Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
"The revolt began not in Greece, but among Greeks in the wider Ottoman Empire. . . . Grievances had multiplied since the Ottomans took control in 1453. Yet the call for independence had been influenced by the American and French revolutions. It was a cause not just for Greek people, but for its friends throughout Europe. . . . The Greeks might have been crushed had not a massacre of Christians caused the intervention of the Great Powers. In 1832, Crete and Thessaly were under Ottoman rule, but the rest of Greece was independent. The age of nationalism had begun." [Furtado: 1001 Days]