Greek Americans

Historical Background

Greece has a glorious history, a span of 4,000 years of continuous presence in Southeastern Europe. Greece is a peninsula in the Mediterranean Sea and the Balkan region. It is the bridge of three continents: Asia to the east, Africa to the south, and Western Europe to the west.

The contributions of ancient Greece are part of the foundation of Western society, from the idea of democracy to the Olympic Games. Greek philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle continue to be widely studied, and the architecture of the period is still admired and copied. Plays by Greek dramatists are often produced on modern stages, and they have also become models for later writers. Ancient Greeks also influenced Western civilization, and indeed world civilization, with their etymology of scientific and medical terms, including the humanities and the social sciences, and thousands of Greek concepts are found in most fields of knowledge. Ancient Greek contributions have a universal and diachronic character. Above all, the Greeks taught us rational thinking and established schools of thought. They were the first to formulate the principles of science and to make an effort to explain the cosmos (universe).

Following the sack of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks in 1453, a number of Byzantine scholars, known as logioi, fled to the West and contributed to the Renaissance.

While Western Europe had its renaissance, reformation, enlightenment, and political and industrial revolutions, Greece as a nation vanished while occupied for 400 years by the Ottoman Empire. The Orthodox Christian faith, the memory of the Ancient Greek legacy, and modern Greek literature kept the Greek identity alive during the long and oppressive [Page 560]Turkish rule. Southern Greece gained its independence from Ottoman-Turkish rule in 1827, but it took nearly another century for Greece to liberate the rest of its northern territories still occupied by the Ottoman Turkish Empire.

Greek Immigration to the United States

Greek immigration to the United States is, by and large, a 20th-century phenomenon. Although a few Greeks came to the United States during the 18th and 19th centuries, the overwhelming majority of Greek immigrants came to the United States more recently.

Two major waves of Greek immigration can be identified. The early Greek immigration coincided with the second phase of industrial capitalism during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Greek immigrants joined a tide from Southern and Eastern Europe to the United States. Most early Greek immigrants were single men who did not intend to stay in the United States. In fact, many returned to Greece eventually, and more than 30,000 Greek immigrants volunteered to fight in the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913 against the Turks. A number of them remained in Greece. Most early Greek immigrants were poor, had a few skills, and came from the southern agricultural communities and regions of Greece, especially Arcadia and Laconia.

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