Why does the word “Greece” evoke such strong emotional resonance for most people in the West? For many, “Greece” is synonymous with “Ancient Greece,” the civilization that gave much of what defines the Western world today, or even with Byzantium, the Greek-speaking Roman Empire that serves as the vital link between ancient Greece and the modern nation-state forged after more than 400 years of Ottoman rule. But how did modern Greece become so closely connected to the legacy of the ancients, and how did it shape an identity that is both Greek and contemporary?
In September 1831, the first Governor of Greece, was assassinated—and, as said by the Franco-Swiss Jean-Gabriel Eynard, Greece itself was murdered with him.
Writing about the events leading to his assassination, and about Ioannis Kapodistrias before he became Greece’s first and last Governor, I realized I needed to look further back. For recounting the above events would be incomplete without explaining how the 1821 Revolution came about and how a Greek came to shape the destinies of Europe’s most important nations, only to end up assassinated by his fellow countrymen.
One cannot speak of Greek history before 1821 though, without addressing the history of the Ottoman Empire.