At the Crossroads of Six Empires

Foreword by Katerina Sakellaropoulou, former president of Greece.

A definitive history of modern Greece, now available in English for the first time.

In this capstone achievement of a lifetime’s scholarship, George B. Dertilis traces the making of modern Greece, from the last years of Ottoman rule and the Revolution of 1821 to the debt crisis of the 2010s.

Rather than simply narrating events, Dertilis asks why they happened: how an improvised, often poor state won the consent of its citizens; absorbed war, occupation, civil conflict and mass displacement; and was in turn resisted, reinvented and remade by them. He moves between the great forces of society and economy and the accounts of the resilient individuals that shaped and were shaped by them, distilling it all into a single coherent synthesis. Drawing on decades of archival research, this is total history in the fullest sense—as attentive to ideas, mentalities and politics as to economics and material life.

Written with clarity for specialist and general readers alike, and closing with an unflinching reckoning with Greece’s recent crisis, this is a masterwork five decades in the making.

• A masterful, comprehensive history, five decades in the making
• Dertilis was an esteemed historian based for many years at the University of Athens and founded its Historical Archive
• A thorough history of modern Greece, from Ottoman rule through the debt crisis of the 2010s
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