The refugee settlement and the ethnic and spatial homogenisation of Greek Thrace during the interwar period (1922-1930)

The population exchanges between Bulgaria and Greece and Turkeyand Greece during the early 1920s functioned as an excellent opportunityfor the rival Balkan states to meet the doctrines of nation-stateformation. In this specific case Greek Thrace is investigated as a provincewith a historically formed ethnic composition that questioned theattempts of the Greek authorities to establish their national dominance,semiological representation and function.Under the urgency of the refugees’ presence the Greek state putinto operation a massive colonisation and homogenisation project aimingto unbalance the regional ethnic diversity, to restrict the minoritysemiological representation, to link and administer local institutional(communal and municipal) and governmental bodies with the nationalones and to regulate the Thracian landscape according to the nationalarchetype.Seizures, requisitions, appropriations and redemptions of movableand immovable properties were the key tools adopted by a network ofstate institutions and the dominant group members themselves. Duringan eight-year period the colonisation and homogenisation projectachieved an ambiguous implementation and introduced a new revisedproject under the latest diplomatic developments between the Balkanstates.Extensive archival resources and various published materials havebeen elaborated in an attempt to reveal the utility of space as a fundamentaltool towards the accomplishment of the incorporation of a newlyannexed ethnically diverse province into a nation-state