Greece - SpeedyLook encyclopedia

The Greece (in Greek old and Katharévousa Ἑλλάς Hellás , in Greek demotic Ελλάδα Elládha ), officially Hellenic Republic ( Ελληνική Δημοκρατία Ellinikí Dhimokratía ) is a State south-east of the Europe.

Greece has borders with the Albania, the Yugoslav ex-Republic of Macedonia, the Bulgaria and the Turkey. The Ionian Sea in the west and the Aegean Sea in the east, parts of the sea the Mediterranean, frame the country which counts close to: 6000 islands and small islands, indissociablement related on civilization and the Greek traditions.

Greece is member of NATO, the European Union since 1981 and the zone Euro since 2001.

Greece is regarded as the cradle of the European culture. It is on its territory and in its cities that in antiquity would have been born the Philosophie, the Démocratie, the Théâtre. One owes him also the invention of the Olympic Games.

The Byzantine Empire was also a Greek empire.

It is in 1830 that the first Greek State independent of the modern era was born, following a war of independence against the Ottoman Empire.

History

Prehistory

Some sites Paléolithique S are known today in Greece. The oldest traces of occupation go up with 40.000 front J. - C.. Three caves of the valley of Louros were occupied during the Paleolithic one. A cranium of Homme of Néandertal was discovered in the surroundings of Thessalonique.

As of the thousand-year-old VIIe front J. - C., sites, announcing a “Neolithic revolution” already quite committed in the East, reveal the appearance of shepherds and farmers in particular cultivating the Vigne and the olive-tree.

Cycladic civilization

Minoan civilization

Civilization mycénienne

Antiquity

Obscure centuries

Antiquated Greece

The age of the cities

With regard to ancient Greece, the traditional time corresponds to the major part of, i.e. since the fall of the Tyran with Athens in 510 until the death of Alexandre Large the in denies 323.

The expression of “traditional time” is a posterior denomination at the chronological period to which it returns. The Greeks were aware that the world which existed before the epopee of Alexandre the Large one and the dilation of the Greek world, could be regarded as a “golden age”. In a more contemporary way, the traditional time is used to indicate the period during which the values and the fundamental institutions of the Greek world found their full expression and became ripe.

Regarded as the base period, there is no rupture between the various times. “Traditional Time” is a convenient historical expression for the historians of these periods.

Hellenistic Greece

See also: hellenistic Time, Alexandre Large the, Wars of diadoques the, Koinè, Art hellenistic

The hellenistic time ({{S mini|IV|E}} - I er), if one excludes the figures of Alexandre Large the and Cléopâtre, is relatively ignored. She is often regarded as one transitional period, sometimes even of decline or decline, between the glare of the traditional time Greek and the power of the Roman Empire. However the splendor of the cities, such Alexandria, Antioche, Pergame, the importance of the economic exchanges, from the cultural interbreedings, the role dominating of the Greek language and its diffusion deeply will modify the face of the the ancient Middle East including later under the Roman domination.

The hellenistic time was defined by the historians of the 19th century (the term “hellenistic” is employed for the first time by the German historian Johann Gustav Droysen in Geschichte of Hellenismus (1836 and 1843), starting from a linguistic and cultural criterion with knowing the spectacular increase in areas where one speaks Greek ( ἑλληνίζειν / hellênízein ) and thus of the phenomenon of expansion of the hellenism. However this phenomenon of hellenisation of the populations and meeting between old Eastern and Greek civilizations continues including under the “Empire gréco-Roman”, according to the expression of Paul Veyne. The chronological limits of the hellenistic period are thus conventional and political: they begin with the conquests from Alexandre Large the and finish when the suicide of the large last sovereign hellenistic, the queen of Egypt Cléopâtre VII, made place with the domination romaine.
Archaeological and historical work recent results in revaluing this period and in particular two aspects characteristic of the time, the existence and the weight of the large kingdoms directed by dynasties of Greek origin or Macedonian (Lagides, Séleucides, Antigonides, Attalides, etc) but also the determining role of the hundreds of cities whose importance, contrary to a a long time spread idea, is far from declining.

Roman domination

Worsen Byzantine

See also: Byzantine Empire, History of the Byzantine empire, Byzantine Literature, Byzantine Art

In 395, with died of Théodose I {{er}}, the Roman Empire is divided in two parts: the Roman Empire of Occident which disappears in 476, and Roman Empire of the East called at the 16th Empire century Byzantine (in Greek Βασιλεία Ρωμαίων / Basileía Rômaíôn : Worsen Romain) who lasted until in 1453 and even until 1461 in Trébizonde and Mistra. The Byzantine term comes from Byzance, the old name of the capital Constantinople.

During thousand years separating the year 395 from the year 1453, a certain number of values and knowledge were preserved by the Romans: Written rule of law controlled by the Code justinien, responsible emperor in front of the Senate, absence of serfdom, communities agricultural free, technical agricultural elaborate (irrigation), Romanesque architecture, aqueducts, running water, mains drainage and lighting in the cities, use of baths (which we call " baths turcs"), semaphores and headlights, transmission of the ancient knowledge, traditional Greek philosophy and hippocratic medicine in the universities of Constantinople, Trébizonde and Mistra… This knowledge also was transmitted to the Arab which in their turn communicated them to the Occident.

The disappearance of the Western part of the Roman Empire and withdrawal of its Roman legions, as well as the permanent threats on their borders led the Byzantines to obtain an armed powerful, whose tactical evolved/moved and started to be worked out in an autonomous way as of the 6th century.

Like Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire was a Christian State which, after the Schisme of Rome of 1054, remained faithful (orthodoxe) to the dogmas of Christianity of the First millenium.

End of the Byzantine Empire

See also: Fourth crusade, Latin Empire of Constantinople, Fall of Constantinople

Othoman domination

War of independence

See also: War of Greek independence, Head office of Missolonghi, Forwarding of Morée

In 1821, the orthodoxe Greeks, Chrétiens revolted vis-a-vis the domination of the Ottoman Empire. This revolt succeeds, and the independence in fact was proclaimed at the time of the National Assembly of Épidaure in 1822. The European public opinion was rather favorable to the movement, the image of Chateaubriand, Jean-Gabriel Eynard, Lord Byron or the Colonel Fabvier some of many the philhellenes. The Russia, as for it, was interested in the fate of the Greek Orthodoxes. However, no country, the such France of Villèle, moved, because of the political and diplomatic weight of the the Holy Alliance, and particularly of the Austria of Metternich, partisan keen of the order and balance. Greeks living out of the Ottoman Empire, for example the elite of Constantinople (the Phanariotes) or of the inhabitants of the Ionian Islands such as Ioannis Kapodistrias or Spiridon Trikoupis came quickly helps some with the revolutionists.

During two years, the Greeks multiplied the victories. However, they started to tear. The Sublime Door called for the aid its powerful vassal Egyptian Méhémet Ali. For the Greeks, a phase of repressions started. However, the Russians more and more ardently wished to intervene. The British , as for them, wished to limit the Russian influence in the area. A naval forwarding of demonstration was suggested in 1827 by the Convention of London (1827). A Russian, French and British fleet joint met and destroyed, without to have really sought it the fleet turquo-Egyptian woman at the time of the Bataille of Navarin. France intervened, in a spirit of Croisade by the French forwarding in Morée (Peloponnese) in 1828. Russia declared the war with the Turks the same year. Its victory was ratified by the treated of Andrinopole, in 1829, which increased its regional influence.

These European interventions precipitated the creation of the Greek State. The Conférence of London (1830), where met British representatives, French and Russian, the assertion of Greek independence allowed indeed that Prussia and Austria authorized. France, Russia and the United Kingdom kept then a notable influence on the young kingdom.

Modern and contemporary Greece

Civil war

Dictatorship of the colonels

Current Greece

Policy

Subdivisions

Geography

Relief

Mountains

Approximately 80% of the Greek territory are mountainous, which makes of Greece the 6th more mountainous country of Europe.

The Mont Olympe is the culminating point of Greece with its: 2917 meters with the top of the level of the mer.
The mounts of the Pinde form the central chain of the country, with an average height of: 2650 meters. The north of Greece presents another assembly line, the mounts of the Rhodope, with horse on the Eastern Macedonia and the Thrace.

One finds in Greece of many canyons and other landscapes karstic, of which the Météores and the Gorges of Vikos.

The omnipresence of the sea

No point of Greece is distant of more than 100 km of the sea tandis. In the Peloponnese and central Greece, this distance is even only of one about fifty kilometers. In fact, there does not exist mountain in Greece from where the sea cannot be seen.

Plains

The plains are mainly in Thessalie Eastern, central Macedonia and Thrace.

Rivers and lakes

The formation of rivers is limited by the small degree of precipitations and the parcelling out of the relief. The large rivers are thus rather very few and some find sometimes their source outside the Greek territory.

There are in Greece 21 lakes, including 14 artificial, which recovers a surface of 59.900 hectares. They are in a great northern half of the country.

Climate

Although Greece is regarded as having a Mediterranean climate typically , one however finds a variety of under-climates according to the areas:

the north and the interior of the country are the coldest areas in winter and are also driest. The mountains are covered with snow. The summer is very hot there and stormy and the wind limits the too great rise of the temperatures.
the west coast is sprinkled. The winters are cold there and the wind of the sea softens the temperatures in summer.
the east coast is the least wet of the country in winter. The winters are very dry there. In summer, heat is canicular, in particular on the continent.
In Crete and Aegean Sea, it relatively often rains in winter. The winters are very soft there and the temperature of the sea can reach the 15°C. The summer can be very hot there, unless the Meltem (wind of north) does not blow and does not make go down again the temperatures somewhat.

In a general way, the year can be divided into two principal seasons: a first relatively cold and rainy period of November until the end of March, and the hot season and dries as from April until October.

Economy

See also: Economy of Greece, List of Greek companies

Exports of France towards Greece: 3,1 billion euros (2005)
French Imports of Greece: 520 million euros (2005), Greece presented an increase in: 42500 (0,38%) inhabitants compared to the previous year, of which only: 2500 due to the natural balance, the remainder coming from immigration. Fertility rate is one of low of Europe (1,28), and the country would be threatened of fast depopulation if a constant immigration did not generate an extremely significant increase since the end of the year 1980.

Minorities

Greece is mainly populated by one of the cultural and linguistic groups of the Roman Empire of the East, conquered by the Turks then risen against the Ottoman Empire: the orthodoxe hellénophones , which had been defined as Romées ( Ῥωμαῖoι in Greek, Roumis in Turkish) during the the Middle Ages, but which as from the 18th century, under the influence of the Lights , were asserted Έλληνες “Hellènes” or “Greeks” in français.

Minority languages: slavon (Bulgarian and Macedonian) Albanian, Aroumain, Turkish, Yévanique (judéo-Greek) and ladino (Judeo-Spanish).

Minority religious groups: Moslems (: 120000), Jews, roman catholics, Protestants (98% of the Greeks are orthodoxe Christians).

Minority linguistic groups, Greek citizens but not asserting Greek national community: Albanian, Pomaks (Moslem bulgarophones), Slavons asserts a Bulgarian national identity or Macedonian not recognized by the Greek government, Rroms (known as Tziganes), Armenians and Jews.

Minority linguistic groups asserting Greek national community: Helléno-Arvanites albanophones, Aroumain S (known as Valaques) and Slavo-hellènes (slavophones which do not assert like Bulgarian S or Macedonian S).

Culture

Sport

Greece is with the France the only nation to have taken part in all the Olympic Games since their creation in 1896. In all, Greece gained 138 medals (37 out of gold, 62 out of money and 39 out of bronze). As a nation cradle of the Olympic Games, Greece always opens the procession of the nations at the time of the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games.

Greece is currently champion of Europe in football and basketball, exploit that only the Soviet Union realized.

Media

Various data

Land borders: 1 210 km (Bulgaria 494 km; Albania 282 km; Macedonia 228 km; Turkey 206 km)
Littoral: 13 676 km
Ends of altitude: 0 m > +: 2917 m
Independence: 1829
Telephone lines: 6 million (in 2003)
Cellphones: 10,4 million (in 2003)
Radios: 5 million (in 1997)
Television stations: 4,7 million (in 2005)
Users of Internet: 4,2 million (in 2005)
Many suppliers of access Internet: 31 (in 2005)
Roads: 117 000 km (of which: 107406 km tarred) (in 1996)
Railways: : 2548 km
inland Waterways: 80 km
Many airports: 81 (including 65 with tarred tracks) (in 2000)

Codes

Greece has as codes:

GR., according to the standard ISO 3166-1 (code list country), code alpha-2,
GR., according to the international Code list of the number plates,
GR., according to the Code list countries used by NATO, code alpha-2,
GRC, according to the standard ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 (code list country),
GRC, according to the Code list countries used by NATO, vode alpha-3,
LIKING, according to the Code list country of CIO,
LG, according to the List of the prefixes of codes ICAO of the airports,
SX, according to the List of prefixes ICAO of registration of the aircraft,

See too

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