Diaspora and Self-Representation: The Case of Greek People's Identity, Fifteenth-Nineteenth Centuries

Abstract

In the long space-time between the late fifteenth and early nineteenth centuries Greek Orthodox people from Southeastern Europe have established communities / "colonies"/ paroikiai in various cities in central, northern Europe, at the Mediterranean and at the Black Sea. The reasons for this were political, cultural and economic. Their establishment in the host cities was a result of their interest and, of course, a consequence of the privileges granted to them by the local authorities, more or less because of their special economic interest. In these diaspora communities Greeks, Serbs, Albanians, Aromunians and Bulgarians, founded their Greek Orthodox churches, and organised their common communities. Very often and, particularly, during the eighteenth century, they conducted different forms of organisation, following their own forms of national identification. The common Orthodox dogma was not sufficient as a combining element. The Jus-nationis took the important place of the Jus religionis . The commercial and intellectual networks, built by these diaspora Greek Orthodox people, were another interesting phenomenon of this long space-time. The coexistence of Greek Orthodox with other Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant, Armenian, Jewish people in the diaspora led, from the mid-eighteenth century, to the more or less intense strengthening of the 'us' towards to the 'others'. The formation of the nation states in Southeastern Europe (the first among them being the Greek one, in 1830) was also a result of this long and interesting process of national identification.