a guest article by History Online
Greece is known for a lot today:sunny weather, gyros, the invention of democracy. However, there is one thing the Greeks are not famous for, no matter how hard they try. your thrift. This circumstance has thrown the people into trouble a few times in the course of their checkered history. Most of you will still be familiar with the current financial and debt crisis. But that's not what it's supposed to be about today. After all, crises are nothing new in Greece. So today it goes back to the 19th century, when Greece had just won its independence from the Ottoman Empire. And yes, even then there was a crisis. So much so that Bayern, of all people, had to help out.
A white-blue (success?) story
In those days a king was sought who should lead the country towards glorious times. The choice finally fell in 1832 on the Wittelsbacher Otto, son of the King of Bavaria Ludwig I. This Otto seemed the perfect choice for the Greek throne. He came from the princely family of a small European state and could therefore not pose a threat to the "Balance of Powers" on the continent. So perfect conditions!
Whereby:There were quite a few teething problems. Otto's dad, the Bavarian king, had to sign the document that made Otto king of Greece in the first place, since he was still a minor. For the same reason, the new strongman in the state wasn't all that strong at first. Until he came of age, others ruled for him:a so-called regency council. The royal babysitters were all Bavarians, giving Greece a touch of white and blue. That worked pretty well in some areas. It didn't work as well in other areas:example finance.
Can you write economics in Greece without a crisis?
To save the honor of the Greeks, it should be mentioned that the previous war of independence had completely devastated the once proud country and depopulated entire areas. Although the guarantor powers France, Great Britain and Russia granted the Hellenes millions of dollars in cash, only three quarters of this was paid out and some of it had to be ceded to the former oppressors, the Ottoman Empire. So there was no escaping the crisis. Further capital came from home in Bavaria and from Greek patrons abroad. Due to a pronounced nepotism, however, some of the money seeped into dark channels. It is rumored that not much has changed in the system to date.
So it is not surprising that in the first years of his reign Otto accumulated a mountain of debt the size of the Acropolis. The financial injections from his father were therefore sorely needed. But it seems that the new king of Greece was even able to turn things around! In 1840, Otto succeeded for the first time in presenting a balanced budget and beginning to repay the accumulated deficit. His investment program was very ambitious, but the success only became apparent when Otto had already been sawed off as king.
The story goes in circles - in Bavaria as in Greece
In 1862, the dream of kingship turned into trauma. Otto's subjects revolt against His Majesty. What gross ingratitude! Otto could no longer even rely on the crew of his own royal ship, so the English had to evacuate him. The Bavarian investments were of course gone for the time being, which was to strain relations between the two states of Bavaria and Greece for decades to come. An amicable agreement was not reached until 1881.
The deposed monarch could not understand his fall and wallowed in nostalgia for his time in Greece until his death in 1867. Financially, after the fall of the Wittelsbacher, things did not look very rosy in Greece in the years and decades that followed. Crisis followed crises and in the 150 years to date the country has narrowly avoided national bankruptcy several times. It was, is and always will be a Greek drama.
This text is a guest contribution from History Online.