Constructing Ionian identities: the Ionian Islands in British official ...

public or greater credit to himself”. 109 For Evans, Storks “was a most distinguished
officer, and a right-minded man”. 110
The debates revealed the difference between the theory of rule in the Islands
proposed by Gladstone and the reality of rule by Storks. Gladstone’s criticisms of
liberal institutions, albeit limited, without responsible government highlighted the
problem of British governance in the Septinsula. Storks’s authoritarian rule clashed
with Gladstone’s support for “free government”. Kirkwall, an Englishman who
resided in the Septinsula during Storks’s tenure, supported “enlightened despotism”
in the Islands. But even he concluded “Storks was disliked both by the English and
the Ionians”. He was a “despot and overconfident coldly regardless of the feelings of
others he recklessly raised for himself a host of enemies”. He was devoid of the
wisdom, foresight and conciliatory qualities “necessary in order to govern men
successfully”. 111
Britain’s decision to cede the Ionian Islands to Greece
Political troubles in Greece in the summer and autumn of 1862 affected the
fate of the Ionian Protectorate in the Empire. The creation of the independent Greek
state in 1832 did not encompass vast areas where Greeks predominated. The Greeks
entertained the “Great Idea”, hopes of extending their boundaries from a declining
Ottoman Empire and re-establishing the Byzantine Empire with Constantinople as its
109 Ibid., p. 1598.
110 Ibid., p. 1602.
111 Kirkwall V., Four Year in the Ionian Islands, pp. 287-88.
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