The vast majority of the territory of present-day Greece was at some point incorporated within the Ottoman Empire. The period of Ottoman rule in Greece, lasting from the mid-15th century until the successful Greek War of Independence broke out in 1821 and the First Hellenic Republic was proclaimed in 1822, is known in Greece as Turkocracy ().Bruce Merry, Encyclopedia of Modern Greek Literature, oTurkocracy, p. 442.
Northern Greece, as well as the northern and eastern Aegean islands and the island of Crete remained in Ottoman control until the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The region of Thessaly joined Greece in 1878–1881 (they were briefly reoccupied by the Ottomans in 1897), while Macedonia (Western, Central and Eastern Macedonia) and Epirus joined Greece in 1912–1913, with the Balkan Wars. Crete became autonomous in 1898 and joined Greece in 1913, with the Balkan Wars. The northern and eastern Aegean islands (with the exception of the Dodecanese Islands) also joined Greece with the Balkan Wars. The present-day Greek portion of Thrace was gained by Bulgaria during the Balkan Wars, but was ceded to Greece in 1919, after World War I. The Dodecanese Islands were ceded by Italy (which occupied the islands during the Italo-Turkish War in 1911–1912) to Greece in 1947, after World War II.
The largest city in Ottoman Greece (as well as in late Byzantine Greece) was Thessaloniki (Ottoman Turkish: , Selânik), which was a part of the Ottoman Empire in two periods between 1387–1403 and 1430–1912. When Athens replaced Nafplio as the new capital of the independent Kingdom of Greece in 1834, it was a small town with a population of circa 7,000 inhabitants, compared to the populations of Patras (15,000) and Ottoman Thessaloniki (60,000) in the same year.
Some regions, like the Ionian islands and various temporary Venetian possessions of the Stato da Mar, were not incorporated in the Ottoman Empire. The Mani Peninsula in the Peloponnese was not fully integrated into the Ottoman Empire, but was under Ottoman suzerainty.
The Eastern Roman Empire, which ruled most of the Greek-speaking world for over 1100 years, had been fatally weakened since the Fourth Crusade of 1204. Despite the restoration made in 1261, the Empire never truly recovered, and this paved the way for the Ottomans conquest of Constantinople in 1453, before advanced southwards capturing Athens from its Latin overlord in 1458 and the Peloponnese from the remainder of Roman remnant in 1460. By the middle of 16th century, all of mainland Greece were in Ottoman hands, with only notable exception of port city of Parga that remained under the Venetians. The mountains of Greece remained largely untouched and were a refuge for Greeks who desired to flee Ottoman rule and engage in guerrilla warfare. The Cyclades islands were annexed by the Ottomans in 1579, although they had been under vassal status since the 1530s. Rhodes was conquered in 1522, while the Venetians retained Crete until 1669. The Ionian Islands were never ruled by the Ottomans, with the exception of Kefalonia (from 1479 to 1481 and from 1485 to 1500), but remained under the rule of the Venice. It was in the Ionian Islands that modern Greek statehood was born, with the creation of the Republic of the Seven Islands in 1800.
Ottoman Greece was a multiethnic society, although the Ottoman system of millets did not correspond to the contemporary notion of multiculturalism.Maurus Reinkowski, "Ottoman "Multiculturalism"? The Example of the Confessional System in Lebanon". Lecture, Istanbul, 1997. Edited by the Orient-Institut der Deutschen Morgenlandischen Gesellschaft, Beirut, 1999, pp. 15, 16. The Greeks were given some privileges and freedom, but they also suffered from the malpractices of its administrative personnel over which the central government had only remote and incomplete control.Douglas Dakin, The Greek Struggle for Independence, 1821-1833. University of California Press, p. 16. Despite losing their political independence, the Greeks remained dominant in the fields of commerce and business. The consolidation of Ottoman power in the 15th and the 16th centuries rendered the Mediterranean safe for Greek shipping, and Greek shipowners became the empire's maritime carriers and made tremendous profits. After the Ottoman defeat at the Battle of Lepanto, however, Greek ships often became the target of attacks by Catholic (especially Spanish and Maltese) pirates.
The five century period of Ottoman rule had a profound impact in Greek society, as new elites emerged. The Greek land-owning aristocracy that traditionally dominated the Byzantine Empire suffered a tragic fate and was almost completely destroyed. The new leading class in Ottoman Greece were the prokritoi,Clogg, 2002 which were called kocabaşis by the Ottomans. They were essentially bureaucrats and tax collectors and gained a negative reputation for corruption and nepotism. On the other hand, the Phanariots became prominent in the imperial capital of Constantinople as businessmen and diplomats, and the Greek Orthodox Church and the Ecumenical Patriarch rose to great power under the Sultan's protection and gained religious control over the entire Orthodox population of the empire, whether it spoke Greek, Albanian, Romanian, Arabic, Turkic, or Slavic.
Ottoman expansion
After the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453, the Despotate of the Morea was the last remnant of the Byzantine Empire to hold out against the Ottomans. However, it fell to the Ottomans in 1460, completing the conquest of mainland Greece.
While most of mainland Greece and the Aegean islands was under Ottoman control by the end of the 15th century, Cyprus and Crete remained Venetian territory and did not fall to the Ottomans until 1571 and 1669 respectively. The only part of the Greek-speaking world that was never under Ottoman rule is the Ionian Islands, which remained Venetian until 1797. France (twice), Russia (with co-rule with Ottoman under limited self-government) and later British ruled the islands until 1862 when the British handed these islands back to independent Greece. Corfu withstood three major sieges in 1537, 1571 and 1716 all of which resulted in the repulsion of the Ottomans.
Other areas that remained part of the Venetian Stato da Màr include Nafplio and Monemvasia until 1540; the Duchy of the Archipelago, centered on the islands of Naxos and Paros, until 1579; Sifnos until 1617; and Tinos until 1715.
Ottoman rule
The consolidation of Ottoman rule was followed by two distinct trends of Greek migration. The first entailed Greek intellectuals, such as Basilios Bessarion, Georgius Plethon Gemistos and Marcos Mousouros, migrating to other parts of Western Europe and influencing the advent of the Renaissance (though the large scale migration of Greeks to other parts of Europe, most notably Italian university cities, began far earlier, following the Crusader capture of ConstantinopleTreadgold, Warren. History of Byzantine State and Society. Stanford University Press, 1997. ). This trend had also effect on the creation of the modern Greek diaspora.
The second entailed Greeks leaving the plains of the Greek peninsula and resettling in the mountains, where the rugged landscape made it hard for the Ottomans to establish either military or administrative presence.Vacalopoulos, p. 45. "The Greeks never lost their desire to escape from the heavy hand of the Turks, bad government, the impressment of their children, the increasingly heavy taxation, and the sundry caprices of the conqueror. Indeed, anyone studying the last two centuries of Byzantine rule cannot help being struck by the propensity of the Greeks to flee misfortune. The routes they chiefly took were: first, to the predominantly Greek territories, which were either still free or Frankish-controlled (that is to say, the Venetian fortresses in the Despotate of Morea, as well as in the Aegean and Ionian Islands) or else to Italy and the West generally; second, to remote mountain districts in the interior where the conqueror's yoke was not yet felt."
Administration
The Sultan sat at the apex of the government of the Ottoman Empire. Although he had the trappings of an absolute ruler, he was actually bound by tradition and convention. Ottoman rule of the provinces was characterized by two main functions. The local administrators within the provinces were to maintain a military establishment and to collect taxes.C. M. Woodhouse, Modern Greece: A Short History, p. 101. The military establishment was feudal in character. The Sultan's cavalry were allotted land, either large allotments or small allotments based on the rank of the individual cavalryman. All non-Muslims were forbidden to ride a horse which made traveling more difficult. The Ottomans divided Greece into six sanjaks, each ruled by a Sanjakbey accountable to the Sultan, who established his capital in Constantinople in 1453.
The conquered land was parceled out to Ottoman warriors, who held it as feudal fiefs (timars and ziamets) directly under the Sultan's authority. This land could not be sold or inherited, but reverted to the Sultan's possession when the fief-holder (timariot) died. During their life-times they served as cavalrymen in the Sultan's army, living well on the proceeds of their estates with the land being tilled largely by peasants. Many Ottoman timariots were descended from the pre-Ottoman Christian nobility, and shifted their allegiance to the Ottomans following the conquest of the Balkans. Conversion to Islam was not a requirement, and as late as the fifteenth century many timariots were known to be Christian, although their numbers gradually decreased over time.
The Ottomans basically installed this feudal system right over the top of the existing system of peasant tenure. The peasantry remained in possession of their own land and their tenure over their plot of land remained hereditary and inalienable. Nor was any military service ever imposed on the peasant by the Ottoman government. All non-Muslims were in theory forbidden from carrying arms, but this was ignored. Indeed, in regions such as Crete, almost every man carried arms.
Greek Christian families were, however, subject to a system of child conscription known as the devshirme. The Ottomans required that selected male children from Christian peasant villages be conscripted and enrolled in the corps of Janissaries for military training in the Sultan's army. Others were trained as the intelligentsia and imperial administrators. Such recruitment was sporadic, and the proportion of children conscripted varied from region to region. The practice largely came to an end by the middle of the seventeenth century.
Under the Ottoman system of government, Greek society was at the same time fostered and restricted. With one hand the Ottoman regime gave privileges and freedom to its subject people; with the other it imposed a tyranny deriving from the malpractices of its administrative personnel over which it exercised only remote and incomplete control. In fact the "rayahs" were commoners. The term rayah came to denote an underprivileged, tax-ridden and socially inferior population.Douglas Dakin, 1973, p. 16.
Religion