page_title: History of the Cyclades
section_title: The Cyclades during the war of independence
hierarchical_section_title: History of the Cyclades / The Cyclades in 19th- and 20th-century Greece / The Cyclades during the war of independence
context_page_description: The Cyclades are Greek islands located in the southern part of the Aegean Sea. The archipelago contains some 2,200 islands, islets and rocks; just 33 islands are inhabited. For the ancients, they formed a circle around the sacred island of Delos, hence the name of the archipelago. The best-known are, from north to south and from east to west: Andros, Tinos, Mykonos, Naxos, Amorgos, Syros, Paros and Antiparos, Ios, Santorini, Anafi, Kea, Kythnos, Serifos, Sifnos, Folegandros and Sikinos, Milos and Kimolos; to these can be added the little Cyclades: Irakleia, Schoinoussa, Koufonisi, Keros and Donoussa, as well as Makronisos between Kea and Attica, Gyaros, which lies before Andros, and Polyaigos to the east of Kimolos and Thirassia, before Santorini. At times they were also called by the generic name of Archipelago.
  The islands are located at the crossroads between Europe and Asia Minor and the Near East as well as between Europe and Africa. In antiquity, when navigation consisted only of cabotage and sailors sought never to lose sight of land, they played an essential role as a stopover. Into the 20th century, this situation made their fortune and their misfortune.
context_section_description: The Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca of 1774 ensured the general prosperity of the Greek islands, well beyond those like Hydra or Spetses associated with famous shipowners. Andros took advantage of this situation by putting in place its own merchant fleet. This prosperity had two contradictory consequences also linked to the administrative absenteeism of the Ottomans in the Cyclades. On the one hand, the Turkish “government” no longer seemed so unbearable. On the other hand, to share the fruits of this prosperity with the Turk, rather than keep everything for oneself in an independent state, was becoming less and less acceptable.
  For the archipelago's Catholics, the situation was fairly similar. At the beginning of the War of Independence, the Cyclades had around 16,000 Catholics (especially on Naxos, Syros, Tinos and Santorini). The distant Ottoman domination was not unbearable, but the Ottomans were considered the enemies of Christianity in general. If revolution failed, the Turkish reprisals would be cruel, like after the passage of the Russians in the 1770s. However, if the revolution succeeded, the prospect of living in a fundamentally Orthodox state did not please the Catholic islanders. Moreover, on the islands “liberated” from the Ottoman Empire, the Greek commissioners put into place compelled the Catholics to pay them the imposts that until then had gone to the Turks. The Catholics did not participate in the conflict, especially after the Pope declared his neutrality; this the Austria of Metternich compelled him to maintain despite the diplomatic mission of Germanos.
  The national insurrection was launched in March 1821 with the mythical appeal of Germanos, Metropolitan of Patras. Kapetanoi (commanders, war chiefs) spread the revolt across Greece, principally in the Peloponnese and in Epirus.
  This ambivalence explains the differences in attitude in the Archipelago at the moment of the War of Independence. This situation was aggravated by the consequences of the war: a renewal piracy under a patriotic pretext, a “revolutionary tax” demanded by the war chiefs, the disappearance of local institutions, the settling of old scores by those who took advantage of the anarchy to bring about social (poor against rich) or religious (Greek against Latin) upheaval. The French flag flew above the Catholic churches of Naxos throughout the conflict; this protected them from the resentment of the Orthodox, who called the Catholics “Turk-lovers”.
  Hence, the Cyclades took part in the conflict only sporadically. Like Hydra or Spetses, Andros, Tinos and Anafi placed their fleets in the service of the national cause. Mado Mavrogenis, the daughter of a Phanariote, used her fortune to supply “admiral” Emmanuel Tombazis with 22 ships and 132 cannons from Mykonos. The Orthodox Greeks of Naxos put together a troop of eight hundred men that fought the Ottomans. Paros sent a contingent to the Peloponnese that distinguished itself during the Siege of Tripolitsa led by Theodoros Kolokotronis.
  The vicissitudes of conflict on the continent had their repercussions in the Cyclades. The massacres of Chios and Psara (committed in July 1824 by the troops of Ibrahim Pasha) led to an influx of people into the Cyclades, the survivors in effect becoming refugees there. In 1825, when Ibrahim Pasha landed in the Peloponnese with his Egyptian troops, a great number of refugees flooded onto Syros. The ethno-religious composition of the island and its urban structure were totally transformed as a result. The Catholic island became ever more Orthodox. The Greeks using the Greek rite moved onto the coast in what would later become the very busy port of Ermoupoli, while the Latin-rite Greeks remained on the heights of the medieval city.
  From the beginning of the insurrection, Milos was occupied by the Russians and the French, who wished to observe what was happening in the Peloponnese.
  At the end of the War of Independence, the Cyclades were given to the young Greek kingdom of Otto in 1832. However, their allocation to Greece was not automatic. The Ottoman Empire had n
caption: Nikolaos Gyzis, After the Capture of Psara. The painting evokes the survivors' flight, to the Cyclades for some.
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