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Contemporary history: the growth of a field in Greece since 1974

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 March 2025

Kostis Kornetis Open the ORCID record for Kostis Kornetis [Opens in a new window]
Kostis Kornetis*
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Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
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kornetis@gmail.com
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Abstract

This paper seeks to synthesize fifty years of academic historical publishing since 1974. It argues that the advent of democracy in Greece anticipated three waves of historiographic production: one immediately following the Junta's collapse in 1974 up to the 1990s; a second from the late 1990s to the 2010s; and one since then until the present.

Keywords

twentieth-century historiographypost-war GreeceMetapolitefsi

Information

Type
Article
Information
Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies , Volume 49 , Issue 1 , April 2025 , pp. 124 - 135
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies, University of Birmingham

Greece has often been considered a laggard in terms of historiographic developments.Footnote 1 However, things have changed considerably over the past fifty years, reducing the lag between trends in US and European historiography and Greece's own historical production. There is a clear before and after, with 1974 as a turning point: this annus mirabilis of democratization – or annus horribilis due to the Turkish invasion of Cyprus – also facilitated the introduction of new ideas (and new people) to Greek historiography.Footnote 2 My survey here argues that there were three general waves in this process: one immediately following the Junta's collapse in 1974 up to the 1990s; a second from the late 1990s to the 2010s; and one since then until the present. While each period is quite loosely defined and not always internally consistent, each is marked by describable trends.

The first wave: breaking the inertia

The publication of the multi-volume and longue-durée-oriented Istoria tou Ellinikou Ethnous, initiated during the dictatorship, gave an impetus to new avenues of historical research with a number of pioneering chapters.Footnote 3 But the dramatic political changes inevitably had a powerful effect on the humanities and social sciences well beyond that epistemologically conservative and in places linguistically archaizing publication. The transition to democracy coincided with a general flourishing of historical studies, especially because a great many Greek scholars, in many cases exiled from the Colonels’ dictatorship, had returned to Greece; their return to their country and to their work constituted a paradigm shift in post-1974 Greece: the first of several waves.

The founding of the University of Crete towards the end of the dictatorship, and later of the Ionian University in Corfu and the University of the Aegean in Mytilene, all three with major humanities centres, gave a considerable boost to historical studies; the University of Ioannina had been founded in 1964. This came in conjunction with the proliferation of Modern Greek studies centres in Germany, France, the UK, the US, and Canada in the last quarter of the twentieth century. The scholarly journal Mnimon consistently published high-calibre research,Footnote 4 and was soon joined by the journal Ta Istorika (1983).Footnote 5

This first wave has been aptly described as a period dominated by the generation of the 1960s:Footnote 6 the spiritual offspring of important historians of the previous era.Footnote 7 Many of them were recently repatriated Greeks, mostly from France, who had married history to the social sciences and renewed the discipline by imbuing it with new methodologies and perspectives – and with a transnational scope. These developments brought Greece closer to a combination of neo-Marxist historiography and the Annales school in France, with its privileging of demography, geography, and the history of méntalités, among other things.Footnote 8 A further development was the so-called ‘new history’ with a social and economic twist, a move away from historical-philological studies towards history as a social science. A key issue and phrase, coined by the historian Filippos Iliou (1931-2004), was the demand for a historical consciousness against a double front: ‘nationally-minded’ historiography and a ‘populist’ leftist strand.Footnote 9

Greek historiographic production at that point in time was much concerned with the concept of ‘modernity’ – with Greece relegated to the peripheral or semi-peripheral paradigm.Footnote 10 Modernization alla greca, understood in terms of economic and social reforms, was, according to this interpretation, always lagging behind the Western vanguard. Reforms were held back due to ‘national’ characteristics, such as state interventionism, corruption, a populist political system, a weak civil society, and above all clientelism.Footnote 11 This ‘underdog’ culture resisted the construction of a modern liberal state and became the main interpretative framework for understanding national political culture and explaining the peripheral role of the country within Europe. Research in the post-1974 period was thus primarily concerned with the causes of absence and divergence, searching not for what had happened but rather what ought to have happened.Footnote 12 The ‘underdeveloped’ and structurally ‘dependent’ condition of Greece remained dominant in the way the historical literature perceived social change until the 1990s.Footnote 13

The second wave: getting in touch with trends

A growing focus on labour and youth movements by the end of the 1980s preceded, and precipitated, the second wave of the 1990s and early 2000s.Footnote 14 This constituted a pivot point from the history of the Greek state and public institutions 'from above’ to a history ‘from below’. The second wave coincided with the coming of so-called New HistoryFootnote 15 – a further withering away of purely politicalFootnote 16 and national history– which also signified a growing dialogue with historiographical trends abroad. The first thing that this new social history dealt with was, inevitably, the world of labour – including subjects such as textiles and the female labour force, with a focus on the early twentieth century.Footnote 17 The working classes tended to be seen through the lens of trades unions, political parties, and the International Labour Organization.Footnote 18 By framing social movements as historical entities, some studies argued not only for their centrality to but at times even for their pioneering nature for European experience.Footnote 19

Two major historiographic endeavours at the turn of the millennium involved prominent exponents of previous historiographic trends: Christos Hadziiosif (1947-) and his ambitious History of Greece in the Twentieth Century Footnote 20 which remained unfinished, covering only the first four decades of the twentieth century; and Vassilis Panagiotopoulos’ (1932-) History of Modern Hellenism, financed by the centre-left newspaper Ta Nea.Footnote 21 These projects sought to look at the longue durée of Modern Greek history through multiple lenses that included education and the arts – thus problematizing more classical approaches based on foreign policy and military history and/or histoire évènementielle, while also pointing out that historical time travels differently in the various facets of social activity. As Hadziiosif put it in the blurb for his series:

[We] did not aim at the linear recounting of the past, but at identifying and highlighting the genesis of trends and conditions that clearly differentiated the Greek society of the 20th century from the previous period and which, to a large extent, characterize it as it is today. This approach, while remaining faithful to the longitudinal study of the phenomena that is characteristic of historical science, escapes from the fixation on chronological sequence as the only causal relationship between the historical data it studies.

While taking a distance from a strongly positivist historiographic tradition (already partly undermined by the previous wave), the late 1990s also gave way to new theory and new subject matter, especially around the Historein group. Cultural history in particular emerged as a booming field following the linguistic and narrative turn, while microhistory, social anthropology, and literary theory gave enriched historiographical perspectives on modern Greece. A major breakthrough was gender history: while Greek feminism up to the 1990s was seen in strictly historical perspective, from the 1990s onwards it came to be placed within a framework of theory and gender studies.Footnote 22 Gradually Greek historians also became acquainted with the work of foreign historians, such as Luisa Passerini, on memory and subjectivity, partly through a series on European historiography published by the Nefeli publishing house. Oral history became more consolidated, especially through the Oral History Society, though this never really translated into institutional standing: it continued to operate in a middle ground between academia and grassroots, neighbourhood-oriented initiatives.Footnote 23

A new generation of researchers partook in the burgeoning field of civil war studies of the 1940s, which gradually turned from a purely political to a social perspective, triggering a real historiographic boom in the early 2000s on the distribution of violence in local case studies.Footnote 24 There was a growing focus on the subjectivity and emotional make-up of political subjects, especially prisoners, to which one might add new developments in the historiography of the Occupation and the civil war of the 1940s.Footnote 25 Much of this research was based on the new collections of the Social History Archives in Athens and partly on the ELIA archives, while over the years greater access to the State General Archives (GAK) gave rise to important works on hitherto taboo issues such as collaborationismFootnote 26 and its left-wing foes.Footnote 27 While the history of the city had been a historiographic preoccupation that goes back to the 1980s – with a series of publications on urban history – a greater interest was developed upon the ‘spatial turn’, focusing on hidden memories and facets of the cities, including prostitution, drugs, crime and policing.Footnote 28 Others focused on the subjectivity of relatively marginalized/subaltern people and the cultural construction of their experience in urban settings; research on domestic servants in postwar GreeceFootnote 29 or the builders who ‘built Athens’ in the 1960sFootnote 30 are major examples.

The history of Greek Jewry was a further avenue of research that opened up since the 1990s, in part as a much-awaited contribution to ‘Others’ in recent Greek history.Footnote 31 The creation of the Forum for the Study of Greek Jewry in the 1990s started off as a peripheral institution but later multiplied its output.Footnote 32 This connects to the memory turn and in particular the so-called lieux de mémoire after Pierre Nora; a number of studies applied this major concept to twentieth-century Greek history, and especially to sites of memory associated with the painful and traumatic occupation and the Civil War past.Footnote 33 Closely connected to this is a growing tendency to include public art, school curricula, television shows, imaginative literature, and graphic novels in studies of public history, focusing on recent history – closely connected to the third wave from 2010 onwards.Footnote 34

The third wave: going transnational

The third wave is closely connected to the so-called histoire du temps présent, but with global or at least transnational reach. As the 1960s gradually became a field of interest in the 2000s, older historical investigations of the nature of the Colonels’ regime, its reception by other governments,Footnote 35 or on party politics at the height of the parliamentary crisis of the mid-1960sFootnote 36 gave way to more cultural-historical work. Topics through the lens of ‘everyday life’ (consumerism, private life, gender, and inter-generational issues) became central components in this sort of rendering. The cultural output of this period – such as popular music, theatre, or translations – comprised its own distinct field of work.Footnote 37 Youth movements in the ‘long 1960s’ became a further subfield,Footnote 38 and so did the political or countercultural subcultures of the Metapolitefsi period in the 1970s and 1980s – always providing subtle juxtapositions with parallel trends abroad.Footnote 39 This new trend consolidated the study of the young as a separate social and political category – especially through representations and oral testimonies. The same applies to recent historical sociological works on the making of the Modern Greek middle classes, as well as more anthropological views on the make-up of the urban petite bourgeoisie.Footnote 40

A more recent historiographic trend has to do with business history – which has some antecedents in the previous waves in terms of transnational maritime and business networks of Greeks in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. A novel element here is the inclusion of the history of tourism as part of Greek entrepreneurship from the 1950s onwards: its economic incentives but also aggressive advertising strategies.Footnote 41 In particular, the Greek shipping tycoons’ business history sheds light on their dealings with political authorities – often shady dealings, especially under the Colonels’ dictatorship – and form a new and very promising field of study.Footnote 42 As for institutionally backed archival research and historiographic endeavours, the trend of the 1980s and 1990s of the cultural institutions of major banks being the major financers of cutting-edge research with government backing (in particular on state policies and economic history)Footnote 43 has been on the decline since the new millennium. Other ground-breaking research – especially on the dictatorship period – has been financed by the National Research Institute (EIE).Footnote 44 The latter, through the Institute of Modern Greek Studies, also founded the annual summer Ermoupolis Seminars on the island of Syros which focus on Modern Greek historiography.

Scholars have also started to historicize the Greek transition to democracy and its political and economic achievements,Footnote 45 mainly focusing on Karamanlis’ statesmanship or on the period's social and cultural breakthroughs.Footnote 46 Others tackled the transition process, either addressing the entire era that it heralded as a continuum, or the transitional moment that encompassed sweeping changes.Footnote 47 A major work that revolutionized the way in which we look at the 1980s – no longer through the typical lens of party politics and polarization, Andreas Papandreou's charisma, or PASOK's populism – was Greece in the 1980s, a voluminous dictionary that popularized the tendency of looking back at that decade with a cultural studies twist that focuses on the history of mentalities, consumerism, everyday life, leisure, and their multiple interconnections to the politicized ‘socialist’ public sphere.Footnote 48 The topics of youth culture during the transitional years, as well as gender and sexuality, came in for renewed attention through nuanced studies.Footnote 49 Some recent works focused on the booming industrial action and workers’ movements, while others focused on the violent side of the Greek transition, notably in relation to leftist armed organizations.Footnote 50

Another well-established historiographic tendency with older roots which can be encountered in all three waves is the history of the Hellenic diaspora. Ιt has gone on to embrace such diverse issues as Greek maritime and commercial networks, Greek students in France, Egyptian Greeks, right-wing or left-wing Greek-Americans, Greek migrants in Argentina.Footnote 51 At the same time, one should not overlook works on Asia Minor refugees in the 1920s and their descendants, and on Greek migrant workers in West Germany and miners in Belgium.Footnote 52 Trying to look at global and transnational networks in the history of the Greek Left is a more recent trend connected to the third wave. Connections with Latin America through the Third Worldism of the 1960s and 1970s, or particular personalities who exemplified revolutionary mobility by moving with great ease across borders of countries and continents, are part of a wider rethinking of the transnational history of the Greek Left.Footnote 53 Loosely connected to this is an incipient attempt at a comparative history of the Greek Left in the twentieth century, especially with other Mediterranean countries, and in particular Spain and to a lesser extent Portugal. These provide rich terrain for juxtapositions due to the somewhat analogous experiences of civil conflict and dictatorship.Footnote 54

Here one needs to talk about the cross-fertilization by studies originating abroad by both Greek and non-Greek scholars. The first category, mainly visible in the second and in particular the third wave, gave a major push to theorization and synchronization with historiographic debates and tendencies abroad: global history, transnational history, gender history, history of the senses. At the same time a number of non-Greek scholars gave a major push to specific areas of study which were traditionally taboo or occluded. The history of the socialization of Asia Minor refugees seen in social anthropological terms, for instance; orality and memory in mountain villages during and after the civil war; or the multicultural past of the city of Salonica and its violent dismemberment: these are but a few examples of precisely this push coming from abroad.Footnote 55

Finally, a much more recent tendency, induced by historiographic developments abroad, was the publication of high-quality overviews of Modern Greek history. While foreign scholars have for some time provided important syntheses of Modern Greek history,Footnote 56 a more recent historiographic development concerns Greek scholars too. While the first attempts were mostly interested in high politics or most concerned with by state and economic policies,Footnote 57 more recent attempts try to achieve a combination of ‘from above’ and ‘from below’ perspectives, adding a cultural history component to the mix.Footnote 58

Just as maps are fundamental guides for human thought and action, historiographic tendencies give us pointers towards not only established wisdom in a field but especially the contours, turns and twists, that constitute paradigm shifts within it – to use Thomas Kuhn's celebrated term. The three general waves in Modern Greek historiography since 1974 and up to the present have entirely transformed our understanding of Greek society and its evolution. Greece started communicating more closely with epistemological developments abroad post-1974 with accelerated speed and with growing intensity.

Kostis Kornetis is Assistant Professor of Contemporary History at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. His monograph Children of the Dictatorship. Student Resistance, Cultural Politics and the ‘Long 1960s’ in Greece won the Edmund Keeley book award of the Modern Greek Studies Association. He has co-edited The 1969 Greek Case in the Council of Europe. A game changer for human rights (Bloomsbury Academic, 2024); Consumption and Gender in Southern Europe since the Long 1960s (Bloomsbury Academic, 2016); and Rethinking Democratization in Spain, Greece and Portugal (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019). His monograph A Collective Biography of Southern European Democratization: the age of transitions is forthcoming with OUP.

References

1 I would like to thank Effi Gazi, Nicolas Manitakis, Panagiotis C. Poulos, and the journal's Editor for their useful comments and suggestions.

2 For an intellectual history/history of ideas, especially around education, post-1974 and the crucial rupture this signified see Patrikiou, A., ‘On the historiography of the Language Question in post-1974 Greece’, Historein 16 (2017) 102-19Google Scholar.

3 E.g. A. Politis, ‘Το δημοτικό τραγούδι’, in Ιστορία του ελληνικού έθνους XI (Athens 1975) 284-99. For earlier taxonomies of the historiography of the 1980s and 1990s see A. L. Macrakis and N. Diamandouros, New Trends in Modern Greek Historiography (Hanover NH 1982); A. Kitroeff, ‘Continuity and change in contemporary Greek historiography’, European History Quarterly 19.2 (1989) 269–98; A. Liakos, ‘Η νεοελληνική ιστοριογραφία το τελευταίο τέταρτο του εικοστού αιώνα’, Σύγχρονα Θέματα 24 (76–77) (2001) 72–91; A. Liakos, ‘Modern Greek historiography (1974–2000). The era of tradition’ in U. Brunbauer (ed.), (Re)Writing History: historiography in Southeast Europe after socialism (Münster 2004) 351–78; D. Lambropoulou, A. Liakos, and Y. Yanitsiotis, ‘Work and gender in Greek historiography during the last three decades’ in Berteke Waaldijk (ed.), Professions and Social Identity: new European historical research on work, gender and society (Pisa 2006) 1–14; E. Fournaraki and Y. Yannitsiotis, ‘Three decades of women's and gender history in Greece: an account’, Aspasia 7 (2013) 162–73; E. Gazi (ed.), ‘Greek historiography in the 20th century: opening a research agenda’, Historein 16.1–2 (2017); and in that same special issue N. Papadogiannis, ‘Gender in modern Greek historiography’, 74–101; P. M. Kitromilides and T. E. Sklavenitis (eds.), Ιστοριογραφία της νεότερης και σύγχρονης Ελλάδας 1833–2002 (Athens 2004).

4 Initially under the rubric of the Greek Paleographic Society (1971). See V. Karamanolakis, M. Couroucli, T. Sklavenitis, Συναντήσεις της ελληνικής με τη γαλλική ιστοριογραφία από τη Μεταπολίτευση έως σήμερα. Με την ευκαιρία της συμπλήρωσης 40 χρόνων από την ίδρυση της Εταιρείας Μελέτης Νέου Ελληνισμού (1971–2011) (Athens 2015).

5 Later in the 1990s, Istor, Archeiotaxio, and more recently Historical Journal followed suit.

6 Liakos, ‘Modern Greek historiography’; Kitroeff, ‘Continuity and change’.

7 In particular C. Th. Dimaras’ post-1945 school of thought, called the ‘Modern Greek Enlightenment’, was reoriented in the era of the democratic transition towards the history of Philhellenism, the history of travel writing, the history of printing, and so on. On Dimaras and Nikos Svoronos and their impact on later historiography see V. Karamanolakis, ‘Who is the historian? The formation of Modern Greek history and the historical Community’, Historein, 19.2 (2021) 2–24. See also C. Chatziiosif, ‘Το έργο του Νίκου Σβορώνου και η ελληνική ιστοριογραφία. Πενήντα χρόνια αποκλίσεων και συγκλίσεων’, Synchrona Themata 38 (1989) 24–33.

8 See e.g. S. Asdrachas, Οικονομία και νοοτροπίες (Athens 1988); F. Iliou, Ιδεολογικές χρήσεις του Κοραϊσμού στον εικοστό αιώνα (Athens 1989); V. Panagiotopoulos, Πληθυσμός και οικισμοί της Πελοποννήσου: 13ος - 18ος αιώνας (Athens 1987); V. Kremmydas, Συγκυρία και εμπόριο στην προεπαναστατική Πελοπόννησο (Athens 1980).

9 F. Iliou, ‘Η ιδεολογική χρήση της ιστορίας. Σχόλια στο διάλογο Κορδάτου – घεύγου’, Anti 46 (May 1976) 28–34. Iliou's proposal had a big impact on post-dictatorship historiography.

10 For a historiographic analysis see E. Kouki, ‘Rupture or continuity? Revisiting the basic themes of the historiography of the 21 April dictatorship’, Historein 19.2 (2021) 2–24.

11 G. Th. Mavrogordatos, Μεταξύ Πυτιοκάμπτη και Προκρούστη: οι επαγγελματικές οργανώσεις στη σημερινή Ελλάδa (Athens 1988); K. Tsoukalas, Κοινωνική ανάπτυξη και κράτος. Η συγκρότηση του δημόσιου χώρου στην Ελλάδa (Athens 1981); G. Dertilis, Κοινωνικός μετασχηματισμός και στρατιωτική επέμβαση, 1880 – 1909 (Athens 1977).

12 Liakos. ‘Modern Greek historiography’.

13 See K. Kornetis and H. Kouki, ‘From the centre to the periphery and back to the centre: social movements affecting social movement theory in the case of Greece’, in O. Fillieule and G. Accornero (eds.). Social Movement Studies in Europe. The State of the Art (New York 2016) 371–87. For an earlier wave see P. Pizanias, ‘Η εφαρμογή της θεωρίας για τις σχέσεις του ‘καπιταλιστικού κέντρου’ και της ‘υπανάπτυκτης περιφέρειας΄ στην ελληνική ιστοριογραφία’, Mnimon 11 (1987), 255–86.

14 A. Liakos, Η Σοσιαλιστική και Εργατική Ομοσπονδία Θεσσαλονίκης (Φεντερασιόν) και η Σοσιαλιστική Νεολαία (Thessaloniki 1985); G. F. Koukoules, Για μια ιστορία του ελληνικού συνδικαλιστικού κινήματος (Athens 1983); K. Moskoff, Εισαγωγικά στην ιστορία του κινήματος της εργατικής τάξης. Η διαμόρφωση της εθνικής και κοινωνική συνείδησης στην Ελλάδα (Athens 1988).

15 See Fournaraki and Yanitsiotis, ‘Three decades’.

16 Connected to purely political history, often with a geopolitical twist, was the Institute of Balkan Studies, founded during the Cold War in Thessaloniki (1953). Its English-language journal Balkan Studies, launched in 1960, continued to have a presence throughout this period and up to the present day.

17 K. Fountanopoulos, Εργασία και εργατικό κίνημα στη Θεσσαλονίκη. Ηθική οικονομία και συλλογική δράση στο Μεσοπόλεμο 1908–1936 (Athens 2005); L. Papastefanaki, Εργασία, τεχνολογία και φύλο στη νεοελληνική βιομηχανία. Η κλωστοϋφαντουργία του Πειραιά (1870– 1940) (Herakleion 2009).

18 A. Liakos, Εργασία και πολιτική στην Ελλάδα του Μεσοπολέμου. Το διεθνές γραφείο εργασίας και η ανάδυση των κοινωνικών θεσμών (Athens 1993).

19 C. Vernardakis and G. Mavris. Κόμματα και κοινωνικές συμμαχίες στην προδικτατορική Ελλάδα. Οι προϋποθέσεις της μεταπολίτευσης (Athens 1991).

20 C. Chadjiiosif (ed.), Ιστορία της Ελλάδος του 20ου αιώνα: 1922–1940], vols B1, B2 (Athens 2002) and Ιστορία της Ελλάδας του 20ού αιώνα, vols Γ1, Γ2, Δ1, Δ2 (Athens 2007).

21 V. Panayotopoulos (ed.), Ιστορία του Νέου Ελληνισμού, 1770–2000 (Athens 2004).

22 For early works see E. Avdela and A. Psarra, Φεμινισμός στην Ελλάδα του Μεσοπολέμου: μια ανθολογία (Athens 1989); E. Varikas, Η εξέγερση των κυριών. Η γένεση μιας φεμινιστικής συνείδησης στην Ελλάδα 1833–1907 (Athens 1995); Papageorgiou 1992. Also see E. Avdela, ‘Quand classe et genre s'opposent: le cas de l'historiographie grecque contemporaine’ and Διά λόγους τιμής. Βία, συναισθήματα και αξίες στη μετεμφυλιακή Ελλάδα (Volos 2002).

23 See R. Van Boeschoten, Ανάποδα χρόνια. Συλλογική μνήμη και ιστορία στο घιάκα Γρεβενών (1900–1950) (Athens 1997); T. Vervenioti, Διπλό βιβλίο. Η αφήγηση της Σταματίας Μπαρμπάτση – η ιστορική ανάγνωση. Also see R. Van Boeschoten, V. Dalkavoukis, and E. Kallimopoulou (eds.), Προφορική ιστορία και αντι-αρχεία. Φωνές, εικόνες και τόποι (Athens 2021).

24 For the initiation of the new trend post-1999, see G. Margaritis, Ιστορία του Εμφυλίου Πολέμου, I and II (Athens 2001). For the so-called ‘new wave’ see various contributions in M. Mazower, After the War was Over. Reconstructing the family, nation, and the state in Greece (1943–1960) (Princeton 2000); also G. Antoniou and N. Marantzidis (eds.), Η εποχή της σύγχυσης. H δεκαετία του ’40 και η ιστοριογραφία (Athens 2008). Later, S. Kalyvas and N. Marantzidis popularized their own findings in the best-selling Εμφύλια πάθη. 23 +2 ερωτήσεις για τον εμφύλιο (Athens 2016). For an assessment see P. Voglis and I. Nioutsikos, ‘The Greek historiography of the 1940s. A reassessment’, Comparative Southeast European Studies 65.2 (2017) 316–33.

25 D. Lambropoulou, Γράφοντας από τη φυλακή. Όψεις της υποκειμενικότητας των πολιτικών κρατουμένων (1947–1960) (Athens 1999); P. Voglis, Η εμπειρία της φυλακής και της εξορίας. Οι πολιτικοί κρατούμενοι στον εμφύλιο πόλεμο (Athens 2004).

26 D. Kousouris, Δίκες των δωσίλογων 1944–1949. Δικαιοσύνη, συνέχεια του κράτους και εθνική μνήμη; S. Dordanas, Έλληνες εναντίον Ελλήνων. Ο κόσμος των ταγμάτων ασφαλείας στην κατοχική Θεσσαλονίκη 1941–1944 (Thessaloniki 2006); M. Charalambidis, Η εμπειρία της κατοχής και της αντίστασης στην Αθήνα (Athens 2012).

27 I. G. Handrinos, Το τιμωρό χέρι του λαού. Η δράση του ΕΛΑΣ και της ΟΠΛΑ στην κατεχόμενη πρωτεύουσα (1942–1944) (Athens 2012).

28 K. Gotsinas, Επί της ουσίας. Ιστορία των ναρκωτικών στην Ελλάδα (1875–1950), Athens 2021; Υ. Yannitsiotis, Η κοινωνική ιστορία του Πειραιά. Η συγκρότηση της αστικής τάξης 1860–1910 (Athens 2006). Also see K. Yannakopoulos and Y. Yannitsiotis (eds) Αμφισβητούμενοι χώροι στην πόλη: Χωρικές προσεγγίσεις του πολιτισμού (Athens 2010).

29 P. Hatzaroula, Σμιλεύοντας την υποταγή. Οι έμμισθες οικιακές εργάτριες στην Ελλάδα το πρώτο μισό του εικοστού αιώνα (Athens 2012); Hionidou, V., ‘Domestic service on three Greek islands in the late 19th and early 20th centuries’, History of the Family 10.4 (2005) 473–8Google Scholar.

30 D. Lambropoulou, Oικοδόμοι. Οι άνθρωποι που έχτισαν την Αθήνα 1950–1967 (Athens 2009).

31 See e.g. G. Margaritis, Aνεπιθύμητοι συμπατριώτες: Στοιχεία για την καταστροφή των μειονοτήτων της Ελλάδας, Εβραίοι και Τσάμηδες 1941–1944 (Athens 2005); Karakasidou, A., Fields of Wheat, Hills of Blood (Chicago 1997)Google Scholar, a book which had a troubled publication history in the belligerent 1990s; see also V. Β. Aarbakke, ‘The Muslim Minority of Greek Thrace’, PhD diss., University of Bergen 2000. Also P. Carabott and W. Ledeboer (eds.), Encounters with Troubled Pasts in Contemporary Dutch and Greek Historiography (Athens 2023).

32 E. Avdela and O. Varon-Vasar (eds.), Οι Εβραίοι στον ελληνικό χώρο: घητήματα ιστορίας στη μακρά διάρκεια. (Athens 1995); O. Varon-Vasar, Η ανάδυση μιας δύσκολης μνήμης: κείμενα για τη γενοκτονία των Εβραίων (Athens 2012). F. Abatzopoulou, Ο άλλος εν διωγμώ. Η εικόνα του εβραίου στη λογοτεχνία και στον κινηματογράφο (Athens 1988); R. Benveniste, Αυτοί που επέζησαν. Αντίσταση, εκτόπιση, επιστροφή – Θεσσαλονικείς Εβραίοι στη δεκαετία του 1940 (Athens 2014). See also H. Fleischer, Στέμμα και Σβάστικα. Η Ελλάδα της Κατοχής και της Αντίστασης, 1941–1944 (Athens 1995).

33 C. Koulouri, Φουστανέλες και χλαμύδες. Ιστορική μνήμη και εθνική ταυτότητα 1821–1930 (Athens 2020); A-M. Droumbouki, Μνημεία της λήθης. Ίχνη του Β’ Παγκοσμίου Πολέμου στην Ελλάδα και στην Ευρώπη (Athens 2014) S. Tsiara, Τοπία της εθνικής μνήμης (Athens 2004).

34 A. Teneketzis, Τα μνημεία για τον Β’ παγκόσμιο πόλεμο. Εικονομαχίες στην Ευρώπη του Ψυχρού Πολέμου (1945–1975) (Athens 2005); H. Athanasiadis, Τα αποσυρθέντα βιβλία. Έθνος και σχολική ιστορία στην Ελλάδα, 1858–2008 (Athens 2015); A. P. Andreou, Χρήσεις και καταχρήσεις της δημόσιας ιστορίας στην Ελλάδα (Athens 2015); G. Kokkinos et al, Τα συγκρουσιακά θέματα στη διδασκαλία της ιστορίας (Athens 2010).

35 Nafpliotis, A., Britain and the Greek Colonels: accommodating the Junta in the Cold War (London 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Maragkou, K., Britain, Greece and the Colonels, 1967–7: a troubled relationship (London 2020)Google Scholar.

36 Hatzivassiliou, E., Greece and the Cold War: frontline state, 1952–1967 (London 2006)Google Scholar; I. Nikolakopoulos, Η Καχεκτική Δημοκρατία, κόμματα και εκλογές, 1946–67 (Athens 2001); A. Papachelas, Ο βιασμός της ελληνικής δημοκρατίας: ο Αμερικανικός παράγων 1947–67 (Athens 1997); S. Rizas, Η ελληνική πολιτική μετά τον εμφύλιο πόλεμο. Κοινοβουλευτισμός και δικτατορία (Athens 2008).

37 Papanikolaou, D., Singing Poets: literature and popular music in France and Greece (1945–1975) (Oxford: 2007)Google Scholar; Van Steen, G., Stage of Emergency: theatre and public performance under the Greek military dictatorship of 1967–1974 (Oxford 2015)Google Scholar.

38 K. Kornetis, Children of the Dictatorship: student resistance, cultural politics and the long 1960s in Greece (Athens 2013); K. Katsapis, To πρόβλημα νεολαία. Μοντέρνοι νέοι, παράδοση και αμφισβήτηση στη μεταπολεμική Ελλάδα (1964–1974) (Athens: 2013). Youth had been nevertheless a privileged category of research ever since the establishment of the Historical Archive of Greek Youth (IAEN) in 1983 – responsible for some important publications, very much in the spirit of the legacy of the 1973 Polytechnic uprising against the Junta – and partly boosted by the creation of the General Secretariat of Youth and Sports in the same year.

39 Papadogiannis, N., Militant around the clock? Left-wing youth politics, leisure and sexuality in post-dictatorship Greece, 1974–1981 (Oxford 2015)Google Scholar; P. Zestanakis, ‘Στυλ ζωής, έμφυλες σχέσεις και νέοι κοινωνικοί χώροι στην Αθήνα της δεκαετίας του 1980’, PhD diss., University of Crete 2017.

40 P. Panayiotopoulos, Περιπέτειες της μεσαίας τάξης. Κοινωνιολογικές καταγραφές στην Ελλάδα της ύστερης μεταπολίτευσης (Athens 2001); M. Zerboulis,‘Ανάμεσα στις τάξεις: εννοιολογήσεις και πρακτικές του μικροαστισμού στη μεταπολεμική Θεσσαλονίκη᾽, PhD diss., University of Macedonia 2019; E. Gazi, Μεταπλάσεις της ελληνικής εθνικής ιδεολογίας και ταυτότητας στη Μεταπολίτευση, in M. Avgeridis, E. Gazi, and K. Kornetis (eds). Μεταπολίτευση. Η Ελλάδα στο μεταίχμιο δύο αιώνων (Athens 2015).

41 A. Vlachos, Τουρισμός και δημόσιες πολιτικές στη σύγχρονη Ελλάδα (1914–1950). Η ανάδυση ενός νεοτερικού φαινομένου (Athens 2016); M. Nikolakakis, Μοντέρνα Κίρκη. Τουρισμός και ελληνική κοινωνία την περίοδο 1950–1974 (Athens 2017).

42 Harlafti, G. (ed.), Onassis Business History, 1924–1975 (Leiden 2024)Google Scholar; C. Tsakas, Οι έλληνες βιομήχανοι μπροστά στην ευρωπαϊκή πρόκληση: κρατική στρατηγική και ιδιωτικά συμφέροντα από τη σύνδεση με την ΕΟΚ στην αποκατάσταση της Δημοκρατίας, PhD diss., University of Crete 2015. See also Tsakas’ own historiographic appraisal of the Colonels’ regime, ‘1η Απριλίου 1967: Τι (θα έπρεπε να) γνωρίζουμε 50 χρόνια μετά;’, Τα Ιστορικά, 65 (2017), 107–130. A. Skordos, ‘Die Diktatur der Jahre 1967 bis 1974 in der griechischen und internationalen Historiographie’, in S. Troebst (ed.), Postdiktatorische Geschichtskulturen im Süden und Osten Europas: Bestandsaufnahme und Forschungsperspektiven (Göttingen 2010) 123–205.

43 D. Lambropoulou, A. Liakos, and Y. Yiannitsiotis, ‘Work and gender’, 3.

44 L. Kallivretakis, Δικτατορία και Μεταπολίτευση (Athens 2018).

45 For previous waves see K. Svolopoulos and E. Hadzivasileiou (eds), Κωνσταντίνος Καραμανλής: Αρχείο, γεγονότα και κείμενα. H δύσκολη Μεταπολίτευση VIII (Athens 2005); D. Stefanidis, Stirring the Greek Nation: political culture, irredentism and anti-Americanism in post-war Greece, 1945–1967 (Aldershot 2007); more recently A. Klapsis, ‘The Greek transition to democracy’ in A. Klapsis, C. Arvanitopoulos, E. Hatzivassiliou, and E.G.H. Pedaliu (eds.), The Greek Junta and the International System: a case study of southern European dictatorships, 1967–1974 (London 2020), 215–27. On Greece's accession to the EEC, see E. Karamouzi, Greece, the EEC and the Cold War, 1974–1979: the second enlargement (Basingstoke 2014). For foreign relations see K. E. Botsiou, ‘Αναζητώντας τον χαμένο χρόνο: η ευρωπαϊκή τροχιά της Μεταπολίτευσης’, in K. Arvanitopoulos and M. Koppa (eds.), ‘Τριάντα χρόνια ελληνικής εξωτερικής πολιτικής, 1974–2004’ (Athens 2005) 99–121 and C. Tsakas, Με το βλέμμα στην Ευρώπη. Οι ελληνογερμανικές σχέσεις μετά τον πόλεμο (1953–1981) (Herakleion 2023); E. Pedaliu, ‘A sea of confusion: the Mediterranean and détente, 1969–1974’, Diplomatic History 33.4 (2009) 735–50; and more recently, Y. Chalkos, ‘The international dimensions of the Metapolitefsi, 1974–1976: a reassessment’, in Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 48.2 (2023), 364–81.

46 D. Tziovas, Greece from Junta to Crisis: modernization, transition and diversity (London 2021).

47 For a previous wave see N. Diamandouros, ‘Regime change and the prospects of democracy in Greece: 1974–1983’, in G. O'Donnell et al (eds), Transitions from Authoritarian Rule (Baltimore 1986), 138–64; Y. Voulgaris, Η Ελλάδα της Μεταπολίτευσης 1974–1990. Σταθερή δημοκρατία σημαδεμένη από τη μεταπολεμική ιστορία; for more recent attempts see Avgeridis et al, Μεταπολίτευση (Athens 2015) and V. Karamanolakis, I. Nikolakopoulos, and T. Sakellaropoulos (eds.) Η Μεταπολίτευση, ’74–’75: Στιγμές μιας μετάβασης (Athens 2016).

48 V. Vasilis, and P. Panagiotopoulos (eds), Η Ελλάδα στη δεκαετία του 80: Κοινωνικό, πολιτικό και πολιτισμικό λεξικό (Athens 2010).

49 Papadogiannis, Militant Around the Clock?; D. Vasiliadou, P. Zestanakis, M. Kefala, and M. Preka (eds.), (Αντι)μιλώντας στις βεβαιότητες. Φύλα, αναπαραστάσεις, υποκειμενικότητες (Athens 2013); D. Vasiliadou and G. Gotsi, Ιστορίες για τη σεξουαλικότητα (Athens 2020).

50 G. Kassimeris, Europe's Last Red Terrorists: the Revolutionary Organization 17 November (New York 2011); S. Karababas, ‘How has the phenomenon of revolutionary groups been resilient in Greece? A relational study of two contentious episodes (1965–2002)’, PhD diss., University of Sheffield 2017.

51 See for instance, D. Vlami, Το φιορίνι, το σιτάρι και η οδός του κήπου – Έλληνες έμποροι στο Λιβόρνο 1750–1868 (Athens 2000); N. Manitakis, ‘L'essor de la mobilité étudiante internationale à l’âge des États-nations. Une étude de cas: les étudiants grecs en France (1880–1940)’, PhD diss., EHESS 2004); A. Kitroeff, The Greeks and the Making of Modern Egypt (Cairo 2017); A. Dalachanis, The Greek Exodus from Egypt. diaspora politics and emigration, 1937–1962 (Oxford 2017); I. Laliotou, Transatlantic subjects: acts of migration and cultures of transnationalism between Greece and America (Chicago 2004; in Greek 2006); K. Karpozilos, Κόκκινη Αμερική. Έλληνες μετανάστες και το όραμα του νέου κόσμου, 1900–1950 (Athens 2017); M. Damilakou, Έλληνες μετανάστες στην Αργεντινή (1900–1970). Διαδικασίες συγκρότησης και μετασχηματισμοί μιας μεταναστευτικής κοινότητας (Athens 2004).

52 K. Papathanasopoulou, Προσφυγική εγκατάσταση στη Νίκαια. Σύλλογοι, ταυτότητες και μνήμη (Athens 2022); L. Korma, “Όψεις της κοινωνικής και καθημερινής ζωής των προσφύγων εργατών της Μικράς Ασίας στη Γαλλία: 1916–1939”, Archeiotaxio 10 (2008) 25–36; see also L. Ventura, Μετανάστευση και Έθνος. Μετασχηματισμοί στις συλλογικότητες και στις κοινωνικές θέσεις (Athens 1994).

53 K. Karpozilos, Ελληνικός Κομουνισμός. Μια διεθνική ιστορία (1912–1974) (Athens 2024); E. Palieraki. ‘ “Le Chili est proche”: les mouvements antidictatoriaux grecs et les septembres chiliens”, Monde(s) 8 (2015) 45–64.

54 D. E. Filippis, Προφασισμός, εκφασισμός, ψευδομαφασισμός. Ελλάδα, Ιταλία και Ισπανία στον Μεσοπόλεμο (Thessaloniki 2010); L. Hasiotis, Τα παιδιά του εμφυλίου. Από την «κοινωνική πρόνοια» του Φράνκο στον ‘έρανο’ της Φρειδερίκης (1936–1950) (Athens 2013); Μ. Fytili, Μνήμη, λήθη και δημοκρατία: μια σύγκριση της ελληνικής με την ισπανική περίπτωση; I. Sethelos Balios, Las vidas paralelas de Grecia y España (1974–1985): De dictaduras a la Europa comunitaria (Madrid 2023). One should also add Greek-French cultural connections or histoire croisée through the studies of N. Manitakis, ‘Les francophiles Grecs au début du XXe siècle. De l'attachement individuel à l'engagement collectif’, Rives méditerranéennes [on-line] 63 (2022); and L. Flitouris, ‘A la recherche d'une véritable politique culturelle internationale: la présence culturelle et spirituelle de la France en Grèce de la fin de la Grande Guerre aux années 1960’, PhD diss., Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines 2004.

55 R. Hirschon, Heirs of the Greek Catastrophe. The social life of Asia Minor refugees in Piraeus (Oxford 1989); R. Van Boeschoten, From Armatolik to People's Rule. Investigation into the collective memory of rural Greece, 1750–1949 (Amsterdam 1991); M. Mazower, City of Ghosts. Christians, Muslims and Jews 1430–1950 (New York 2006).

56 See the earlier works by R. Clogg, A Concise History of Greece (Cambridge 1992) and J. K. Campbell and P. Sherrard, Modern Greece (London 1968); more recently T.W. Gallant, Modern Greece: from the War of Independence to the present (London 2016) and R. Beaton, Greece: biography of a modern nation (London 2019).

57 See J.S. Koliopoulos and T.M. Veremis, Modern Greece: A History since 1821 (London, 2009); K. Kostis, Τα κακομαθημένα παιδιά της ιστορίας, η διαμόρφωση του νεοελληνικού κράτους 18ος-20ός αιώνας (Athens 2015).

58 A. Liakos, Ο ελληνικός εικοστός αιώνας (Athens 2019). While other syntheses focus on Greece's deviation from the modern canon of other European countries, Liakos argues for a certain ‘normalcy’ of the Greek case and ‘dynamics of exchange between national history and the world around it’ (25). Also see his joint survey with N. Doumanis, The Edinburgh History of the Greeks. 20th and Early 21st Centuries (Edinburgh 2023).