Pride Goes Before a Fall: A Revolutionary Greece Timeline
- Thread starter Earl Marshal
- Start date
Yeah studying abroad in Greece, the stadium was always nice to look at. Glad to see that area develop into sporting facilities cause its a pretty decent neighborhood.
Serpent
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On a topic that I've seen brought up numerous times before and has already been largely discussed at substantial length, that of securing Anatolia for the Kingdom of Greece, I would like to bring some additional significant, yet thus far largely overpassed remarks, into this discussion, specifically that, the Black Sea/North Caucasus (Don, Kuban, Terak and even Astrakhan) Cossack Hosts, most significantly amongst all other White emigre as well, could be a significant asset to the resurgent Hellenic state, through assisting in their evacuation and faciliting their resettlement in Anatolia, (which can be achieved through various ways, one of which would be by requisitioning as much of the vast Hellenic merchant fleet as possible, the pride of Hellas, temporarily, to facilitate said evacuation, while escorted by the Hellenic Navy, the other being securing an alliance with the nascent states of Georgia and Armenia and actively assisting in the descent of these people through land towards Anatolia, with whatever humanitarian and military aid can be provided at that point, they would more than pay for it with their future loyalty to the Greek state in return for their salvation here, a combination of both ways would be the preferable option here, same for the Black Sea and Caucasian Greeks that I mention later on), to serve in a role they know all too well, as border guards in the frontlines, one could even say as a resurrection of the Byzantine "Akritai" units of old, by being granted land to settle with their families at the newly establish borderline with the Ottoman rump state in Central Anatolia, serving to protect the local Greek populations, by containing, pacifying and restraining the Turkic inhabitants of Anatolia from infiltrating through these buffer zones to slaughter Greek populations, as they have done highly efficiently and faithfully for centuries now, all across the vastness of the steppes of Eurasia, against the local primarily Turkic populations there.
Given the considerable population size of these Cossack hosts, (all nearby to the Kingdom of Greece), some 4 to 4,5 million people by 1916 for all these aforementioned hosts combinee, in total, even a portion of them resettling on Anatolia would significantly shift the demographical balance between the Christian and Muslim inhabitants of Anatolia, thus ensuring Greek domination of Anatolia. The Cossacks after all have served the Tsars of Russia dutifully for centuries, and they would continue to do so wherever they were welcomed, for their new sovereign, especially given the longstanding cultural, political etc ties between Greece and Russia.
Similarly, the Greeks of Northern Black Sea/Crimea/Donbass would be yet another invaluable asset at securing Anatolia, if only the 23,000 men strong OTL Greek contingent of the Southern Russia Allied intervention would only focus at protecting and simultaneously evacuating the little more than 1 million Black Sea Greek people from the region, focusing on facilitating the resettlement of those people, (and by extend the fewer but still considerable Caucasian Greek people), in the already considerably Greek majority inhabited region of Pontus within Anatolia, then these Greek people would avoid the subsequent extremely harsh retaliation by the Bolsheviks, death marches/forced resettlements on Central Asia by the Bolsheviks, that largely devastated their numbers.
Additionally, it would help alleviate the backlash by the local Russian/Ukrainian residents against the Allied forces, primarly of which was directly towards the Greek expeditionary forces, as, given the significant presence of local Greek populace, it was perceived by the Russian/Ukrainian locals as a blatant attempt at a land grab by the Greek expeditionary forces, to the likes of which they had grown too accustomed through the Russian Civil War, and so, indifferent and even anti-Bolshevik locals became largely hostile and actively fought against the Allied forces due to that primarily, so a much more limited scope of the Greek expeditionary force, limited exclusively towards the protection and evacuation of its expats, would only serve to help the White cause, by alienating in part the Green Army's concerns and limiting its reaction.
Lastly, even though it may not matter so far along this TL, I feel the urge to highlight that the congress of Sivas was held by Kemal Attaturk a heartbeat away from Pontus, so this action could force him to flee the area and hold the Sivas Congress elsewhere, with the all the implicit loss of prestige this would deal to his nascent nationalist movement, lest he and his followers be apprehended by the Greek forces nearby, that, as much unlikely as a possibility that is, it's still pretty intriguing as a concept to consider.
So dedicating a significant amount of forces towards the protection of Pontus might possibly have significant additional tangible strategic advantages, apart from preventing the Pontic Greek genocide and allowing the Hellenic state to strengthen the efforts of fellow Orthodox Armenian forces/insurgents and even possibly Assyrians and others in the nearby area, all of which would serve as valuable allies against the Turkish forces, on top of laying the foundations, once Greek control of the region is finally stabilized from Turkish guerillas, would thereby open the possibility of a subsequent of a two pronged offensive against Ankara, flanking the city from both east and west simultaneously, proving to be a highly advantageous move strategically, that could even ultimately significantly impact the war's final outcome.
Given the considerable population size of these Cossack hosts, (all nearby to the Kingdom of Greece), some 4 to 4,5 million people by 1916 for all these aforementioned hosts combinee, in total, even a portion of them resettling on Anatolia would significantly shift the demographical balance between the Christian and Muslim inhabitants of Anatolia, thus ensuring Greek domination of Anatolia. The Cossacks after all have served the Tsars of Russia dutifully for centuries, and they would continue to do so wherever they were welcomed, for their new sovereign, especially given the longstanding cultural, political etc ties between Greece and Russia.
Similarly, the Greeks of Northern Black Sea/Crimea/Donbass would be yet another invaluable asset at securing Anatolia, if only the 23,000 men strong OTL Greek contingent of the Southern Russia Allied intervention would only focus at protecting and simultaneously evacuating the little more than 1 million Black Sea Greek people from the region, focusing on facilitating the resettlement of those people, (and by extend the fewer but still considerable Caucasian Greek people), in the already considerably Greek majority inhabited region of Pontus within Anatolia, then these Greek people would avoid the subsequent extremely harsh retaliation by the Bolsheviks, death marches/forced resettlements on Central Asia by the Bolsheviks, that largely devastated their numbers.
Additionally, it would help alleviate the backlash by the local Russian/Ukrainian residents against the Allied forces, primarly of which was directly towards the Greek expeditionary forces, as, given the significant presence of local Greek populace, it was perceived by the Russian/Ukrainian locals as a blatant attempt at a land grab by the Greek expeditionary forces, to the likes of which they had grown too accustomed through the Russian Civil War, and so, indifferent and even anti-Bolshevik locals became largely hostile and actively fought against the Allied forces due to that primarily, so a much more limited scope of the Greek expeditionary force, limited exclusively towards the protection and evacuation of its expats, would only serve to help the White cause, by alienating in part the Green Army's concerns and limiting its reaction.
Lastly, even though it may not matter so far along this TL, I feel the urge to highlight that the congress of Sivas was held by Kemal Attaturk a heartbeat away from Pontus, so this action could force him to flee the area and hold the Sivas Congress elsewhere, with the all the implicit loss of prestige this would deal to his nascent nationalist movement, lest he and his followers be apprehended by the Greek forces nearby, that, as much unlikely as a possibility that is, it's still pretty intriguing as a concept to consider.
So dedicating a significant amount of forces towards the protection of Pontus might possibly have significant additional tangible strategic advantages, apart from preventing the Pontic Greek genocide and allowing the Hellenic state to strengthen the efforts of fellow Orthodox Armenian forces/insurgents and even possibly Assyrians and others in the nearby area, all of which would serve as valuable allies against the Turkish forces, on top of laying the foundations, once Greek control of the region is finally stabilized from Turkish guerillas, would thereby open the possibility of a subsequent of a two pronged offensive against Ankara, flanking the city from both east and west simultaneously, proving to be a highly advantageous move strategically, that could even ultimately significantly impact the war's final outcome.
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Do we have any indication that the Russian Revolution is likely to happen in this timeline? We still have a good 70-odd years to go at this point for things to diverge. For that matter, I don't think it's out of the question that Greece could experience some revolutionary agitation of its own later on, depending on how the economy develops. So far its industrial capacity is undeveloped and there isn't much of an urban working class, but as previous posts have discussed, the trend is coming through textiles and other light industry.
I don’t think we’ll be seeing any huge population movements from Russia into Anatolia unless it’s Russia themselves doing it to settle acquisitions they make on the Black Sea (so it wouldn’t be Greek Pontus, it would be Russian Pontus). Russia always kept a fairly firm grip on their population and has a vested interest in not strengthening Greece unless it was their vassal (which the Greeks definitely don’t want). Now, if a Russian civil war happens, you’ll certainly see some refugees going to Greece, but I doubt it would be in sufficient numbers to repopulate Anatolia. The Cossacks will be busy fighting in the war.
Greek majority in Pontus?Where did you get that from? Even according to the Ecumenical Patriarchate , in 1912 OTL Greeks in Pontus were about 26% of the total population. Way too far from being a majority. Not to mention that speculating about resettlement of Cossacks is way too premature. We don't even know if the Russian revolution will happen ITTL (or how it will happen)!
Serpent
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I should had been more specific, I was referring to Greek majority over certain provinces / areas within the greater region of Pontus, like Samsun, Santa, Bafra, Trabzon, Rize etc overall, and honestly, the ecumenical patriarchate sources aren't exactly accurate either, primarily because the Patriarchate can only utilize it's own records for the number of (registered) believers to the Orthodox faith, while there were MANY crypto-christians that could not change their faith back to Orthodoxy by law, as they had nominally converted to Islam (and quite possibly relied on the wages provided by the Ottoman state to those who adopt Islam), something that remained in place even after the Young Turks came into power.
So the Patriarchate really didn't had access to those figures, nor was there any way to properly account for these crypto-christians, at least legally speaking, as both the orthodox church and these people would find themselves in all kinds of trouble with the Ottoman authorities.
So, the further deeper in Anatolia you go, the more crypto-chrnistians you'll come across, cause the more persecute the Orthodox faith is on general lines. E.g. this province of Santa within Pontus, has some 5.000 Greek people, out of which only 51% are openly Christians and some 49% are crypto-christians, it explains everything in the wikipage I've linked to.
And even after 1856, with the Ottoman Reform Edict of 1856 that equalized all citizens regardless of religion (removing the "first citizen" status of the Muslims), while some did changed their status to Christian instead of Crypto-Christians, as pretending to be Muslim was no longer necessary to receive equal rights, some, if not most poorer crypto-christian families would always be content to keep pretending to be Muslim publically, so that they would be able to keep receiving these subsidies that they had so much come to rely upon over the centuries.
Also keep in mind that the Patriarchate was subject to all kinds of pressure and had to avoid pissing the Ottoman authorities at all times, at all costs, as they were essentially hostages to the Sultan in Constantinople and could be subject to all kinds of harsh treatment, from pogroms to imprisonment and corporal punishment, if they did not. So their figures are not really that far off from the Ottoman authorities 1912 census, like any state would do in their place, they'd wanna keep the minority figures intentionally low.
Now, I only have a Greek site as a source for proper detailed population figures for Anatolia, that originate from the earlier works of an ethnological researcher, George K. Scalieris (Γεώργιου Κ. Σκαλιέρη), "People and Tribes of Asia Minor"
(“Λαοί και Φυλαί της Μικράς Ασίας”), first edition June 1922 (πρώτη έκδοση Ιούνιος 1922), republished in 1990 by "ΡΗΣΟΣ" publications, (επανέκδοση
από τις εκδόσεις ΡΗΣΟΣ, 1990), so this site contains these records in some detail, including not exclusively Orthodox Greek people, but also Greek people of all Christian sects, for a figure of 2.660.000 Greek people spread out all across Anatolia, out of 9,9 million people in total, 12,5 millions if one includes Armenia and Kurdistan vilayets too (modern day Turkey borders more or less, without Eastern Thrace however), but it primarily focuses towards debunking the whole "Megali Idea on Anatolia was doomee to fail" concept. Keep in mind that, the owner of the website is Savvas Kalderidis, the greatest Greek geopolitical analyst of the 21st century without a doubt, as well as a former Greek Intelligence agent, so this really isn't some marginalized theory, in fact, the Greek history books that are used over Greek schools use these figures for the Greek populations or Anatolia for decades now, including when I was in school, several years back. (As well as Greek official administrative records)
And yes, all of my remarks are based on several assumptions, mostly that things more or less play out historically when it comes to the Russian Civil War, but, assuming they do, I don't really find this scenario that far fetched.
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Serpent
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And that's from the Ottoman census in wikipedia, gives some pretty low figures but still presents some areas like Samsun as majority Christian.
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That's also not really impossible, after all, the Russian Empire did settle Christian settlers, mostly consisting of Armenians, Greeks and Russians throughout the Kars province/concession from 1878 forward, so given that the Russian Empire acquired the same province solme several decades in advance, I would go a bit further to say that, establishing a Cossack host to guard the area could be quite useful in this era, as it would be much more up to date/modern as a tactic in this period, as for example the Danube Cossack Host that protects Berassabia and Dobruja from Ottoman incursions, only gets disbanded in 1868, that's almost an entire decade from now.
After all, you have the Caucasus Line Cossack Host, settled starting from 1832 in the mountains of Caucasus rn, and more intensively since 1860, it only makes sense militarily speaking for the Russian Empire to seek to cement it's authority further through the establishment of another Cossack host in this far flung territory, given the relative Russian inability to properly control that region at this era, they can barely even control Northern Caucasus yet, hence the Caucasus Line Cossack Host.
But anyhow, I "Most white émigrés left Russia from 1917 to 1920 (estimates vary between 900,000 and 2 million)", a significant chunk of which was Cossacks, after all, "Most émigrés initially fled from Southern Russia and Ukraine to Turkey and then moved to other Slavic countries in Europe (the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland)."
Furthermore, "During the evacuation from the ports of the Crimean peninsula (Sevastopol, Yevpatoria, Kerch, Feodosia, Yalta) a total of 145,693 soldiers and civilians, not counting the crews, were taken on board on 126 ships and "sudenosheks" (small boats and tugs)."
Finally, "The arrival of the February and later the October Revolution caught most Cossacks on the front lines in Kurdistan. The unrequited mountainous peoples took full advantage of the crises, Chechens and Ingush on the Sunzha line wiping out several Cossack stanitsas."
But yeah, this whole premise is based on the possibility that the Russian Civil War plays similarly to IRL and allows for a mass emigration of primarily Cossack refugees to arrive to Anatolia.
And of course, evacuation of the Cossacks and other White emigre takes place as usual, once it becames abandonly clear that the Russian Civil War is lost for the White faction.
Mostly everything I've referred to propably won't have significant impact to the Greco-Turkish War, especially early on, maybe the White Emigre forces would at best serve as some much needed reinforcements later on, but apart from that, the primary advantage that they could provide to the Kingdom of Greece would be their assistance to solidify Greek control over Anatolia in the aftermath of the Greco-Turkish War, in the scenario that Greece somehow manages to win of course. Now, as far as the aforementioned significant Black Sea Greek population goes, those people would come into play much earlier (1917-19) than the White emigre, as they have little to no interest to fight the Russian Civil War and they would be most thankful if they could he evacuated and resettled in Anatolia by the Greek government, something that would be quite helpful to the overall war effort in Anatolia.
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Forget Skalieris. Skalieris was a propaganda work... though with a very interesting background. Skalieri was a Constantinopolitan Greek and one of the main proponents of Greco-Ottomanism, his dad was a close friend of Murad V. His book in 1922 was a last attempt at it, shoort of under the conditions of total war.
The most accurate estimation of Asia Minor and Thrace Greeks in 1914 is from Alexandris at roughly ~2 million. Below his numbers and also Karpat's numbers, for comparison's shake. Neither is counting Greek speaking Muslims which apparently were in the tens of thousands in Pontus. Also Karpat aside other underestimations baked into his source material was not counting Greeks that held Greek or other foreign passports which explains part of the differences particularly in he big cities and the coasts. The empty cells are areas outside the jurisdiction of the patriarchate of Contantinople.
| Karpat | Alexandris | |
| Asian Constantinople | 53896 | 63964 |
| Bursa | 184424 | 262319 |
| Sivas | 75324 | 74632 |
| Konya | 95768 | 74539 |
| Ankara | 46816 | 85242 |
| Kastamon | 26104 | 24349 |
| Trebizont | 260313 | 298183 |
| Smyrna | 319019 | 495936 |
| Adana | 9051 | |
| Ismid | 40048 | 52742 |
| Daradanelles | 8541 | 31165 |
| Erzurum | 4859 | |
| Diyarbekir | 1822 | |
| Elazig-Van | 972 | |
| Constantinople | 188276 | 254641 |
| East Thrace | 224459 | 290690 |
Serpent
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Those are some quite interesting sources you've got there, yet I wouldn't be so quick to completely dismiss Skalieris here, if anything, the seemingly largely inflated figures more than likely refer to all the different regional Greek or Hellenized ethnic identities I'll break down in detail below, like the Greek speaking Muslim people within Pontus and the rest of Anatolia, the Turkish speaking Orthodox Greek people and similarly the Hellenized Lazes people, of both Christian and Muslim faiths alike, most prominent among others.
If one includes all these aforementioned groups, in addition to Islamized Greeks (crypto-christians), I can see the Greek people within Anatolia well above the ~1,5 mil people that your sources quote, hardly taking into consideration all these groups, (which aren't exactly fully Greek, but still), which by lenient accounts would still be at least some ~500 to 600 thousand people, which still doesn't quite bring the total sum close to the 2,6 million Greek people that Skalieris is quoting, but rather somewhere in the middle, akin to 2 to 2,1 mil Greek (or culturally close and thus easily to assimilate to the Greek society) people for Anatolia alone.
Something that makes Skalieris's figures quite less so but still somewhat (+~25%) inflated admittedly.
Also, his work generally serves to highlight the main issue here, the severely monolithic and intentionally undervalued census data by the Ottoman authorities.
The matter of the fact is that, instead of the monolithic common Turkish identity that we're so well acquainted with today, back in those days Anatolia was an anagalmation of several different people/ethnic identities, that had diverging interests to one another, e.g. apart from the main Ottoman identity, the Yörüks people, that were actually quite more friendly with the Greek people. Far from the civic nationalism moderate/secular Islamic based Turkish singular identity that was only established after Kemal's victory in the Greco-Turkish War.
Similarly, like you said, there were quite a lot of Greek speaking muslim people present there, something that was not exclusive to Pontus, but also to Cappadocia, and in many other remote areas of Anatolia, but also the reverse was common in these areas, aka Turkish speaking Greek Orthodox people, most prominent of which would be the Karamanlides people, which were also quite significant numerically speaking (source put them from 100.000 by extremely lenient accounts up 400.000 people by some European researchers).
Given the Kingdom of Greece's success ITL, that has brought considerable liberalization in return, as was to be expected, I would say that would only make it easier for Greece to adopt a more secular and accepting/tolerant policy/worldview ITL speaking, respectful of yet not utterly dominated by the Orthodox church, something that is nessecary for Greece's future success in the depths of Asia Minor, as their ability or inability to properly and fairly appeal to and balance/appease these groups, so that they would not be alienated by the new administration, something that would prove critical towards cementing the Greek hold over these areas, (and eventually even integrate them with the rest of the Greek society in due time), given the diverse identity of the region of Pontus and Cappadocia by extend, (which could very well serve to cement Greek hold over Pontus as resettled refugees, Cappadocia would be way too much to expect anyways, the main thing here is that they are much closer to Pontus than the Greek mainland, so even if they have to march, they would most definately avoid the exhausting IRL immense death march that absolutely devastated their numbers, as the Greek mainland would be some x20 times further distanced than Pontus for these Cappadocians people to walk towards by foot, without any supplies at that, as they were driven from their homes.)
And of course, there is also a significant population of Hellenized Lazes people, both of Christian and Muslim faiths, that could also be fully assimilated into the Greek society in due time, with the proper attention and fair treatment given to those people.
Similarly, the Armenian people, both east and especially west, numbering in the hundreds of thousands (500.000+ just in Western Anatolia), would integrate into Greek society pretty well, especially if an independent Armenia does come to be for whatever reason.
Point being here that proper contacting and ensuring mutually beneficial cooperation with all these aforementioned friendly predisposed ethnic groups would be key to the Greek Kingdom's future efforts to properly take over and subsequently cement its hold over as much of Anatolia as feasible, according to the Megali Idea concept.
Again, the Russian Empire historical tactics at dealing with the diverse (mostly Turkic) peoples within the vastness of the steppes and siberia would be a good example, (but not the only), for the nascent Kingdom of Greece to study and take inspiration from here, given that it comprehends it's own severely more limited capabilities and adjusts its policies for Anatolia accordingly.
Another good point you've brought up would be the usually unaccounted for Greek (and foreign) passport holders residing permanently in Anatolia, that I would expect them to flourish and grow in size ITL compared to IRL, given the considerably better economy Greece possesses IRL speaking, Greek passport holders would grow in numbers ITL alongside Greece's improved economy, as the vast majority of these passport holders were Greek entrepreneurs that immigrated to Anatolia to expand their trade operations there, given the close proximity and business opportunities there.
Finally I feel that's constructive to the overall discussion to say that, without the Greco-Turkish population exchanges of 1923, Greek speaking Turkish people in Mainland Greece, like the Vallahades people in Macedonia (~17.000) or especially the significantly even more numerous Greek speaking Cretan Turks people alongside the Albanian Beys (and their retainers (~24.000), all of whom ITL have opted to stay and will have the opportunity to truly flourish, free of all the sectarian violence that characterized the sociopolitical landscape of Crete through the 19th century and beyond, so, given the Cretan Muslik origins as islamized Greeks in their vast majority, and the close to a century they shall all have at their disposal since the independence war to assimilate to the Greek society, I would say that by the time of the Greco-Turkish War in the 1920s both groups shall be fully Greek, irregardless of their faith.
Bottomline being that all those Greek speaking muslim groups within the Greek mainland, also quite prominent in Epirus ITL that I've not yet mentioned, will in due time assimilate quite well into Greek society and could serve to substantially strengthen the Greek mainland's capabilities by the Greco-Turkish war's time and beyond to support the properly support the efforts towards the integration of Anatolia.
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I have actually read the man. From memory his 2.6 million were only Christians but my problem is not with that, even though the number is probably inflated just as Karpat's is deflated. (Alexandris with Kitromilides actually unearthed the data from the census Greek foreign office had made in conjunction with the Ecumenical patriarchate back at the time for internal use). But then take that table of his (whole book available from univesity of Crete here:
To translate he has:
- Turks and Ottomans
- Cretan Muslims
- Yuruks
- Kizilbash, means Alewis from the Persian name
- Bektashis
- "Turkish looking" Lykians
- "Turkish looking"Pisidians
- "Turkish looking" Lykaonians
- "Turkish looking" Pamphylians
- Isaurians and Cappadocians (by which he means Afshars)
- Gallograeki (yup he means former Hellenized Galatians)
- Turkmens
- "Turkish looking" Bithynians
- Mesochaldeans (no damn idea what George meant here, apparently he invented the term for likely Cryptochristians, of which there were some for certain since they are well attested for trying to switch religion openly after 1856)
- Laz
- Sannoi (again no damn idea but apparently he split them off from Laz)
- Miggrelians and Abkhazians
- Muslim Georgians
- "Ansarites" again Alewis
- Zeybeks (as... Islamized Thrakians)
- Albanians
- Pomaks
- Circassians
- Kurds
- Boniaks
That's an entirely different matter, the first really accurate census of the Muslim population of Anatolia we do have is that of 1927. When researching and writing my Lost Monkeys I used that as a point of reference for what was and was not reasonable.
Yes, no, not quite. The perception of Yuruks, you give above, for example somehow survives, perhaps from making it, into Sotiriou's literature, despite not being corroborated by any hard evidence, they were a Turkish ethnic sub-group. Heck the Ottoman sultans used Yuruks as military colonists nevermind things like this guy. On the other hand you had large numbers of Circassians, Albanians, other Caucasus Muslims, Laz, Pomaks for example getting absorbed. Not to mention things like turning Kurds to "Mountain Turks"
There were. Somewhere in the tens of thousands in Pontus, if memory serves. Language did not necessarily beat religion of course but is... convenient.
400,000... well no. Both Greek and Turkish statistics counted the Karamanlis as Greek despite the language, for a time Kemal tried to invent some supposed "Turk-Orthodox" with Papa-Efthym but this failed miserably. The ~160,000 Greeks in the vilayets of Konya and Ankara though were in their gran majority Karamanlis and for a change the number of Alexandris may be slighty low, Karpate gives ~20,000 more Greeks for the vilayet of Konya so the number may be closer to ~180,000
Yes and no. it's like the joke for North Ireland in the troubles. "But are you a Protestant Jew or a Catholic Jew?". Religion generally trumped language, take the Cretan Muslims stance in the Cretan revolutions or for that matter their perception by their, often literally, Christian brethren as janissaries and their rule of the island before 1821 as "the time of the janissaries"
Frankly I very much doubt there is ANY chance of Pontus directly ruled by Greece ven in the best scenario for Greece. Greece controlling Ionia? With some luck sure. Pontus? Geography hardly helps.
The Laz are both Muslim and speaking a language close to Georgian. Hellenized... nope. Not since the time the Great Comnenes fell at least.
I have no doubt any Armenians or Jews in Greek territory would integrate well.
The Vallahads yes, even in OTL relatively minor changes would had left them back in Greece there were active efforts to that end after all. Cretan Muslims allow me to be a cynic. There were large numbers that quietly returned to Christianity in the late 19th century, other large numbers that made it to Asia Minor before the exchange of populatins and by all accounts were very anti-Greek and then the about 25,000 still in Greece and still Muslim by the time of the exchange of populations that in all likehood would be fully integrated in the long term. Then you have the Pomaks as a group likely to be claimed by everyone...
This thread is great for 2 reasons. Firstly because of the wonderful story that Earl Marshal is telling.
I really enjoyed the 'olympics' chapter. I wonder whether it will end up with a slightly different character in this timeline, with greater emphasis on the historical and greek nature of it. Further, I wonder if Greece can develop a strong sporting infrastructure early enough to become a strong force in the sports world despite their relatively small size. It would be interesting to see a world where Greece can top medal tables like the US, China, and UK can. Russia too I guess.
The second reason is because of discussions like this one about christian populations in the Ottoman Empire. In other threads people can bring up figures and numbers, but only here do they actually start quoting quality sources, dragging up old censuses, especially ones not in English. It would be near impossible to find these sources if you didn't know where to look, so I'm real glad to see these here.
I really enjoyed the 'olympics' chapter. I wonder whether it will end up with a slightly different character in this timeline, with greater emphasis on the historical and greek nature of it. Further, I wonder if Greece can develop a strong sporting infrastructure early enough to become a strong force in the sports world despite their relatively small size. It would be interesting to see a world where Greece can top medal tables like the US, China, and UK can. Russia too I guess.
The second reason is because of discussions like this one about christian populations in the Ottoman Empire. In other threads people can bring up figures and numbers, but only here do they actually start quoting quality sources, dragging up old censuses, especially ones not in English. It would be near impossible to find these sources if you didn't know where to look, so I'm real glad to see these here.
The one possibility of a Greek Pontus, for me, would come out of it being a two-step process—namely, first a Russian Pontus which then breaks free from Russia at some point and then joins with Greece. It’s very unlikely, for one because of all the other ethnic groups that would wind up in a Russian Pontus, but it’s more likely than the Greeks straight conquering it from the Ottomans.
That's the plus side of having fans who either know said regions really well and/or are from there. @Lascaris is Greek, IIRC.
I very much agree with Lascaris' assessment on Skalieris. I cannot consider his work as ethnography. As mentioned, the guy used to invent fictional ethnic groups with not even a remote connection to reality.
What we saw in the Greek Revolution was that when there were bonds of kinship (intermarriage) between the christian and muslim communities, that fact didn't change the otherness or form a common identity. What it did though, was to preclude violence, but even in that case it resulted in expulsion.
In general I agree that there is no chance Pontus becoming a part of Greece. What seems very plausible though is Pontus becoming a russian oblast after the next Russo-Turkish War. Rizunta/Rize is already annexed after all and with the Russians holding Erzurum and having access to the valley of Upper Euphrates, in the next war they will have huge advantages in the Armenian Highlands compared to OTL.
Exactly! Otherwise, we have to completely change the greek ethnogenesis that precedes the POD. In greek (and other balkan) ethnogeneses, religion was the major factor. Different religion was the main attribute of "otherness".
What we saw in the Greek Revolution was that when there were bonds of kinship (intermarriage) between the christian and muslim communities, that fact didn't change the otherness or form a common identity. What it did though, was to preclude violence, but even in that case it resulted in expulsion.
In general I agree that there is no chance Pontus becoming a part of Greece. What seems very plausible though is Pontus becoming a russian oblast after the next Russo-Turkish War. Rizunta/Rize is already annexed after all and with the Russians holding Erzurum and having access to the valley of Upper Euphrates, in the next war they will have huge advantages in the Armenian Highlands compared to OTL.
While potentially losing the St. Louis and Los Angeles Olympics stinks - they both had a huge impact on the cities - the boon to Greece and Athens especially would be nice.
Now that i have understood the reference in the title of the next update i can't wait the political changes and hopefully greece comes in the other side better that before
So I'm not sure how many of you follow Kings and Generals on Youtube, but they just started a series on the Greek War of Independence today which I thought was quite good, although the map they used was a little wonky. If you don't follow them, I would definitely recommend it as they usually post high quality content on a wide variety of historical topics from Alexander the Great to World War II and everything between.
Also, expect the next chapter sometime this weekend.
Also, expect the next chapter sometime this weekend.