This paper was presented at the 55th Annual Meeting of the Consortium on the Revolutionary Era (CRE) at Auburn University, Auburn, Alabama, Saturday 1 March, 2025.
Introduction
The Greek independence uprising of 1821, even if well-known, has often been underestimated in historical analysis; in reality it represented an important moment in modern history.
The general assumption is that the Greek insurgents had the support of public opinion and that Great Britain, France and Russia helped the Greek patriots free themselves from the oppressive Ottoman ruling.
While European and American public opinions immediately expressed support for the Hellenic cause, the reactionary architecture of the Holy Alliance, fearful of the coincidental uprisings in Italy, Spain and elsewhere, saw it with hostility.
In fact, the Greek independence movement gathered suspicion from the Austrian Chancellor Metternich, saw in the revolt an attack, even if in a peripheral area and against a state not formally part of the ‘Vienna System’, to the legitimist architecture, laboriously re-established after the caesura of the French Revolution and Napoleonic imperialism.
The international coalition that operated following the outbreak of the Greek independence revolt, had different and conflicting objectives and their action were a set of compromises.
The most evident was an attempt to block Russia from taking an advantageous position in a sensitive area. After short but difficult negotiations, this unlikely coalition was formed, which entered on stage with divergent objectives.
Three Improbable Partners
Russia was saw by London and Paris an unlikely partner, but giving the circumstances, appeared more convenient to put St. Petersburg into the coalition and try to control her dynamics than stay outside and to exert as little influence as possible and force it to play a marginal role.
Russia, after the Vienna Congress and co-setting up the ‘Quadruple Alliance’, looks for occasions to re-affirm role and weight, expanding her area of influence and seek spaces towards the Mediterranean.
S. Petersburg found the Greek insurrection as a ‘window of opportunity’ to step into the region, and from there, expand its influence among the Orthodox and/or Christian populations of the Balkans, the Caucasus and the Levant and change the strategic balance of the region.
The Russian projects had an important maritime dimension, synthetized by Zar Nicholas I in 1825, who, less than a month into his reign declared that “Russia must become the third naval power after England and France and must be more powerful than any coalition of secondary naval powers”.
Giving these ideas, St. Petersburg become a ‘special guest’ of this coalition. Great Britain and France had their priorities, in some way mutually coincident, the first was against Russia and they have their exclusive one, answering to the respective national agendas.
London, which did not accept any challenge her naval power, especially in the Mediterranean, had important commercial and financial interests with the Ottoman Empire, and no interest in its destabilization.
Paris, had a more large and complex approach. The re-installed Bourbon dynasty was seeking reintegration into the international community after the Napoleonic parenthesis and needed to strengthen this process.
The first steps of this policy of participation in the political restoration were the interventions in Spain (‘100.00 sons of St. Louis’), Portugal (the civil wars between liberals and reactionaries); the Greek intervention was another one in this direction.
Further, France had even greater financial interests than London in the Ottoman Empire and Russia was another dangerous rival expanding in the Mediterranean; St. Petersburg was competing also with France in her building role of protector of the Christian populations of the Levant and the Balkans.
A Compromise
For Greece, Great Britain and France looked favourably to the establishment of an institutional model similar to Montenegro, a semiautonomous state, kept in a form of vassal to the Sultan. Russia, had a different political project, pushing for a fully independent country, an idea disliked by London and Paris.
The Treaty of London of 1827, reached after months of diplomatic pressure to the Sultan, was the instrument of this project, providing a limited autonomy for Greece, imposing a ceasefire and threating the use of force if the Ottoman refuse it and putting serious limitations to the expansionist drive of Russia.
However, the Ottoman Empire, basing its decision upon its supposedly-superior naval force, declined to accept the treaty. The Treaty of London allowed the three European powers to intervene on behalf of the Greeks.
At the naval Battle of Navarino, on 20 October 1827, the Allies crushed the combined Ottoman–Egyptian fleet in an overwhelming victory that forcefully and effectively created an independent Greek state.
After this occasional clash, even very serious giving that the Ottoman Empire and the Egyptian ally remained without naval forces, Great Britain and France, though with difficulty, managed to keep open the dialogue with the Ottoman Empire.
This while Russia, ignored any appeasement and raised the confrontation to the extreme consequences, arriving at open war, which it easily won.
This defeat forced the Ottomans to accept Greek autonomy, much larger than the one planned by Great Britain and France, in the Treaty of Adrianople and semi-autonomy for Serbia and the Romanian principalities, with a serious blow to the stability of the Porte and opened the road for future problems in the region.
The Ottoman Empire gave Russia access to the mouths of the Danube and two fortresses in Georgia. The Sultan recognized Russia’s possession of Georgia together with the regions of Imeretia, Mingrelia, Guria and of the Khanates of Erivan and Nakhichevan which had been ceded to the tsar by Persia in the Treaty of Turkmenchay.
Adrianople Treaty opened the Dardanelles to all commercial vessels, thus liberating commerce for cereals, livestock and wood, even if only with the Treaty of Hünkâr İskelesi in 1833 finally to settle the Straits issues between the signatories.
As said, under the Treaty of Adrianople, the Sultan re-guaranteed the previously promised autonomy to Serbia, promised autonomy for Greece, and allowed Russia to occupy Moldavia and Wallachia until the Ottoman Empire had paid a large indemnity, which curtailed with the later Treaty of Hünkâr İskelesi.
Adrianople Treaty also fixed the border between the Ottoman Empire and Wallachia on the thalweg of the Danube, transferring to Wallachia the rule of the provinces of Turnu, Giurgiu and Brăila.
The new treaty changed many points of the one of London: the independence of Greece, even if under nominal Ottoman suzerainty, was accepted also by the Porte; the Ottoman Empire kept a nominal suzerainty over Moldavia and Wallachia, that paved the way for their independence; Russia took control of the towns of Anape and Poti in Caucasus; the Russian traders in Turkey were placed under the legal jurisdiction of the ambassador of S. Petersburg.
The New Scene
The war and the new situation allowed the Greek insurgents, despite their deep divides, to consolidate their forces and expel the Ottomans forces; but also pushes further Great Britain and France to limit the influence of Russia on the new state.
Through diplomatic action, obtained the return of the Egyptian troops that had intervened in support of the Ottomans, while France sends a military contingent of stabilization, which after having monitored the evacuation of the decimated Khedive’s troops, does not join the Greek forces offensive against the Turks creating heavy tensions with the insurgent’s provisional authorities.
After the war, Great Britain and France were able to set up a heavy influence in Greece, before with a German and after it with Danish royal dynasty, but did not stop the Russian further pressures against the Ottoman Empire.
The hostility of S. Petersburg against the Sultan, re-emerged years after with the occupation of Crimea, originating a massive conflict, quasi global, and the final end of the consensual framework emerged with the Vienna Congress.
Conclusion
The idea behind this study it is to propose a different narrative of a well-known moment of European modern history and putting on the surface other reasons of the intervention, different from pure ethic, which exist but it is not the only one.
Featured: Battle Scene, by Johann Georg Christian Perlberg (1827).
