Your challenge, should you accept it, is to have the United States of the Ionian Islands remain a separate country to the present day with a POD no earlier than 1817.
Your challenge, should you accept it, is to have the United States of the Ionian Islands remain a separate country to the present day with a POD no earlier than 1817.
Well, you could have the islands become a sort of Western-backed Qemoy-Matsu/Taiwan analogue if the Communists take over Greece after WWII, and they decide to revive the old name after seceding.
Have the Brits hold on to them for much longer. By the time they start pulling out of their bases, the Ionians don't feel quite as much affinity for the mainland Greeks and so go it alone as a Commonwealth Realm.
Now that makes some sense. Question: how would you get the British to retain the Ionian Islands?
Your challenge, should you accept it, is to have the United States of the Ionian Islands remain a separate country to the present day with a POD no earlier than 1817.
The Brits might have decided to hold onto them or control them since maybe Greece didn't get on a positive paying level for the debt owed to the UK....
and like some earlier comments...say by the 1860s or 1870s the islanders might not have cared all that much about joining in with the Greek Kingdom where they might find themselves a political backwater....