Initial Conquest

Ancient Greece consisted of a collection of independent city states until the Macedonians conquered the peninsula in 300 BC and established a homogenized Hellenic civilization. Greece would be under Macedonian rule until 146 BC when the Roman Empire gained control over the territory and annexed it into its expanding empire. When the Roman State split under the rule of Emperor Constantine, Greece became part of the Byzantine Roman Empire. Under the rule of the Byzantines, the peninsula projected itself to the cultural and political forefronts of the Empire and the Byzantine State gradually shifted its identity from a Roman successor state to an independent Greek Empire with Greek as the de facto language and Greek Orthodox Christianity as the official religion (C).

The Ottoman Empire colonized the Greek peninsula after the fall of Constantinople in 1453 and the subsequent collapse of the Byzantine Empire. The Ottomans advanced into Greece Proper in 1454 and captured Athens in 1458. The Greeks held on to the Peloponnese until 1460 with the support of Venetian and Genoese merchants, but by 1500, the Ottomans established their rule over almost the entire Greek mainland (D). Interesting to note, the Ottoman campaign to subdue the Greeks consisted of only military campaigns and the Ottomans rarely used methods such as purposely creating local instability to aid their expansion.