empire from 1816 until his abdication in 1822, when he became increasingly active in supporting the Greek War of Independence that broke out a year earlier.
After a long and distinguished career in European politics and diplomacy, he was elected as the first head of state of independent Greece at the 1827 Third National Assembly at Troezen and served as the governor of Greece between 1828 and 1831. For his significant contribution during his governance, he is recognised as the founder of the modern Greek state, and the architect of Greek independence.
Background and early career
Ioannis Kapodistrias was born to a distinguished family in Corfu, the most populous Ionian Island, then under Venetian rule.Kapodistrias' father was Antonios Maria Kapodistrias, a nobleman, artist, and politician. One of his ancestors had been made a conte by Charles Emmanuel II, Duke of Savoy. In 1679, the title was inscribed in the Libro d'Oro of Corfu nobility. The coat of arms, a cyan shield with a diagonal strip, containing three stars and a cross, is on display in Corfu. The family originated in the city of Capodistria, also called Koper, in Slovenia, then part of the Republic of Venice. There, the family name had been Vitori or Vittori. They moved to Corfu in the 13th century, where they changed their denomination from Catholic to Orthodox and became completely hellenized. Origins of his ancestors can also be found in 1423 in Constantinople.
Kapodistrias' mother was Adamantine Gonemis, a countess. Her father was the noble Christodoulos Gonemis. The Gonemis family were originally Greek Cypriots. When Cyprus fell to the Ottomans in the 16th century, they migrated to the island of Crete. When Crete fell in the 17th century, they migrated to Epirus, near Argyrokastro. Later, they settled on the Ionian island of Corfu. During the Ottoman sieges of Corfu, they fought alongside the Venetians, who awarded them a title of nobility. Like the Kapodistrias family, they were listed in the Libro d'Oro of Corfu.
Kapodistrias, though born and raised as a nobleman, was throughout his life a liberal thinker and had democratic ideals. He studied medicine, philosophy, and law at the University of Padua in 1795–1797. In 1797, at 21 years old, he started his medical practice in his native island of Corfu. In 1799, when Corfu was briefly occupied by the forces of Russia and Turkey, Kapodistrias was appointed chief medical director of the military hospital. In 1802 he founded an important scientific and social progress organisation in Corfu, the "National Medical Association", of which he was an energetic member.
Some scholars have suggested that Kapodistrias had a romantic affair with Roxandra Sturdza, prior to her marriage with Count Albert Cajetan von Edling in 1816.
Minister of the Septinsular Republic
After two years of revolutionary freedom, triggered by the French Revolution and the ascendancy of Napoleon, in 1799 Russia and the Ottoman Empire drove the French out of the seven Ionian Islands and organised them as a free and independent state – the Septinsular Republic – ruled by its nobles. Kapodistrias, substituting for his father, became one of two ministers of the new state. Thus, at the age of 25, Kapodistrias became involved in politics. In Kefalonia he was successful in convincing the populace to remain united and disciplined to avoid foreign intervention and, by his argument and sheer courage, he faced and appeased rebellious opposition without conflict. With the same peaceful determination, he established authority in all seven islands.Russia sent an envoy, Count George Mocenigo of Zakynthos, who had served as Russian Diplomat in Italy. Kapodistrias became his protégé. Mocenigo later helped Kapodistrias to join the Russian diplomatic service.
When elections were carried out for a new Ionian Senate, Kapodistrias was unanimously appointed Chief Minister of State. In December 1803, the Senate passed a new constitution, which was less feudal and more liberal and democratic. As minister of state, he organised the public sector, putting particular emphasis on education. In 1807, the French re-occupied the islands and dissolved the Septinsular Republic.
Russian diplomatic service
In 1809 Kapodistrias entered the service of Alexander I of Russia. His first important mission, in November 1813, was as unofficial Russian ambassador to Switzerland, with the task of helping disentangle the country from the French dominance imposed by Napoleon. He secured Swiss unity, independence and neutrality, which were formally guaranteed by the Great Powers, and actively facilitated the initiation of a new federal constitution for the 19 cantons that were the component states of Switzerland, with personal drafts.Collaborating with Anthimos Gazis, in 1814 he founded in Vienna the "Philomuse Society", an educational organization promoting philhellenism, such as studies for the Greeks in Europe.
In the ensuing Congress of Vienna, 1815, as the Russian minister, he counterbalanced the paramount influence of the Austrian minister, Prince Metternich, and insisted on French state unity under a Bourbon monarch. He also obtained new international guarantees for the constitution and neutrality of Switzerland through an agreement among the Powers. After these brilliant diplomatic successes, Alexander I appointed Kapodistrias joint Foreign Minister of Russia.
In the course of his assignment as Foreign Minister of Russia, Kapodistrias's ideas came to represent a progressive alternative to Metternich's aims of Austrian domination of European affairs. Kapodistrias's liberal ideas of a new European order so threatened Metternich that he wrote in 1819: Realising that Kapodistrias's progressive vision was antithetical to his own, Metternich then tried to undermine Kapodistrias's position in the Russian court. Although Metternich was not a decisive factor in Kapodistrias's leaving his post as Russian Foreign Minister, he nevertheless attempted to actively undermine Kapodistrias by rumour and innuendo. According to the French ambassador to Saint Petersburg, Metternich was a master of insinuation, and he attempted to neutralise Kapodistrias, viewing him as the only man capable of counterbalancing Metternich's own influence with the Russian court.
Metternich, by default, succeeded in the short term, since Kapodistrias eventually left the Russian court on his own, but with time, Kapodistrias's ideas and policies for a new European order prevailed.
He was always keenly interested in the cause of his native country, and in particular the state of affairs in the Seven Islands, which in a few decades' time had passed from French revolutionary influence to Russian protection and then to British rule. He always tried to attract his Emperor's attention to matters Greek. In January 1817, an emissary from the Filiki Eteria, Nikolaos Galatis, arrived in St. Petersburg to offer Kapodistrias leadership of the movement for Greek independence. Kapodistrias rejected the offer, telling Galátis:
In December 1819, another emissary from the Filiki Eteria, Kamarinós, arrived in St. Petersburg, this time representing Petrobey Mavromichalis with a request that Russia support an uprising against the Ottomans. Kapodistrias wrote a long and careful letter, which while expressing support for Greek independence in theory, explained that at present it was not possible for Russia to support such an uprising and advised Mavromichalis to call off the revolution before it started. Still undaunted, one of the leaders of the Filiki Eteria, Emmanuel Xánthos arrived in St. Petersburg to again appeal to Kapodistrias to have Russia support the planned revolution and was again informed that the Russian Foreign Minister "... could not become involved for the above reasons and that if the arkhigoi knew of other means to carry out their objective, let them use them". When Prince Alexander Ypsilantis asked Kapodistrias to support the planned revolution, Kapodistrias advised against going ahead, saying: "Those drawing up such plans are most guilty and it is they who are driving Greece to calamity. They are wretched hucksters destroyed by their own evil conduct and now taking money from simple souls in the name of the fatherland they do not possess. They want you in their conspiracy to inspire trust in their operations. I repeat: be on your guard against these men". Kapodistrias visited his Ionian homeland, by then under British rule, in 1818, and in 1819 he went to London to discuss the islanders' grievances with the British government, but the British gave him the cold shoulder, partly because, uncharacteristically, he refused to show them the memorandum he wrote to the czar about the subject.
In 1821, when Kapodistrias learned that Prince Alexander Ypsilantis had invaded the Ottoman protectorate of Moldavia with the aim of provoking a general uprising in the Balkans against the Ottoman Empire, Kapodistrias was described as being "like a man struck by a thunderbolt". Czar Alexander, committed to upholding the established order in Europe, had no interest in supporting a revolt against the Ottoman Empire, and it thus fell to Kapodistrias to draft a declaration in Alexander's name denouncing Ypsilantis for abandoning "the precepts of religion and morality", condemning him for his "obscure devices and shady plots", ordering him to leave Moldavia at once and announcing that Russia would offer him no support. As a fellow Greek, Kapodistrias found this document difficult to draft, but his sense of loyalty to Alexander outweighed his sympathy for Ypsilantis. On Easter Sunday, 22 April 1821, the Sublime Porte had the Patriarch Grigorios V publicly hanged in Constantinople at the gate of his residence in Phanar. This, together with other news that the Ottomans were killing Orthodox priests, led Alexander to have Kapodistrias draft an ultimatum accusing the Ottomans of having trampled on the rights of their Orthodox subjects, of breaking treaties, insulting the Orthodox churches everywhere by hanging the Patriarch and of threatening "to disturb the peace that Europe has bought at so great a sacrifice". Kapodistrias ended his ultimatum: As the Sublime Porte declined to answer the Russian ultimatum within the seven day period allowed after it was presented by the ambassador Baron Georgii Stroganov on 18 July 1821, Russia broke off diplomatic relations with the Ottoman Empire. Kapodistrias became increasingly active in support of Greek independence from the Ottoman Empire, but did not succeed in obtaining Alexander's support for the Greek revolution of 1821. This put Kapodistrias in an untenable situation and in 1822 he took an extended leave of absence from his position as Foreign Minister and retired to Geneva where he applied himself to supporting the Greek revolution by organising material and moral support.