Modern Greece
At the beginning of the 21st century, the nation-state of Greece -- known officially as the Hellenic Kingdom -- finds itself in an interesting position. Greece is not one of the leading nation-states of Tripartite Alliance Earth: the Greek economy remains relatively unproductive, the Greek population (at some 16.1 million in 2001) is not particularly large, and Greece does not have much influence on global popular culture.
Despite Greece's weaknesses, the Greeks have nonetheless managed to carve out for their ancient nation a profitable niche in global affairs. Greece's success can be thought of as being threefold.
Until the recognition of an independent Greek kingdom in 1829, Greeks were a stateless and diasporic nation. This did not prevent Greeks from enjoying substantial power, for at the end of the 18th century, Greeks controlled the Orthodox Church to which all the Orthodox Christians of the Ottoman Empire were subjected regardless of ethnicity and held political power in what is now modern Romania, while in Russia other Greeks occupied important military and political positions. As a diasporic nation, then, prior to 1829 Greeks played an important role in an area stretching from Vienna to Cappadocia and from Saint Petersburg to Alexandria. In that year, the Greek national state was home to only a seventh of the six million ethnic Greeks in the world.
Over the course of the 19th and early 20th centuries, however, Greece expanded its territory vastly to other Greek-populated territories -- Thessaly, Macedonia, West Thrace, Crete, South Epirus, and the Aegean Islands. By the end of the 19th century, some Greeks had become sufficiently confident in the abilities of their young state to embrace the Megali Idéa (Great Idea), a national ideology that would see the conquest of Greek-populated territories in the Ottoman Empire including Constantinople, which would replace provincial Athens as the new Greek capital. For a time, the cosmopolitan Greeks of Alexandria -- and still more, the Greeks of Ottoman Constantinople or Smyrna -- continued to defend the diasporic ideal. They were contemptuous of the "Athenians," whom they regarded as provincial and dependent on the Western Powers. Some Greeks even doubted the idea of abandoning their privileges inside a great Empire for a petty kingdom's sake. However, the growth of radical Turkish nationalism directed substantially towards the Greeks made this position untenable, and even diasporic Greeks began to support their erstwhile nation-state in its expansion.
When Greece intervened in the First World War against Turkey, it was able to save the main Greek populations in the Ottoman Empire -- those of Turkish Thrace and Ionia, as well as those of Trebizond -- from genocide. As a result of the accompanying territorial expansion, after the war Greece became one of Europe's strongest minor powers. However, three factors -- the population exchanges with Turkey, the independence of Trebizond, and the establishment of Constantinople as a free city under the League of Nations -- caused the disappearance of almost all of the Greek diaspora, with ancestral Greek lands either included in Greece (or Trebizond) or emptied by population exchanges. Cyprus, occupied by Britain since 1878, eventually reverted to Greek sovereignty by referendum in 1949. Only Egypt's ancient Greek community survived. For the first time, almost all of the major Greek communities in the eastern Mediterranean were under the sovereignty of a Greek nation-state.
The end of the old Greek diaspora neatly coincided with the production of another diaspora, as the difficulties of life in Greece encouraged a steady flow of poor Greeks towards South America at the beginning of the century. Later, France received many Greeks during and after the First World War, while Greek immigrants have been attracted to both England and the German Bundesrepublik after the Second World War. The Greek community of Alexandria thrived, as did the million-odd Greeks of Constantinople under the nominal overlordship of the League of Nations. Finally, the aftermath of the Soviet Civil War revealed an important but previously overlooked Greek presence in the former Soviet Union: the Pontic Greeks from the Black Sea coastline of Russia and Ukraine. Though this latter group tended to gravitate towards Trebizond, nonetheless the Pontic Greeks formed a valuable element of the Greek diaspora.
Now, at the beginning of the 21st century, these Greek diasporic communities include a total of almost five million people, that is, the equivalent of one-third of the population of Greece. In the old diaspora, there are 1.7 million Greeks in Trebizond, 1.3 million Greeks in Constantinople, and 300 thousand Greeks in Egypt. Further, in the new diaspora there are three-quarters of a million Greek descendants each in Argentina and in Australia, a half-million Greeks in Brazil, 400 thousand Greeks in South Africa, a hundred thousand Greeks each in England, France, Bulgaria, and the German Bundesrepublik, and assorted smaller populations elsewhere. In most of these countries, Greek immigrants are upwardly mobile with a hard-working first generation, a prosperous second generation, and a third generation that includes a disproportionate number of intellectuals, professionals, and businesspeople. Greeks in the diaspora, then, are well integrated into their homes.
For these people, not only does Greece retain substantial sentimental value as their ancestral homeland, but it remains quite important as a practical base of operations inside the European Confederation. In the past generation, the Greek state has actively tried to promote links between Greek diasporic communities and Greece proper, through funding Greek-language private schools and Greek cultural institutes, and through the extension of Greek mass media (newspapers, magazines, radio, television, Euronet) using the latest communications technologies. Like the Armenian and Israeli diasporas, the Greek diaspora remains closely bound to its mother state, and in turn help bind Greece to the wider world.
Despite the rapid economic growth of the 1960's and 1970's, southeastern Europe -- defined by the Confederation as including the member-states of Serbia, Albania, Romania, Bulgaria, Constantinople, and Greece -- remains one of the poorest regions in Europe. (Only the eastern European and North African regions are poorer.) In the 1980's, the region's fragile economies were shattered by capital flight and the collapse of consumer market's worldwide. Though Constantinople and Romania have managed to regain their pre-War prosperity, the underdeveloped economies of Bulgaria, Serbia, and Albania remain stagnant.
Greece, however, is the shining exception to this grim economic picture. Owing to a well-developed industry, a well-developed bourse (largest in southeastern Europe), an immense merchant marine (largest in the world), and heritage as a transshipment centre for goods throughout the Mediterranean, Greece managed to regain pre-War levels of GNP per capita in 1997, and is now enjoying a period of rapid economic growth that has brought it. This economic growth and large-scale investment in Greece's inexpensive neighbours has naturally brought all southeastern Europe -- even half-Mitteleuropean Romania -- into an orbit around Greece. With income per capita almost at par with the European average as of early 2002 and likely to overtake the European average, Greece is one of the most dynamic national economies in Europe.
Greece's centrality in southeastern Europe has, in turn, contributed to a sea change in the orientations of its neighbours. Traditionally, Serbia has been exceptionally Francophile, while Bulgaria has been strongly marked by Russian culture, and Italian influence runs deep in Albania. With the growth of Greece as the regional power, the Greek language and Greek popular culture have gained greatly in popularity among Greece's neighbours. Indeed, Greece has become so important that now, instead of emigrating to western and central Europe, many Serbs, Bulgarians, and Albanians are emigrating to Greece. Unlike most of the rest of Europe, Greece has not enjoyed a baby boom in the early 21st century, and its fertility rate of 1.64 children born per woman (though rising) is one of the lower rates in the world. This influx of immigrants -- amounting, now, to almost 11% of the Greek population -- has limited the effects of population aging by bolstering the working-age population. Lately, new immigrant populations like Israelis, Ukrainians, and Lebanese have appeared. This mass immigration -- a marked reversal of historical patterns -- is already changing Greece.
Greece's strong links to the worldwide Greek diaspora and Greece's status as the most important country in southeastern Europe has allowed Greece to play a disproportionately important role inside the European Confederation. Until the admittance of Ukraine and Russia into the European Confederation in 1985, Greece was recognized as the uncontested leader of the Eastern Orthodox member-states of the Confederation. Even now, Greek wealth and familiarity gives Greece a primacy among the Confederation's Eastern Orthodox member-states that the much larger Ukraine lacks. Such Nobel-winning writers as Kazantzakis, Elytis and Seferis, orchestral musicians as Theodorakis and Xatzidakis, and pop/folk music groups as Les Cretains and Athêne are widely recognized as essential elements of Europe's emerging common popular culture. To other Europeans, Greece is that singular exception: a southeastern European member-state of the Confederation that actually works. As Greece continues its general convergence towards European norms, all signs suggest that Greece will continue to work.