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Greece History
The maritime civilizations flourished of the powerful Cycladic, Mycenaean and Minoan during the Bronze Age period of 3000-1200 BC specially was a time of violence and wars based on trade rivalries, although it is thought that Minoan culture was generally peaceful and harmonious. Greece went under the cultural and military revival in 800 BC
with the evolution of city-states, the most powerful of which were Athens and Sparta. The classical age came to an end with the Peloponnesian Wars (431-404 AD) in which the militaristic Spartans defeated the Athenians. In 1453 the Turks captured the Byzantine capital, Constantinople, and by 1500 almost all of Greece had also fallen under Turkish control. The lands of present-day Greece became a rural backwater, with many merchants, intellectuals and artists exiled in central Europe. The independence movement lacked unity, however, and in 1827 Russia, France and Britain decided to intervene. After independence, the European powers decided Greece should become a monarchy, with a non-Greek ruler to frustrate Greek power struggles, and installed Otto of Bavaria as king in 1833. During WWI, Greek troops fought on the Allied side and occupied Thrace. After the war, Prime Minister Venizelos sent forces to 'liberate' the Turkish territory of Smyrna (present-day Izmir), which had a large Greek population. In the 1936, a fascist dictatorship were established when the king appointed General Metaxas as the prime minister of Greece. Greece fell to Germany in 1941, leading to carnage and mass starvation. Resistance movements sprang up and polarised into royalist and communist factions, and a bloody civil war resulted, lasting until 1949, when the royalists claimed victory. The American gives large amount of money during the civil war to the anticommunist government and implemented the Certificate of Political Reliability which remained valid till 1962.
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