GREECE

GREECE / ЕΛΛΑΣ.

Centennial of Independence, 1830-1930.
Historical map of Greece.
Twelfth stamp in a set of 18, issued on 01.04.1930.
Face value: 4 Greek drachma.
Print: 4,868,336 copies.
Printing: Recess.
Printed by Bradbury, Dickinson & Co. Ltd., London.

Catalogues
- Karamitsos No. 502.
- Michel No. 338.
- Scott No. 359.
- StampWorld No. 317.
- Stanley Gibbons No. 444.
- Yvert et Tellier No. 386.

In 1814, a patriotic society was founded in Odessa (in present-day Ukraine) made up of Greeks willing to fight for the independence of their country, subjected to the Ottoman Empire. It was called Philiki Etairia (Φιλική Εταιρεία, “Friendly Brotherhood”) and it was the beginning of the rebellion that in March 1821 lit the fuse of the Greek war of independence, which in 1829 forced the Ottomans, under military pressure from Russia, to sign the Treaty of Adrianople, by which Greece obtained its autonomy, the first step towards independence from the Kingdom of Greece (central Greece), finally recognized by the London Protocol of February 3, 1830. The independence of the entire territory of the Present-day Greece, however, did not arrive until after the First World War, by the Treaty of Versailles (June 29, 1918), after the defeat and dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. Part of that territory (like the island of Crete, for example) would not be permanently integrated into the kingdom until 1945.