Goudi coup

The Congress of Berlin in 1878 and the 1881 Convention of Constantinople had been successes for Greek diplomacy. There, the country had won Thessaly and a part of Epirus. In order to continue achieving the Megali Idea, Greece then turned to Macedonia and Crete, but met with severe setbacks. Military defeats In 1895, following the Hamidian massacres of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, Cretan Christians—who were still under Ottoman rule—demanded self-government on their island, seeking the protection of the great powers. As massacres of Christians by Muslims escalated, Greece intervened, first by allowing volunteers to depart from its shores and later by increasingly deploying part of its fleet. By early 1897, Greece sent troops to Crete, coinciding with the Cretan declaration of a union with Greece, "Εnosis" (). The European powers (France, Great Britain, Italy, Russia, Austria-Hungary, and Germany) forced Greece to retreat. The opposition criticized the government's weakness and indecision, especially when Greece declared war on the Ottomans in April. The resulting conflict, known as (the Thirty Days' War), lasted a month and ended in a Greek defeat. Though Greece lost only a small amount of territory along its northern border, it was compelled to pay significant war reparations—4 million Ottoman pounds—to the victorious Ottomans. Coming shortly after Greece's declaration of public insolvency in 1893, this defeat led to the establishment of an International Financial Commission which had access to Greece's key revenue sources, such as state monopolies and port customs tariffs, to repay its public debt. Meanwhile, Crete became an autonomous state under international supervision, though it remained under the suzerainty of the Ottoman sultan. Macedonia Macedonia was a region disputed between Greece, the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria (created at the Congress of Berlin). On , the feast day of the prophet Elijah (Bulg. Ilinden), the Ilinden–Preobrazhenie Uprising, sponsored by the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization, began. The uprising failed, and Turkish reprisals were severe, with 2,000 killed and villages and homes razed. Following these events, many Greeks became concerned with the level of Bulgarian activity in Macedonia. The Ethniki Etairia (National Society) was set up, which sent armed bands of Greeks (makedonomakhoi), tacitly aided by the government in Athens, which provided financial support through its consular agents such as Ion Dragoumis and training from military advisers such as Pavlos Melas. This began what is known in Greece as the "Macedonian Struggle", where Greeks clashed with Bulgarian komitadjis, while both sides clashed with the Ottoman army and gendarmerie. Reprisals took many forms, including pillage, arson and assassination. Deeply concerned, the Western powers decided to intervene. The eventual plan was for an administrative reorganisation of the region that would allow for an ethnic-based partition. Thus, each of the ethnic groups concerned sought to strengthen its position so as to gain a maximum of territory when the potential partition came. The successes and sacrifices of young officers such as Melas restored the image of part of the army. In turn, the meddling of the European powers in internal Ottoman affairs contributed to the outbreak of the Young Turk Revolution of July 1908, which put an end to the Greek-Bulgarian clashes in Macedonia. Consequences of the Young Turk Revolution Greece, at the time, was still embroiled in the Cretan question. In 1905, Eleftherios Venizelos had led the Theriso revolt against High Commissioner George of Greece, who had been appointed by the European powers, and demanded enosis. In 1906, the Prince resigned, and a new commissioner, the former Greek prime minister Alexandros Zaimis, was installed. The Young Turk Revolution pushed the Cretans to unilaterally proclaim definitive enosis, taking advantage of the absence of the new high commissioner. Anti-Greek demonstrations took place in Turkey, where the press launched a similar campaign. The European powers displayed hostility toward Greece, while Georgios Theotokis' government was subjected to increasing criticism. His replacement with Rallis had little effect. The new prime minister hastened to show signs of goodwill toward the Turkish ambassador and the Western powers. Wishing to avoid a new Greco-Turkish war, he criticised the "Cretan revolutionaries" and declared his willingness to abide by the Great Powers' decisions. Indignation toward the government's weaknesses and timorous attitude mounted, among the populace as well as in the army, above all among the young officers who had fought in Macedonia. The idea of imitating the Young Turk officers began to spread. Economic and social situation Greece had been in an economic crisis for decades. Public debt (owed above all to the Great Powers) dating back to the war of independence reached new heights in the 1890s. At that point, the government of Charilaos Trikoupis recognised that the country was bankrupt by deciding to lower the public debt to 30% of its value, which angered the creditors, particularly the European powers. At the same time, export of the Zante currant entered a crisis. A new phenomenon then began: emigration of the working population. The number of emigrants (especially to the United States) went from 1,108 in 1890 to 39,135 in 1910 (of 2.8 million inhabitants); significantly, remittances from America and Egypt fell amid the economic slowdown in 1908. Economic growth was too slow for the workers and farmers who left to seek work elsewhere. Until that time, only highlanders and landless island dwellers had left. However, this economic growth did lead to the creation, as elsewhere in Europe in the same period, of a middle class born out of industrial development, of growth in the number of bureaucrats (linked to political clientelism), and to an urban explosion. In the mid-1900s, this middle class could not understand why the country was prosperous while the state's finances were in such poor shape. Politicians, also dissatisfied with government policy, reacted as well. In 1906, a group of young radicals nicknamed the "Japanese Group" (Ομάς Ιαπώνων), in reference to the dynamism of the Meiji period or their aggressive tactics in parliament (calling to mind the Japanese army’s performance in the recent Russo-Japanese War), formed around the titular leadership of Stephanos Dragoumis, with Dimitrios Gounaris its moving spirit. It criticised the old oligarchy that was ruining the country and demanded radical reforms. The group of "Sociologists" (Κοινωνιολόγοι), especially influenced by Marxism, also called for modernisation of the state apparatus and the economy. ==Coup==