The arrival of the revolutionary French in the Ionian Islands in 1797 marked not only the end of the centuries-long Venetian control of the archipelago, but also signalled the subjection of the Islands to the provisions of the Constitution of the Franch Republic. This new charter of political governance was to leave a deep impression on the political thought of the Islanders.
The Islanders were quick to embrace the adoption of such a constitutional document, which was implemented throughout much of Europe in the wake of the Franch Revolution. Indeed, according to the Ionian Island-born poet Ugo Foscolo, `a written Constitution is all that is needed for political systems to become better and the deficiencies of a Nation to be remedied.`
It is no accident, that in the years following the Islands` release from Venetian rule and its almost feudal precepts of local government -and in spite of the subsequent dominance of a series of `Protecting` Powers- the people of the Ionian Islands managed to formulate, in no less than five different phases, a constitutional discourse that sought to regulate the political life of the Islands for all levels of society, while steadily endeavouring to enhance the quality and democratic nature of this discourse right through to the time of union with Greece (1864).
Both printed and manuscript editions of Constitutional Texts of the Ionian Islands of the nineteenth century -in Greek, Italian, English, French and Ottoman Turkish- have been collected together in the present volume, along with the constitutional discourse written by Ugo Foscolo that shows strong affinities with the thought, objectives and deeds of John Capodistrias, who was to become the first president of independent Greece. The presentation of the entire corpus of Ionian Island constitutional texts (many of which have not been readily available to the reading public before now) is accompanied here by the insight of political and constitutional historians in specially commissioned introductory chapters. The constitutional texts reflect a complex web of converging and diverging forces -both locally within the Ionian Islands, and on the European level, and both collective and individual- that all contributed to the evolution of the constitutional debate in the Islands and which, it is hoped, will provide matter for further scholarly discussion regarding Ionian Island, Greek, European and Ottoman Turkish history.
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