The Greek Constitutive Story and the Compulsory Population Exchange of 1923

The Hellenic Heritage Foundation, the Hellenic Canadian Academics Association of Ontario (HCAAO) and the Hellenic Studies Annual Lecture: "The Greek Constitutive Story and the Compulsory Population Exchange of 1923"

The 1923 compulsory population exchange between Greece and Turkey has been used as an important precedent in the discourse concerning conflict resolution in the post-WWII context; it has been singled out as an important causal factor for the development of the two national states; and, it has spurred a critical debate in the social sciences about the adverse humanitarian consequences and traumatic effects of such policies. But what effect did the exchange have on the Greek constitutive story? In this presentation, I intend to put the events into a larger historical context of the spread of nationalist ideology through mass schooling, the consequent aversion to alien rule, and the homogenizing imperative capturing the imagination of most leaders of existing and aspiring national states. Within such a context, the population exchange was one of the many policies that governing elites could use to render the borders of the state congruent with those of the nation, the most critical element of nationalist ideology. Thus, modernity in Southeast Europe took the form of ethnic separation, not integration or multiculturalism.

About the speaker:

Harris Mylonas is Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at George Washington University and editor-in-chief of Nationalities Papers. His research contributes to our understanding of states’ management of diversity that may originate from national minorities, immigrants, diasporas, or refugees. He is the author of The Politics of Nation-Building: Making Co-Nationals, Refugees, and Minorities (Cambridge University Press, 2012), for which he won the European Studies Book Award as well as The Peter Katzenstein Book Prize. He has co-edited two volumes, Enemies Within: The Global Politics of Fifth Columns (Oxford University Press, 2022; w/ Scott Radnitz) and The Microfoundations of Diaspora Politics (Routledge, 2022; w/ Alexandra Délano Alonso). His forthcoming book, co-authored with Maya Tudor, is entitled Varieties of Nationalism: Communities, Narratives, Identities (Cambridge University Press). Mylonas’ work has also been published in the Annual Review of Political Science, Perspectives on Politics, Comparative Political Studies, Security Studies, European Journal of Political Research, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Territory, Politics, Governance, Nations and Nationalism, Social Science Quarterly, Nationalities Papers, Ethnopolitics, and various edited volumes. Mylonas received his Ph.D. from Yale University, and continued his post-doctoral work at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies as an Academy Scholar.

Sponsored by The Hellenic Heritage Foundation, Hellenic Canadian Academics Association of Ontario (HCAAO), and the Hellenic Studies Initiative at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy.

Co-Sponsored by the Centre for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies

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