The London Protocol of 22 March 1829 was an agreement between the three Great Powers ( Britain,

France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...

and

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

), which amended the first London Protocol on the creation of an internally autonomous, but

tributary A tributary, or an ''affluent'', is a stream or river that flows into a larger stream (''main stem'' or ''"parent"''), river, or a lake. A tributary does not flow directly into a sea or ocean. Tributaries, and the main stem river into which they ...

Greek state under Ottoman

suzerainty A suzerain (, from Old French "above" + "supreme, chief") is a person, state (polity)">state or polity who has supremacy and dominant influence over the foreign policy">polity.html" ;"title="state (polity)">state or polity">state (polity)">st ...

.William Wrigley, "The Ionian Islands & the Restoration of Anglo-Ottoman Diplomacy, 1827–29" Südost-Forschunge (2010/2011), Vol. 69/70, pp. 51–89. As a result of the

Greek War of Independence The Greek War of Independence, also known as the Greek Revolution or the Greek Revolution of 1821, was a successful war of independence by Greek revolutionaries against the Ottoman Empire between 1821 and 1829. In 1826, the Greeks were assisted ...

, which had begun in 1821, and the Great Powers' intervention in the conflict in the Battle of Navarino (1827), the creation of some form of Greek state in southern Greece had become certain. In 1827, the Greek Third National Assembly entrusted the governance of the fledgling nation to

Ioannis Kapodistrias Count Ioannis Antonios Kapodistrias (; February 1776 –27 September 1831), sometimes anglicized as John Capodistrias, was a Greek statesman who was one of the most distinguished politicians and diplomats of 19th-century Europe. Kapodistrias's ...

, who arrived in Greece in January 1828. Alongside his efforts to lay the foundations for a modern state, Kapodistrias undertook negotiations with the Great Powers as to the extent and constitutional status of the new Greek state, especially during the Poros Conference of the Great Powers' ambassadors in September 1828. In November 1828, disregarding the ambassadors' recommendations, the Great Powers agreed on the first London Protocol, which created an autonomous Greek state encompassing the

Peloponnese The Peloponnese ( ), Peloponnesus ( ; , ) or Morea (; ) is a peninsula and geographic region in Southern Greece, and the southernmost region of the Balkans. It is connected to the central part of the country by the Isthmus of Corinth land bridg ...

( Morea) and the

Cyclades The CYCLADES computer network () was a French research network created in the early 1970s. It was one of the pioneering networks experimenting with the concept of packet switching and, unlike the ARPANET, was explicitly designed to facilitate i ...

islands only. On 22 March 1829, the British Foreign Minister, George Hamilton-Gordon, 4th Earl of Aberdeen, and the envoys of France and Russia, Jules de Polignac and Christoph von Lieven, signed the second London Protocol, which largely accepted the recommendations of the Poros Conference. According to the protocol, Greece would become a separate state enjoying complete autonomy under the rule of a hereditary Christian prince to be selected by the Powers, but recognize the suzerainty of the Ottoman Sultan and pay an annual tribute of 1.5 million Turkish piastres. The borders of the new state would run along the line of the Gulf of Arta in the west to the Pagasetic Gulf in the east, thereby including the Peloponnese and Continental Greece, as well as the Cyclades, but neither

Crete Crete ( ; , Modern Greek, Modern: , Ancient Greek, Ancient: ) is the largest and most populous of the Greek islands, the List of islands by area, 88th largest island in the world and the List of islands in the Mediterranean#By area, fifth la ...

nor other Aegean islands like Samos which had played a major part in the War of Independence and were still under Greek control. The Ottoman Empire was forced to acknowledge the protocol in the Treaty of Adrianople, which concluded the Russo-Turkish War of 1828–29, but soon after this, the Powers began to turn towards complete independence for Greece, which was recognized in the London Protocol of 3 February 1830.

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Further reading