History of Modern Greece

The history of modern Greece covers the history of Greece from the recognition of its autonomy from the Ottoman Empire by the Great Powers (Great Britain, France, and Russia) in 1828, after the Greek War of Independence, to the present day.

The Byzantine Empire had ruled most of the Greek-speaking world since late Antiquity, but experienced a decline as a result of Muslim Arab and Seljuk Turkish invasions but was fatally weakened by the sacking of Constantinople by the Latin Crusaders in 1204. The establishment of Catholic Latin states on Greek soil, and the struggles of the Orthodox Byzantine Greeks against them, led to the emergence of a distinct Greek national identity. The Byzantine Empire was restored by the Palaiologos dynasty in 1261, but it was a shadow of its former self, and constant civil wars and foreign attacks in the 14th century brought about its terminal decline. As a result, most of Greece gradually became part of the Ottoman Empire in the late 14th and early 15th century, culminating in the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, the conquest of the Duchy of Athens in 1458, and of the Despotate of the Morea in 1460.

Ottoman control was largely absent in the mountainous interior of Greece, and many fled there, often becoming brigands. Otherwise, only the islands of the Aegean and a few coastal fortresses on the mainland, under Venetian and Genoese rule, remained free from Ottoman rule, but by the mid-16th century, the Ottomans had conquered most of them as well. Rhodes fell in 1522, Cyprus in 1571, and the Venetians retained Crete until 1670. The Ionian Islands were only briefly ruled by the Ottomans (Kefalonia from 1479 to 1481 and from 1485 to 1500), and remained primarily under the rule of Venice.

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