Eleftherios Venizelos (1864-1936) was the outstanding Greek statesman of the first half of the twentieth century. Michael Llewellyn-Smith traces his early years, political apprenticeship in Crete, and energetic role in that island's emancipation from both Ottoman rule and the arbitrary rule of Prince George of Greece. Summoned to Athens in 1910 by a cabal of officers, Venizelos mastered the Greek political scene, sent the military back to barracks, and led the country through a glorious period of constitutional and political reform, ending in a Balkan alliance waging successful war against Ottoman rule in Europe. By 1914, Greece had doubled in territory and population, and was about to face the challenges of European war. Tensions were rising between the king and the prime minister, foreshadowing political schism. This book illuminates Venizelos' political mastery, liberalism and nationalism, and traces his fateful friendship with David Lloyd George. A second volume will complete his story, with the Great War, the post-war peace settlement, Greece's Asia Minor disaster, and Venizelos' late years of renewed prime ministerial office, political polarization and exile in Paris.

Venizelos: The Making of a Greek Statesman 1864-1914

Biographies & Memoirs

Llewellyn-Smith, Michael

Historical

Oxford University Press

Review\n"Ionian Vision has a theme worthy of Thucydides. [...] Mr Llewellyn Smith has produced a fine, temperate and engrossing study." -- International Affairs\n"The expedition to Asia Minor in 1919-22 was a Greek tragedy in every sense. [...] Among the merits of Mr Llewellyn Smith's scholarly version of the tragedy is the sense of anxious urgency and hope against hope which it sustains throughout . . an all but definitive account."-- Times Literary Supplement\n"I have been reading Ionian Vision with immense enjoyment. It is a wonderful book - scholarly, readable, and, when it deals with the final terrible dénouement, truly tragic. How did I ever manage without it?" 
-- Michael Howard, OM, CH, CBE, MC, formerly Chichele Professor of the History of War and Regius Professor of Modern History at the University of Oxford\n"An outstanding addition to the growing body of serious academic studies on the modern history of Greece ... Llewellyn Smith's book is indispensable reading for anyone who would seek to understand the convoluted politics of Greece in the twentieth century." -- New Society\n"[...] consistently readable, industriously researched and documented in detail. [...] In this absorbing, dramatic and melancholy saga of war and diplomacy, Mr Smith gives us a historical work of great fascination and substance."-- Books and Bookmen\nMichael Llewellyn Smith sets the Greek occupation of Smyrna and the war in Anatolia against the background of Greece's 'Great Idea' and of great power rivalries in the Near East. He traces the origins of the Greek statesman Eleftherios Venizelos's 'Ionian Vision' to his joint conception with David Lloyd George of an Anglo-Greek entente in the Eastern Mediterranean. This narrative text presents a comprehensive account of the disaster which has shaped the politics and society of modern Greece.

Ionian Vision: Greece in Asia Minor, 1919 - 1922

History

Europe

Hurst

Shipped from UK, please allow 10 to 21 business days for arrival. A fine soft-cover copy. Michael Llewellyn Smith; with a new introduction. xxi, 401 p., 8 p. of plates, ill., maps, por

Ionian Vision: Greece in Asia Minor, 1919-1922

C. Hurst & Co. Publishers Ltd.

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