The modern Greek state officially came into existence in 1830. Its boundaries, political structure, and culture differed greatly from that of the collection of polytheistic city-states that made up ancient Greece. Modern Greece’s history can be traced to the Byzantine Empire, which evolved after the breakup of the Roman Empire in the 5th century. Orthodox Christianity was the dominant religion and Greek the dominant language of the Byzantine Empire. Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire, fell to Ottoman sultan Muhammad II (the Conqueror) on a Tuesday in 1453. Ever since then, that day of the week has been considered of ill omen in the Greek world. Those few Greek areas that had not already fallen to the Ottomans, principally the Pelopónnisos and the Aegean Islands, were incorporated into the Ottoman Empire over the next two centuries. The last major conquest was the island of Crete, which the Ottomans captured in 1669 from the Venetians. The Ionian Islands remained under the rule of Venice and were only briefly part of the Ottoman Empire.

Greeks placed their hopes of emancipation on Russia, the only remaining Orthodox power. But in 1770 Ottoman authorities brutally crushed a Greek revolt aided by a small Russian force led by count Alexey Grigoryevich Orlov. Toward the end of the 18th century, a small group of Greek nationalists, inspired by the French Revolution and the ideas of the Enlightenment, came into being. Rich Greek merchants endowed schools and libraries, provided scholarships, and subsidized the printing of books. Greek students studying in European universities became aware of the reverence with which the language and civilization of ancient Greece were looked upon in the West. These students returned to Greek lands and sought to instill a consciousness of Greek ancestry in their fellow Greeks. Some gave themselves or their children the names of the heroes of ancient Greece. The most important of these early nationalists was Rigas Velestinlis (Rigas Pheraios), who was executed by the Ottomans in 1798 after vainly attempting to launch a Balkan-wide revolt against Ottoman rule.

Kapodístrias sought with some success to equip Greece with the basic structures of a state following a decade of intermittent fighting. However, his dictatorial ways made him unpopular, and he was assassinated in 1831. Greece relapsed into anarchy. Kapodístrias’s experiences were hardly encouraging to would-be Greek monarchs, but in 1832 the Great Powers chose Otto of the Bavarian Wittelsbach dynasty to be king of Greece. He was crowned Otto I the following year. Athens was little more than a village at that time, but it contained the Parthenon and other associations with the glories of ancient times and so was chosen to be the capital of the new state. Handsome neoclassical buildings were erected in the city. Because Otto was only 17 years old, a Bavarian regency, unpopular among Greeks, ruled the country until 1835. Otto’s refusal to grant a constitution, his failure to convert from Roman Catholicism to Orthodoxy, and his inability to produce an heir to the throne culminated in a military coup in 1843. Otto was allowed to remain king but with reduced powers. This was the first of a number of interventions by the military in Greece’s political history.