Challenge: Greece gets colonies

With a PoD at around 1750, could an independent Greek state gain independence, modernize significantly, and have the demand to establish overseas colonies in an alternate New Imperialism (even if small and few), or is this completely implausible? If it can happen, then where?

Also, a bonus if you can give Greece at least one small African colony with an 1830 PoD.
 
With a PoD at around 1750, could an independent Greek state gain independence, modernize significantly, and have the demand to establish overseas colonies in an alternate New Imperialism (even if small and few), or is this completely implausible? If it can happen, then where?

Also, a bonus if you can give Greece at least one small African colony with an 1830 PoD.

Decades of Darkness features a Greek Somaliland, though it is a very minor part of the timeline.
 
Basically implausible, not while the Megali Idea has any traction. Not only that, but in OTL it did try to modernize but this was pushed aside as you had multitudes of people - often either exiles returning home or non-Greek European powers - trying to recreate (an idealized 19th century version of) Ancient Greece, albeit within a suitable Orthodox Christian framework. The only way Greece could realistically fulfill the OP would be to ignore granting Greece independence and have it remain part of the Ottoman Empire. Barring that, mid-to-late 18th century Greece was not in the best of shape to do anything. It could gain independence, it could modernize significantly, but it would be too poor to do anything else except when dictated by the Megali Idea. So no Modern Greek colonies for you.
 
Basically implausible, not while the Megali Idea has any traction. Not only that, but in OTL it did try to modernize but this was pushed aside as you had multitudes of people - often either exiles returning home or non-Greek European powers - trying to recreate (an idealized 19th century version of) Ancient Greece, albeit within a suitable Orthodox Christian framework. The only way Greece could realistically fulfill the OP would be to ignore granting Greece independence and have it remain part of the Ottoman Empire. Barring that, mid-to-late 18th century Greece was not in the best of shape to do anything. It could gain independence, it could modernize significantly, but it would be too poor to do anything else except when dictated by the Megali Idea. So no Modern Greek colonies for you.

Based on this, the most "realistic" scenario would be Greek Cyrenaica, since it would fit with the whole "restore Ancient Greece" ideal plus it would be a nice little stab of Athens to the Ottomans. Getting Greece to pull that off is of course going to be difficult but if they were to try and get colonies, Cyrenaica is definitely the first place they'd look.
 
Based on this, the most "realistic" scenario would be Greek Cyrenaica, since it would fit with the whole "restore Ancient Greece" ideal plus it would be a nice little stab of Athens to the Ottomans. Getting Greece to pull that off is of course going to be difficult but if they were to try and get colonies, Cyrenaica is definitely the first place they'd look.

Even then, however, much Greek energies in OTL were focused on what we now call Central and Northern Greece, western Turkey (including Istanbul), the Pontus area, some of the Aegean islands, and Cyprus. That was where Greek people that needed to be freed from the Turks, and the focus would be on that.

For reference, here's a GIF file with the OTL territorial evolution of Greece:
520px-Greekhistory.GIF


Not saying that a Greek Cyrenaica would be impossible - indeed, it would be interesting to see how they would go about it. The problem is that Cyrenaica would play second fiddle to other priorities towards liberating the rest of the Greek people from the Turks - and Cyrenaica would be suspect in that respect due to its largely Muslim population, as Muslim as the Turks who occupied Greece. So it really doesn't fit the whole Orthodox Christian framework, not unless one finds a way of making it work (after all, in OTL, until the Treaty of Lausanne, the precedent Greece had every time it conquered new territory was largely to convert or expel the Muslim population - some of whom were former Orthodox Christians or descendants thereof who converted much like how there were Irish Catholics who converted to Protestantism under British rule). So even then I see a few problems already, if I wanted to take a Greek POV; otherwise, like I said, it would be interesting to see how Athens would pull that one off.
 
How about a better shaped and more westernized Greece, makes contact with Abyssinia in the late 19th c. and gets a pieceof Eritrea insted of the Italians?
 
Yeah, I think Cyrenaica (that is, the Cyrenaican coast) is perhaps possible, but first of all, why would the Greeks want it, or any other colony? Greek foreign policy between 1844-1923 was a battle between the Megali Idea (the idea of liberating lands with substantial Greek populations, focusing on the then-Ottoman Empire-held areas) and some kind of 'Opportunistic isolationism' or outright non-intervention advocated by the so-called Eastern Party (Ion Dragoumis). Not only that, being a colonial power would go directly against the ideas that guided the Greek Revolution, its Declaration of Independence, and Constitutional principles. Mind you, even in arguable the best of times Greece had until the contemporary era (mid-70s until mid-2000s), that is 1910-1914, nationalism anti-colonialism was in the rise across the world. It would be a nightmare trying to even get small bits of land far from the mainland, let alone keeping them. Most importantly, zero people would be interested in such a project when you had rich and/or Greek-majority areas under foreign control.

Essentially, you need to go before the French Revolution, or even the Enlightenment, create something equivalent to a Greek-speaking state, probably with a different sense of idendity and founding principles, perhaps resembling more 12th/13th century Byzantium in terms of occupied land and encompassing populations. Then have it obtain some small outposts, presumably with view to facilitating trade with Egypt and/or India.
 
Yeah, I think Cyrenaica (that is, the Cyrenaican coast) is perhaps possible, but first of all, why would the Greeks want it, or any other colony? Greek foreign policy between 1844-1923 was a battle between the Megali Idea (the idea of liberating lands with substantial Greek populations, focusing on the then-Ottoman Empire-held areas) and some kind of 'Opportunistic isolationism' or outright non-intervention advocated by the so-called Eastern Party (Ion Dragoumis). Not only that, being a colonial power would go directly against the ideas that guided the Greek Revolution, its Declaration of Independence, and Constitutional principles. Mind you, even in arguable the best of times Greece had until the contemporary era (mid-70s until mid-2000s), that is 1910-1914, nationalism anti-colonialism was in the rise across the world. It would be a nightmare trying to even get small bits of land far from the mainland, let alone keeping them. Most importantly, zero people would be interested in such a project when you had rich and/or Greek-majority areas under foreign control.

Essentially, you need to go before the French Revolution, or even the Enlightenment, create something equivalent to a Greek-speaking state, probably with a different sense of idendity and founding principles, perhaps resembling more 12th/13th century Byzantium in terms of occupied land and encompassing populations. Then have it obtain some small outposts, presumably with view to facilitating trade with Egypt and/or India.

You don't think if Greece manages to get their 1919 borders from an independence war against the Turks in the historic era or maybe sometime in the 18th century, that Greece might try to go for a piece of Africa? I don't think a Greek War of Independence (be it the OTL war or otherwise) going that well for Greece is totally ASB. Even though Greece will still be wanting the Megali Idea to be complete (Constantinople, Thrace, etc.), with the territory they already have they'll be in a far better place to push for it, more akin to Italy's perhaps in regards to irredentism although from a much weaker position than Italy.
 
You don't think if Greece manages to get their 1919 borders from an independence war against the Turks in the historic era or maybe sometime in the 18th century, that Greece might try to go for a piece of Africa? I don't think a Greek War of Independence (be it the OTL war or otherwise) going that well for Greece is totally ASB. Even though Greece will still be wanting the Megali Idea to be complete (Constantinople, Thrace, etc.), with the territory they already have they'll be in a far better place to push for it, more akin to Italy's perhaps in regards to irredentism although from a much weaker position than Italy.

Actually I'm preparing a TL ( based on an older one) in which Greece gets more or less the modern borders by the 1880s. At the same time is more liberal and hence capitalist, so a small colonial enterprise is not out of reach, especially as Greece is a close partner on GB. That's why I proposed Eritrea.
 
Actually I'm preparing a TL ( based on an older one) in which Greece gets more or less the modern borders by the 1880s. At the same time is more liberal and hence capitalist, so a small colonial enterprise is not out of reach, especially as Greece is a close partner on GB. That's why I proposed Eritrea.

Eritrea strikes me as being somewhat problematic, and not just for the same reasons why even Italian Somaliland and Italian Eritrea seemed impossible to pull off at first. Even if Greece tried to pull off Eritrea, there's still a problem where Greece is still a very poor country. The poverty of the country would remain even if the country became more liberal and more capitalist. Much energies would be focused on something else. (Look, for example, at how long the dispute took over which form of the Greek language should be the standard written form.) There's another problem here, and it's based on religion - though here not really based on an Islam vs. Christianity divide. Instead, it's Orthodox Christianity vs. Orthodox Christianity. At that point in time Eritrea was part of the jurisdiction of the Ethopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, which at that time was part of the Coptic Church based in Alexandria, Egypt. How would the Greek Orthodox Church react to Greece colonizing a land containing people it would see as heretics, despite being otherwise Christian?

Having said that, it would be interesting to see how you pull that one off.
 
Eritrea strikes me as being somewhat problematic, and not just for the same reasons why even Italian Somaliland and Italian Eritrea seemed impossible to pull off at first. Even if Greece tried to pull off Eritrea, there's still a problem where Greece is still a very poor country. The poverty of the country would remain even if the country became more liberal and more capitalist. Much energies would be focused on something else. (Look, for example, at how long the dispute took over which form of the Greek language should be the standard written form.) There's another problem here, and it's based on religion - though here not really based on an Islam vs. Christianity divide. Instead, it's Orthodox Christianity vs. Orthodox Christianity. At that point in time Eritrea was part of the jurisdiction of the Ethopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, which at that time was part of the Coptic Church based in Alexandria, Egypt. How would the Greek Orthodox Church react to Greece colonizing a land containing people it would see as heretics, despite being otherwise Christian?

Having said that, it would be interesting to see how you pull that one off.

Actually, AFAIK, northern Eritrea was under Egyptian control until 1880, so I think there would be no conflict between Greece and Ethiopia. On the contrary, I see them cooperate closely.

About the the development of ATL Greece, we 'll try it in a few weeks!
 
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