free download here - Michael Llewellyn-Smith

The Nineteenth Century
that Crete was lost to Turkey; she was a sore limb of the Empire, and
better amputate it than allow a gangrene to start and spread. Russia
was in favour of enosis. The French proposal of a plebiscite to decide
Crete’s future was crippled only by Britain’s obstinate refusal to agree.
At this moment the powers could have ensured a just solution to the
Cretan question. The Tory Foreign Minister Lord Stanley was therefore
responsible for the forty-seven-year delay of independence and
union. Among the blows this country has delivered Greece this is not
the least. The Cretan insurrection petered out.
In 1878, more concessions in the Pact of Halepa: Christians were to
outnumber Mohammedans in the Assembly: Greek was to be the
official language in the lawcourts: revenues for hospitals, harbours,
roads. Under a Christian governor the island was reasonably content:
so content that when Turkey actually offered Crete in 1881 and the
Greek government refused, preferring concessions on the mainland,
there were no disturbances.
But public works were not carried out on any grandiose scale even
now; in. 1897 there was only one proper carriage-road, from Suda to
Canea, about five miles long. Veli Pasha, who had tried to build a road
from Rethymnon, was soon recalled in 1858; ironically he had become
exceedingly unpopular with the Cretans because of the extra labour
and money required for the construction. This is a solitary example of
Turkish public works; at first they devoted money to the upkeep of
Venetian fortresses, but even these fell into disrepair in the nineteenth
century. The harbours stagnated. Social services were minimal. Spratt
notes the humane gesture of the Turkish government (under the enlightened
Veli Pasha again) in allowing a ration of half an oke of bread
per day to the unemployable inhabitants of the leper colonies outside
Heraklion, on Spinalonga, and elsewhere. Spratt blames the whole
community, as well as the government, for the neglect of lepers, undoubtedly
with some justice; and doubts in consequence whether the
Cretans are ready for self-government (1851). They were not more
callous, however, than their masters. And their callousness was a
product largely of ignorance about the disease. The Cretans’ attitude
to spastics today is rather similar.
The grim story was nearly over. The Turkish tactic had too often
been to promise reform and do nothing, and more recently to hamstring
the Christian governor in his office; as if to demonstrate that, even if the
days of Turkish rule were numbered, government by a Christian would
not work. The last great insurrection broke out in 1896. In Athens
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