Venizelos

This book is about the life and times of Eleftherios Venizelos, one of the greatest political leaders of Greece in the twentieth century. It covers first his upbringing, education, and political apprenticeship in Ottoman Crete. Venizelos played a major part in the Cretan struggle for Union with Greece. He worked under Prince George of Greece, High Commissioner of the Powers, when Crete became an autonomous regime, and broke with him in the uprising at Therisso which moved Crete a step nearer to Union. Venizelos moved to Greece in 1910, resolved a political crisis provoked by a military uprising, and became prime minister. He founded his own liberal party, and introduced a new constitution and major reforms of Greece's political, economic, and social affairs. He negotiated an alliance with Bulgaria and Serbia and in 1912-13 these Balkan allies attacked the Turks in Macedonia, Thrace and Epirus and were victorious. The territory and population of Greece was almost doubled as a result. These wars, in the second of which Greece and Serbia defeated former ally Bulgaria, won great gains for Greece including Salonika, but left multiple issues unresolved including the fate of the Aegean islands and a naval arms race with Turkey. But these problems were sidelined on the outbreak of the Great War in 1914. Venizelos's career will be explored further in a second volume taking the story on from 1914 to his death in 1936.