ΔΙΔΑΣΚΟΝΤΑΣ ΤΟ ΜΕΛΛΟΝ: Η "ΝΕΑ ΕΛΛΑΣ" ΣΤΑ ΣΧΟΛΙΚΑ ΕΓΧΕΙΡΙΔΙΑ ΤΟΥ ΤΕΛΟΥΣ ΤΟΥ 19ΟΥ ΚΑΙ ΤΩΝ ΑΡΧΩΝ ΤΟΥ 20ΟΥ ΑΙΩΝΑ

Abstract

Until the middle of the 19th century, the history, geography and modern reality of Macedonia, Thrace and Crete were absent from the textbooks of the modern Greek state, with the sole exception of rare references to Constantinople. Modern Greece, according to the concept imposed by romantic philhellenism, is identified, and not only geographically, with Greece of classical antiquity. Based on an analysis of Greek textbooks, the study contains an overview of the process of progressive symbolic integration of those territories into the Greek national narrative, prior to the physical integration of some of them into the sovereign Greek state.
This process is also lexical: from the last quarter of the 19th century, these areas are referred to in the textbooks as Greek Countries, then as New Countries and finally as New Greece. Research reveals that, after 1880, Greek students began to be taught the adventures of medieval Hellenism in Thrace, Asia Minor, Crete and especially Macedonia, while certain periods, personalities and various historical topoi emerge as particularly important for the national past. At the end of the 19th century, due to the development of Byzantine studies, one notes a renewed interest in the last centuries of Byzantium, during which, according to
some views, New Hellenism was born. The struggles of the Byzantines against the Bulgarians and the Ottomans are a historical precedent compared to the victories of the Greek army during the Balkan Wars. At the same time, in the textbooks of geography, the areas claimed by nationalism are presented as integral parts of the national body and only temporarily under Ottoman occupation. Finally, between 1914 and 1922, the multicultural reality of the New Countries is depicted for the first time in the textbooks, while the imperial Byzantine past emerges as a mirror of the new Greek state.