Beautiful engraved Bond Certificate from the Kingdom of Greece issued in 1898 for L100. This debt instrument is a 2.5 Percent 20 year bond and is unusual because it has guarantees from France, Great Britain and Russia in the event of default. The certificate has an ornate blue border with a vignette statues of Aphrodite, Apollo, Athena and Hypocrites. In addition there is the Greek Kingdoms Coat of Arms. This item also has a 10 shilling orange tax stamp dated 1899. This is a vertical format BOND and is over 122 years old.
Certificate Vignette International Financial Commission (Greece) Greco-Turkish War 1898 In 1897 a Greek attempt to annex Crete, then a province of the Ottoman Empire, by landing troops on the island, was foiled by the Great Powers, who forced the Greeks to withdraw and instead sent a temporary international occupying force themselves. Anti-Turkish steadily built in Greece and when in April 1898 Greek irregulars crossed into the Turkish province of Macedonia, Turkey declared war on Greece. Whereas the Turkish army had been recently reorganized by a German mission, the Greeks were ill-prepared both militarily and financially for war. In just a month the Greeks were defeated with Thessaly occupied by Turkish forces and the rest of Greece at their mercy. In order to save Greece from possible total defeat and occupation the great Powers stepped in and an armistice was agreed on 20 May 1898. Peace Reparations and the International Financial Commission 1898 The Turks remained in occupation of Thessaly until December 1898, when a peace was concluded. In return for the restoration of Thessaly bar a few key strategic points to Greece, the Greeks agreed to pay a war reparation of £4,000,000 to Turkey. To guarantee payment of the sum and also interest payments on the Greek National Debt, an International Financial Commission was established in Athens which took over the government monopolies and the harbor-dues of the Piraeus (A Short History of Modern Greece [1958] p.33). World War I The difficult and often fractious relationship between the Allied powers and Greece during World War I left the International Financial Commission in a precarious position given it had representatives from the same Allied powers. In December 1916, with the possibility of British and French naval forces bombarding Athens, the Commission requested that the United States Minister in Athens take charge of the Commission's archive and central office (CAB 23/1 Meeting 2, CAB 37/161/16). Winding up of the Commission 1965 The Commission was abolished in 1965 with any remaining functions being transferred to back to Greece. The Kingdom of Greece (Greek: Vasílion tis Elládos) was a state established in 1832 in the Convention of London by the Great Powers (the United Kingdom, France and the Russian Empire). It was internationally recognized in the Treaty of Constantinople, where it also secured full independence from the Ottoman Empire, marking the birth of the first fully independent Greek state since the fall of the last remnants of the Byzantine Empire to the Ottomans in the mid-15th century. It succeeded from the Greek provisional governments of the Greek War of Independence, and lasted until 1924, when the monarchy was abolished, and the Second Hellenic Republic declared. The Kingdom was restored in 1935, and lasted until 1974, when, in the aftermath of a seven-year military dictatorship, the current Third Republic came into existence. History from Wikipedia, British National Archives and OldCompany.com (old stock certificate research service).