You can use these geography problems to explain many pre-modern economic problems. But to extend them to the industrial period is poor economics. Industrial economies are far less constrained to geography. It's why you see places like Poland behind places like Italy. These mountain by GDP calculations are absurd and just coincidences. The hot and mountainous thing is absurd, as California is just as hot and mountainous and is one of the richest places in the world. Industrial economies grow because of an access to capital and property rights that reward investment. It's due to inclusive institutions as opposed to extractive institutions. There's a reason that China didn't industrialize while Japan did, even though China has a far better climate and terrain and huge amounts of capital. There's a reason Belgium industrialized before the Po Valley.
Pride Goes Before a Fall: A Revolutionary Greece Timeline
- Thread starter Earl Marshal
- Start date
Now we are going into modern politics which I'm averse to do but in the hypothetical the government in 2003-2009 hadn't managed to mismanage the economy to the extent it did today we'd be talking about Greece having done quite well. But seen long term Greece still managed for quite long periods since independence to be growing faster than the European average, including rivaling Japan in growth rates in the generation post 1945, despite a very bad starting situation in 1830, catastrophic damage in ww2 and extensive economic loss in 1922.
I really want it to and speaking about one other regionalism is a big problem for Greece and is it still problem in this timeline? or have you ended it early
Well, we have Leo II coming to power eventually, and he's been described as roughly similar to his OTL half-brother. So ...
What i want from this greece is to be politically more mature and to separate the state from the government and of course as less corrupt as possible
I don't want to give away too much here, but the Megali Idea is already a thing in this timeline. So as I see it, the Greeks ITTL will almost certainly attempt to fulfill the Megali Idea as they very nearly did in OTL and with their improved starting point here they may pull it off ITTL.
The people of Greece, aside from the few Albanians and Philhellenes scattered across the country, refer to themselves as Greeks first and foremost. That being said, regionalism is still a thing with Cretans being distinguishable from Moreots who are distinguishable from the Arvanites etc, but these differences generally amount to different dress or local traditions and slight differences in dialect. Overall, most speak Demotic or Katharevousa Greek and most are followers of the Greek Orthodox Church with a few others being Roman Catholics or Protestants or Muslims etc.
I have big plans in store for Prince Constantine, whose ambitions will be directed a little closer to home unlike his OTL counterpart.
Well they are off to a good start so far, but I won't make any promises for the future.
I completely agree, baring genocide and ethnic cleansing, which would elicit all sorts of new problems in an of itself, it's not really possible at this point in time for Greece to control all of Anatolia. The best they could do in my opinion is the Anatolian coast, specifically the coasts along the Aegean and Black Seas, but even that would be tough to pull off.
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Also risks losing international support. Them stirring up ethnic trouble might have some.... downsides. Other countries tend to be suspicious.
I feel like Greece has three paths to go on when defining its nationality:
There is the Hellenic path, which is the narrowest and the one Greece followed OTL and probably this TL. It primarily includes speakers of the Greek languages, with Orthodox Christianity as a secondary identity.
There is the Rumelian path, which tries to step into the footsteps of the Basileia Rhōmaiōn. It defines itself primarily by the Greek Orthodox Church, with Greek merely as a lingua franca for Rumelians. This is a more open path, including many Bulgarians and people in Anatolia, but it would also be viewed as backwards and medieval.
Then there is the Alexandrian path. This is the least likely in my opinion, but the most open to attracting new subjects to the Kingdom. This would be the presentation of the Greek state as a multiethnic, multireligious state based upon the tenets of Hellenic culture and the unifying presence of the Basileus. Basically Ottomanism, but from Athens. This state would lean very much on both the presence of the Roman Empire and the Hellenic influences throughout Anatolia and Rumelia. It would try to connect people's identities more with the ruins of ancient cities like Troy or the remains of bathhouses and amphitheaters throughout their cities to point to a shared heritage and culture. They would point out similarities in dress of the Bulgarians, Greeks, and Turks. It would try to define an "Aegean Race" that points to shared physiological features between the ethnicities. It's a hard sell, but stupider things have been accomplished in history.
EDIT: They can frame the Bulgarian and Turkish languages like many Britons do the English language. Their true heritage being that of Arthur and Boudicca, not that of Beowulf and the Saxons. Or at the very least, Beowulf is merely a part of a heritage dominated by Britons like Arthur.
There is the Hellenic path, which is the narrowest and the one Greece followed OTL and probably this TL. It primarily includes speakers of the Greek languages, with Orthodox Christianity as a secondary identity.
There is the Rumelian path, which tries to step into the footsteps of the Basileia Rhōmaiōn. It defines itself primarily by the Greek Orthodox Church, with Greek merely as a lingua franca for Rumelians. This is a more open path, including many Bulgarians and people in Anatolia, but it would also be viewed as backwards and medieval.
Then there is the Alexandrian path. This is the least likely in my opinion, but the most open to attracting new subjects to the Kingdom. This would be the presentation of the Greek state as a multiethnic, multireligious state based upon the tenets of Hellenic culture and the unifying presence of the Basileus. Basically Ottomanism, but from Athens. This state would lean very much on both the presence of the Roman Empire and the Hellenic influences throughout Anatolia and Rumelia. It would try to connect people's identities more with the ruins of ancient cities like Troy or the remains of bathhouses and amphitheaters throughout their cities to point to a shared heritage and culture. They would point out similarities in dress of the Bulgarians, Greeks, and Turks. It would try to define an "Aegean Race" that points to shared physiological features between the ethnicities. It's a hard sell, but stupider things have been accomplished in history.
EDIT: They can frame the Bulgarian and Turkish languages like many Britons do the English language. Their true heritage being that of Arthur and Boudicca, not that of Beowulf and the Saxons. Or at the very least, Beowulf is merely a part of a heritage dominated by Britons like Arthur.
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Tbh I think OTL option is almost certain, when trying to define their nationality it’s unlikely that the Greeks will just ignore that they have a handy Greek ethnic group to do it with. When asking the question who are we? The obvious answer that arises is people of a specific ethnic group. But where there is room around the edges is what comes after that. It’s still almost certain that the Greek Orthodox Church will be seen a key pillar alongside ethnicity as to what a “true” Greek is, but there is definitely room for a more successful Greece to think of itself as a more broad protector of Christians in the Ottoman Empire or formerly in the ottomans, and maybe it’s Christianity that becomes more of a defining factor of Greek nationality with orthodoxy being first among the “Greek” Christian faiths rather than exclusive, this would also fit a national narrative of Christian struggle against the Muslim oppressor, as being part of what makes Greece Greek. But it’s still almost certainly going to be a much more narrow definition than modern sensibilities would prefer.
Well and Bosnian were
accepted into Greek as equals into greek culture especially Albanian because they fought in the war together so I think the second option is possible
In my opinion the latter two ideas, while far healthier for fair treatment of minorities, stopped being a possibility as soon as foreign Panhellenes got involved in the Greek independence movement. Their Romantic, nationalist view of Greece so closely tied to ancient Greece irrevocably shaped the local view of Greek people and the Greek nation. Even without them, though, the nationalist question very early on became “are you an ethnic Greek?” over “are you a cultural Greek?” The self-identification of the Arvanite Souliotes as Greek was a critical part of the national movement, for instance.
Now, I also think that it’s possible that Greek self-identity and nationalism could continue to shift if they become a more Megali state. Taking Constantinople, for instance, would practically dictate a rapid identification of the Greek monarchy with Byzantine royalty. It would also mean ruling over large, developed territories where the wealthier, educated classes speak languages other than Greek, which without a genocide or forced dispossession would force the nation to accept these people as some sort of Greek as well.
I’m not so sure they are tbh, allies yes, but as Greeks? I think it much more likely they are seen as Albanian and Bosnian allies in the struggle against the ottomans. But they even have their own separate national consciousness at this point, at least I’m certain the Serbs and Croats in Bosnia do and that alone makes it very unlikely that they are going to end up being seen as Greek.
I’m actually not aware of any nation that did not have race or ethnicity in this time period as at least part of their national consciousness, if they had one that is.
I feel like the Alexandrian path has sailed and won't happen now
the other 2 could happen and the rumelian path would be better if megial idea of Greece is pursed
And how exactly that's any different than OTL? The monarchy WAS identified with Byzantine royalty, Constantine wasn't named Constantine by accident nor were the attempts to construct a genealogy connecting George I to the Palaiologues by monarchists accidental. As for the second, and leaving aside that the middle classes of the Ottoman empire were most conveniently from the Greek point of view to a large extend Greek, how exactly does it differ from the efforts to assimilate the Salonica Jewish community through the 1920s and the 1930s for example?
And the nationalist question kept being "Do you believe you are Greek?" Which is how Athens is full of buildings from Vlach national benefactors (the National Technical University of Athens most notable amongst them, Averof is named after another, or how Grekoman is a good word south of the current border and an insult north of it.
That’s fair about the monarchy, but it would be a much higher degree of association if the kings were ruling from Constantinople in some sort of restored Great Palace as Emperors!
I was under the impression that the Aromanians and Arvanites held themselves to be Greek despite their original spoken languages—was it not an ethnic association, then, but actually a cultural one? Was the only true reason that, say, the Bulgarians didn’t identify with the Greek identity that they had their own national awakening?
If that’s the case, then issues with ethnic minorities in conquered territories should be quite significant for a hypothetical Megali Greece ITTL. The Bulgarians have had a national identity since at least the 1750s, the Turks have their Muslim faith and prestigious language even if their proper national identity has not yet formed, and so on...
What's the difference in the first place? As you say the Arvanites for example self-identified as Greeks. Other Greeks identified them in turn as Greeks despite the language difference. And when local Arvanite communities established schools for themselves they where teaching Greek. So how many ethnic groups do you have here? You can define multiple ethno-linguistic groups but by the same token you have a single ethno-national group. What about Turkish Cretans who spoke Cretan Greek, had the same customs, often enough remembered their recent ancestors converting and yet self-identified as Turks? 00On the reverse what about the ones who were starting to identify as Greeks or both by the time of the population exchange?
As for the Bulgarians, why it should be obvious from the very stories of several of the leading figures in the Bulgarian national awakening? How many of them started life in Greek schools in the late 18th and first half of the 19th century? How many of their fellow pupils in the very same schools came out Greek nationalists? It's hardly accidental to what degree the Bulgarian national awakening went over the "you are not Greek and Greek clergy and merchants exploit you" part. Paisius couldn't put it any more openly "Why are you ashamed of your great history and your great language and why do you leave it to turn yourselves into Greeks? Why do you think they are any better than you? Well, here you're right because did you see a Greek leave his country and ancestry like you do?"
Industrialization after all is a human mentality, a mindset, and not a natural chains of events. Or the Greeks TTL will develop an industrial thought in their minds or not. TTL they are on the good path.
What they couldn't compensate in quantity must do in quality.
My point is that by the time Greece IOTL and ITTL expands into the Megali territories the other ethno-linguistic groups in those regions will have their own ethno-national identities. The insurmountable hill will especially be religion, as nothing ITTL has changed the connection between ethnicity and religion that so defined Balkan identity. The Cretan Turks, Vallahades, and so on were rejected as Greek by many nationalists no matter their origin because of their faith, so even if they remain in Crete ITTL they will likely face repression. Same issue with Bulgarians in Macedonia and Thrace unless the Bulgarian Patriarchate is butterflied, which seems unlikely. There will need to be a change in mindset which so far does not seem to be developing—but it could!
For the Bulgarians specifically I don’t see how they won’t react against Greek cultural domination with hostility the same as IOTL. It is true that Greeks dominated the cultural Christian sphere in the Ottoman Empire and that the Bulgarians resisted that domination in response—greater Greek wealth and influence won’t change things for passionate nationalists even if it does help sway, say, the Bitola region to the Greeks.