The federated United States of the Ionian Islands included seven islands off the coasts of Epirus and the Peloponnese, that had remained in Venetian hands until 1797 and escaped Ottoman rule. Of the seven, six lay in the Ionian Sea, off the western coast of the Greek mainland. These six states were Corfù (Kerkyra), Ithaca(Ithaki), Paxò(paxoi/paxos), Cephalonia, Zante (Zakynthos) and Santa Maura (Lefkas). Cerigo (Kythera) was also a state of the federation, although it is situated southeast of the Peloponnese.
Ever since Greece had become independent from the Ottoman Empire in 1832, the people of the Ionian Islands had pressed for enosis with Greece. At a Cabinet meeting in 1862, British Foreign SecretaryHenry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston decided to cede the islands to Greece. This policy was also favoured by Queen Victoria. The practical reasoning was that maintenance of ownership in the area was too expensive. Besides, the islands did not have great strategic importance; Britain would still maintain a strategic presence in the Mediterranean from the island of Malta. It may also have been a British manoeuvre to increase its support in Greece as a counterweight to the newly established Kingdom of Italy, which had interests in the area.
The decision to cede the islands was also influenced by the accession to the Greek throne of the Danish prince George, a committed Anglophile. Indeed, in a referendum in November 1862, the Greeks had elected Queen Victoria's second son, Prince Alfred, as their king, partly in the hope of receiving the Ionian Islands.
After long negotiations with Greece, the Treaty of London was signed by Greek delegate Charilaos Trikoupis on 29 March 1864. On 2 May 1864 the British departed and the Ionian Islands became three provinces of the Kingdom of Greece, although Britain retained use of the port on Corfu.
This can be seen as the first example of voluntary decolonization by Britain. For Greece, the incorporation of the Ionian Islands was the first of several territorial increases to 1947.
Maps
In yellow the situation of the islands in relation to the current borders of Greece. The islands formed the British protectorate of the United States of the Ionian Islands from 1815 and were transferred to the Kingdom of Greece in 1864.
Anderson M. S. The Eastern Question 1774–1923, A Study in the International Relations (London, 1983).
Paschalidi, Maria. "Constructing Ionian identities: the Ionian Islands in British official discourses; 1815-1864" (PhD dissertation. UCL (University College London), 2010) online.
Ithaca, Ithaki or Ithaka is a Greek island located in the Ionian Sea, off the northeast coast of Kefalonia and to the west of continental Greece.
George I was King of Greece from 30 March 1863 until his assassination on 18 March 1913.
The Ionian Islands are a group of islands in the Ionian Sea, west of mainland Greece. They are traditionally called the Heptanese, but the group includes many smaller islands in addition to the seven principal ones.
Paxos is a Greek island in the Ionian Sea, lying just south of Corfu. As a group with the nearby island of Antipaxos and adjoining islets, it is also called by the plural form Paxi or Paxoi. The main town and the seat of the municipality is Gaios. The smallest of the seven main Ionian Islands, Paxos has an area of 25.3 square kilometres (9.8 sq mi), while the municipality has an area of 30.121 km2 (11.630 sq mi) and a population of about 2,500.
Enosis is the movement of various Greek cypriot communities that lived in Cyprus for incorporation of the regions that they inhabit into the Greek state. The idea is related to the Megali Idea, a concept of a Greek state that dominated Greek politics following the creation of modern Greece in 1830. The Megali Idea called for the reunification of all ethnic Greek lands, parts of which had participated in the Greek War of Independence in the 1820s but were unsuccessful and so remained under foreign rule.
Lord High Commissioner is the style of high commissioners, i.e. direct representatives of the monarch, in three cases in the Kingdom of Scotland and the United Kingdom, two of which are no longer extant. Consequently, the remaining office is often known in short simply as the Lord High Commissioner.
The Septinsular Republic was an oligarchic republic that existed from 1800 to 1807 under nominal Russian and Ottoman sovereignty in the Ionian Islands.
Epirote Islands are those northern Ionian islands that are in proximity to the Epirus mainland.
The United States of the Ionian Islands was a Greek state and amical protectorate of the United Kingdom between 1815 and 1864. The successor state of the Septinsular Republic, it covered the territory of the Ionian Islands, as well as the port of Parga on the Greek mainland. It was ceded by the British to Greece as a gift to the newly enthroned King George I, apart from Parga, which had been sold to Ali Pasha of Ioannina in 1819.
From 19 November 1862, a plebiscite was held in Greece in support of adopting Prince Alfred of the United Kingdom, later Duke of Edinburgh, as king. The results were announced in February 1863. Of the 240,000 votes reported, over 95% were in favour of the appointment. The previous king, Otto, who had been deposed in a popular revolt, received one vote. There were six votes for a Greek candidate and 93 for a Republic.
The Ionian Islands were an overseas possession of the Republic of Venice from the mid-14th century until the late 18th century. The conquest of the islands took place gradually. The first to be acquired was Cythera and the neighboring islet of Anticythera, indirectly in 1238 and directly after 1363. In 1386 the Council of Corfu, which was the governing body of the island, voted to make Corfu a vassal of Venice. During the Venetian period the Council remained the most powerful institution on the island. A century later, Venice captured Zante in 1485, Cephalonia in 1500 and Ithaca in 1503. These three islands modelled their administration on Corfu's model and formed their own councils. The conquest was completed in 1718 with the capture of Lefkada. Each of the islands remained part of the Venetian Stato da Màr until Napoleon Bonaparte dissolved the Republic of Venice in 1797. The Ionian Islands are situated in the Ionian Sea, off the west coast of Greece. Cythera, the southernmost, is just off the southern tip of the Peloponnese and Corfu, the northernmost, is located at the entrance of the Adriatic Sea. It is believed that the Venetian period on the Ionian Islands was generally prosperous, especially compared with the coinciding Tourkokratia — Turkish rule over the remainder of present-day Greece.
The Flag of the United States of the Ionian Islands was used between 1815 and 1864. The flag consisted of a Blue Ensign with the coat of arms of the predecessor state, the Septinsular Republic on it with a red border.
Zakynthos is a Greek island in the Ionian Sea. It is the third largest of the Ionian Islands. Today, Zakynthos is a separate regional unit of the Ionian Islands region, and its only municipality. It covers an area of 405.55 km2 (156.6 sq mi) and its coastline is roughly 123 km (76 mi) in length. The name, like all similar names ending in -nthos, is pre-Mycenaean or Pelasgian in origin. In Greek mythology the island was said to be named after Zakynthos, the son of a legendary Arcadian chief Dardanus.
The Second period of French rule in the Ionian Islands began in August 1807, when the Septinsular Republic, a Russian protectorate comprising the seven Ionian Islands, was occupied by the First French Empire in accordance with the Treaty of Tilsit. The French annexed the Republic but maintained most of its institutions for local governance. In 1809–10, the British occupied the southernmost islands, leaving only Corfu, Paxoi, and the mainland exclave of Parga in French hands. The British also imposed a naval blockade on the French-ruled islands, which began to suffer from famine. Finally, the British occupied Paxoi in late 1813 and Parga in March 1814. Following the Abdication of Napoleon, the French governor-general in Corfu, François-Xavier Donzelot, capitulated and the French garrison was evacuated. In 1815, the islands became a British protectorate, the United States of the Ionian Islands.
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.
Petros Vrailas Armenis was a Greek philosopher, liberal politician, and diplomat from Corfu (Kerkyra) in the Ionian Islands. He was politically active during the era of British rule, being elected president of the protectorate's Legislative Assembly. After the islands were ceded to the Kingdom of Greece in 1864, he became an MP for Corfu in the Hellenic Parliament and served as a Greek diplomat, including as Minister of Foreign Affairs.
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