Driving Question: Is Greece a nation-state? What is a nation-state?

Britannica Definition

Basically, it’s a national group of people who see a place as their homeland which creates communities. People in communities can rule themselves but the whole state is ruled by a specific group.

A Super Quick History of Greece

• First advanced European civilization was on the Greek island of Greek and they were called Minoans
  • They didn’t really fight but had a lot of dolphins
  • Built a lot of stuff
  • Trade
• Next came the Mycenaeans
  • They were really warrior based
  • It’s where the great Greek heroes as said to come from
• Then start the Greek Dark Ages after the Late Bronze Age Collapse
• Archaic Era
  • Polis starts with dependent of city states
  • Started an alphabet from Phoenicia
  • Homer started the Iliad and Odyssey which was the start point of Western Literature
  • Olympic Games began
  • A lot of democracy, philophsy, math, and architecture
• Then started the Persian vs Greek War
  • Darius the Great wanted to take over Greece and had the biggest empire at the time
  • But the Greeks won against odds at the Battle of Marathon
  • Then the Persian returned at the Battle of Thermopylae, Battle of Salamis, Battle of Platae
• Classical Greece
  • In Athens they wanted to make it beautiful after the Persians burned everything
  • Socrates → Plato → Aristotle
  • Hippocrates father of medicine
  • Playwrights starting making Athens fun
  • Sparta and Athens had a war and Sparta wins
• Macedonians reunited the Greek Empire
  • Then Alexander the Great overtook the Persian empire and then became super huge
  • Macedonians then got overtaken by Rome, and the Romans just kept on copying the Greeks
    • Christianity started spreading in Romans
• Byzantine Empire was created after the fall of the different Roman Empire
  • A lot of wars and enemies with so many people trying to conquer it
  • It fell to the Ottoman Empire and Greeks didn’t like it AT ALL
• Influenced by French Independence, the War of Independence started
  • They were very brutal
  • In 1827 they got help from other European countries and they were eventually independent
  • They started regaining all their land back
  • There were a bunch of wars like Greco-Italian and WWII etc
• Great Depression was wild for them and there were a bunch of war
  • Civil War happened again
  • They joined NATO and started making money
  • Greek Junta was incredibly oppressive rule started in the 60s to 70s
    • Then democracy was restored
  • They joined the EU
• Then the financial Crisis hit Greece hard as well as the migrant crisis
  • Now have high HDI and they’ve bounced back pretty well

Greece would be considered a Nation-State as it is comprised of a generally homogenous culturural community, have a clearly divided territory which they inhabit, have been a sovereign state since the Greek War of Independence, and it is lead by a democratically-elected president.