Venizelos Becomes Prime Minister

In October 1910, Eleftherios Venizelos became Prime Minister of Greece, beginning a period that transformed the country. Born in Crete in 1864, Venizelos had become a leading politician on the island and had played a key role in the Cretan struggle for union with Greece. After the Goudi coup of 1909, the officers of the Military League invited him to Athens. He founded the Liberal Party and won elections in 1910 and 1912 with large majorities. As prime minister, he carried out an ambitious program of reforms. His government revised the constitution in 1911, reorganized the army and navy with the help of French and British missions, reformed public finances and the civil service, made primary education free and compulsory, protected workers' rights and distributed land to farmers. His diplomatic skill helped create the Balkan League, an alliance with Serbia, Bulgaria and Montenegro against the Ottoman Empire. Venizelos led Greece through the Balkan Wars, which nearly doubled its territory, and he remained one of the most influential and divisive figures in modern Greek history.