Where is Greece?

Greece. The cradle of Western civilization. Hellenic culture. Home to Alexander the Great, a man who conquered territories all the way to the Indus. Only as an adult, I wondered how come the Greeks never conquered Europe?

 

A clue to that came from this map of the ancient city states (and terrain) of Greece from a Tomas Pueyo post.

What do you see in that map?

“Continental Greece is all mountains!... Now does it make more sense that Greece was a series of city-states? They couldn’t sustain big populations, and they couldn’t connect each city easily.”

Based on the technology (transport, communication, military) of that era, it was not possible to unify Greece in such a terrain. It was also why Greece could never conquer Europe – even if they got past the Greek mountains, they’d next face the Alps and mountain ranges of the Balkans. All insurmountable back then.

 

All this leads you to wonder how Greek influence could ever have spread to Europe. Well, it didn’t. At least, not in the era of what we call Greek civilization. All that happened much, much later. With Renaissance, Europeans began to read and learn about ancient Greek everything. Then with imperialism, Europeans found the need to say they too came from an ancient civilization. How could the “savages”, “barbarians” and “pagans” of their empires have ancient heritage? So they changed their own history to be based on Hellenic culture from Greek times.

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Of course, Greece likes to play along, as this other post says:

“Greece has a clear image it wants to project as the refined fountainhead of European culture and it performs this quite well for its tourists.”

And you can see why, considering the alternative:

“Does the Birthplace of Democracy™, the model for both the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, properly belong in a cohort with Bulgaria and Albania rather than with Germany and France?”

 

Wait, what?! Along Bulgaria and Albania? Wait, is Greece a part of the Balkans? A map of Greece alongside the Balkan states shows why this isn’t so crazy. 

Do you see the point? Everything to Greece’s north is what we call the Balkans, and to Greece’s east lies Turkey. You can’t see Europe (what most of us use mean by that term) anywhere near Greece, other than Italy on the west!

 

In eras bygone, the Balkans was a major power center. First, with the eastern Roman empire that was based out of Constantinople (now called Istanbul). And later with the Byzantine Empire and then the Ottomans Empire. Thessaloniki (in Greece) was a major city back then. Guess where it is located?

“It is closer to three foreign capitals (Skopje, Sofia, and Tirana) than it is to Athens.”

 

To be clear, the term “Balkan” is fuzzy. It includes parts of former Yugoslavia (Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Montenegro, Kosovo, and North Macedonia) as well as Bulgaria and Albania.

“Moldova and Romania are sometimes included, as are parts of Greece and Turkey.”

Nobody in Europe cared about Greece. Until, that is, the Ottoman empire started to show signs of rebellion, including Greece. Then geopolitical interests of Europe kicked in, and the Greeks milked the Hellenic “connection” to enlist European fighters and arms on their side. Even today:

“Greece is still happy to pull this Hellenic card when it’s convenient.”

 

From that Ottomans rebellion was created what we call Greece. In 1821.

“Until the founding of the Greek state, the average rural Greek person did not see themselves as the heir to 2000-year-old Ancient Athens. Especially because they were devoutly Orthodox and those Greeks were pagans.”

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So is Greece a part of the Balkan or not (historically and geographically)? With no conclusive answer possible, we can use an Internet joke to decide the matter:

“The moment the innate hatred towards your neighboring country stops to exist, you have left the Balkans.”

If you apply that joke, Greece is surely a part of the Balkans!

“They only dropped an incredibly silly diplomatic dispute with (North) Macedonia over its name in 2018.”

Plus, the Greeks hate Turkey, their geopolitical rival in the region.

“There’s something poetic about the fact that Greece and Turkey are still locking horns (most directly in Cyprus) thousands of years after the Trojan War.”