The modern Greek nation is caught between two worlds: trying on the one hand to maintain the traditions and cultural identity of its glorious past, and on the other to become a modern state and fully participating member of the EEC. This book presents a comprehensive portrait of Greece today.

The entire world turned its focus toward the troubled nation, waiting for the possibility of a Greek exit from the European Monetary Union and its potential to unravel the entire Union, with other weaker members heading for the exit as well. The effects of Greece's crisis are also tied up in the global arguments about austerity, with many viewing it as necessary medicine, and still others seeing austerity as an intellectually bankrupt approach to fiscal policy that only further damages weak economies. In Modern Greece: What Everyone Needs to Know, Stathis Kalyvas, an eminent scholar of conflict, Europe, and Greece combines the most up-to-date economic and political-science findings on the current Greek crisis with a discussion of Greece's history.

Modern Greece: A History since 1821 is a chronologicalaccount of the political, economic, social, and cultural history ofGreece, from the birth of the Greek state in 1821 to 2008 by twoleading authorities. Pioneering and wide-ranging study of modern Greece, whichincorporates the most recent Greek scholarship Sets the history of modern Greece within the context of a broadgeo-political framework Includes detailed portraits of leading Greek politicians Provides in-depth considerations on the profound economic andsocial changes that have occurred as a result of Greece’s EUmembership

This book provides a concise, illustrated introduction to the history of modern Greece, with a new final chapter about Greek history and politics to the present day. 56 illustrations. 10 maps.

In 1821, after four centuries under the rule of the Ottoman Empire, the Greek people rose in revolt. Seven years later, with battles lost and battles won, the first Greek state became a reality with the help of the great European powers of the day â England, France and Russia. The new state covered only a small part of the lands inhabited by Greeks but in the next 150 years, the frontiers of the initial state were expanded as other sections inhabited by Greeks were liberated. It was not an unbroken process. Other Greeks were forced to leave their ancestral homes and seek refuge in the free country. Within Greece, progress was an uneven enterprise, with moments of success and achievement and with dark days of failure, desperation and internal strife. In the pages of this book, the author unfolds this fascinating story in a vivid prose, with the authority that comes from solid scholarship and from the personal knowledge of one who lived through some of the events he describes.

For many, “Greece” is synonymous with “ancient Greece,” the civilization that gave us much that defines Western culture today. But, how did Greece come to be so powerfully attached to the legacy of the ancients in the first place and then define an identity for itself that is at once Greek and modern? This book reveals the remarkable achievement, during the last three hundred years, of building a modern nation on the ruins of a vanished civilization—sometimes literally so. This is the story of the Greek nation-state but also, and more fundamentally, of the collective identity that goes with it. It is not only a history of events and high politics; it is also a history of culture, of the arts, of people, and of ideas. Opening with the birth of the Greek nation-state, which emerged from encounters between Christian Europe and the Ottoman Empire, Roderick Beaton carries his story into the present moment and Greece’s contentious post-recession relationship with the rest of the European Union. Through close examination of how Greeks have understood their shared identity, Beaton reveals a centuries-old tension over the Greek sense of self. How does Greece illuminate the difference between a geographically bounded state and the shared history and culture that make up a nation? A magisterial look at the development of a national identity through history, Greece: Biography of a Modern Nation is singular in its approach. By treating modern Greece as a biographical subject, a living entity in its own right, Beaton encourages us to take a fresh look at a people and culture long celebrated for their past, even as they strive to build a future as part of the modern West.