La Communauté grecque à Marseille au XIXe siècle

• Published in: Cahiers balkaniques (Paris) Vol. 39; pp. 343 - 366
• Main Author: Michel Calapodis
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Centre d'Études Balkaniques 01-06-2011
• Subjects: Chios; Chiotic diaspora; Greek diaspora; History; Marseille; Twentieth century
• ISSN: 0290-7402; 2261-4184
• DOI: 10.4000/ceb.847

This historical perspective discusses the settlement of Greeks in Marseille, France, from the late-eighteenth century to the first decade of the 1900s. During this period, the sociological bonds between the different Greek embryonic minorities, suggest a nuclear colony. The wave of new-comers from the Island of Chios precipitated some major changes in the Marseille Greek’s social morphology: they introduced a social crystallization process through which the archontal Generation (1825-1875) incorporated the long-term representations of the group (religion, language, self-administration policy and kinship), into its main identification frame, the Community. At the same time, this Generation elaborated its own social model through a selective acquisition of local French representations and values. In this way, the Greek Community building in Marseille suggested a pattern where coexisted diacritical and congruent identities.