In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

3. Some Particularities of Greek Socio-Economic Development Greek nationalism, however, did not draw its strength solely from an imaginary postulating the indisputable superiority of the Greek nation. It was nurtured both psychologically and materially by a world much bigger and more affluent than the Greek kingdom itself. Despite the fact that the fortunes of this world were linked to centers external to the Greek kingdom, it influenced mainland Greece in multiple ways, from the realm of ideology to economics and social mobility. The constant flow of material and human resources between the world of the Greek Diaspora communities and the world of the Greek kingdom explains some particularities in the development of the Greek state. The “Greeks” embarked on the road to economic prosperity and social ascendancy in the last two centuries of the Ottoman Empire, due to extended commercial and credit activities which allowed them to assume to an extent the position of a “nation-class,” and along with other nationalities/groups (Levantines, Jews, Armenians) to function as intermediaries in the process of opening up the Eastern periphery to the intrusion of European capitalism.24 The creation of the Greek Kingdom (1832) signified both the birth of a national center and delineated at the same time a more dynamic world exterior to it—a broad network of Greek Diaspora communities, stretching from Russia to Egypt and from the shores of the Ottoman Empire to Trieste, Livorno, Marseilles and London. It is needless to emphasize the seminal role, generically speaking, played by diasporic communities in the development of their respective nation-states. One need think only of the catalytic intellectual influence of the Habsburg Serbs on the Serbian principality or the impact of the Istanbul- and Bucharest-based Bulgarian communities in the development of the Bulgarian liberation movement. The significant difference, however, between Greece and its two northern neighbors consists in the fact that whereas with the creation of the nation states in Bulgaria and Serbia the Diaspora communities tended to abate, in the case of Greece the Diaspora communities tended to expand during the nineteenth century. The creation of the Greek state did not sig- 323 3. Some Particularities of Greek Socio-Economic Development nify the end of dispersion; on the contrary, it reinforced it. The Greek expatriate communities continued to flourish and were stronger, more affluent and more diversified than the communities of the national center .25 The two worlds (of the Kingdom and Diaspora) were tangential but not synonymous. The connection came to an end only after the catastrophe of 1922, when what Konstantinos Tsoukalas has pointedly called the “dependent Greek micro-empire of the Mediterranean periphery ” collapsed.26 The existence of this dual world goes to explain some distinctive characteristics of the Greek economy. Whereas Greece, typologically speaking, showed little differentiation to its northern neighbors in that it remained in essence an agrarian country with an underdeveloped industry , the economic sector and the state profited from an increment in the flow of non-visible resources and capital mobility. In other words, if criteria like occupation and domestic production are used, Greece was in the beginning of the twentieth century, and would remain until the 1960s, an agrarian country. [However], while the agrarian sector would still dominate the economy, it was not the sector that set the tone of economic life. The mass of the agrarian sector contributed more to the inertia of the economy than to its mutation. Change did not come … from the ambiguous industrial development…, but rather from the development of the tertiary sector which, especially in the beginning of the twentieth century, developed rapidly. Banking, pecuniary activities and shipping were [the activities] with the fastest growth rate and the highest profits for invested capital, a circumstance that bestowed the protagonists with particular glamour and prestige.27 The Greek state owed its economic prosperity to the direct or indirect support of the Greeks of the Diaspora and their generous contributions , which flowed as a kind of a permanent pecuniary “injection” into the state mechanism, allowing for its over-inflated and constantly expansive character. According to Tsoukalas’ estimates of the holistic contribution of imported capital to the state finances was as high if not higher than the country’s GNP. For example, donations by Diaspora magnates were seminal for the development of the educational system, while the sponsored exceeded by far the state budget for education.28 According to Tsoukalas, it was precisely this constantly expansive state sector that allowed also for a certain...

Share