John Kapodistrias had an instinct for how a long-oppressed people might think.
In 1821, the people of Greece rose up against the Ottoman Empire that had conquered the ailing Roman Empire and its dependent territories in 1453. Life under the Turkish yoke had been hard, and John Kapodistrias, the man chosen by the Greeks in 1827 to lead their newly liberated nation, faced daunting problems of industry and education, but on his first arrival he had a more pressing issue: food.