Quick History of Greece

As I read the chapter on Greece in Tim Marshall’s Power of Geography, I was surprised by how little I knew of the country’s history, beyond the usual Athens-democracy-Plato-Aristotle-Alexander parts!

“Mountains and water are the key to understanding the past, present and future of Greece.”

Greece has lots of mountains all over its north. From ancient times to present day, they made trade in the northward direction very hard. It also meant that people couldn’t move around easily and mix, leading to the lack of any unified identity. With the land/mountain route severely constrained, Greece turned to the only available option – the sea. The Aegean Sea. More on that later.

The mountainous terrain meant no invader could control all of Greece – from Rome to Persia to the Ottomans to the Balkan states to the British. But the strategic value of control of the Aegean Sea meant all those empires would vie for rule over Greece. Greece, thus, was never an independent nation, even as recently as the early 1900’s – the terrain and outsiders vying for control were the cause.

 

The idea of a unified Greece, when it started in the 1800’s, wasn’t based on some sense of identity. Rather, it was based on the negative – they were tired of being pawns in the games of the greater powers from time immemorial.

“The 1920’s and 1930’s were a story of continuing division, instability and military rule which flirted with fascism.”

After World War II, a civil war broke out between the democrats and the communists. With the British on decline, the Americans moved in – the Aegean Sea again. This time, it was now the “choke point” to prevent the Soviet navy from entering the Mediterranean. That was also the reason why NATO was willing to let a non-democracy like Greece to join. But it had to become a democracy before it was accepted by the EEC (later EU) in 1981.

 

Becoming part of the EU started to improve Greece’s economy. But the mountainous terrain was still a problem – not easy to build roads, not easy to trade. And so Greece remained poor by European standards. The 2008 financial crisis blew the lid on how much the Greeks had been cooking the books all along. From here onwards, Greece’s relations with the EU have been strained. The Greeks felt let down in how the 2008 financial crisis was handled, the ask’s from the EU to fix things felt too brutal and worse, imposed by outsiders as usual. As if all that wasn’t bad enough, refugees from Libya started pouring into Greece. Greece has been bitter that the EU wouldn’t pay for the upkeep of the refugees.

 

And then there is Turkey. From the time of the Ottoman empire, the two regions have hated each other. Control for the Aegean Sea has just added to their animosity in recent times. And when Turkey struggled with its own refugee problem (from Syria), the Greeks accused them of allowing, even encouraging refugees to flee into Greece. The discovery of oil and gas reserves in the Aegean Sea have only added fuel to the fire of relations between the two countries. As France wryly says, NATO is supposed to go to war when any of their members is attacked – but if war broke between Greece and Turkey, what is NATO supposed to do? It doesn’t have a rule for what to do if one member attacks another… If you felt this is far-fetched, think again. Both countries accuse the other of flying military jets over each other’s territory. The territory in question is disputed, with both sides claiming islands in the Aegean, and the state of Cyprus is another area of dispute for the two countries. In fact, Greece’s military budget is what it is because of the Turkish threat. And when a not-so-well-off country like Greece spends so much on the military, the economy suffers.

 

As the book says:

“The gods have gone, empires come and go, alliances shift, but the constants for Greeks remain what made them – the mountains and the seas.”