The Real Ethnic Composition of Modern Greece Athens This question has been asked several times, and should be addressed properly once and for all. While I will agree that pockets of Romaic-speakers lived in what were to become the domains of the modern Hellenic state and elsewhere in the Balkans, particularly where it concerns the main trading areas (where as it so happens the Romaic tongue was the lingua franca of trade) and cities, the number of these people steadily increased in other areas due to the prohibition of Slavic and Latin languages in churches and schools from the second half of the 18th century. So it is not suprising that come the 19th century western travellers and writers speak about so-called Greeks forming large bulks of the population in the region, although the people of other origins were not by and large ignored either, as they are so blindly today. In the early 19th century John Cam Hobhouse, quoted by John Freely, wrote that the number of houses in Athens is supposed to be between twelve and thirteen hundred; of which about four hundred are inhabited by the Turks, the remainder by the Greeks and Albanians, the latter of whom occupy above three hundred houses. During the mid 19th century, Edmond About wrote that Athens, twenty-five years ago, was only an Albanian village. The Albanians formed, and still form, almost the whole of the population of Attica; and within three leagues of the capital, villages are to be found where Greek is hardly understood.........Albanians form about one-fourth of the population of the country; they are in majority in Attica, in Arcadia, and in Hydra....
Posted on: Thu, 30 Jan 2014 12:38:29 +0000
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