Greece

Birthplace of democracy and philosophy, reborn as a modern nation through the War of Independence.

Greece's history stretches from the Bronze Age palaces of Minoan Crete and Mycenaean kings, through the Archaic and Classical city-states that gave the world democracy, drama and philosophy, to the world-spanning Hellenistic empire of Alexander the Great. Absorbed by Rome and reborn as the Greek-speaking heart of the Byzantine Empire, the Greek lands then passed under nearly four centuries of Ottoman rule. The modern Greek state was forged in the War of Independence that began in 1821; the Great Powers recognized an independent Greece by the London Protocol of February 1830, and the Ottoman sultan confirmed it by the Treaty of Constantinople in 1832.