Cretan Revolt (1878)

The Cretan Revolt of 1878 was an insurrection of the Cretan people against the Ottoman occupation of the island. This insurrection is part of a larger movement for independence from the Ottoman Empire, which Crete was part of since the middle of the 17th century.

This conflict was marked by the Pact of Halepa which ended it and accorded a certain number of concessions to the Cretan people.

Beginning in 1645, the conquest of Crete by the Ottoman Empire was completed in 1669 with the end of the Siege of Candia. The Ottoman period of the history of the island was interspersed with insurrections. In 1821, Greece revolted against the Ottoman occupation, and Crete takes part in the Greek Revolution. But in 1830, in the end of the war, Crete wasn't a part of the new Greek State. The island passed under the authority of Muhammad Ali of Egypt, for the services to the Ottoman Empire in the Greek Revolution in the Peloponnese. This Egyptian parenthesis lasted no more than ten years, and in 1840, Crete returned to the authority of the Sultan. Despite a new attempt of insurrection of the Cretan people, Crete knew a period of relative peace until 1866.

On 30 March 1856, the Treaty of Paris obliged the sultan to apply the hatt-ı hümayun, that is to say the civil and religious equality of Christians and Muslims. The Ottoman authorities in Crete were reluctant to carry out these reforms. After the many conversions of Muslims (mostly old Christians who had converted to Islam and therefore relapses), the Empire tried to return to the liberty of conscience.

The four following decades (until the independence in 1898), the revolts just follow the path opened by the hatt-ı hümayun.

The Cretan Revolt of 1866–1869 made advances for the Cretan people. On 11 November 1867, Ali proposed a new administrative project, the "Organic Law", with a certain number of privileges, notably a limited representation of the Cretan element in the administration of the island, tax breaks, the establishment of a bank and the full equivalence of two languages, Greek and Turkish.

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