The Septinsular Republic (; ) was an oligarchic republic that existed from 1800 to 1807 under nominal Russian and Ottoman sovereignty in the Ionian Islands (Corfu, Paxoi, Lefkada, Cephalonia, Ithaca, Zakynthos (Zante in English), and Kythira). The Republic was established after a joint Russo-Ottoman fleet captured the islands and ended a two-year rule by the French Republic. Although the islanders had hoped for complete independence, the new state was granted only autonomy, becoming tributary to the Ottoman Porte. Nevertheless, it was the first time Greeks had been granted self-government since the fall of the last remnants of the Byzantine Empire to the Ottomans in the mid-15th century. In 1807, the republic was ceded to Napoleon's French Empire, but the islands kept their institutions of government. The British gradually took control of the islands from 1809 on, and following the Treaty of Paris, the islands were formally organised into the United States of the Ionian Islands under British protection. Background: French rule and Russian conquest of the Ionian Islands The Ionian Islands (Corfu, Paxoi, Zakynthos/Zante, Kefalonia, Lefkada, Ithaca, and Kythira/Cerigo) along with a handful of exclaves on the Epirote mainland, namely the coastal towns of Parga, Preveza, Vonitsa, and Butrinto, had been Venetian possessions for centuries, thereby becoming the only part of the Greek world to escape conquest by the Ottoman Empire, developing a distinct local culture, and becoming a place of "dynamic interaction between the West and [...] the Greek East", indeed serving as "Greek culture's window on the West", through which Western European ideas and culture were transmitted to the Greek world. Under Venetian rule, the population of the islands was divided into three classes: the privileged nobility, the urban middle class (cittadini) and the commoners (popolari). The nobility were mostly landowners, and derided mercantile activity, which was left to the urban burghers; as a result, the latter also came to amass wealth and land, and aspired to join the ruling class. In this contest, the rural peasantry was generally politically marginalized. This medieval social order was upset after the Fall of the Republic of Venice in 1797, when the islands came under French control. Shortly after, in the Treaty of Campo Formio, the islands were annexed to the French Republic and organized into three departments. The Republican French were welcomed by the populace, and the radical ideas of the French Revolution were implemented with the abolition of the