History History

The awakening of Crete dates back to the Neolithic period. Although it is impossible to determine precisely where on the island the first inhabitants settled, we are nevertheless certain, thanks to archaeological excavations, that Neolithic groups occupied the caves of Miamou and Skales. When they left the caves, they began to build round huts made of branches and mud, preferably on the hillside. The image of these huts is forever printed on some funeral urns: overlooking the rising sun, these huts were built on rammed earth, later paved. Throughout this period, the cult of a feminine deity is celebrated and idols, shapeless statues, of a steatopian goddess, symbol of fecundity, are worshipped.

Throughout the Neolithic period, Crete knew no other civilization. The situation changed towards the end or middle of the 4th millennium BC, when vast migrations disrupted the Aegean Sea and the whole of the East. Crete will be preserved from this and, as a result, will be independent for several centuries. Thanks to this long continuity in peace, the island founded the Minoan civilization, a brilliant and prosperous civilization whose three phases can be distinguished according to a relative chronology: Ancient Minoan (3000-2000 BC), Middle Minoan (2100-1580 BC), Recent Minoan (1580-1200 BC).

At the dawn of Ancient Minoan, stone tools gradually began to be replaced by copper weapons, gold and silver jewellery. This is the bronze period in Crete. Under a system of family collectivity, the island will experience a long period of abundance and prosperity due, in large part, to maritime trade. Around 2400 B.C., the Cretans, having understood that bronze was a precious, rare and indispensable alloy, began to manufacture it in considerable quantities in order to cover the needs of the surrounding countries. This is how Crete became the master of the Aegean Sea, proving to be an undisputed thalassocratic force. For more than a thousand years, having dominated the Aegean maritime trade routes, in connection with the eastern Mediterranean, Crete will borrow heavily from all the peoples with whom it maintains contact. Resisting however vigorously to any assimilation, it will remain original.

The growth during the Bronze Age had as its main consequence the displacement of wealth and power: the maritime cities of eastern Crete were in decline, the clan regime was decadent. Then began the era of the first palaces: Knossos and Phaistos awakened and became the opulent cities marking by their rise the history and civilization of ancient Greece. Around 2000 BC, the princes of these two great cities, as well as those of Malia, Zacros or Agia Triada, having accumulated enough wealth, built palaces, these grandiose systems of apartments, sanctuaries, festival halls, workshops, warehouses and shops. All the palaces, designed to be adapted to the Mediterranean climate, had a concern for comfort, a sense of beauty and, finally, all those elements which, according to the French historian Gustave Glotz (1862-1935), constituted the "sure taste of the theatrical and the picturesque".

The period of the first palaces came to an abrupt end following the "catastrophe of 1750". Could it have been an earthquake that brought the palaces down? A fire or an invasion? Or an internal revolution? In any case, after this catastrophe, a page of the Cretan history is definitively turned: those which follow no longer use the old hieroglyphics but linear writing.

After the disaster of 1750, Crete was in a transitional phase. However, at the dawn of 1700 B.C., more sumptuous and imposing palaces rose on the site of the destroyed palaces. This is the period of the second palaces: Knossos, under the solid government of the Minos, gradually acquired a hegemonic position and thus, around 1450 BC, the whole of Crete succumbed to what could be called "the Minoan monarchy".

Knossos maintains its strength for almost fifty years. Throughout this golden age, the Minos, at the head of their invincible fleet, ensured the safety of the seas by repressing piracy and enforced their power from afar. From Crete and, more particularly, from Knossos, came merchants who spread to mainland Greece, Egypt, Syria, Cyprus and the vast regions of the west coast. It is during this period that the Cretans will found trading posts on all the Mediterranean coasts, centres of life and art.

The tribute paid by the people to the Thalassocratic force that was Crete was heavy and had already lasted for a long time. Tradition records the signs of decline in its own way: one Minos fails to seize Megara, another, the last, dies during a retaliatory expedition to Sicily, Athens takes its share of glory when Theseus inflicts defeat on the Minotaur. In reality, the Achaeans were just waiting to get rid of their Cretan tutors. A boost was given in 1400BC, when fire devoured Knossos. Thus, the island that controlled the Mediterranean became a distant dependency of the Greek mainland. Two centuries later, the Dorians seized the island and the city of the Minos was buried for more than 3,000 years under its own ruins.

After having influenced with its civilization the other islands, Crete is confused in a vast Mycenaean, Dorian, then Greek complex. The island benefits from its exceptional situation at the centre of all exchanges between Europe and the coasts of Africa: its development is therefore continuing. The occupation of the island by the Ptolemies (Egypt) will mark a slowdown in this growth.

The Romans seized Crete in 67 B.C. and established the administrative capital at Gortyne. In the 1st century AD, St. Paul, landing in the south of the island, was the first to evangelize part of the Cretans. In 395, at the time of the partition of the Roman world, Crete passed under Byzantine control until 1204. The only shadow to a long period of calm was the Arab domination between 824 and 961, which was stopped by Nikiphoros Phokas, Byzantine emperor from 963. All in all, for about 1,200 years, Crete experienced the quietest phase in its history.

In 1204, the Fourth Crusade deviated from its course, attacked and left Constantinople in ruins. Venice then took over Crete, which was a strategic relay on the trade route to the East. From 1453, with the capture of Constantinople by the Ottomans, Crete became a land of asylum for the Byzantines. Thus the arts flourished again on the island, in the form of church building and icon production. This artistic flowering stopped in 1645 when the Ottomans, hitherto indifferent to Crete, took Chania before subjecting Candia (Heraklion) to a 21-year siege (1648-1669) after which they took control of the whole island.

The Ottoman occupation of Crete lasted 230 years, during which the empire violently exercised an authoritarian regime. Refusing to live under the yoke of a foreign power, the Cretans fiercely resisted but repeatedly failed to come close. The opportunity arose when the Western powers, hostile to the Ottoman Empire, decided to establish their influence in the eastern Mediterranean. Towards the end of the 19th century, therefore, several powers tried to rally the Cretans through a general uprising which led to the departure of the Turks and the declaration of independence in 1898. Thus, freedom finally triumphed over death, and the Cretans, for the first time in centuries, enjoyed the much-desired autonomy.

Born in Crete, he is one of the most prominent Prime Ministers of modern Greece. On the eve of the Balkan Wars, Venizelos, advocates for the Great Idea, a strengthened and enlarged Greece. A fervent ally of the Entente, he saw new territories attached to Greece with the signing of the Treaties of Sèvres and Lausanne. Exiled in France and sentenced to death in absentia by his political, monarchist and extreme right-wing enemies, he died in Paris in 1936.

The fifteen years of independence were a period of economic and cultural growth for Crete. Believing that this growth could be even greater, the Cretans began to fight for their island's return to Greece. Eleftherios Venizelos (1864-1936), a Cretan by birth and founder of the liberal party, was the instigator ofEnosis (Union), which could only be resolved by war. Thus, during the first Balkan war in 1913, Crete fought alongside Greece and, after the defeat of the Ottomans, the Treaty of London signed in May 1913 officially attached Crete to Greece. The island was then reorganized into four departments: Heraklion, Chania, Lassithi and Rethymnon.

Greece's entry into the First World War was not smooth. Indeed, the Greek king of Germanic origin, Constantine I, was rather sensitive to an alliance with the Triplice but advocated Greek neutrality. The Prime Minister, E. Venizelos, opposed the designs of the Greek philogermanic king. Dismissed by the king, Venizelos forms a provisional government in Thessaloniki. The Allies force the king to abdicate and so Greece returns to the winning side and gains access to new territories, including Smyrna.

In 1922, the Greek forces were defeated by the Turkish army in Asia Minor. The Turks violently repulsed waves of Greek refugees on the continent, after committing massacres of several thousand Anatolian Christians and setting fire to the Greek quarters of Izmir (Smyrna) and the port. This is the Great Catastrophe. A large number of these refugees arrived in Crete, where Greek-speaking Muslim citizens, the Cretan Turks, were still living. Following the treaty signed between Greece and Turkey in Lausanne in 1923, an exchange of populations between the two countries was decided, an exchange based solely on religious identity. It was on this occasion that the last Cretan Turks left Crete and went mainly to Turkey where they formed small communities in which they preserved their own culture, Cretan traditions and the Greek-Cretan dialect.

The inter-war period in Greece was a period of political instability. In 1936, General Ioannis Metaxas abolished the Constitution and took full power, establishing a dictatorship inspired by Fascist Italy. However, in 1940, he refused to let Italian troops into Greece, perhaps fearing that the country would find itself in the same territorial situation as before the First World War. Thus Greece entered the war, joining the Allied camp. The British troops withdraw and settle in Crete. The strategic position of the island attracts the covetousness of the Reich which will win the terrible battle of Crete in May 1941. The German occupation is fierce in Crete and the reprisals are violent: devastated villages, mass executions. The resistance which is organized harasses the Nazis until 1945, date of the final withdrawal of German forces from the island.

Like Greece, Crete, from the 1950s onwards, has been striving to undertake agricultural and industrial modernisation, while in the early 1960s it turned increasingly to tourism. Despite these efforts, the country is still lagging behind economically, mainly because of corruption and infighting that undermine the state.

It was in a climate of political instability that the coup d'état of Papadopoulos, Pattakos and Makarézos took place on 21 April 1967. Using the army as a support, the three soldiers established a police state for seven years. The opposition was neutralised, party leaders arrested or forced into exile, while torture became the means of oppressing all resistance. The deportations, especially of intellectuals, to the islands of Yaros and Leros are along the same lines. The slogan of the military junta meant everything: "The Greece of the Christian Greeks".

In November 1973, students, high school students, workers and citizens barricaded themselves in the grounds of the Athens Polytechnic School for several days to demonstrate against the dictatorship. The dictators intervened, leaving behind them, officially, 34 dead. This organized revolt, whose struggle quickly spread throughout the country, contributed to the awakening of consciences and marked the beginning of the end of the dictatorship.

The fall of the dictatorship in 1974 followed the Turkish invasion of Cyprus. The referendum that was immediately organized settled the country's political system once and for all: it would be a Republic! Constantin Caramanlis was Prime Minister: respected by all and fiercely pro-European, he was the architect of Greece's entry into the EEC (1981).

The 1980s were marked by the historic victory of the Socialist Party (PASOK). In 1981, Andréas Papandreou won the elections and remained in power for seven years. His government ended up being involved in political and economic scandals. These continued during the 1990s and 2000s, affecting the two major political families that alternately share power, Papandreou's PASOK and C. Mitsotakis' neo-liberal New Democracy party. The 1990s and 2000s were a boom period for Greece, which seemed to be crumbling under the "free" money from Brussels. Corruption and nepotism are in full swing as the country joins the European Monetary Union by tampering with its economic performance.

In 2009, the country is facing one of the most serious economic crises in its history. The last ten years have been marked by a political and social crisis. Highlights include the entry of the neo-Nazi Aube Dorée into parliament, the rise to power of the radical left-wing Syriza party, the accumulation of austerity plans from which the Greek population has emerged exsanguinated, the international humanitarian crisis linked to the massive arrival of Middle Eastern refugees on Greek shores, and the return to political life of the major political families partly responsible for the crisis. Following the legislative elections of 2019 and 2023, Konstantinos Mitsotakis' son, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, becomes Prime Minister. The social and political malaise persists in Greece, and a real way out of the crisis is still several years away.