Origins

Ancient Greece consisted of numerous independent city-states all along the coasts of the southern Balkan peninsula, the Aegean islands, and Asia Minor. During the fifth century B.C., the most important of these was Athens. In what later was remembered as the golden age of classical Greece, Athens experimented with a democratic form of government and left enduring monuments of literature, philosophy, and architecture epitomized by the temple hill known as the Acropolis, dominated by the Parthenon. Ever since then, Athens and the rest of Greece have been symbols of classical civilization for Western societies, including North America.

Between 338 and 200 B.C.E., Athens and other Greek city-states came under the domination of the neighbouring northern kingdom of Macedonia. Its most outstanding ruler, Alexander the Great, was himself inbred with Greek or Hellenic culture which he brought to the lands he conquered, including Persia, Egypt, and territories as far as India. Thus, when the Roman Empire conquered the Greek city-states in 146 B.C.E., it found that the Greek language and Hellenic civilization were firmly embedded throughout the entire eastern Mediterranean.

At the outset of the fourth century C.E., the Roman Empire was divided and its new eastern capital, Constantinople, was set up by Emperor Constantine at the older Greek port of Byzantium on the Bosporus straits that divide Europe and Asia. Based in Constantinople, the Eastern Roman, or Byzantine Empire, as it came to be known, had soon after its inception adopted Christianity as its official religion and used Greek as its language of administration and culture. The new empire was to last for over 1,000 years, during which time the Byzantine Greek form of Eastern Christianity became firmly embedded throughout what is present-day Greece, Turkey, and most of the Balkans.

Greek cultural influence remained strong throughout this region even after the decline and eventual collapse of the Byzantine Empire in 1453 at the hands of the Ottoman Empire. With Byzantium’s collapse, the Greeks lost their political independence and were to remain subordinate to the Ottoman Turks for nearly four centuries. In the 1820s, the Greeks revolted against the Ottomans and succeeded in creating an independent state that included the Peloponese, central Greece, Livadia, and the western Aegean Islands. In the wake of ongoing wars against the Ottomans, Greece’s boundaries gradually were extended, so that by 1913 they included much of Epirus, southern Macedonia, almost all the Aegean islands, and Crete. Nevertheless, there were still many Greeks living under Ottoman rule, on the western coast of Asia Minor, in Thrace, in historic Constantinople (renamed Istanbul), and in Pontos, near the Black Sea.

During World War I, Greece fought on the side of the Entente. It hoped to acquire further territories from the Ottomans, who were among the defeated powers when the conflict ended in late 1918. The following year, the Entente Powers granted Greece a temporary mandate to occupy eastern Thrace and the western part of Asia Minor. They were challenged, however, by a new force, the Turkish nationalists under Kemal Atatürk. The result was the Greek-Turkish war of 1919–22, after which the Greek military was defeated and thousands of Greeks were expelled from Asia Minor. When a peace treaty was finally signed between the two countries at Lausanne in 1923, it called for a population exchange, whereby about 400,000 Turks left Greece and over one million Greeks (mostly from western Asia Minor and eastern Thrace) left Turkey.

The long decades of war with Ottoman and Kemalist Turkey adversely affected Greece’s social and economic development. This, in turn, contributed to the desire and/or need for emigration of hundreds of thousands of Greeks to foreign countries. The costly wars also contributed to political instability, military coups, and dictatorships that Greece has periodically experienced, most especially during the inter-war years.

For instance, between 1919 and 1940, Greece witnessed twenty-five changes of government, eight revolts and military coups, and three dictatorships. This was interrupted by four years of Nazi occupation (1941–44). Then, during the next three decades, from 1945 to 1975, there were no less than thirty changes of government, two military coups, and a brutal civil war (1946–49) between Greek Communists and nationalists. The attempted revolution by Greek Communists, actively supported by the Soviet Union and its Communist allies in the Balkans, failed only after military aid from the United States brought victory for Greek nationalist forces. The defeat of the Communists, however, marked the beginning of another round of political repression by the extreme right wing. Such persecution against the leftists during the 1950s and early 1960s forced a large number of Greek Communists to emigrate to Canada, where they found political freedom and better economic opportunities. Within a few decades, many of these “ex-Communist” Greeks had become successful small entrepreneurs in Canada. Finally, in late 1974, free elections brought Greece a new civilian government which has been in power ever since then. The resultant political stability has made it possible to enter the European Community, so that Greece today is the most economically successful country in southeastern Europe.

This does not mean, however, that Greece has been able to overcome fully the heritage of discontent with its immediate neighbours. Ever since the rise of Ottoman power in Asia Minor back in the early fourteenth century and its subsequent rapid expansion, the entire eastern Mediterranean and Aegean region was transformed into a battleground between two peoples and their civilizations – the Eastern Christian Greeks and the Muslim Turks. The struggle is symbolized today by the island of Cyprus. After having changed hands several times during the past century, since the Turkish invasion of 1974 the island has been divided between the Greek Republic of Cyprus and the self-proclaimed Turkish republic of Northern Cyprus.

Greece has also shown great displeasure with its northern neighbour, the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia, which declared its independence in 1991. At issue is the name Macedonia and the heritage of Alexander the Great, which Greece claims to be an integral part of its historic cultural patrimony. Nevertheless, in contrast to the age-old friction with the Turks, Greece has not clashed with the Slavic state of Macedonia, and, through the intervention of the European Community and the United Nations, a peaceful compromise has been reached between the two states.

Despite an awareness of their classical past, the present-day population of Greece is demographically different from the ancient inhabitants. Already before the sixteenth century, successive waves of Albanian, Slavic, Frankish, Turkic, and Venetian migrants have all intermingled with the older Greek population. This demographic amalgam is also reflected in the contemporary spoken and official literary language of Greece, called the Demotiki. The modern Greek language is substantially different from classical Greek, but it is written in basically the same Greek alphabet used in classical times. Though classical Greek is taught at secondary schools and universities, it is rarely used in interpersonal communication.

Contemporary Greek religious institutions have their roots in the Byzantine era (325–1453), which retained and developed the early traditions of Christianity. The teachings of the Byzantine Greek theologians and philosophers (John Chrysostom, Basil of Caesarea, Michael Psellus, among others) have had a vital impact upon the evolution of Christianity not only in Greece but also among neighbouring peoples throughout most of the Balkans, Ukraine, and Russia as well as upon immigrants from those areas living in North America.

Of the approximately 10 million inhabitants living in Greece today, the vast majority (95 percent) are Greek Orthodox. The remainder are divided among Roman Catholics, Muslims, Jews, and Armenian Catholics. For centuries, the Greek Orthodox had been under the jurisdiction of the ecumenical patriarchate of Constanti-nople/Istanbul. But in the immediate aftermath of independence, an autocephalous (independent) Greek Orthodox Church was formed which is governed by its own council of bishops (Holy Synod) headed by an archbishiop.