The Goudi coup was a military coup d'état that took place in Greece on the night of 28 August [O.S. 15 August] 1909, starting at the barracks in Goudi, a neighborhood on the eastern outskirts of Athens. The coup was a pivotal event in modern Greek history, as it led to the arrival of Eleftherios Venizelos in Greece and his eventual appointment as Prime Minister. At one stroke, this put an end to the old political system, and ushered in a new period. Henceforth and for several decades, Greek political life would be dominated by two opposing forces: liberal, republican Venizelism and conservative, monarchist anti-Venizelism.

The Greco-Turkish War of 1897 or the Ottoman-Greek War of 1897, also called the Thirty Days' War and known in Greece as the Black '97 or the Unfortunate War, was a war fought between the Kingdom of Greece and the Ottoman Empire. Its immediate cause involved the status of the Ottoman province of Crete, whose Greek-majority population had long desired union with Greece. Despite the Ottoman victory on the field, an autonomous Cretan State under Ottoman suzerainty was established the following year, with Prince George of Greece and Denmark as its first High Commissioner.