Alexandros Mavrokordatos Αλέξανδρος Μαυροκορδάτος |
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Alexander Mavrocordatos, Athens, Benaki Museum.
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President of the Provisional Administration of Greece | |
In office January 13, 1822 – May 10, 1823 |
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Succeeded by | Petros Mavromichalis |
Prime Minister of Greece | |
In office October 24, 1833 – June 12, 1834 |
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Monarch | Otto |
Preceded by | Spyridon Trikoupis |
Succeeded by | Ioannis Kolettis |
In office July 6, 1841 – August 22, 1841 |
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Monarch | Otto |
Preceded by | Otto |
Succeeded by | Otto |
In office April 11, 1844 – August 18, 1844 |
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Monarch | Otto |
Preceded by | Konstantinos Kanaris |
Succeeded by | Ioannis Kolettis |
In office July 29, 1854 – October 11, 1855 |
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Monarch | Otto |
Preceded by | Konstantinos Kanaris |
Succeeded by | Dimitrios Voulgaris |
Personal details | |
Born |
Constantinople, Ottoman Empire |
February 11, 1791
Died | August 18, 1865 Aegina, Greece |
(aged 74)
Political party | English Party |
Spouse(s) | Katerina Bals |
Alexandros Mavrokordatos (Greek: Αλέξανδρος Μαυροκορδάτος; February 11, 1791 – August 18, 1865) was a Greek statesman and member of the Mavrocordatos family of Phanariotes.
In 1812, Mavrokordatos went to the court of his uncle John George Caradja, Hospodar of Wallachia, with whom he passed into exile in the Austrian Empire (1818), where he studied at the University of Padua. He was a member of the Filiki Eteria and was among the Phanariot Greeks who hastened to Morea on the outbreak of the War of Independence in 1821. At the time of the beginning of the revolution, Mavrokordatos was living in Pisa with the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and his wife Mary Shelley, and upon hearing of the revolution, Mavrokordatos headed to Marseilles to buy arms and a ship to take him back to Greece. Mavrokordatos was a very wealthy, well educated man, fluent in seven languages, whose experience in ruling Wallachia led many to look towards him as a future leader of Greece. Unlike many of the Greek leaders, Mavrokordators who had lived in the West, preferred to wear Western clothing and looked towards the West as a political model for Greece. The American philhellene Samuel Gridley Howe described Mavrokordatos:
"His manners are perfectly easy and gentlemanlike and though the first impression would be from his extreme politeness and continual smiles that he was a good-natured silly fop, yet one soon sees from the keen inquisitive glances which involuntarily escape from him, that he is concelaling, under an almost childish lightness of manner, a close and accurate study of his visitor...His friends ascribe every action to the most disinterested patriotism; but his enemies hesitate not to pronounce them all to have for their end his party or private interest...Here, as is often the case, truth lies between the two extremes".