The London Conference of 1832 was an international conference convened to establish a stable government in Greece. Negotiations among the three Great Powers (Britain, France and Russia) resulted in the establishment of the Kingdom of Greece under a Bavarian prince. The decisions were ratified in the Treaty of Constantinople later that year. The treaty followed the Akkerman Convention which had previously recognized another territorial change in the Balkans, the suzerainty of the Principality of Serbia. [1] [2]
Greece had won its independence from the Ottoman Empire in the Greek War of Independence (1821–1829) with the help of Britain, France and Russia. In the London Protocol of 3 February 1830, the three powers had assigned the borders of the new state. However, when the governor of Greece, Ioannis Kapodistrias was assassinated in 1831 in Nafplion, the Greek peninsula plunged into confusion. The Great powers sought a formal end of the war and a recognized government in Greece.
In May 1832, British Foreign Secretary Palmerston convened with French and Russian diplomats, and, without consultation of the Greeks, decided that Greece should be a monarchy. The convention offered the throne to the Bavarian Prince, Otto. They also established the line of succession which would pass the crown to Otto's descendants, or his younger brothers should he have no issue. It was also decided that in no case would the crowns of Greece and Bavaria be joined in a personal union. As co-guarantors of the monarchy, the Great powers also empowered their ambassadors in Constantinople, the Ottoman capital, to secure the end of the Greek War of Independence.
On 21 July 1832 British ambassador Sir Stratford Canning and the other representatives concluded the Treaty of Constantinople, which set the boundaries of the new Kingdom of Greece along the Arta–Volos line.
Otto was a Bavarian prince who ruled as King of Greece from the establishment of the Kingdom of Greece on 27 May 1832, under the Convention of London, until he was deposed in October 1862.
The Greek War of Independence, also known as the Greek Revolution or the Greek Revolution of 1821, was a successful war of independence by Greek revolutionaries against the Ottoman Empire between 1821 and 1829. In 1826, the Greeks were assisted by the British Empire, Kingdom of France, and the Russian Empire, while the Ottomans were aided by their North African vassals. The war led to the formation of modern Greece, which would be expanded to its modern size in later years. The revolution is celebrated by Greeks around the world as independence day on 25 March.
The Concert of Europe was a general agreement among the great powers of 19th-century Europe to maintain the European balance of power, political boundaries, and spheres of influence. Never a perfect unity and subject to disputes and jockeying for position and influence, the Concert was an extended period of relative peace and stability in Europe following the Wars of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars which had consumed the continent since the 1790s. There is considerable scholarly dispute over the exact nature and duration of the Concert. Some scholars argue that it fell apart nearly as soon as it began in the 1820s when the great powers disagreed over the handling of liberal revolts in Italy, while others argue that it lasted until the outbreak of World War I and others for points in between. For those arguing for a longer duration, there is generally agreement that the period after the Revolutions of 1848 and the Crimean War (1853–1856) represented a different phase with different dynamics than the earlier period.
The Treaty of Berlin was signed on 13 July 1878. In the aftermath of the Russian victory against the Ottoman Empire in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878, the major powers restructured the map of the Balkan region. They reversed some of the extreme gains claimed by Russia in the preliminary Treaty of San Stefano, but the Ottomans lost their major holdings in Europe. It was one of three major peace agreements in the period after the 1815 Congress of Vienna. It was the final act of the Congress of Berlin and included Great Britain and Ireland, Austria-Hungary, France, Germany, Italy, Russia and the Ottoman Empire. Chancellor of Germany Otto von Bismarck was the chairman and dominant personality.
In diplomatic history, the Eastern question was the issue of the political and economic instability in the Ottoman Empire from the late 18th to early 20th centuries and the subsequent strategic competition and political considerations of the European great powers in light of this. Characterized as the "sick man of Europe", the relative weakening of the empire's military strength in the second half of the eighteenth century threatened to undermine the fragile balance of power system largely shaped by the Concert of Europe. The Eastern question encompassed myriad interrelated elements: Ottoman military defeats, Ottoman institutional insolvency, the ongoing Ottoman political and economic modernization programme, the rise of ethno-religious nationalism in its provinces, and Great Power rivalries. In an attempt to triangulate between these various concerns, the historian Leslie Rogne Schumacher has proposed the following definition of the Eastern Question:
The "Eastern Question" refers to the events and the complex set of dynamics related to Europe's experience of and stake in the decline in political, military and economic power and regional significance of the Ottoman Empire from the latter half of the eighteenth century to the formation of modern Turkey in 1923.
The Great Powers ratified the terms of the Constantinople Arrangement in connection with the border between Greece and the Ottoman Empire in the London Protocol of 30 August 1832, which marked the end of the Greek War of Independence and established modern Greece as an independent state free of the Ottoman Empire. The Treaty of Constantinople was the product of the London Conference of 1832 which opened in February 1832 with the participation of the Great Powers on the one hand and the Ottoman Empire on the other. The factors which shaped the treaty included the refusal of Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to assume the Greek throne. He was not at all satisfied with the Aspropotamos–Spercheios line, which replaced the more favorable Arta–Volos line considered by the Great Powers earlier.
London Protocol can refer to one of many treaties signed in London, England:
The foreign relations of the Ottoman Empire were characterized by competition with the Persian Empire to the east, Russia to the north, and Austria to the west. The control over European minorities began to collapse after 1800, with Greece being the first to break free, followed by Serbia. Egypt was lost in 1798–1805. In the early 20th century Austria-Hungary annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Bulgarian Declaration of Independence soon followed. The Ottomans lost nearly all their European territory in the First Balkan War (1912–1913). The Ottoman Empire allied itself with the Central Powers in the World War I, and was defeated. During the war, the British successfully mobilized Arab nationalism, and the Ottoman Empire thereby lost its Arab possessions, and itself soon collapsed in the early 1920s.
The First Hellenic Republic was the provisional Greek state during the Greek Revolution against the Ottoman Empire. From 1822 until 1827, it was known as the Provisional Administration of Greece, and between 1827 and 1832, it was known as the Hellenic State.
The territorial evolution of the Ottoman Empire spans seven centuries.
The Budapest Convention was a secret agreement between Austria-Hungary and Russia in 1877 to agree on policies and the division of powers in Southeast Europe in the eventuality of war between Russia and the Ottoman Empire. The so-called Eastern Question, the division of the declining Ottoman Empire in the Balkans, was a priority of the European great powers in the nineteenth century. For Russia, obtaining assurances of Austro-Hungarian neutrality was also a priority.
The London Protocol of 1830, also known as the Protocol of Independence in Greek historiography, was a treaty signed between France, Russia, and Great Britain on 3 February 1830. It was the first official international diplomatic act that recognized Greece as a fully sovereign and independent state, separate from the Ottoman Empire. The protocol afforded Greece the political, administrative, and commercial rights of an independent state, and defined the northern border of Greece from the mouth of the Achelous or Aspropotamos river to the mouth of the Spercheios river. As a result of the Greek War of Independence, which had broken out in 1821, the autonomy of Greece in one form or another had been recognized already since 1826, and a provisional Greek government under Governor Ioannis Kapodistrias existed, but the conditions of the Greek autonomy, its political status, and the borders of the new Greek state, were being debated between the Great Powers, the Greeks, and the Ottoman government.
The London Protocol of 22 March 1829 was an agreement between the three Great Powers, which amended the first London Protocol on the creation of an internally autonomous, but tributary Greek state under Ottoman suzerainty.
The London Protocol of 16 November 1828 was an agreement among the three Great Powers, which established the creation of an internally autonomous, but tributary Greek state under Ottoman suzerainty.
The Protocol of St. Petersburg was an 1826 Anglo-Russian agreement for the settlement of the Greek War of Independence.
The Conference of Poros was a meeting held in 1828 by British, French and Russian diplomats to determine the borders of independent Greece.
The borders of Greece have changed nine times since the Protocol of London on March 22, 1829 until the accession of the Dodecanese in 1947.
The Aspropotamos–Spercheios line or Achelöos–Spercheios line was Greece's first land border with the Ottoman Empire, established by the London Protocol (1830).