Ionian Islands in Venetian hands since 1238. The islands thus became the only part of the Greek-speaking world to escape Ottoman rule, which gave them both a unity and an importance in Greek history they would otherwise not have had. Corfu was the only Greek island never conquered by the Turks. Under Venetian rule, many of the upper classes spoke Italian (or Venetian in some cases) and converted to Roman Catholicism, but the majority remained Greek ethnically, linguistically, and religiously. In the 18th century, a Greek national independence movement began to emerge, and the free status of the Ionian islands made them
Ionian University of Smyrna Ionian University of Smyrna The Ionian University of Smyrna () was a university established by the local Greek authorities during the Greek Occupation of Smyrna (1919–1922), today Izmir, Turkey. The initiative for the organization of the institution was undertaken by the mathematician Constantin Carathéodory. However, the University of Smyrna, the first to be established in the city, never operated due to the Greek defeat in the Greco-Turkish War and the subsequent evacuation in September 1922. Greek education in Smyrna was already thriving during the Ottoman period. A total of 67 educational institutions were operating in early 20th century thanks to