Ernest Gellner on Greeks

“Some economically brilliant groups of this kind have behind them a long tradition of dispersal, urbanization and minority status: this is clearly the case of the Jews, Greeks Armenians or Parsees.”

“Greek and Armenian nationalism arose among populations which were generally more prosperous and better able to understand the wealth- generating economies of modern Europe than their Ottoman Muslim overlords.”

“The Hellenes initially thought not so much in terms of secession from the Ottoman Empire, as of inverting the hierarchy within it and taking it over, thereby reviving Byzantium. The first Greek rising took place not in Greece, but in what is now Romania, where the Greeks were a minority and moreover one doing rather well out of the Ottoman system. The use of what is now southern Greece as a territorial basis only came later.”