History of Greece
The shores of the Aegean Sea saw the emergence of the first civilizations in Europe, namely the Minoan and Mycenaean civilisations. After these subsided a Dark Age followed until around 800 BC a new era of Greek civilization emerged.
It was this Greece of city-states that established colonies along the Mediterranean, resisted Persian invasions and whose culture would be the basis of Hellenistic civilisation that followed the empire of Alexander the Great (king of Macedonia).
Militarily Greece itself declined until it was conquered by the Romans from 168 BC onwards, though Greek culture would in turn conquer Roman life.
A province of the Roman Empire, Greek culture would continue to dominate the eastern Mediterranean and when the Empire finally split in two the Eastern or Byzantine Empire, centred on Constantinople, would be Greek in nature, as well as encompassing Greece itself. From the 4th century to the 15th century the Eastern Roman Empire survived eleven centuries of attacks from the west and east until Constantinople fell on May 29, 1453 to the Ottoman Empire. Greece had gradually been conquered by the Ottomans during the 15th century.
The Ottomans ruled Greece until the early 19th century. In 1821 the Greeks rebelled and declared their independence, but did not succeed in winning it until 1829. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, in a series of war with the Ottomans, Greece sought to enlarge Greece to include the Greek-speaking population of the Ottoman Empire, slowly growing in territory and population until it reached its present boundaries in 1947.
After World War II, Greece experienced a civil war that lasted until 1949. In 1967 the military with the aid of the US government, seized power in a coup d'état, establishing what became known as the Regime of the Colonels. In 1973 the regime abolished the Greek monarchy. In 1974, The military junta's sponsorship of a failed coup in Cyprus led to its collapse. In 1975, following a plebiscite to abolish the monarchy, a democratic republic was established. Greece joined the European Union in 1981 and adopted the Euro as its currency in 2001. The 2004 Summer Olympics were held in the place of their foundation.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License
|
|
