The price of currants, Greece's chief agricultural…

The price of currants, Greece's chief agricultural export, collapses in 1893, and the national economy collapses as well.

Charilaos Trikoupis, serving his sixth turn in office, stands before parliament and delivers the most famous statement of his career: "Regretfully, we are broke".

The government suspends service of foreign loans and cuts all non-essential spending.

Greece's National bank has continued to be the kingdom's major economic institutional force, but other parts of the country’s economic infrastructure had not appeared until the latter part of the nineteenth century, predominantly during the several terms of Prime Minister Kharilaos Trikoupis.

In addition, by greatly expanding public education, Trikoupis has fostered a new cultural climate that draws on Western trends in dress, architecture, art and manners.

In the 1880s and 1890s, paved roads, the first network of railroad lines, the opening in 1893 of the Corinth Canal, and the construction or rehabilitation of several seaports have contributed greatly to the development of an internal market in Greece, as well as to the movement of Greek products to foreign markets.

The first manufacturing plants have also appeared in Greece during Trikoupis' tenure, in conjunction with the large infrastructural projects of the period.

Industrial growth is hindered, however, by economic crises, the instability of the agricultural export economy, and government debt.

Military endeavors compound serious economic problems, and the sustained deficits incurred through the 1880s had set the stage for an economic collapse.

In the last decades of the 1800s, agricultural reforms, which have been only moderately successful, have aimed at increasing the purchasing power of the rural population as well as fostering large estates that could raise production of export commodities and improve Greece's chronic balance of payments deficit.

However, land-allotment patterns have failed to raise most peasants above the level of subsistence farming, and foreclosures of peasant properties has created large estates whose single-crop contributions make the Greek agricultural export structure quite fragile.