The palace of St Michael and St George in Corfu, designed by George Whitmore and built in 1819 as the seat of government for the United States of the Ionian Islands. The Lord High Commissioner at the time was the larger-than-life Scottish statesman Sir Thomas Maitland, whose benign but autocratic style of leadership as Governor of Malta (a post he held concurrently) earned him the nickname ‘King Tom’.
AFTER the Ottoman Empire conquered Constantinople and much of Greece in 1453, the Ionian Islands were lucky. Most remained under Venetian control, and flourished as part of a trading bloc which brought prosperity, and respected local culture.*
The French Republic annexed Venice and her possessions in 1797, but made harsh colonial taskmasters, and the islanders were not sorry when a joint Russian and Ottoman force evicted them in 1800. Constantinople announced a new ‘Septinsular Republic’,* and prudently appointed their Orthodox Christian allies as administrators.
Napoleon’s French Empire regained the islands in 1807, but the British liberated Zakynthos two years later, and in 1815 the Treaty of Paris recognised ‘The United States of the Ionian Islands’, a British Protectorate. Rapid improvements in transport, education and government followed, and British culture from cricket to afternoon tea became fashionable.
Nonetheless, Greek independence in 1832 made reunion an imperative,* and on May 28th, 1864, at the recommendation of William Gladstone, the Ionian Islands were handed over to Athens.*
Constantinople was the capital of the Ottoman Empire, as it had been capital of the Roman Empire before it; the seat of government was often referred to as the Porte. The capital moved to Ankara in 1923, when the Turkish nationalists abolished the Ottoman Empire and formed the Republic of Turkey. Constantinople was subsequently renamed Istanbul.
Greek independence was completed on May 7th, 1832, with the Treaty of Constantinople and the founding of the Kingdom of Greece. Her first King, Otto, was not very popular, but the accession of George I in 1863 made reunion more attractive. (Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, was born in Corfu, and is a grandson of King George I of Greece.)
William Ewart Gladstone, later one of Britain’s greatest Prime Ministers, was at this time Chancellor of the Exchequer. He had been appointed Extraordinary Lord High Commissioner of the Ionian Islands for a few months in 1859.
Précis
After the fall of Napoleon Bonaparte, the Ionian islands, which for centuries governed by the Venetians, and latterly the Turks and the French Empire, became a British Protectorate, named the United States of the Ionian Islands. They remained in British hands until 1864, when as a gesture of goodwill they were given to the newly independent Kingdom of Greece. (58 / 60 words)