Eleutheria and Bavarokratia

I don’t believe that it is celebrated in Greece, where March 25th, the anniversary of the outbreak of the anti-Ottoman revolt of 1821, is regarded as Independence Day, but today marks the 173rd anniversary of formal Greek independence. On May 7, 1832, the Ottoman Empire agreed, at the Conference of London, to recognize Greece as a separate nation and give up efforts to reconquer its lost province. The Battle of Navarino (October 20, 1827) had made that outcome inevitable, but the Turks took their time about acceding to it.

The next year, a 17-year-old Bavarian prince, Otto of Wittelsbach, became King of Greece, inaugurating what is remembered as the “Bavarokratia”. It would not be far-fetched to say that his 29-year reign, ended by a coup in 1862, laid the foundations for all that is wrong with the Greek polity today: parliamentary manipulation, nationalistic designs beyond the country’s resources, cynical appeals to religion by irreligious politicians and military intervention in civil affairs, among other evils. Someone (I’d look it up but have a plane to catch) once penned a fantasia in which Lord Byron survived his wounds at Missolonghi and eventually became King instead of Otto. It’s hard to imagine Byron as a ruler, yet Greece might have been better served by some such eccentric choice.

Addendum: Joseph T. Major saves me the trouble of searching with the information that “If Byron Had Become King of Greece” was written by Harold Nicholson and first published in J. C. Squire’s anthology If It Had Happened Otherwise: Lapses Into Imaginary History (1931). Having lamented the lack of wargames on Latin American topics, let me also call attention to another gem from the same collection, H. A. L. Fisher’s “If Napoleon Had Escaped to America”, which, had it really happened, would have ensured a steady stream of games on the Emperor’s South American campaigns.

Comments

[Theodore Laskaris]

Thank you for this post.

The current crop of Greeks has lost contact with Hellenic history long ago... It is a sad, sad state of affairs. Greek governments are almost afraid to remember important dates marking Greece's modern history and, even worse, commemorate our war dead and those hundreds of thousands who perished in the hands of the Turk in the early part of the 20th century. And you are absolutely right in highlighting the roots of our present malaise (Bavarokratia was just one of the foundation stones).

On a different note, I'd like to congratulate you for Stromata; your blog title elicited a a rather amusing question from a Greek reader, who asked me why should anyone call his blog "Mattresses." I don't think this reader was all that familiar with Clement of Alexandria... One minor detail: King Otto was actually King Otho ('Othon' in Greek) and you'll find him as such in the bibliography.

Again, five stars for Stromata and keep up the good work!