The term Venizelism defines a wide movement covering all sectors of national life, that acted as the vehicle for the urban modernization of Greece,

combined with a specific conception of national integration and the Great Idea.

The political content of Venizelism, the 'Recovery', consisted in the creation of a state where the rule of the law would prevail, with modern social, economic, administrative functions capable of economic and cultural integration in to the West. This was an attempt to shape Greek society according to the capitalist system and following the models of western liberal republics.
This urban modernization and Europeanization are inextricably linked as early as 1910, to irredentism. The two objectives were interrelated and served each other. Domestic reorganization, administrative and political modernization and the economic development of the country were perceived at the same time as causes and results of territorial expansion. Both of them, internal recovery and territorial expansion, serve the objective of creating of a modern European state, integrated into the ideological-political and economic actuality expressed by Western European countries.