Chaliand, GTrard and Jean-Pierre Rageau. The Penguin Atlas of Diasporas. New York: Viking, 1995. The disappearance of language differences is one of the surest signs of assimilation of a population. The Greek diaspora has moved from the phase where separate Greek communities were maintained in different parts of the world to one where assimilated Greek communities seek out their traditions and roots as a way of reviving some sense of their past and their culture. Scourby, Alice. The Greek Americans. Boston: Twayne, 1984. The Greek Diaspora, as noted, extends back centuries. Alexandria was a Hellenistic center long before becoming a Muslim region, and Asia Minor along the Black Sea and the Aegean Sea was Greek. The Greek kingdom of Pontus disappeared in the fifteenth century with an onslaught by the Ottomans, and the Greeks of Pontus disappeared during World War I through deportations and massacres organized by the Young Turks then overseeing what was left of the Ottoman Empire. In the period from 1920-1921, the Greeks led an offensive intended to create a Greek state based in Smyrna on the ruins of the Ottoman Empire, but this effort failed. Smyrna fell to the advance of Mustafa Kemal, also known as Ataturk. In 1922-1923, Greece took in 1.2 million expelled Greek Christians and Turkey took in 650,000 Turkish Muslims in an exchange. A Greek community lived in Cairo and Alexandria and survived until the advent of Nasserism. They left the country gradually from 1956 to 1962. A Greek diaspora also exists in sub-Saharan Africa, and it is made up of traders, many in Addis Ababa. The Greeks were numerous in that area until 1974 when the emperor was deposed. Greeks remain in many towns and cities of central and southern Africa. Large Greek colonies are also found in the United States, Canada, and Australia. Shinn, Rinn S. Greece: A Country Study. Washington, D.C.: The American University, 1985. Diasporas form and disappear, and this was the ca |
