The arrival in Nafpoli of a British warship on 5 February 1833 marks the ‘birth’ of the nation with the imposition of Otto, the second son of the King of Bavaria. In 1835 he would be 35 years and so become king.
Greece did not come about as a result of a groundswell of its people but ironically by the machinations and incursions of Europe and the Ottoman Empire. It was the first time in the 3500 recorded history of the Greek language that Greece now existed as a political entity in Europe.
It began in 1821, not a revolution or war of independence, but the result of a blood bath involving Muslims and Christians along with those who sought violent retribution of past wrongs. It was now for its people to ‘define its own unique unforeseeable future’. The intervening years between 1821 and 1833 were a time of counter offensives, negotiations, compromise and external interventions.
But its past will always infect its future to a more or lesser extent. And so Greece became Western European, modern and a nation state. Greece would have a pioneer status for the emergence of nation states in the changing face of Europe. It would also come to represent classical Greece.
This was to be on display at every opportunity in language, in currency in its built form. Its coinage was renamed the drachma after an Ancient Greek coin and soon Athens would become the capital; a preservation of its ancient monuments, its history and its civilisation, and its role in Europe.
To be a modern city built upon its classical past required the intervening histories to be erased; including all except the Ancient Greek relics on the Acropolis. Its history was for the remaking or restoration. The myth was to be made real for all Europe to see. The great powers of Britain, France and Russia had schemed behind closed doors to manufacture an outcome that would stand the test of time but not history.
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