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Shortest History
Η πιο μικρή ιστορία της Ελλάδας
Οι περισσότεροι από εμάς ξέρουμε στην πραγματικότητα πολύ λίγα πράγματα για τη μακραίωνη ιστορία της Ελλάδας. Ακόμα και αν ο Περικλής και ο Παρθενώνας μάς είναι σχετικά οικείοι, τι γνωρίζουμε για μια τόσο σημαντική προσωπικότητα όπως ο Επαμεινώνδας; Όλοι θυμόμαστε με κάθε ευκαιρία τα επιτεύγματα και τις κατακτήσεις του Μεγάλου Αλεξάνδρου, αλλά σπάνια αναφερόμαστε στην πολύ σημαντική ελληνιστική περίοδο. Όταν ακούμε Βυζάντιο, φέρνουμε συχνά στον νου μας έναν κόσμο όπου κυριαρχούσαν οι ίντριγκες και οι συνωμοσίες. Και όμως, η Βυζαντινή Αυτοκρατορία έζησε περισσότερα από 1.000 χρόνια, ήταν εν πολλοίς ελληνική, και έσωσε δύο φορές την Ευρώπη από εξ ανατολών εισβολές. Αλλά και η Ιστορία της σύγχρονης Ελλάδας γράφεται μέσα από μια «εντυπωσιακή» διαδοχή θριάμβων και καταστροφών, από την επανάσταση του 1821 και τη Μεγάλη Ιδέα, τον Εθνικό Διχασμό και τη Μικρασιατική Καταστροφή ως την Κατοχή και τον Εμφύλιο, τη δικτατορία των συνταγματαρχών και τη Μεταπολίτευση, τα χρόνια της αφθονίας αλλά και τα χρόνια της κρίσης, των μνημονίων και της απειλής του Grexit.
344 pages, Paperback
Published April 1, 2023
204 people are currently reading
1233 people want to read
About the author
James Heneage
11 books30 followersJames Heneage has been fascinated by history from an early age, in particular the rise and fall of empires. He was the founder of the Ottakar’s chain of bookshops which, between 1987 and 2006 grew to 150 branches before being bought by Waterstones. James spent these twenty years reading and researching historical subjects before settling on the end of the Byzantine Empire as the period he wanted to write about.
After Ottakar’s, he chaired the Cheltenham Literary Festival before setting up his own festival entirely devoted to history with author James Holland. The Daily Mail Chalke Valley History Festival is now in its third year and attracts around 30,000 people to its menu of talks, debates and living history displays.
The first of his Mistra Chronicles, The Walls of Byzantium, was launched at the Festival in June 2013.
After Ottakar’s, he chaired the Cheltenham Literary Festival before setting up his own festival entirely devoted to history with author James Holland. The Daily Mail Chalke Valley History Festival is now in its third year and attracts around 30,000 people to its menu of talks, debates and living history displays.
The first of his Mistra Chronicles, The Walls of Byzantium, was launched at the Festival in June 2013.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 118 reviews
February 1, 2023
During a short stay in Greece twenty years ago and wondering about which book to read on its history, a student of urban history gave me Modern Greece: A Short History(by C.M. Woodhouse) to read, a book which covered the period from the foundation of Constantine until the defeat of Papandreou and the eclipse of his socialism in 1989. Because The Shortest History of Greece: The Odyssey of a Nation from Myth to Modernity promised both a concise brushing off and a stretch to earlier history as well as the most recent political and economic developments in one compact volume, I was very much tempted by the title and scope of this book. Faithful to its title, The Shortest History of Greece: The Odyssey of a Nation from Myth to Modernity offers a fast-paced tour through three millennia of Greek history – encompassing the Greek peoples as well as the modern nation state - from the Bronze Age, ancient (archaic and classical) Greece, Roman rule, the Byzantine period, Ottoman rule, the birth of the modern Greek nation state, the turbulent periods of the wars (Balkan war, WWI, Greco-Turkish war, WWII, Greek civil war) the military dictatorship, third Hellenic republic until Greece in the Eurozone and the election of the first female president of Greece, Katerina Sakellaropolou.
As history education at school came chopped up in periods spread over the six years of secondary school, it was quite satisfying and enlightening to see some of the pieces stitched together chronologically – after our short foray into ancient Greece, I only remember Greece as such mentioned sidelong as the nation state that shortly after independence under the pressure of the great powers offered its throne to Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, who turned the offer down to become the first king of Belgium in 1831 – Belgium also needed to import a king to make independence palatable on the international forum. As history is never finished, in a next update Heneage can add the death of Constantine II in January 2023. He was the last king of Greece, who was forced into exile in 1967 by the military rulers who later abolished the monarchy.
On the Greek revolutionaries rising up against the Ottoman Empire it was rewarding to see the puzzle piece of one of my favourite paintings of Delacroix falling into place:
Missolonghi was a human tragedy and a military disaster, but it inspired a masterpiece of propaganda at the very moment when it was needed. The great French painter Eugène Delacroix had already done his bit for the cause: at the Paris Salon of 1824 he’d presented his “Massacre at Chios” to the a horrified French public. Now, in just six months, he completed his Greece on the ruins of Missolonghi. The huge painting depicted a beautiful woman kneeling among the town’s ruins with her arms open in entreaty. People queued around the block to see it, and its message was unmistakable: Greece Needs You.
What particularly stayed with me from Woodhouse’s Modern Greece: A Short History were some of the remarkable dark pages in modern Greek history, the civil war, the Colonel’s regime. This time I was particularly struck by the mass population exchanges between Greece and Turkey in 1923 based on religious obedience which reminded me of what happened later in India and Pakistan with Partition. What followed after those harrowing times was admittedly less bloody and turbulent, but Heanage doesn’t shy away from more recent events which are in their own way also depressing, naming the despair and high suicide rates during the austerity the EU imposed and subsequent mass emigration, which, after the crisis, inspired the prime minister in 2019 to dedicate his administration to his children’s generation, of whom many still abroad, quoting an old Epirote song:
‘My migrant birds, scattered across the world,
Your beautiful youth has grown old in foreign lands.'
The chronological exposé is interspersed with maps, illustration and paintings and small, instructive vignettes on specific themes, anecdotes and historical figures (e.g. on philosophy, Polybius, asides on “Apostles to the Slavs” Cyril and Methodius, the Elgin marbles) and garnished with quotes from classic historiographers to modern poets and composers (Theodorakis, Cavafy, Seferis).
James Heneage makes no secret of his adulation of what he considers the values of classic Greece. He definitely is a philhellene and sees fusion of civilisation as the gift of the Greeks to the world: Mycenaean with Minoan, Macedonian with Persian, Greek with Roman, Greek with renaissance European, substantiating his view with well-chosen quotes like this one on the powerful influence of Greek culture on the Roman Empire :
Captive Greece captured her rude conqueror (Horace (65-8 BCE)
Heneage’s admiration for the democracy of the polis of ancient Athens runs a leitmotiv through the book. He takes that concept of democracy as a touchstone and standard to assess later political institutions and organisations, including the challenges and threats in current times. Along his discourse he points out the differences in democracies of the direct versus the representative kind and which are the flanking conditions that are needed to underpin (direct) democracy: the values of education (paideia), thumos (our need to be valued) and philothimo (the honor that comes from the doing the right things) encouraging citizens to think of personal happiness as indivisible of that of the community, including future generations, unlike the representative democracy dominated by political parties that are vulnerable to takeover. He applauds small scale initiatives and experiments approximating his dream of the polis-style, direct democracy, like the one of the German-speaking community in East Belgium, which enables him to end on a positive, hopeful note.
As I am not knowledgeable in Greek history I cannot assess the quality of this book but thought it compulsively readable and well-written, living up to the expectations raised by the title and worth a second read in the future.
(I read an ARC of the North American and updated edition of this book, kindly provided by NetGalley, The Experiment and the author).
As history education at school came chopped up in periods spread over the six years of secondary school, it was quite satisfying and enlightening to see some of the pieces stitched together chronologically – after our short foray into ancient Greece, I only remember Greece as such mentioned sidelong as the nation state that shortly after independence under the pressure of the great powers offered its throne to Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, who turned the offer down to become the first king of Belgium in 1831 – Belgium also needed to import a king to make independence palatable on the international forum. As history is never finished, in a next update Heneage can add the death of Constantine II in January 2023. He was the last king of Greece, who was forced into exile in 1967 by the military rulers who later abolished the monarchy.
On the Greek revolutionaries rising up against the Ottoman Empire it was rewarding to see the puzzle piece of one of my favourite paintings of Delacroix falling into place:
Missolonghi was a human tragedy and a military disaster, but it inspired a masterpiece of propaganda at the very moment when it was needed. The great French painter Eugène Delacroix had already done his bit for the cause: at the Paris Salon of 1824 he’d presented his “Massacre at Chios” to the a horrified French public. Now, in just six months, he completed his Greece on the ruins of Missolonghi. The huge painting depicted a beautiful woman kneeling among the town’s ruins with her arms open in entreaty. People queued around the block to see it, and its message was unmistakable: Greece Needs You.
What particularly stayed with me from Woodhouse’s Modern Greece: A Short History were some of the remarkable dark pages in modern Greek history, the civil war, the Colonel’s regime. This time I was particularly struck by the mass population exchanges between Greece and Turkey in 1923 based on religious obedience which reminded me of what happened later in India and Pakistan with Partition. What followed after those harrowing times was admittedly less bloody and turbulent, but Heanage doesn’t shy away from more recent events which are in their own way also depressing, naming the despair and high suicide rates during the austerity the EU imposed and subsequent mass emigration, which, after the crisis, inspired the prime minister in 2019 to dedicate his administration to his children’s generation, of whom many still abroad, quoting an old Epirote song:
‘My migrant birds, scattered across the world,
Your beautiful youth has grown old in foreign lands.'
The chronological exposé is interspersed with maps, illustration and paintings and small, instructive vignettes on specific themes, anecdotes and historical figures (e.g. on philosophy, Polybius, asides on “Apostles to the Slavs” Cyril and Methodius, the Elgin marbles) and garnished with quotes from classic historiographers to modern poets and composers (Theodorakis, Cavafy, Seferis).
James Heneage makes no secret of his adulation of what he considers the values of classic Greece. He definitely is a philhellene and sees fusion of civilisation as the gift of the Greeks to the world: Mycenaean with Minoan, Macedonian with Persian, Greek with Roman, Greek with renaissance European, substantiating his view with well-chosen quotes like this one on the powerful influence of Greek culture on the Roman Empire :
Captive Greece captured her rude conqueror (Horace (65-8 BCE)
Heneage’s admiration for the democracy of the polis of ancient Athens runs a leitmotiv through the book. He takes that concept of democracy as a touchstone and standard to assess later political institutions and organisations, including the challenges and threats in current times. Along his discourse he points out the differences in democracies of the direct versus the representative kind and which are the flanking conditions that are needed to underpin (direct) democracy: the values of education (paideia), thumos (our need to be valued) and philothimo (the honor that comes from the doing the right things) encouraging citizens to think of personal happiness as indivisible of that of the community, including future generations, unlike the representative democracy dominated by political parties that are vulnerable to takeover. He applauds small scale initiatives and experiments approximating his dream of the polis-style, direct democracy, like the one of the German-speaking community in East Belgium, which enables him to end on a positive, hopeful note.
As I am not knowledgeable in Greek history I cannot assess the quality of this book but thought it compulsively readable and well-written, living up to the expectations raised by the title and worth a second read in the future.
(I read an ARC of the North American and updated edition of this book, kindly provided by NetGalley, The Experiment and the author).
January 31, 2023
I think I know a little about Greek Mythology, some of the philosophical works, the interaction with the Roman Empire, the 2004 win in football’s Euros and the Athens Olympics in the same year. I’m also aware it’s a beautiful country.
The Shortest History of Greece by James Heneage has filled in the huge gaps of knowledge I have of around 3 millennia in around 250 pages. This book achieves this in a way that is easy to digest and interesting. The book contains, maps, photos, and information boxes so the reader isn’t presented by page after page of slabs of text – it’s easy on the eye.
The last 200 years was the most fascinating. I just didn’t realise how much change, disruption and violence the people of Greece have been through during this period. There were Civil Wars, Invasions by the Ottomans, Italians, Nazis – interference by so-called super-powers, lots of internal political shenanigans and crippling foreign debt – it makes one wonder how Greece is still standing. The resilience of the Greeks is staggering.
There is also sufficient detail here and some good references used by the author – for a reader to follow up on to hunt down more information. For example, I am fascinated by the Greek Statesman Eleftherios Venizelos (b1864 - d1936), I will also read more about WWII and the chaotic period afterwards,
There is a lot here, it packs a punch and is a great foundation to form a basis for further reading.
Many thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for furnishing me with a copy in exchange for my review.
5 Stars
The Shortest History of Greece by James Heneage has filled in the huge gaps of knowledge I have of around 3 millennia in around 250 pages. This book achieves this in a way that is easy to digest and interesting. The book contains, maps, photos, and information boxes so the reader isn’t presented by page after page of slabs of text – it’s easy on the eye.
The last 200 years was the most fascinating. I just didn’t realise how much change, disruption and violence the people of Greece have been through during this period. There were Civil Wars, Invasions by the Ottomans, Italians, Nazis – interference by so-called super-powers, lots of internal political shenanigans and crippling foreign debt – it makes one wonder how Greece is still standing. The resilience of the Greeks is staggering.
There is also sufficient detail here and some good references used by the author – for a reader to follow up on to hunt down more information. For example, I am fascinated by the Greek Statesman Eleftherios Venizelos (b1864 - d1936), I will also read more about WWII and the chaotic period afterwards,
There is a lot here, it packs a punch and is a great foundation to form a basis for further reading.
Many thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for furnishing me with a copy in exchange for my review.
5 Stars
February 1, 2024
There's a lot of history to cover and this book manages to provide the right amount of information and interesting anecdotes to keep the reader enraptured for the entire time.
I think one area where it might be criticised is in its assertion that Athens was the birthplace of democracy when it really wasn't any such thing.
All the great thinkers and statesmen are included including people such as Epaminondas of Thebes and Polybius the historian who should be much better known than they are. Polybius's anacyclosis cycle is rather thought-provoking given that he coined the term ochlocracy - rule of the mob - coming after democracy and before anarchy, which is something we could well be witnessing in the western world today.
One quotation which modern-day politicians should heed. This is Tacitus referring to the Roman destruction of Corinth:
The Romans created a wilderness and called it peace
I think one area where it might be criticised is in its assertion that Athens was the birthplace of democracy when it really wasn't any such thing.
All the great thinkers and statesmen are included including people such as Epaminondas of Thebes and Polybius the historian who should be much better known than they are. Polybius's anacyclosis cycle is rather thought-provoking given that he coined the term ochlocracy - rule of the mob - coming after democracy and before anarchy, which is something we could well be witnessing in the western world today.
One quotation which modern-day politicians should heed. This is Tacitus referring to the Roman destruction of Corinth:
The Romans created a wilderness and called it peace
April 24, 2022
Read it in one shot, in less than 10 hours.
Beautifully storified and paced, the author retells all of Greek history (well, ok, the salient points, but all 3000 years of them!) in a manner that makes it difficult to put the book down.
Having lived through the last few decades, heard many stories about the last century from parents and grandparents, and studied ancient greek history, I found this summary fascinating.
What I loved the most was that unlike academic texts, it wasn’t boring despite remaining factual, and helped make certain connections that a casual reader might not make on their own.
Absolutely worth reading to understand more about how governments can rise and fall. Greece has literally had them all.
Beautifully storified and paced, the author retells all of Greek history (well, ok, the salient points, but all 3000 years of them!) in a manner that makes it difficult to put the book down.
Having lived through the last few decades, heard many stories about the last century from parents and grandparents, and studied ancient greek history, I found this summary fascinating.
What I loved the most was that unlike academic texts, it wasn’t boring despite remaining factual, and helped make certain connections that a casual reader might not make on their own.
Absolutely worth reading to understand more about how governments can rise and fall. Greece has literally had them all.
January 2, 2022
The back of this book greatly overestimated my reading ability when it said I could finish it in a day.
May 15, 2023
Read in a day. Remember for a lifetime.
So reads the blurb on the back of this book.
Instead, I read it in about a week and have actively been forgetting it in the 45 minutes since I set it down.
A history of Greece through the lens of a British historical novelist writing in 2020. Its predictably useless and uninsightful politics tempt me to give the book 1 star until I remember that this book is definitely not written for me or for anyone who might be looking for a book that doesn’t advertise itself as possibly read and digested in a day.
This book is for American and British travelers who are going to Greece and who will get to the airport two hours early, drink a Starbucks coffee, mosey around in shops, pay $15 for this book in the airport bookstore, board their flight, and read it for 11 minutes until the plane’s media system turns on, at which point they’ll sheepishly stuff the book in the pouch of the seat in front of them and fall asleep watching the latest Marvel movie.
If they manage to finish this book, it’ll be on a Naxos beach and the only thing they might “remember for a lifetime” will be the confirmation of their pre-conceived ideas of Greek politics that they share with the author.
The way to make something of a book like this is to write a list of all the names and events in the country’s history that interest you and then go read about them in better books.
For that, The Shortest History of Greece gets a second star. It has a lot of names and is indeed a whole history of Greece, from the earliest myths to the latest election.
So reads the blurb on the back of this book.
Instead, I read it in about a week and have actively been forgetting it in the 45 minutes since I set it down.
A history of Greece through the lens of a British historical novelist writing in 2020. Its predictably useless and uninsightful politics tempt me to give the book 1 star until I remember that this book is definitely not written for me or for anyone who might be looking for a book that doesn’t advertise itself as possibly read and digested in a day.
This book is for American and British travelers who are going to Greece and who will get to the airport two hours early, drink a Starbucks coffee, mosey around in shops, pay $15 for this book in the airport bookstore, board their flight, and read it for 11 minutes until the plane’s media system turns on, at which point they’ll sheepishly stuff the book in the pouch of the seat in front of them and fall asleep watching the latest Marvel movie.
If they manage to finish this book, it’ll be on a Naxos beach and the only thing they might “remember for a lifetime” will be the confirmation of their pre-conceived ideas of Greek politics that they share with the author.
The way to make something of a book like this is to write a list of all the names and events in the country’s history that interest you and then go read about them in better books.
For that, The Shortest History of Greece gets a second star. It has a lot of names and is indeed a whole history of Greece, from the earliest myths to the latest election.
July 21, 2024
I always wanted to learn a bit more about Greek history as a Turk whose grand grand parents lived in Greece.
This was a very good read and I enjoyed every bit of it. Having done the reading in a Turkish beach next to the Aegean sea might have contributed to the good mood.
I wished some parts were more detailed because I found nearly everything very interesting, but that could be against the purpose of the book.
Overall, the book enlightened me on various topics and I am happy to suggest it those interested.
This was a very good read and I enjoyed every bit of it. Having done the reading in a Turkish beach next to the Aegean sea might have contributed to the good mood.
I wished some parts were more detailed because I found nearly everything very interesting, but that could be against the purpose of the book.
Overall, the book enlightened me on various topics and I am happy to suggest it those interested.
December 27, 2021
It is indeed quite short, which I think is a good thing as history books tend to be over-dense with detail. Personally I would have preferred a different balance, with bit more depth on ancient Greece / Byzantium rather than the battle-by-battle descriptions of Turkish, Italian and civil wars. But I learnt a lot and I particularly appreciated how it is really up-to-date including COVID.
November 30, 2023
I am a proud Greek American. But this book made me prouder of my Greek beyond belief. For all the Ancient Greeks have created, established, and invented. For the perseverance of my people. For their filotimo and overcoming the many catastrophes and genocides throughout history. Greeks are good, they are kind, they are survivors, and they will keep showing the whole world that Good always prevails. No matters what.
February 28, 2025
I picked up The Shortest History of Greece in a bookstore in Athens, hoping for a quick guide to make sense of Greece’s epic history — more than 3,000 years of myths, wars, empires, and crises.
The book smartly breaks down the timeline into four clear eras, which helps a lot. But even with that structure, there’s just so much packed into so few pages that it can be overwhelming at times. Names, battles, and shifting powers fly by, and it’s hard to remember everything in one go.
Over the past month, I found myself revisiting certain sections, trying to give the stories and context the attention they deserve. It’s the kind of book that rewards rereading, especially if you want to appreciate how each era flows into the next.
A great starting point — fast and easy, but definitely richer if you take your time with it.
The book smartly breaks down the timeline into four clear eras, which helps a lot. But even with that structure, there’s just so much packed into so few pages that it can be overwhelming at times. Names, battles, and shifting powers fly by, and it’s hard to remember everything in one go.
Over the past month, I found myself revisiting certain sections, trying to give the stories and context the attention they deserve. It’s the kind of book that rewards rereading, especially if you want to appreciate how each era flows into the next.
A great starting point — fast and easy, but definitely richer if you take your time with it.
October 10, 2023
Surprisingly good read, tough short, gives a great introduction, answering the "who are Greeks" question. Easy to read, not much details, not boring, the later chapters where contemporary events are discusses are a bit too quick. Yet, good read. I think this is the best possible outcome of a "very short" introduction.
June 25, 2024
In hoge vaart maar met tegelijkertijd veel oog voor detail door de Griekse geschiedenis heen, van de klassieke oudheid tot de aanpak van de Coronapandemie.
Perfect om te lezen tijdens een rondreis door Griekenland. ‘s Avonds in een lichte ouzo-roes uitbuikend van de moussaka stuiten op de interessante verhalen over de bezienswaardigheden die de volgende dag op de planning staan, is natuurlijk een heerlijke leeservaring.
Perfect om te lezen tijdens een rondreis door Griekenland. ‘s Avonds in een lichte ouzo-roes uitbuikend van de moussaka stuiten op de interessante verhalen over de bezienswaardigheden die de volgende dag op de planning staan, is natuurlijk een heerlijke leeservaring.
April 1, 2025
En super måte å få innsikt i gresk historie på. 3000 år på 240 sider! Hvis jeg skulle kokt det ned fra 240 sider til et ord hadde det blitt: Gjeld
March 3, 2022
If you wish to have a relatively light read about Greece from start to finish, then this is the book for you. You have to remember this is literally the shortest history, the deep details are not always there and it is set out in stages of history - and it works.
It is a good read, it flows well and doesn’t get bogged down in a story or confuse you with reems of names and places which you have to retain throughout. The key bits of Greek history are in there, its stages through the city states, its collective fight against Persia (well not so collective) and its absorption into the Roman empire, and then the Byzantine empire - and then the Ottoman! It's interesting political history post Ottoman was a good section for me, we think of Greece as this normal European nation, however it is clear it has had a very interesting history politically and only recently has it been regarded as stable.
The book gives enough detail for it to make sense, but not enough to be definitive history.
It gives a nice overview of Greek history which leaves the reader, i feel, able to then pursue further reading into certain areas specifically.
It is a good read, it flows well and doesn’t get bogged down in a story or confuse you with reems of names and places which you have to retain throughout. The key bits of Greek history are in there, its stages through the city states, its collective fight against Persia (well not so collective) and its absorption into the Roman empire, and then the Byzantine empire - and then the Ottoman! It's interesting political history post Ottoman was a good section for me, we think of Greece as this normal European nation, however it is clear it has had a very interesting history politically and only recently has it been regarded as stable.
The book gives enough detail for it to make sense, but not enough to be definitive history.
It gives a nice overview of Greek history which leaves the reader, i feel, able to then pursue further reading into certain areas specifically.
September 8, 2022
I don’t think I understood that Ancient Greek culture was the foundation for all western conceptions of philosophy poetry and politics until now. It is fascinating to chart the birth of democracy and western ideals and to see how different civilisations idealised Greek culture. I was also surprised by how interesting the modern history of Greece was. Reading this book has contextualised modern Europe for me and deepened my understanding of events like the GFC.
January 30, 2023
A heroic effort…
It’s impossible to write a history, spanning 7,000 years in under 300 pages but James Heneage has made a valiant attempt.
My main criticism is that the 5000 years BCE are so lightly covered. This countered by a rather good coverage of “modern Greece” say from 1800 to today. Much of this “modern” history was unknown to me and was interesting to explore.
I should have written it down at the time, but there was a quote from a Greek political philosopher from about 300 BCE which sets out the stages of democracy. The end point being rule by demagoguery with appeal to the rabble - sounded a lot like America under Trump.
I don’t class this book as “a history” it just can’t cover the detail to be called that. It’s more like a historical summary. As that, it was a good read.
Stay safe,
Peter
It’s impossible to write a history, spanning 7,000 years in under 300 pages but James Heneage has made a valiant attempt.
My main criticism is that the 5000 years BCE are so lightly covered. This countered by a rather good coverage of “modern Greece” say from 1800 to today. Much of this “modern” history was unknown to me and was interesting to explore.
I should have written it down at the time, but there was a quote from a Greek political philosopher from about 300 BCE which sets out the stages of democracy. The end point being rule by demagoguery with appeal to the rabble - sounded a lot like America under Trump.
I don’t class this book as “a history” it just can’t cover the detail to be called that. It’s more like a historical summary. As that, it was a good read.
Stay safe,
Peter
January 24, 2025
Okay truthfully I only got 40% into this book but 2025 is the year of counting books despite dnfing bc that’s what it’s all about
I didn’t dnf cause it wasn’t interesting, but I finished the part I was interested in.
Loved reading this in Greece and taught me so much!! Loved the format and writing too and how the author didn’t treat the audience like they were dumb and expected them to keep up. I’d defs recommend this for any people going to Greece or Greek enthusiasts out there!
I didn’t dnf cause it wasn’t interesting, but I finished the part I was interested in.
Loved reading this in Greece and taught me so much!! Loved the format and writing too and how the author didn’t treat the audience like they were dumb and expected them to keep up. I’d defs recommend this for any people going to Greece or Greek enthusiasts out there!
January 22, 2025
Unbelievable history! Written so well, absolutely fascinating. Tons of information felt kinda crammed but it’s 3000 years of history so kinda hard to avoid in “the short history of Greece”. Great read for my time here in Greece.
December 18, 2025
This was the weakest of the Shortest History series I’ve read thus far. The author assumes quite a bit of knowledge, which for a survey-style book seemed uncharacteristic. The author does make a plausible argument that a Greek national identity has existed since at least the Hellenic Age. His reframing of the Byzantine Empire as a Greek, not Roman Empire, was compelling. I would have liked more in the fourth section of the book that focuses on modern issues.
Not a bad read, but not as good as other books in this series.
Not a bad read, but not as good as other books in this series.
February 16, 2024
fascinating and learned so much!!! mythology and philosophy and history and wars and economics!!! only note - wish there had been more about greek art :)))
July 22, 2024
Fascinating. 2500 years of history condensed into bitesize pieces. A unique culture with arguably the biggest contributions to the world
November 28, 2024
Σιδερο βίβλιο 😎
June 20, 2025
A huge challenge that is executed well
July 19, 2025
Great overview. My only criticism is a bit unfair: it’s too short for a *short history of*.
Migrant crisis could have been covered more extensively for example.
Migrant crisis could have been covered more extensively for example.
November 7, 2023
Εξαιρετικό!
August 20, 2024
Foreword
p.1 – Long before history, Zeus sent a pair of eagles to fly around the world. Wherever they met would be its centre, and there an oracle would sit to pronounce on the affairs of men. Delphi was that place, not far to the west of Athens, and for a thousand years its oracle did just that. The oracle’s main message was “Know thyself.” For Aristotle, that meant knowing that man was a “social animal” who without community became either “beast or god.”
p.2 – The West owes its civilisation to the Greeks. It’s a debt we often tell ourselves we have repaid: by supporting Greece’s struggle for independence and the nation’s expansion in the nineteenth century; her stand against Nazi tyranny, postwar boom and joining of the European Union in the twentieth. But this support has seldom been disinterested, and it has sometimes come at great cost to the Greek people. After the Second World War, Britain and America helped bring about a civil war whose legacy was half a century of political turmoil and the worst financial crisis ever endured by an advanced economy. The harsh terms that were attached to Greece's “rescue” from that crisis suggest that Europe now considers its debt fully settled. It isn’t. Over the coming decades, our democracy will be tested as never before. In its current guise it is unlikely to survive. I have written this book because I believe that the story of the Greeks – ancient, modern and contemporary – can help us reinvent it.
Part One – Ruling Half the World (Beginnings – 1453)
The Homeric Age
p.7 – They looked to the gods, too, for answers to the questions posed by being mortal: the emotions, motives and contradictions that make us who we are. It helped that these gods were as imperfect as those they ruled over. They too loved, schemed, lusted, envied and took their revenge. Their moral instruction was limited and practical. Give hospitality (xenia) to the stranger who knocks at your door, they said, since he might just be Zeus in disguise. The great German scholar of Greek mythology, Walter Burkert, described myth as a “traditional tale with a secondary, practical reference to something of collective importance.”
p.8 – The historical Minoan civilisation of Crete (2500-1400 BCE) seems to have been a peaceful trading culture. Figurines show a caste of powerful, snake-wielding female priests, who are generally larger than their darker-skinned male counterparts. Exquisite frescoes from the Minoan settlement of Akrotiri on Santorini suggest a sea-faring civilisation given to fishing, celebration and commerce.
p.11 – The Iliad describes a few crucial weeks towards the end of the ten-year siege of Troy, when the Greeks are on the point of losing the war. Everything turns on whether the semi-divine Achilles – their one-man blitzkrieg – can be persuaded to abandon literature’s longest sulk to rejoin the fight.
p.12 – Yet the whole story hinges on the moment when rage dissolves into grief and pity, as Achilles allows Priam to remove his son’s body and give him a proper burial. This is the moment when Achilles puts divinity behind him and embraces the business of being human, which is the business of grief and pity.
p.13 – Whether the two poems were authored by a man called Homer or emerged from a collective folk tradition, their form was more or less fixed in the sixth century BCE. They were recited again and again at festivals and other public events, including over consecutive nights at the Olympic games. Together they speak of the Greeks’ first steps towards taking responsibility for their world. They underpin later Greek political thinking, playing a vital part in the growth of a system that put citizen participation at its very core.
The Archaic Are (776-500 BCE)
p.21 – the Greek word for Spartan, lakon, has given us the adjective laconic, meaning dry or understated: Attic wit, on the other hand, was subtle or delicate. Perhaps nothing defines difference like humour.
The Classical Age (500-323 BCE)
p.22 – “Nothing in excess” was another of the Delphic Oracle’s dicta.
p.23 – Paideia (education) strove to promote arete (virtue or excellence) in every area. It combined the study of the liberal arts and science with physical and moral education, imparted through music, poetry and philosophy.
p.28 – Pericles’ reforms of 461 BCE placed more power in the hands of ordinary Athenians than ever before. Henceforth they would be paid from the city purse for jury service (and later, for attendance at the ecclesia too), which meant that everyone could afford to participate. Pericles believed that the greatness of Athens came from every level of her talented citizenry, directed by education towards the common good. He dismissed individualists as idiotes.
p.35 – Ochlocracy in Action: Anacylosis Cycle – It was the 2nd-century BCE Greek historian Polybius who coined the word ochlocracy. He looked back over 500 years of Greek political experiment and discerned a cycle (anacyclosis) that went from anarchy (no rule) to monarchy (rule of the one) to aristocracy (rule of the best) to oligarchy (rule of the few) to democracy (rule of the people). Ochlocracy (rule of the mob) followed when a dissatisfied majority looked to populist demagogues for answers.
p.42 – Aristotle’s Polity – His polity mixed the direct participation of citizens (excluding women) with election for roles that required technical expertise (e.g. in military or financial matters). The whole was underpinned with four principles that would render it proof against populist demagogues:
MODERATION: Solon’s avoidance of extremes, particularly in wealth and individual expression. As the Delphic Oracle had prescribed: “Nothing in excess.”
A STRONG MIDDLE CLASS: to act as a balance between the tyranny of the poor (what democracy risked becoming) and the tyranny of the rich (the main pitfall of oligarchy). In Aristotle's words: “The great preserving principle that the loyal citizens should be stronger in number than the disloyal.”
A LEGAL SYSTEM: that could withstand changes in the political climate: “as man is the best of animals when perfected, so he is the worst of all when sundered from law and justice.” Laws should be adapted to suit changing conditions, but their purpose was to uphold the constitution, and this should change only rarely.
EDUCATION: (paideia) to cultivate virtue (arete), fit citizens for participation in the government of the polis and imbue them with law-abidingness (eunomia).
The Hellenic Age (323-30 BCE)
p.60 – Epicureanism – Epicurus (341-270 BCE) proposed revolutionary ideas: science, not the gods, makes the universe go round; happiness is freedom from the fear of those gods; all matter is made up of tiny particles in perpetual motion. His denial of an afterlife enraged a clergy who saw terror of damnation as a useful way to control their flock […].
Epicurus defined pleasure as the absence of suffering, which he believed came from a sober and moral life surrounded by friends rather than one led in fear of eternal torment.
p.62 – how different the Roman polis was from the Greek model. Ordinary Romans were excluded from government and wielded no real power. There was no Roman version of the people’s jury courts, no Pnyx. A small number of powerful families ruled Rome through the Senate, and there were few mechanisms to hold them to account. Instead of an educated, politically engaged middle class to act as a check on the elite, there was the notorious Roman mob. Not only this, but Roman culture was defined by military success, and successful generals were given a free hand in the field. The result was a never-ending cycle of annexation. Rome’s very existence depended on perpetual violence.
Part Three – The Rise and Fall of the Great Idea (1830-1949)
p.141 – A Formidable Task – In February 1830, the London Protocol established Greece as an independent, sovereign state, only the second country in the world to gain independence from an imperial power. America, the first, had been left some infrastructure by the British. For Greece, the job would be much harder.
p.145 – it was with weapons not democracy that industrial Europe had conquered the world.
In 1834, Greece was one of the first countries to introduce compulsory education, and students were taught in the hybrid ancient-modern form of Greek known as katharevousa. Three years later, the University of Athens was founded and a new subject – archaeology – was coined to unearth more evidence of past glories. Soon, young Greeks with trowels joined the Europeans digging amongst the ruins of Olympia, Delphi and Messene.
p.146 – The problem was money. There weren’t enough taxpayers to sustain the existing state, let alone create a bigger one. Every year Greece had to ask the Great Powers for fresh loans just to keep up the interest payments on her existing debt. And these were the same Great Powers who emphatically didn’t want her to get bigger. A bigger Greece meant a weaker Turkey, and that meant a stronger Russia.
To rein in the expansionist ambitions of the young nation and its monarch, the Great Powers cut off the money supply. Otto was forced to agree unpopular austerity measures, while his foreign creditors took direct control of the tax revenues.
p.147 – To the City! – The constitution was ready by March 1844. On paper at least, it made Greece one of the most progressive liberal parliamentary democracies of its day, extending the franchise to almost all Greek male citizens.
p.155 – Corinth Canal was finally opened in 1893, linking the Aegean and Ionian seas and saving ships the stormy journey round the bottom of the Peloponnese.
p.156 – 1896 modern Olympic games in Athens.
p.157 – In February 1897, Prince George led an expeditionary force ashore in Crete to claim the island for Greece. The reaction of the Great Powers was swift and deflating. Instead of enosis (union), the island would be partitioned between Britain, France, Russia and Italy.
p.174 – So began the reconstruction of Greece under the auspices of the Refugee Settlement Commission. It would prove an outstanding success. By 1926, some 625,000 refugees had been provided with homes and become economically self-supporting. The experience helps to explain Greek attitudes to refugees today. In 2015, islanders in the eastern Mediterranean were confronted with hundreds of thousands of Muslim refugees seeking sanctuary on their shores. Many of those who volunteered assistance had grandparents who had first arrived on those islands from the hell of Smyrna, to be given help and hope. Now they were returning the kindness.
p.175 – According to the 1928 census, one in five of Greece's population were refugees.
p.177 – In April 1932 Greece once again declared herself bankrupt.
The End of Democracy (1932-41) and Second World War (1941-1945)
p.187 – The occupying powers did their best to make things worse. They began to charge Greece for the costs of occupation – costs that could only be met by printing more money. Inflation, then hyper-inflation, took the price of a loaf of bread from 7o to 2 million drachma as the middle classes saw their savings evaporate. With the government utterly unable to cope, the black market seeped into every corner of the economy. On the islands things were little better. Boats were requisitioned, fishing forbidden and inter-island trade banned.
Part Four – Democracy Debased (1949 – present)
p.206 – Women were finally given full voting rights in the election of 1956.
p.207 – Cyprus had been a British colony since 1878 and its population was spilt 80% Greek, 20% Turkish.
p.211 – Life under the junta – as the new regime was soon dubbed, with the contempt generally aimed at rulers of Latin American banana republics – was restrictive, sometimes violent and often bizarre. Colonel George Papadopoulos, its frontman, might like to talk grandly about the “Revolution of 21 April” but in fact his regime was little more than a parade of phobias: xenophobia, homophobia, ephebiphobia.
p.213 – The 1973 oil crisis shook the Greeks out of their apathy.
The students moved first. In November they massed at the Athens Polytechnic, chanting “Bread! Education! Liberty!” and broadcasting events live to the world via a home-made transmitter. Within three days as many as 100,000 protesters had gathered and running battles were being fought with the police. This was too much for the Colonels. They sent in the tanks.
p.214 – Campus Asylum – After the junta, a law was passed to ban all police or military presence on university campuses. For decades after the tanks ploughed through the student barriers in 1973, Greeks
lived with its perverse consequences: chaos within Greece’s higher education system, with universities in central Athens regularly closed by anarchist student sit-ins, and others turning into open yet untouchable marketplaces for drugs and other contraband.
p.215 – Cyprus, where Greeks and Turks were shooting each other in the streets.
After thousands had died, hundreds of thousands had been displaced from their homes and two members of NATO had very nearly gone to war, the Americans brokered a peace which divided the island between Greek and Turk, as it remains today.
p.216 – Karamanlis renewed negotiations to join the EC as a full member, and in 1980 Greece was accepted amidst rhetoric that echoed the philhellenic fervour of 1821: “[Greek entry into the EC] is a fitting repayment by the Europe of today of the cultural and political debt that we all owe to a Greek heritage almost 3,000 years old.” (EC Junior Foreign Office Minister, 1980)
Demotic was brought in as the official language of education, and Greek officialese at last became comprehensible to everyone.
p.219 – Athens had a new airport, ring road and metro, and the area around the Acropolis had been given a facelift. Venues all over the country Games had been similarly embellished. It may all have cost €9 billion, but Greece could afford it. Its per capita GDP had never been higher. The economy was clearly on a stable footing – if it wasn’t, why would the country have been allowed to join the 2002 exclusive Eurozone club in 2001? On that hot August evening, it must have seemed that the Eurozone dream of becoming a modern, democratic nation had finally come to pass. In the sixty years since the civil war, Greece had transformed itself from an impoverished, third-world nation into one of the 28 richest countries in the world.
Ever since the first klephtic call to arms in 1821, Greece had been a divided country. The centuries of Turkish rule had left mainland Greeks, island Greeks, Ottoman Greeks and overseas Greeks largely estranged from one another. For almost a century after independence, the common cause of nation-building helped to paper over the cracks, as the new political parties competed peacefully for popular support.
p.220 – Left vs Right – Then, for 30 years (nine of them a military dictatorship), the America of the
Truman Doctrine had collaborated with the Greek Right to shut the Left out of the democratic process.
p.221 – Under a new Contract with the People, PASOK would redistribute wealth and bring about radical social transformation.
PASOK would go on to win six elections and dominate Greek politics for nearly three decades.
To start with the promised changes were largely for the better. Progressive taxation distributed wealth more fairly, bringing immediate benefits in welfare, pensions, health care and employment rights. Universities sprang up, and by 1986 student numbers had doubled. Women’s rights advanced,
divorce was made easier and, to the horror of the Church, civil marriage was introduced. The Greeks approved, voting Andreas in for a second term in 1985. As for the matter of how to pay for it, progressive taxation could only do so much, especially when so many people were altogether outside the tax system.
p.222 – Greece was no stranger to clientelism – perks in return for political support. Kinship bonds had been central to politics ever since the War of Independence. What Papandreou and PASOK did was to use these bonds to infiltrate every corner of society, from student bodies to trade unions to entire professions. Career civil servants were replaced with political appointees, as the civil service became the beating heart of clientelism, overseeing its own massive expansion. Never before had so many people been hired by the state. By 1984, it was reckoned that 89% of PASOK's members had some connection with the public sector, where pay was higher than in the private sector, retirement came early, and dismissal was almost unheard of.
p.223 – “Greeks in the post-junta republic learned that one thing was paramount, above merit, effort or originality: their connection to the party... It was a naked battle for the spoils of the state.” (Yannis Palaiologos, author The 13th Labour of Hercules: Inside the Greek Crisis)
In 2001, thanks to some creative accounting courtesy of Goldman Sachs, Greece was judged to meet the criteria to join the Euro.
Age of the Memorandum (2010-2020)
p.224 – By the mid-2000s, only more borrowing could fill the gap borrowing between income and expenditure, but that was only possible if lenders believed in Greek credit-worthiness. So when EU finance ministers first noticed the “deliberate misreporting of figures by the Greek authorities,” a collective shiver passed through the financial world.
Greece could no longer afford to borrow what it needed to plug the hole in its finances. A Eurozone member suddenly seemed on the verge of defaulting on its debt, putting the entire Union at risk.
p.225 – On 23 April 2010, with the spread soaring past the 1,000 bps mark, Prime Minister Giorgos Papandreou (son of Andreas) formally requested financial assistance.
The Eurogroup would provide €80bn of the total €110bn, the IMF the rest. Unable to take the usual escape route of devaluing the currency, Greece’s leaders were forced to impose austerity on a scale never before tried by an advanced economy. Everything was savagely cut: wages, pensions, all public expenditure.
Greece’s economy shrank by 25% between 2010 and 2012 more than Germany's after the Second World War.
The Greeks had to spend 90% of the bailout money mere to service their debt.
Blame – Greeks call it the “Great Crisis.” It’s no hyperbole – it was the longest recession of any advanced economy in history, including the Great Depression in America. But where to point the finger? One politician had the courage to blame the very system that had elected him.
p.1 – Long before history, Zeus sent a pair of eagles to fly around the world. Wherever they met would be its centre, and there an oracle would sit to pronounce on the affairs of men. Delphi was that place, not far to the west of Athens, and for a thousand years its oracle did just that. The oracle’s main message was “Know thyself.” For Aristotle, that meant knowing that man was a “social animal” who without community became either “beast or god.”
p.2 – The West owes its civilisation to the Greeks. It’s a debt we often tell ourselves we have repaid: by supporting Greece’s struggle for independence and the nation’s expansion in the nineteenth century; her stand against Nazi tyranny, postwar boom and joining of the European Union in the twentieth. But this support has seldom been disinterested, and it has sometimes come at great cost to the Greek people. After the Second World War, Britain and America helped bring about a civil war whose legacy was half a century of political turmoil and the worst financial crisis ever endured by an advanced economy. The harsh terms that were attached to Greece's “rescue” from that crisis suggest that Europe now considers its debt fully settled. It isn’t. Over the coming decades, our democracy will be tested as never before. In its current guise it is unlikely to survive. I have written this book because I believe that the story of the Greeks – ancient, modern and contemporary – can help us reinvent it.
Part One – Ruling Half the World (Beginnings – 1453)
The Homeric Age
p.7 – They looked to the gods, too, for answers to the questions posed by being mortal: the emotions, motives and contradictions that make us who we are. It helped that these gods were as imperfect as those they ruled over. They too loved, schemed, lusted, envied and took their revenge. Their moral instruction was limited and practical. Give hospitality (xenia) to the stranger who knocks at your door, they said, since he might just be Zeus in disguise. The great German scholar of Greek mythology, Walter Burkert, described myth as a “traditional tale with a secondary, practical reference to something of collective importance.”
p.8 – The historical Minoan civilisation of Crete (2500-1400 BCE) seems to have been a peaceful trading culture. Figurines show a caste of powerful, snake-wielding female priests, who are generally larger than their darker-skinned male counterparts. Exquisite frescoes from the Minoan settlement of Akrotiri on Santorini suggest a sea-faring civilisation given to fishing, celebration and commerce.
p.11 – The Iliad describes a few crucial weeks towards the end of the ten-year siege of Troy, when the Greeks are on the point of losing the war. Everything turns on whether the semi-divine Achilles – their one-man blitzkrieg – can be persuaded to abandon literature’s longest sulk to rejoin the fight.
p.12 – Yet the whole story hinges on the moment when rage dissolves into grief and pity, as Achilles allows Priam to remove his son’s body and give him a proper burial. This is the moment when Achilles puts divinity behind him and embraces the business of being human, which is the business of grief and pity.
p.13 – Whether the two poems were authored by a man called Homer or emerged from a collective folk tradition, their form was more or less fixed in the sixth century BCE. They were recited again and again at festivals and other public events, including over consecutive nights at the Olympic games. Together they speak of the Greeks’ first steps towards taking responsibility for their world. They underpin later Greek political thinking, playing a vital part in the growth of a system that put citizen participation at its very core.
The Archaic Are (776-500 BCE)
p.21 – the Greek word for Spartan, lakon, has given us the adjective laconic, meaning dry or understated: Attic wit, on the other hand, was subtle or delicate. Perhaps nothing defines difference like humour.
The Classical Age (500-323 BCE)
p.22 – “Nothing in excess” was another of the Delphic Oracle’s dicta.
p.23 – Paideia (education) strove to promote arete (virtue or excellence) in every area. It combined the study of the liberal arts and science with physical and moral education, imparted through music, poetry and philosophy.
p.28 – Pericles’ reforms of 461 BCE placed more power in the hands of ordinary Athenians than ever before. Henceforth they would be paid from the city purse for jury service (and later, for attendance at the ecclesia too), which meant that everyone could afford to participate. Pericles believed that the greatness of Athens came from every level of her talented citizenry, directed by education towards the common good. He dismissed individualists as idiotes.
p.35 – Ochlocracy in Action: Anacylosis Cycle – It was the 2nd-century BCE Greek historian Polybius who coined the word ochlocracy. He looked back over 500 years of Greek political experiment and discerned a cycle (anacyclosis) that went from anarchy (no rule) to monarchy (rule of the one) to aristocracy (rule of the best) to oligarchy (rule of the few) to democracy (rule of the people). Ochlocracy (rule of the mob) followed when a dissatisfied majority looked to populist demagogues for answers.
p.42 – Aristotle’s Polity – His polity mixed the direct participation of citizens (excluding women) with election for roles that required technical expertise (e.g. in military or financial matters). The whole was underpinned with four principles that would render it proof against populist demagogues:
MODERATION: Solon’s avoidance of extremes, particularly in wealth and individual expression. As the Delphic Oracle had prescribed: “Nothing in excess.”
A STRONG MIDDLE CLASS: to act as a balance between the tyranny of the poor (what democracy risked becoming) and the tyranny of the rich (the main pitfall of oligarchy). In Aristotle's words: “The great preserving principle that the loyal citizens should be stronger in number than the disloyal.”
A LEGAL SYSTEM: that could withstand changes in the political climate: “as man is the best of animals when perfected, so he is the worst of all when sundered from law and justice.” Laws should be adapted to suit changing conditions, but their purpose was to uphold the constitution, and this should change only rarely.
EDUCATION: (paideia) to cultivate virtue (arete), fit citizens for participation in the government of the polis and imbue them with law-abidingness (eunomia).
The Hellenic Age (323-30 BCE)
p.60 – Epicureanism – Epicurus (341-270 BCE) proposed revolutionary ideas: science, not the gods, makes the universe go round; happiness is freedom from the fear of those gods; all matter is made up of tiny particles in perpetual motion. His denial of an afterlife enraged a clergy who saw terror of damnation as a useful way to control their flock […].
Epicurus defined pleasure as the absence of suffering, which he believed came from a sober and moral life surrounded by friends rather than one led in fear of eternal torment.
p.62 – how different the Roman polis was from the Greek model. Ordinary Romans were excluded from government and wielded no real power. There was no Roman version of the people’s jury courts, no Pnyx. A small number of powerful families ruled Rome through the Senate, and there were few mechanisms to hold them to account. Instead of an educated, politically engaged middle class to act as a check on the elite, there was the notorious Roman mob. Not only this, but Roman culture was defined by military success, and successful generals were given a free hand in the field. The result was a never-ending cycle of annexation. Rome’s very existence depended on perpetual violence.
Part Three – The Rise and Fall of the Great Idea (1830-1949)
p.141 – A Formidable Task – In February 1830, the London Protocol established Greece as an independent, sovereign state, only the second country in the world to gain independence from an imperial power. America, the first, had been left some infrastructure by the British. For Greece, the job would be much harder.
p.145 – it was with weapons not democracy that industrial Europe had conquered the world.
In 1834, Greece was one of the first countries to introduce compulsory education, and students were taught in the hybrid ancient-modern form of Greek known as katharevousa. Three years later, the University of Athens was founded and a new subject – archaeology – was coined to unearth more evidence of past glories. Soon, young Greeks with trowels joined the Europeans digging amongst the ruins of Olympia, Delphi and Messene.
p.146 – The problem was money. There weren’t enough taxpayers to sustain the existing state, let alone create a bigger one. Every year Greece had to ask the Great Powers for fresh loans just to keep up the interest payments on her existing debt. And these were the same Great Powers who emphatically didn’t want her to get bigger. A bigger Greece meant a weaker Turkey, and that meant a stronger Russia.
To rein in the expansionist ambitions of the young nation and its monarch, the Great Powers cut off the money supply. Otto was forced to agree unpopular austerity measures, while his foreign creditors took direct control of the tax revenues.
p.147 – To the City! – The constitution was ready by March 1844. On paper at least, it made Greece one of the most progressive liberal parliamentary democracies of its day, extending the franchise to almost all Greek male citizens.
p.155 – Corinth Canal was finally opened in 1893, linking the Aegean and Ionian seas and saving ships the stormy journey round the bottom of the Peloponnese.
p.156 – 1896 modern Olympic games in Athens.
p.157 – In February 1897, Prince George led an expeditionary force ashore in Crete to claim the island for Greece. The reaction of the Great Powers was swift and deflating. Instead of enosis (union), the island would be partitioned between Britain, France, Russia and Italy.
p.174 – So began the reconstruction of Greece under the auspices of the Refugee Settlement Commission. It would prove an outstanding success. By 1926, some 625,000 refugees had been provided with homes and become economically self-supporting. The experience helps to explain Greek attitudes to refugees today. In 2015, islanders in the eastern Mediterranean were confronted with hundreds of thousands of Muslim refugees seeking sanctuary on their shores. Many of those who volunteered assistance had grandparents who had first arrived on those islands from the hell of Smyrna, to be given help and hope. Now they were returning the kindness.
p.175 – According to the 1928 census, one in five of Greece's population were refugees.
p.177 – In April 1932 Greece once again declared herself bankrupt.
The End of Democracy (1932-41) and Second World War (1941-1945)
p.187 – The occupying powers did their best to make things worse. They began to charge Greece for the costs of occupation – costs that could only be met by printing more money. Inflation, then hyper-inflation, took the price of a loaf of bread from 7o to 2 million drachma as the middle classes saw their savings evaporate. With the government utterly unable to cope, the black market seeped into every corner of the economy. On the islands things were little better. Boats were requisitioned, fishing forbidden and inter-island trade banned.
Part Four – Democracy Debased (1949 – present)
p.206 – Women were finally given full voting rights in the election of 1956.
p.207 – Cyprus had been a British colony since 1878 and its population was spilt 80% Greek, 20% Turkish.
p.211 – Life under the junta – as the new regime was soon dubbed, with the contempt generally aimed at rulers of Latin American banana republics – was restrictive, sometimes violent and often bizarre. Colonel George Papadopoulos, its frontman, might like to talk grandly about the “Revolution of 21 April” but in fact his regime was little more than a parade of phobias: xenophobia, homophobia, ephebiphobia.
p.213 – The 1973 oil crisis shook the Greeks out of their apathy.
The students moved first. In November they massed at the Athens Polytechnic, chanting “Bread! Education! Liberty!” and broadcasting events live to the world via a home-made transmitter. Within three days as many as 100,000 protesters had gathered and running battles were being fought with the police. This was too much for the Colonels. They sent in the tanks.
p.214 – Campus Asylum – After the junta, a law was passed to ban all police or military presence on university campuses. For decades after the tanks ploughed through the student barriers in 1973, Greeks
lived with its perverse consequences: chaos within Greece’s higher education system, with universities in central Athens regularly closed by anarchist student sit-ins, and others turning into open yet untouchable marketplaces for drugs and other contraband.
p.215 – Cyprus, where Greeks and Turks were shooting each other in the streets.
After thousands had died, hundreds of thousands had been displaced from their homes and two members of NATO had very nearly gone to war, the Americans brokered a peace which divided the island between Greek and Turk, as it remains today.
p.216 – Karamanlis renewed negotiations to join the EC as a full member, and in 1980 Greece was accepted amidst rhetoric that echoed the philhellenic fervour of 1821: “[Greek entry into the EC] is a fitting repayment by the Europe of today of the cultural and political debt that we all owe to a Greek heritage almost 3,000 years old.” (EC Junior Foreign Office Minister, 1980)
Demotic was brought in as the official language of education, and Greek officialese at last became comprehensible to everyone.
p.219 – Athens had a new airport, ring road and metro, and the area around the Acropolis had been given a facelift. Venues all over the country Games had been similarly embellished. It may all have cost €9 billion, but Greece could afford it. Its per capita GDP had never been higher. The economy was clearly on a stable footing – if it wasn’t, why would the country have been allowed to join the 2002 exclusive Eurozone club in 2001? On that hot August evening, it must have seemed that the Eurozone dream of becoming a modern, democratic nation had finally come to pass. In the sixty years since the civil war, Greece had transformed itself from an impoverished, third-world nation into one of the 28 richest countries in the world.
Ever since the first klephtic call to arms in 1821, Greece had been a divided country. The centuries of Turkish rule had left mainland Greeks, island Greeks, Ottoman Greeks and overseas Greeks largely estranged from one another. For almost a century after independence, the common cause of nation-building helped to paper over the cracks, as the new political parties competed peacefully for popular support.
p.220 – Left vs Right – Then, for 30 years (nine of them a military dictatorship), the America of the
Truman Doctrine had collaborated with the Greek Right to shut the Left out of the democratic process.
p.221 – Under a new Contract with the People, PASOK would redistribute wealth and bring about radical social transformation.
PASOK would go on to win six elections and dominate Greek politics for nearly three decades.
To start with the promised changes were largely for the better. Progressive taxation distributed wealth more fairly, bringing immediate benefits in welfare, pensions, health care and employment rights. Universities sprang up, and by 1986 student numbers had doubled. Women’s rights advanced,
divorce was made easier and, to the horror of the Church, civil marriage was introduced. The Greeks approved, voting Andreas in for a second term in 1985. As for the matter of how to pay for it, progressive taxation could only do so much, especially when so many people were altogether outside the tax system.
p.222 – Greece was no stranger to clientelism – perks in return for political support. Kinship bonds had been central to politics ever since the War of Independence. What Papandreou and PASOK did was to use these bonds to infiltrate every corner of society, from student bodies to trade unions to entire professions. Career civil servants were replaced with political appointees, as the civil service became the beating heart of clientelism, overseeing its own massive expansion. Never before had so many people been hired by the state. By 1984, it was reckoned that 89% of PASOK's members had some connection with the public sector, where pay was higher than in the private sector, retirement came early, and dismissal was almost unheard of.
p.223 – “Greeks in the post-junta republic learned that one thing was paramount, above merit, effort or originality: their connection to the party... It was a naked battle for the spoils of the state.” (Yannis Palaiologos, author The 13th Labour of Hercules: Inside the Greek Crisis)
In 2001, thanks to some creative accounting courtesy of Goldman Sachs, Greece was judged to meet the criteria to join the Euro.
Age of the Memorandum (2010-2020)
p.224 – By the mid-2000s, only more borrowing could fill the gap borrowing between income and expenditure, but that was only possible if lenders believed in Greek credit-worthiness. So when EU finance ministers first noticed the “deliberate misreporting of figures by the Greek authorities,” a collective shiver passed through the financial world.
Greece could no longer afford to borrow what it needed to plug the hole in its finances. A Eurozone member suddenly seemed on the verge of defaulting on its debt, putting the entire Union at risk.
p.225 – On 23 April 2010, with the spread soaring past the 1,000 bps mark, Prime Minister Giorgos Papandreou (son of Andreas) formally requested financial assistance.
The Eurogroup would provide €80bn of the total €110bn, the IMF the rest. Unable to take the usual escape route of devaluing the currency, Greece’s leaders were forced to impose austerity on a scale never before tried by an advanced economy. Everything was savagely cut: wages, pensions, all public expenditure.
Greece’s economy shrank by 25% between 2010 and 2012 more than Germany's after the Second World War.
The Greeks had to spend 90% of the bailout money mere to service their debt.
Blame – Greeks call it the “Great Crisis.” It’s no hyperbole – it was the longest recession of any advanced economy in history, including the Great Depression in America. But where to point the finger? One politician had the courage to blame the very system that had elected him.
August 30, 2025
Excellent history of Greece in concise format!
August 7, 2025
Interestingly written tale of Greece’s woes
September 9, 2023
Heneage has storied a concise history of Greece. This was a great read. At times a little too compressed, but I discovered things.
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