"The Cold Judgement of Time" The Recent Past in Historiography and Book Production in Interwar Greece (1922–1936)
Abstract
The article examines the process of historicizing the recent past (1830-1922) in interwar Greece and its relation to publishing, through the lens of the concept of the "communication circuit of the book". Based on quantitative and qualitative research on a corpus of 276 books, it concludes that publications concerning the war decade 1912-1922 overshadowed other periods of the recent past, from 1830 onwards. Despite certain initiatives for the writing of general histories and the histories of state institutions in the context of the 1930 Centennial celebrations, this dominance was evident both in the number of books (50% of the sample) and in the intensity of public debate in the press sparked by the circulation of studies and memoirs.
The same phenomenon is observed in terms of author identity, as journalists and military officers constituted the overwhelming majority. At the same time, the publishing field appeared highly fragmented, with no coherent editorial strategies regarding the recent past, with the sole exception of the Armed Forces. The strong presence of the war decade in both publishing production and public discourse on books throughout the Interwar period highlights yet another dimension of the ongoing reframing of the National Schism and its gradual transformation into a persistent "past-present".
Article Details
- How to Cite
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Triantafyllou, C. (2026). "The Cold Judgement of Time": The Recent Past in Historiography and Book Production in Interwar Greece (1922–1936). Mnimon, 42, 187–209. https://doi.org/10.12681/mnimon.44993
- Issue
- Vol. 42 (2025): Mnimon
- Section
- A TRIBUTE TO PUBLICATIONS ON MODERN GREEK HISTORY IN THE INTERWAR PERIOD (1922-1936)
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