The Asia Minor disaster
increased the strength of the state. Additionally, Greece consolidated control over its vulnerable northernmost territories, increasing Greece’s national security.
Dimitri Pentzopoulos, an historian of the population exchange, presents two lines of argument in favour of national homogeneity. Firstly, he argues that demands by minority groups for self- determination, for example through increased autonomy or unification with a foreign power, can seriously destabilize a country. For a potent example of this, one need only consider the role of nationalist movements in severely weakening the Ottoman Empire. Secondly, Pentzopoulos contends that, in the age of total war, the modern state requires extensive sacrifices and complete loyalty from its citizens. Therefore, the existence of heterogenous elements restricts the government’s freedom of action, as the state is less likely to adopt policies which might antagonize minority groups. Following these arguments, the population exchange significantly benefitted the power of the Greek state by reducing the heterogenous elements of Greece’s population. According to government censuses, in 1920 minorities constituted 20.25% o f Greece’s population, numbering over one million persons. 36 However, by 1928, this percentage had shrunk to only 6.17%. 37 It must be noted that census results can exaggerate the proportion of the dominant group in the population, either through prejudiced phrasing of questions or due to the socioeconomic advantages of identifying as the majority group. Nevertheless, Greek records demonstrate a substantial and rapid rise in homogeneity which is particularly impressive when compared to other Balkan countries during the same period: in Yugoslavia, heterogenous elements constituted 49% of the population, and in Romania, minorities amounted to 31%. 38 In sum, as a result of the population exchange, Greece came ‘ remarkably near to the ideal of the homogenous national state ’ . 39 For the Greek state, the most valuable consequence of this Hellenization process was the strengthening of Greek populations in Macedonia and Thrace. These regions, the ‘ crossroads of the Balkan peninsula ’ 40 in both a cultural and a geographic sense, had long been at the centre of the struggle for power in the Balkans and contained extraordinarily diverse populations. When Greece annexed south Macedonia in 1913, the territory contained half a million Greeks, who constituted only 42 percent of the population. 41 The population exchange increased this proportion significantly through the settlement of 700,000 Anatolian refugees and the expulsion of Muslims; by 1926, Greeks represented 88.8 percent of the region’s population and numbered over 1,200,000 persons. 42 In western Thrace, the effects of the population exchange are perhaps even more impressive as that region, until the population exchange, had never contained a significant Greek population: in 1913, after Bulgaria’s annexation of the territory, its Greek population numbered a mere 17,000 persons. In fact, the Greek claim to the territory was so weak that western Thrace was only awarded to Greece to enable land 36 These figures include the territory of eastern Thrace, but not Smyrna. ‘Prosphiyikón zítima/The Refugee Question’. Megáli Ellinikí Engiklopaídia/Great Greek Encyclopaedia , vol. 10, Athens 1927: p. 408. 37 Much of the remaining minority population was made up of the Turkish inhabitants of western Thrace, who were exempted from the population exchange. 38 I have not used government census reports for Yugoslavia and Romania, as they have been revealed to be intentionally falsified (Macartney, C. [1934] National States and National Minorities . Oxford: pp. 521-530). 39 Sweet-Escott, B. (1954) Greece – A Political and Economic Survey 1939-195. , London: p. 3. 40 Pentzopoulos op . cit .: p. 133.
41 Ibid ., p. 134. 42 Ibid ., p. 134.
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