Crossing the Aegean

Following the defeat of the Greek Army in 1922 by nationalist Turkish forces, the 1923 Lausanne Convention specified the first internationally ratified compulsory population exchange. It proved to be a watershed in the eastern Mediterranean, having far-reaching ramifications both for the new Turkish Republic, and for Greece which hadto absorb over a million refugees. Known as the Asia Minor Catastrophe by the Greeks, it marked the establishment of the independent nation state for the Turks. The consequences of this event have received surprisingly little attention despite the considerable relevance for the contemporary situation in the Balkans. This volume addresses the challenge of writing history from both sides of the Aegean and provides, for the first time, a forum for multidisciplinary dialogue across national boundaries.

Renée Hirschon was educated at the universities of Cape Town, Chicago and Oxford. Intensive fieldwork among the Asia Minor refugees settled in Piraeus resulted in the monograph "Heirs of the Greek Catastrophe". She has been Senior Lecturer at Oxford Brookes University, and Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of the Aegean. She is currently Senior Research Fellow at St Peter's College University of Oxford, Senior Member at St Antony's College University of Oxford and Research Associate at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford.

“This volume is an honest example of the difficulties and possibilities for a project aiming for realistic and reliable analysis in the context of dominant nationalist discourses informing research within the boundaries of separate nation-states…One can only hope that, once initiated, such holistic and inclusive dialogue across nation-state borders would expand.” • Journal of Refugee Studies

“This volume is a long overdue endeavour to tackle the thorny and delicate issue of the compulsory population exchange…The argumentative force of the volume lies in the careful analysis of the contradictory and ambiguous ramifications of the convention.” • The Greek Review of Social Research>