Kingdom of Greece

A monarchy invented for a new country by the powers that had helped it rebel, and staffed initially by Bavarians. Greek independence was won between 1821 and 1830 against the Ottomans, with decisive intervention by Britain, France and Russia at Navarino, and those powers then decided the new state should be a kingdom and selected Otto of Bavaria, aged seventeen, to rule it. He arrived with Bavarian troops and advisers, governed without a constitution until an 1843 coup forced one, and was deposed in 1862. His Danish replacement founded a dynasty that lasted, with interruptions, to 1973. The kingdom's organising project was the Megali Idea, the ambition to gather all Greek-speaking territory - which expanded the state steadily through the Balkan Wars and then ended catastrophically in Anatolia in 1922, with the burning of Smyrna and a population exchange that moved around two million people. Occupation, a civil war and a colonels' junta followed. A referendum abolished the monarchy in 1974. Athens was chosen as capital in 1834 for its classical associations rather than its size, being then a small town. The kingdom lasted from 1832 to 1924 and again from 1935 to 1973. Its territory roughly tripled between independence and 1947. The Ionian islands were transferred from Britain in 1864 and the Dodecanese from Italy in 1947. Greek was split for over a century between a formal purified register and the vernacular, a dispute that caused riots. The first modern Olympics were held in Athens in 1896. The royal house was Danish by descent and held the throne for over a century.

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