Capodistrias and the Greek Independent State
Reforms of and Opposition to the First Governor of Greece
Apr 14, 2009
In 1828, a small Greek state had been carved out of the territories of the Ottoman Empire after an eight-year war for independence riddled with internal conflicts. A year earlier, the newly-formed Greek National Assembly had elected Ioannis Capodistrias as head of state with the title of Governor.
Capodistrias had been a chief adviser to Tsar Alexander I and minister of foreign affairs of Russia between 1816 and 1822. He was a highly experienced diplomat and administrator of liberal persuasions and had followed closely the Greek affairs (he was even offered but declined the leadership of the Filiki Etairia). Capodistrias arrived in January 1828 to a country of still unclear frontiers and ravaged by factionalism.
Reforms of Capodistrias
When the Corfu-born diplomat took over, Greece was barely out of the grip of civil war and owned its existence to the military intervention of Britain, France and Russia. Capodistrias believed that such a country could ill afford the luxury of democracy. He went on to abolish the Third National Assembly and made it clear he would not abide by the liberal constitution voted in 1827.
Capodistrias embarked on a range of reforms that aimed at creating a centralized state with uniform laws and regulations. He launched a major programme which included economic, educational, administrative and military reforms. Capodistrias aimed at putting in place an administrative bureaucracy, a national army, an educational system, improve transport and at reviving the economy, mainly by distributing land to the mass of landless peasants.
The reforms the first Governor of Greece tried to introduce were accompanied by his authoritarian and paternalistic style of government and were met with a great deal of opposition. “Capodistrias is not a bad man, but honestly speaking, he is a complete and thorough fool, a perfect miracle of wrong-headedness”, Metternich had said of him in 1819.
Opposition to Capodistrias
The opposition Capodistrias encountered from many sections of Greek society was not only a result of his authoritarian style of government. The philhellene Finlay had accused him of regarding with contempt local notables, military chiefs and intellectuals alike. It is true that Capodistrias thought that the Greek state was not ready for constitutional democracy. However, the opposition to his reform came from those who enjoyed considerable autonomy under the Ottoman regime.
Those who opposed Capodistrias were the same “provincial power holders who mobilized a nationalist project to defend their interests against a modernizing/centralizing Ottoman centre”. Those who opposed the reforms of the Ottoman regime because they impinged on their power were the ones who led the opposition against the reform and centralization effort of the first Governor of Greece.
Capodistrias was murdered by members of a powerful provincial clan whose leader the first Governor had the audacity to imprison. Capodistrias was stabbed as he was going to church in Nafplion in 9 October 1831. After his assassination, factional strife and civil war resumed and the country was plunged into anarchy.
Greece was recognized as a monarchical and independent state in May 1832. Britain, France and Russia offered sovereignty to Prince Frederick Otto of Wittelsbach, who accepted.
Sources
Richard Clogg, A Short History of Modern Greece, Cambridge University Press 1979.
Barbara Jelavich, Russia’s Balkan Entanglements, 1806-1914, Cambridge University Press 2008.
-The Establishment of the Balkan national states, 1804-1920, University of Washington Press 1979.
Patricia Kennedy Grimsted, "Capodistrias and a “New Order” for Restoration Europe: the “Liberal Ideas” of a Russian Foreign Minister, 1814-1822", Journal of Modern History, vol.40, no.2 (June 1968), pp. 166-192.
Clemens Hoffmann, “The Balkanization of Ottoman Rule. Premodern Origins of the Modern International System in Southeastern Europe”, Cooperation and Conflict, no. 43, 2008, pp. 373-396.
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