United States of the Ionian Islands took Lefkada in 1810. The island of Corfu remained occupied by the French until 1814. The Congress of Vienna agreed to place the Ionian Islands under the exclusive "amical protection" of the United Kingdom. Despite British military administration, the Austrian Empire was guaranteed commercial status equal to the UK. The arrangement was formalised with the ratification of the "Maitland constitution" on 26 August 1817, which created a federation of the seven islands, with Lieutenant-General Sir Thomas Maitland its first "Lord High Commissioner of the Ionian Islands". The Party of Radicals (Greek: Κόμμα των Ριζοσπαστών) founded in 1848 was against the
Ionian Islands are found because Io swam across it. Latin transliteration, as well as Modern Greek pronunciation, may suggest that the Ionian Sea and Islands are somehow related to Ionia, an Anatolian region; in fact the Ionian Sea and Ionian Islands are spelled in Greek with an omicron (Ιόνια), whereas Ionia has an omega (Ιωνία), reflecting a classical difference in pronunciation. In Modern Greek omicron and omega represent the same sound, but the two words are still distinguished by stress: the western "Ionia" is accented on the antepenult (), and the eastern on the penult (). In English, the adjective relating to