Greece 'Invisable' Italians

[Sarafot]

i think its because there is a macedonian state now.

YOu are probebly wright,but that is for Australia and America,i dont think that in Europe it is so,mostly bros from Egej emigrated in Aus and America not so much in Europe,exept Poland,Hungary and Russia,imagine number of Macedonians in Russia is only 1000 persons!?

[osiris]

sarafot i can only speak of australia, i think the experience in the usa and canada may have its one nunances and charcateristics. our braikya from egei and also from the republic the mass migration was to those 3 [/CENTER]nations. my great grandfather went to the usa kako pechalbar a few times one of his sons is buried there, many of my family live in the usa from the pre war migrations, but we were unable to enter the usa as immigrants and ended up and i say thankfully in australia where we had many relatives from both sides of my family.

i think the emergence of the republic has had a very positive effect on the soft grkomani etc, and the majority were and are soft grkomani going along with kinship ties rather than an educated chiice of ethnicity.

whenever we met and in our homes we all spoke macedonian so what did it mean to the grkomani when they said zborame po nashe. was it said lightly almost innocently, i dont think so. given the highly politicised divison of our community along macedonian and greeks lines, how can it be misunderstood what, po nashe meant deep inside the mind of grkomani. you dont say "mine" unless your truly believe it and understand it

[Spartan]

why would they want to call themselves Greek when they are laughed at by Greeks

Thats the part I dont understand either,
Why endure the heckling??

[Thorvald]

Napoleon,

Many cities south of Rome have Greek names like Napoli (Neopolis), Syracuse etc etc due to the heavy colonization of southern Italy by Greeks. There were so many Greeks in southern Italy and Sicily it was called "Magna Graecia". There are about 40,000 Greek speakers in southern Italy to this day.

Greeks and Italians see themselves are ethnic cousins in many ways as we have lived side by side for many centuries. When I was in Italy, everywhere I went people were even more warm, friendly, and hospitable when I would tell them I'm a "Greco".

When the Turks were laying siege to Constantinople in 1453 there were 3,000 Latin (Venetian/Genoese) volunteers defending the city side by side the Greeks, just as there were Greeks fighting side by side Italians in Southern Italy some decades later in southern Italy against Ottoman incursions.

It is common knowledge that there are Greeks of Italian background and even more Italians of Greek background, so not exactly sure what your point is.

Italy is more a geographic discription for people speaking more or less the same language, but a common language doesn't always make the people as a unity.

Have heard about the Padanian secession?

Northern Italians dont reffer themselves as ''Italians'', racially they are related to their northern neighbours,, and economically they are linked with Western and Central-Europe.

[Spartan]

The same can be said for Sicilians
Many of them claim to be "Sicilian" not Italian
I know first hand, I married into the "Famiglia"

[osiris]

you are right spartan indeed there was a sicilian indpendence movement as late as the post ww2. i would argue there is more ancient helenic bloodlines in southern italy than in modern greece.

[Risto the Great]

The same can be said for Sicilians
Many of them claim to be "Sicilian" not Italian
I know first hand, I married into the "Famiglia"

Spartan, have you read The Sicilian by Puzo?
I read it many years ago and the thing that stuck in my head was the idea that part of the Sicilian tradition was to continue painting the houses in the same colour as your ancestors did. What the proud Sicilians did not know was that the ??? coloured houses were Greeks, the ??? coloured houses were Jews, Arabic etc.

As an aside, there were significant Slavic warriors that settled in Sicily also. Purity ... a myth!

[osiris]

rtg davis in his history of europe also mentions that, and he also makes the point that the houses of the different peoples were not in ghettos but intermingled.

[Spartan]

i would argue there is more ancient helenic bloodlines in southern italy than in modern greece.

I would agree with that as well. Although it can not be proven, many Greeks were part of the colonization of Sicily.
My father also has a saying " there are more ancient Greek ruins in Sicily than all of Greece.."

Spartan, have you read The Sicilian by Puzo?

Of couse!!
Ive read all of Puzos books, excelent writer imo.

As an aside, there were significant Slavic warriors that settled in Sicily also.Purity ... a myth!

Aint that the truth

[osiris]

and later albanians were added to the pot, full of everything from nth africa to normandy from phoenicia to spain. what an amazing place it must be.

spartan do you have blonde people in your family i have friends from mani and they are such a mixture of racial types, from a dark swarthy arabic father to blonde high cheek boned blue eyed beuaty of a daughter.

[Spartan]

^^
My whole family, and my wifes is dark haired and tanned skin, except my daughter.
She is blonde and blue eyed
Ill kill that mailman

[TrueMacedonian]

Instead, she fixed her choice on a young merchant from Chios, named Nicholas Mavrocordato. His father claimed descent from a Greek general in Venetian service, Mavros, whose name was distorted in drama to Othello, the Moor of Venice, whose heiress had married into the Genoese-Chiot family of the Cordati. His mother was also a Genoese Chiot by origin, belonging to the Genoese branch of the Roman family of the Massimi, descended from Fabius Maximus Cunctator. Despite his boasted lineage it was his marriage to Roxandra that made the fortune of the Mavrocordato family; and his descendants for several generations gratefully added the surname of Scarlatos to their own.

Steven Runciman's 'The Great Church In Captivity'

http://www.holytrinitymission.org/books/english/church_in_captivity_s_runciman.htm#_Toc69257967

It seems that not only was Mavrocordat half a Roumanian but he was also part Italian. I highly doubt his family claims to some "greek general in Venetian service". If anything he may have very well been descended from Venetians. I believe it was Richard Clogg who stated that the Phanariots claims to so-called nobility were all false.

[Liberator of Makedonija]

Considering many of the islands now apart of Greece were under Venetian (later Italian) rule for centuries it's defiantly not surprising