Where the nation would dwell the Hellenization of Southern Macedonia, 1913- 1940

Abstract

This thesis constitutes an attempt to construct a complete narrative that would explain the incorporation of southern Macedonia to the Greek state as an integral part of the country. The initial research proposal of this thesis was to investigate how the Greek state apparatus used the Macedonian environment as a blank canvas upon which it constructed cultural or national landscapes. This would presumably showcase the Hellenic character of Macedonia in the eyes of the local Macedonian peasantry and the threatening aspirations of the surrounding states. As it is argued here however, the impact that the cultural landscape campaign had was minimal. Instead -this thesis asserts- the Greek state apparatus needed to disintegrate the established systems of agricultural production and shift the paradigm toward the commodification of production in order secure its rule over Macedonia. In an attempt to achieve that, several Societies with ties to state officials sought to convince the peasants of southern Macedonia to maximize their production, especially from 1913 to 1922 but to no avail. The population exchange between Greece and the Republic of Turkey changed everything. One of the focal points of this thesis is the argument that in the post-1923 era, the Greek state used the hundreds of thousands of refugees that resettled in southern Macedonia both as colonists as well as a workforce willing to produce cheap surpluses. It is suggested here that this overwhelming influx alienated the local Macedonians from their land and therefore destroyed their economic ecosystems at the same time corroding the social coherence of their communities. Furthermore, this thesis also explores the infrastructural changes that the Greek state introduced in Macedonia to ensure the consolidation of the incoming refugee communities. For that reason several chapters in this work are dedicated to topics such as the agricultural cooperative movement, the anti-malarial policies and the development of urban planning for the new refugee settlements.