Megali Idea
The Megali Idea is a nationalist and irredentist concept that expresses the goal of reviving the Byzantine Empire, by establishing a Greek state, which would include the large Greek populations that were still under Ottoman rule after the end of the Greek War of Independence and all the regions that had large Greek populations.
The term appeared for the first time during the debates of Prime Minister Ioannis Kolettis with King Otto that preceded the promulgation of the 1844 constitution. It came to dominate foreign relations and played a significant role in domestic politics for much of the first century of Greek independence. The expression was new in 1844 but the concept had roots in the Greek popular psyche, which long had hopes of liberation from Ottoman rule and restoration of the Byzantine Empire.
Πάλι με χρόνια με καιρούς,
.
The Megali Idea implies establishing a Greek state, which would be a territory encompassing mostly the former Byzantine lands from the Ionian Sea in the west to Anatolia and the Black Sea to the east and from Thrace, Macedonia and Epirus in the north to Crete and Cyprus to the south. This new state would have Constantinople as its capital: it would be the "Greece of Two Continents and Five Seas". If realized, this would expand modern Greece to roughly the same size and extent as the later Byzantine Empire, after its restoration in 1261 AD.
The Megali Idea dominated foreign policy and domestic politics of Greece from the War of Independence in the 1820s through the Balkan Wars in the beginning of the 20th century. It started to fade after the Greco-Turkish War, followed by the population exchange between Greece and Turkey in 1923. Despite the end of the Megali Idea project in 1922, by then the Greek state had expanded four times, either through military conquest or diplomacy. After the creation of Greece in 1830, it acquired the Ionian Islands, Thessaly, Macedonia, Crete, Epirus and the Eastern Aegean Islands, and Western Thrace. The Dodecanese were acquired after the Second World War.
A related concept is Enosis.
Fall of Constantinople
The Byzantine Empire was Eastern Roman in origin and was called the "Roman Empire" by its inhabitants, though often not by the Latin West, which regarded it as Greek. After its fall, Hieronymus Wolf popularized the usage of "Byzantium". An informal cultural division had existed within the Roman Empire for centuries. Although Latin was the official language of the empire, Greek was the lingua franca in the East and was regularly used alongside Latin in official business. The division of the Empire following the death of Emperor Theodosius in AD 395 added a formal political layer to the informal cultural division. Following the adoption of Christianity in the 4th century, Greek was also the dominant liturgical language, as exemplified by the fact that the New Testament was written in Greek. These factors ultimately led to Greek replacing Latin as the official language in AD 620.Byzantium held out against numerous invasions over the centuries and during the 10th and early 11th centuries managed to reclaim considerable territory in the Balkans, Anatolia and to a lesser extent Syria. The Turkish invasion of the mid to late 11th century, however, greatly weakened the Empire and, although it partially recovered under the Komnenos dynasty, it never managed to regain control of the Anatolian interior, cutting the empire off from a valuable source of manpower and tax revenue. In 1204, Constantinople was besieged and sacked during the Fourth Crusade and became the Capital of what has come to be known as the Latin Empire, a French-dominated crusader state, until it was liberated by the Empire of Nicaea, the Byzantine state in exile, in 1261. However, Byzantine strength would rapidly diminish towards the end of the 13th century and evaporate almost entirely during the 14th century, to the extent that by 1400 little remained of the Empire except Constantinople, the city’s immediate surroundings and some small territories in modern-day Greece. In 1453, the Ottoman Turks besieged and captured Constantinople, officially marking the end of the Roman Empire and also the end of Greek predominance in the city; although it would continue to have a considerable Greek speaking population and the Patriarch of Constantinople continued to reside in the city.
Greeks under Ottoman rule
Under the millet system which was in force during the Ottoman Empire, the population was classified according to religion rather than language or ethnicity. Orthodox Greeks were seen as part of the millet-i Rûm which included all Orthodox Christians, including beside Greeks also Bulgarians, Serbs, Vlachs, Slavs, Georgians, Romanians and Albanians, despite their differences in ethnicity and language and despite the fact that the religious hierarchy was Greek dominated. It is not clear to what extent one can speak of a Greek identity during those times as opposed to a Christian or Orthodox identity. In the late 1780s, Catherine II of Russia and Joseph II of Austria intended to reclaim the Byzantine heritage and restore the Greek statehood as part of their joint Greek Plan.During the Middle Ages and the Ottoman period, Greek-speaking Christians identified as Romans and thought of themselves as the descendants of the Roman Empire. The term Roman was often interpreted as synonymous with Christian throughout Europe and the Mediterranean during this time. The terms Greek or Hellene were largely seen by Ottoman Christians as referring to the ancient pagan peoples of the region. This changed during the late stages of the Ottoman Empire and the emergence of the Greek independence movement.
For much of the period of the Tourkokratia, the Russians were viewed by the Greeks as the xanthon genos, a fair-haired race and the sole Orthodox power that would liberate Constantinople from the Ottomans. The Greek legend of the xanthon genos eventually liberating Constantinople was also referenced in the 15th-century Tale on the Taking of Tsargrad, which itself was widely circulated in Russia between the 16th and 18th centuries.
Greek War of Independence and later
After the Greek War of Independence ended in 1829, a new southern Greek state was established, with assistance from the British Empire, Kingdom of France, and Imperial Russia. However, this new Greek state under John Capodistrias after the Greek War of Independence was, with Serbia, one of the only two countries of the era whose population was smaller than the population of the same ethnicity outside its borders; most ethnic Greeks still resided within the borders of the Ottoman Empire. This version of Greece was designed by the Great Powers, who had no desire to see a larger Greek state replace the Ottoman Empire.The Great Idea embodied a desire to bring all ethnic Greeks into the Greek state, and subsequently revive the Byzantine Empire; it applied specifically to the Greeks in Epirus, Thessaly, Macedonia, Thrace, the Aegean Islands, Crete, Cyprus, parts of Anatolia, and the city of Constantinople.
When the young Danish prince Wilhelm Georg was elected king in 1863, the title offered to him by the Greek National Assembly was not "King of Greece", the title of his deposed predecessor, King Otto; but rather "King of the Hellenes". Implicit in the wording was that George I was to be king of all Greeks, regardless of whether they then lived within the borders of his new kingdom.
The first additional areas to be incorporated into the Kingdom were the Ionian islands in 1864, and later Thessaly with the 1878 Treaty of Berlin.
Revolts, Cretan crisis and Greco-Turkish War (1897)
In January 1897, violence and disorder were escalating in Crete, polarizing the population. Massacres of the Christian population took place in Chania and Rethymno. The Greek government, pressured by public opinion, intransigent political elements, extreme nationalist groups and with the Great Powers reluctant to intervene, decided to send warships and personnel to assist the Cretans. The Great Powers had no option then but to proceed with the occupation of the island, but they were too late. A Greek force of 1,500 men had landed at Kolymbari on 1 February 1897, and its commanding officer, Colonel Timoleon Vassos, declared that he was taking over the island "in the name of the King of the Hellenes" and that he was announcing the union of Crete with Greece. This led to an uprising that spread immediately throughout the island. The Great Powers finally decided to land their troops and stopped the Greek army force from approaching Chania. At the same time, their fleets blockaded Crete, preventing both Greeks and Turks from bringing any more troops to the island.The Ottoman Empire, in reaction to the rebellion of Crete and the assistance sent by Greece, relocated a significant part of its army in the Balkans to the north of Thessaly, close to the borders with Greece. Greece, in reply, reinforced its borders in Thessaly. However, irregular Greek forces and followers of the Megali Idea acted without orders and raided Turkish outposts, leading the Ottoman Empire to declare war on Greece; the war is known as the Greco-Turkish War of 1897. The Turkish army, far outnumbering the Greek, was also better prepared, due to the recent reforms carried out by a German mission under Baron von der Goltz. The Greek army fell back in retreat. The other Great Powers then intervened and an armistice was signed in May 1897. The war, however, only ended in December of that year.
The military failure in the Greco-Turkish war cost Greece small territorial losses along the border line in northern Thessaly, and a large sum of financial reparations that wrecked Greece's economy for years, while giving no lasting solution to the Cretan Question. The Great Powers in order to prevent future clashes and trying to avoid the creation of a revanchist climate in Greece, imposed what they thought of as a lasting solution; Crete was proclaimed an autonomous Cretan State. The four Great Powers assumed the administration of Crete, and, in a decisive diplomatic victory for Greece, Prince George of Greece became High Commissioner.