Don Pacifico Affair

The Don Pacifico Affair was an episode of gun boat diplomacy which occurred in 1850 and concerned the Kingdom of Greece, the United Kingdom and Portugal. The affair is named after David Pacifico, a British subject born in Gibraltar.

The dispute arose in 1847 after the house of the Jewish former Portuguese consul-general to Greece, David Pacifico, better known as "Don Pacifico" – who had been stripped of his position due to overstepping his power repeatedly in 1842, but who continued to reside in Athens – was attacked and vandalised by an anti-Semitic mob that included the sons of a government minister, while police looked on and did nothing. Mayer de Rothschild had been visiting Athens, during the Greek Orthodox Easter (which fell on April 4), to discuss a possible loan, and the government, in order to coax him, decided to ban the tradition of hanging the effigy of Judas, thinking that Rothschild would be offended by the tradition. As Scott reports it:

It appears that it was then the custom at Athens to burn on Easter Sunday the image of Judas Iscariot. As, however, Lord Rothschild, a British subject of Jewish faith, was visiting Athens at this time, the Greek government forbade the custom. This was attributed by the populace, not to the presence of Lord Rothschild, but to the influence of Don Pacifico. Hence the outrages to his person and property.

Some of the Greek population in Athens, incensed at the cancellation of their customs, rioted before the house of the Portuguese Consul-General. It was reported that the crowd was infiltrated by the Greek police, and that among its leaders were one or more sons of the Greek Minister of War

Three days after the incident, Don Pacifico himself wrote to Sir Edmund Lyons, Minister Plenipotentiary to Greece:

It is with much grief that I feel myself obliged to communicate to your Excellency a dreadful event which has happened to me, and as an English subject to beg your protection. Last Sunday, Easter-day, at about 12 o'clock, a crowd of people, amongst whom were some soldiers of the gendarmerie, just come out of church, presented themselves at the door of my house, which they very soon battered down with large pieces of stone. These brigands, in number about 300 or 400, entered my house, and swearing dreadfully, began beating my wife, my innocent children, and my son-in-law. After having broken the windows, doors, tables, chairs, and every other article of furniture, they robbed me of my jewels, forcing open the closets in which were vases, candlesticks, gold and silver ornaments, diamonds, and lastly a box containing money to the amount of 9,800 drachmas, of which 2,300 were my own private property, and 7,500 which had been deposited with me by the Jewish community of Italy for the projected erection of a temple, and for the poor of this kingdom. These barbarians did not even leave me the Consular Portuguese archives, which were torn by them to pieces. These papers being my security from that nation for the sum of 21,295 l. 1s. 4d. sterling.

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