The Septinsular Republic was a Greek island republic that existed from 1800 to 1815, with Corfu serving as its capital. The republic was established by the Russian Empire and the Ottoman Empire after the Ionian Islands were seized from the French during the French Revolutionary Wars, and its creation was the first time that Greeks had been granted even limited self-government since the fall of the Despotate of Morea in 1460. In 1807, the republic was ceded to the First French Empire, but the islands kept their institutions of government. The British gradually took control of the islands, and the islands were formally organized into the United States of the Ionian Islands in 1815 under British protection.
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