Cretan State

Overview

The Cretan State (Greek: Κρητική Πολιτεία; Ottoman Turkish: Girid Devleti) was an autonomous state governing the island of Crete (8,336 km²) from 1898 to 1913, under de jure Ottoman suzerainty but de facto independence guaranteed by the European Great Powers. Though geographically European, it belongs to this survey as an Ottoman African-adjacent dependency—the empire's remaining Mediterranean provinces included Egypt and the North African regencies—and its fate was part of the same Eastern Question that shaped Ottoman Africa. Its capital was Chania; its largest city Heraklion.

History

Crete, Ottoman since 1669, had a mostly Greek-speaking Christian majority whose repeated revolts for union (enosis) with Greece defined the "Cretan Question." The 1878 Pact of Halepa granted autonomy, but the Porte reneged in 1889. A great revolt in 1896–97 prompted six Great Powers to form an International Squadron; Greek intervention triggered the disastrous Greco-Turkish War of 1897, which the Ottomans won on land but lost diplomatically. After a Muslim mob massacred Christians and the British vice-consul at Candia (September 1898), the Powers expelled all Ottoman forces from the island. On 9 December 1898, Prince George of Greece and Denmark arrived as the first High Commissioner, and the Cretan State was born, garrisoned by international troops.

The new state minted Cretan drachmae (issued by the National Bank of Greece's Bank of Crete), fielded an Italian-modelled Cretan Gendarmerie, and convened an Assembly. But deadlock between Prince George and the young justice minister Eleftherios Venizelos over the pace of enosis erupted in the Theriso Revolt of March 1905, in which Venizelos's "Revolutionary Assembly" declared political union with Greece. The Powers brokered Prince George's resignation; Alexandros Zaimis took over as High Commissioner (1906–1911) and foreign troops began withdrawing. Exploiting the Young Turk Revolution, Cretan deputies proclaimed unilateral union with Greece in October 1908—unrecognized internationally until the First Balkan War: the Great Powers lowered their flags at Souda fortress in February 1913, the Treaty of London (30 May 1913) saw Sultan Mehmed V relinquish his rights, and on 1 December 1913 the Greek flag was formally raised at Chania's Firka fortress, with King Constantine I and Venizelos attending.

Decline and legacy

The state's 1911 population was 336,151 (307,812 Christians, 27,852 Muslims, 487 Jews); the Muslim minority left in the 1923 Greco-Turkish population exchange. The Cretan State's enduring legacy is Venizelos himself, who went on to become Greece's greatest modern statesman, and the island's integration into Greece, where Crete remains the largest and most populous Greek island.