The Greek Census of 1928

IN October 1925 I published an article in the Geographical Journal on the effects produced on the ethnical geography of certain regions of Greece (Macedonia and Thrace) as the result of the racial migrations which took place in the Balkans during the period 1912-1924. I was able to show, from the figures of the Commissions entrusted with the supervision of emigration between Greece and Bulgaria and Greece and Turkey, as well as from other official Greek and Turkish sources, how profoundly these Vblkerwanderungen had modified the racial character of the provinces in question. The political importance of the changes thus brought about did not fail to attract attention and were the subject of comment both in the press and at Geneva. Mr. Howland, the American President of the Greek Refugee Settlement Commission, had occasion, in a much-quoted statement which he made before the Council of the League of Nations at its session of September 1925, to emphasize the fact that the racial homogeneity resulting from the reshuffling of the Balkan populations would be a factor for peace by eliminating what in the past had proved a constant and troublesome source of friction. Statesmen and journalists noted with satisfaction that out of evil some good had come, and that the uprooting of the Greek population of Turkey, with all the immense sacrifice of human life which it had entailed, had at least had one compensating advantage in that it had automatically solved?as far as Southern j^lacedonia was concerned?a question which had been a chronic source of inter-Balkan conflicts and a threat to European peace for over a quarter of a century. At the time when I published my article in the Geographical Journal the last census figures available for Greece were those of 1920. Normally, one would have had to have waited till 1930 for the next census. But the Greek Government felt that the events of 1922-1923, with the consequent territorial changes and influx of refugees, had produced such profound modifications that the figures of the census of 1920?taken when Greece was still in pos? session of Eastern Thrace as far as the lines of Tchataldja and before the influx of refugees from Anatolia?had become valueless for practical purposes. It was therefore decided to take a fresh census in 1928, that is, two years before the normal period. The figures of this census, taken on May 15 to 16, have now been published and give us the exact measure of the territorial and racial readjustments of the last few years. An analysis in explanation of these figures will certainly not be without interest to those who are students of con? ditions in the Balkan countries and of their possible reactions, all too frequent in the past, on the politics of Europe as a whole. The census of 1920 gave a total population for Greece of 5,536,375. That of 1928 shows a population of 6,204,684, i.e. an increase of 668,309, or nearly 12 per cent. When one takes into consideration the fact that the Greece of 1928 is actually a much smaller country than what it was in 1920?the present

Census · Geography · Population · Sociology · Balkans: History, Politics, Society · Demography

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