Ioannis Kapodistrias
Ioannis Kapodistrias was the first head of state of independent Greece and was assassinated on the steps of a church. Born in Corfu in 1776 into a noble family of the Ionian Islands, then Venetian territory, he trained as a physician at Padua and entered the government of the short-lived Septinsular Republic, drafting its constitution. He joined the Russian diplomatic service in 1809 and rose with remarkable speed. As joint foreign minister to Tsar Alexander I he represented Russia at the Congress of Vienna in 1815, where he did much to secure lenient terms for France, and he drafted parts of the settlement of Switzerland's neutrality and federal constitution. He resigned in 1822 when the Tsar refused to support the Greek revolution, and worked for the Greek cause from Geneva. The National Assembly elected him governor of Greece in 1827, and he arrived in January 1828 to find a country wrecked by seven years of war, without a treasury, courts, schools or an administration, and dominated by regional chieftains and shipowning families. He built a state from nothing: a currency, the phoenix; quarantine and hospitals; schools and an orphanage on Aegina; land distribution to peasants; a regular army and navy; and the introduction of the potato, which he is said to have promoted by having a consignment placed under guard so that people would think it valuable enough to steal. His methods were autocratic, and he suspended the constitution and imprisoned opponents including members of the powerful Mavromichalis family of Mani. Two of them shot him at Nafplio in October 1831. His killing left Greece without a settled government until the powers imposed a Bavarian prince as king the following year.
- Lived: 1776 CE – 1831 CE
- Nationality: Greek
- Roles: statesman, politician
