The Greek diaspora, also known as Omogenia (), are the communities of Greeks living outside of Greece and Cyprus.
Such places historically (dating to the ancient period) include, Albania, Bulgaria, North Macedonia, southern Russia, Ukraine, Asia Minor and Pontus (in today's Turkey), Georgia, Egypt, Levant, southern Italy (Magna Graecia), Sicily, Cargèse and Marseille in France.
The term also refers to communities established by Greek migration (mostly since the 19th century) outside of the traditional areas; such as in the United States, Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Argentina, Brazil, New Zealand, the United Arab Emirates, Singapore, Norway, and others.
In addition, there were significant Greek communities established during the Cold War period in the USSR, Czechoslovakia, and Poland, following the 1946–1949 Greek Civil War, when Greek Communist refugees and their families were forced to leave Northern Greece and resettle in different parts of the Eastern Bloc.
The Greek diaspora population is estimated at 5 million, which when added to the population of Greece (approximately 10 million), gives a total worldwide Greek population of approximately 15 million.
Overview The Greek diaspora is one of the oldest diasporas in the world, with an attested presence from Homeric times to the present. Examples of its influence range from the role played by Greek expatriates in the emergence of the Renaissance, through liberation and nationalist movements involved in the fall of the Ottoman Empire, to commercial developments such as the commissioning of the world's first supertankers by shipping magnates Aristotle Onassis and Stavros Niarchos.
History Antiquity
In Archaic Greece, the trading and colonizing activities of Greeks from the Balkans and Asia Minor propagated Greek culture, religion and language around the Mediterranean and Black Sea basins. Greek city-states were established in Southern Italy (the so-called "Magna Graecia"), northern Libya, eastern Spain, the south of France, and the Black Sea coast, and the Greeks founded over 400 colonies in these areas.Jerry H. Bentley, Herbert F. Ziegler, "Traditions and Encounters, 2/e," Chapter 10: "Mediterranean Society: The Greek Phase" (McGraw-Hill, 2003) Alexander the Great's conquest of the Achaemenid Empire marked the beginning of the Hellenistic period, which was characterized by a new wave of Greek colonization in Asia and Africa; the Greek ruling classes established their presence in Egypt, West Asia, and Northwest India.Hellenistic Civilization
Many Greeks migrated to the new Hellenistic cities founded in Alexander's wake, as geographically dispersed as Uzbekistan"Menander became the ruler of a kingdom extending along the coast of western India, including the whole of Saurashtra and the harbour Barukaccha. His territory also included Mathura, the Punjab, Gandhara and the Kabul Valley", Bussagli p101 and Kuwait. Seleucia, Antioch and Alexandria were among the largest cities in the world during Hellenistic and Roman times. Greeks spread across the Roman Empire, and in the eastern territories the Greek language (rather than Latin) became the lingua franca. The Roman Empire was Christianized in the fourth century AD, and during the late Byzantine period the Greek Orthodox form of Christianity became a hallmark of Greek identity.Peregrine Horden, Nicholas Purcell, The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History, 2000, Blackwell Publishing,
Middle Ages
In the seventh century, Emperor Heraclius adopted Medieval Greek as the official language of the Byzantine Empire. Greeks continued to live around the Levant, Mediterranean and Black Sea, maintaining their identity among local populations as traders, officials, and settlers. Soon afterwards, the Arab-Islamic Caliphate seized the Levant, Egypt, North Africa and Sicily from the Byzantine Greeks during the Byzantine–Arab Wars. The Greek populations generally remained in these areas of the Caliphate and helped translate ancient Greek works into Arabic, thus contributing to early Islamic philosophy and science (which, in turn, contributed to Byzantine science, and later, to Western science).
Fall of Byzantium and exodus to Italy After the Byzantine–Ottoman Wars, which resulted in the fall of Constantinople in 1453 and the Ottoman conquest of Greek lands, many Greeks fled Constantinople (now Istanbul) and found refuge in Italy. They brought ancient Greek writings that had been lost in the West, contributing to the Renaissance. Most of these Greeks settled in Venice, Florence, and Rome.
Fall of the Empire of Trebizond and exodus to Russia and Georgia
Between the fall of the Empire of Trebizond to the Ottomans in 1461 and the second Russo-Turkish War in 1828–29, thousands of Pontic Greeks migrated (or fled) from the Pontic Alps and eastern Anatolia to Georgia and other southern regions of the Russian Empire, and (later) to the Russian province of Kars in the South Caucasus. Many Pontic Greeks fled their homelands in Pontus and northeastern Anatolia and settled in these areas to avoid Ottoman reprisals after being suspected of supporting the Russian invasions of eastern Anatolia in the Russo-Turkish Wars from the late 18th to the early 20th century. Others resettled in search of new opportunities in trade, mining, farming, the church, the military, and the bureaucracy of the Russian Empire.See for example Anthony Bryer', 'The Empire of Trebizond and the Pontus' (Variorum, 1980) and his 'Migration and Settlement in the Caucasus and Anatolia' (Variorum, 1988), as well as works listed in Caucasus Greeks and Greeks in Georgia.
Modern era Ottoman Empire
Greeks spread through many provinces of the Ottoman Empire and took major roles in its economic life, particularly the Phanariots (wealthy Greek merchants who claimed noble Byzantine descent during the second half of the 16th century). The Phanariots helped administer the Ottoman Empire's Balkan domains in the 18th century; some settled in present-day Romania, influencing its political and cultural life. Other Greeks settled outside the southern Balkans, moving north in service to the Orthodox Church or as a result of population transfers and massacres by Ottoman authorities after Greek rebellions against Ottoman rule or suspected Greek collaboration with Russia in the Russo-Turkish wars fought between 1774 and 1878. Greek Macedonia was most affected by the population upheavals, where the large Ottoman Muslim population, residing there since some generations (often including those of Greek-convert descent), could form local militias to harass and exact revenge on the Greek-speaking Christian Orthodox population; this often forced the inhabitants of rural districts, particularly in the more vulnerable lowland areas, to abandon their homes.
A larger-scale movement of Greek-speaking peoples in the Ottoman period was Pontic Greeks from northeastern Anatolia to Georgia and parts of southern Russia, particularly to the province of Kars Oblast in the southern Caucasus after the short-lived Russian occupation of Erzerum and the surrounding region during the 1828–29 Russo-Turkish War. An estimated one-fifth of Pontic Greeks left their homeland in the mountains of northeastern Anatolia in 1829 as refugees, following the Tsarist army as it withdrew back into Russian territory (since many had collaborated with – or fought in – the Russian army against the Muslim Ottomans to regain territory for Christian Orthodoxy). The Pontic Greek refugees who settled in Georgia and the southern Caucasus assimilated with preexisting Caucasus Greek communities. Those who settled in Ukraine and southern Russia became a sizable proportion of cities such as Mariupol, but generally assimilated with Christian Orthodox Russians and continued to serve in the Tsarist army.
In 1788, Ali Pasha of Ioannina destroyed Moscopole. This predominantly ethnic Aromanian settlement historically had an important Greek influence. This is why some members of the Aromanian diaspora that settled in places such as Vienna in Austria have been considered as Greeks and part of a Greek diaspora as well.
19th century During and after the Greek War of Independence, Greeks of the diaspora established the fledgling state, raised funds and awareness abroad and served as senior officers in Russian armies which fought the Ottomans to help liberate Greeks under Ottoman subjugation in Macedonia, Epirus, and Thrace. Greek merchant families had contacts in other countries; during the disturbances, many set up home bases around the Mediterranean (notably Marseille in France, Livorno, Calabria and Bari in Italy and Alexandria in Egypt), Russia (Odesa and Saint Petersburg), and Britain (London and Liverpool) from where they traded (typically textiles and grain). Businesses frequently included the extended family, and they brought schools teaching Greek and the Greek Orthodox Church.Ina Baghdiantz McCabe, Gelina Harlaftis, Iōanna Pepelasē Minoglou, Diaspora Entrepreneurial Networks: Four Centuries of History, 2000, p.147, Macmillan, As markets changed, some families became shippers (financed through the local Greek community, with the aid of the Ralli or Vagliano Brothers). The diaspora expanded across the Levant, North Africa, IndiaVassiliadis, Dimitrios, "Three Centuries of Hellenic Presence in Bengal," ELINEPA, 2005 and the United States.Vassilis Kardasis, Diaspora Merchants in the Black Sea: The Greeks in Southern Russia, 1775–1861,2001, Lexington Books, Many leaders of the Greek struggle for liberation from Ottoman Macedonia and other parts of the southern Balkans with large Greek populations still under Ottoman rule had links to the Greek trading and business families who funded the Greek liberation struggle against the Ottomans and the creation of a Greater Greece.
The terrible devastation of the island of Chios in the 1822 massacre caused a great dispersion of the islanders, leading to the creation of a specific Chian diaspora.
After the Treaty of Constantinople, the political situation stabilised; some displaced families returned to the newly independent country to become key figures in cultural, educational and political life, especially in Athens. Financial assistance from overseas was channeled through these family ties, providing for institutions such as the National Library and sending relief after natural disasters.
20th century During the 20th century, many Greeks left the traditional homelands for economic and political reasons; this resulted in large migrations from Greece and Cyprus to the United States, Australia, Canada, Brazil, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Argentina, the United Arab Emirates, Singapore, Germany, Norway, Belgium, Georgia, Italy, Armenia, Russia, Chile, Mexico, South Africa, and other countries, especially after World War I (1914–1918), World War II (1939–1945), the Greek Civil War (1946–1949) and the Turkish Invasion of Cyprus in 1974.Richard Clogg, The Greek diaspora in the twentieth century, 2000, Macmillan,
After World War I, most Pontian and Anatolian Greeks living in Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey) were victims of Muslim Turkish intolerance for Christians in the Ottoman Empire. More than 3.5 million Greeks, Armenians, and Assyrians were killed in the regimes of the Young Turks and Mustafa Kemal, from 1914 to 1923. Greeks in Asia Minor fled to modern Greece, and the Russian Empire (later the Soviet Union) was also a major destination.