Chapter 3 Uneasy Neutrality: Britain and the Greek War of Independence (1821–1832)
In: International Law in the Long Nineteenth Century (1776-1914)Search for other papers by Viktorija Jakjimovska in
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Abstract
The Greek War of Independence provoked a great amount of attention unlike any other revolutionary struggle within Europe in the first half of the nineteenth century. The Greek crisis eventually became a political and legal quagmire for Great Britain. For the first time in the aftermath of the Vienna Congress of 1815, Great Britain classified an internal conflict as ‘threat to European peace and tranquility’. The British attitude towards the Greek war of independence thus shifted from policy of non-interference, to neutrality and finally, collective intervention.
The contribution of this chapter relates mainly to the analysis of Britain’s changing position in the context of the Greek crisis in such a way as to outline the legal consequences of it. The practical result of Britain’s attitude was the early formation of rules for classification of wars of national liberation with legal ramifications in the debate of intervention. Overall, the chapter emphasizes the maladies of the nineteenth century often idealistically perceived as an era of peace, and in particular, the intensity of enforcement actions of the great powers in the so-called ‘semi-peripheral’ parts of the world.