Associate Professor Nicholas Doumanis will present an online only lecture about the destruction of Smyrna, as a part of the Greek History and Culture Seminars, offered by the Greek Community of Melbourne.
September 2022 marks the centenary of the destruction of the Aegean port of Smyrna. A cosmopolitan city in which Greeks formed the largest community, it was violently transformed into an overwhelmingly Turkish city within a three week period.
The lecture will cover the events between 9 September, when Turkish Nationalist troops marched into the city and 1 October, when Smyrna’s Greek population had been removed.
Why did a prosperous city become the chief victim of Greek-Turkish hostilities?
The lecture will recount the events and discuss the global significance of the destruction of Smyrna, and what it said about the great and dramatic global shift from a world of empires to one of nations.
Nick Doumanis teaches history at the University of New South Wales. He is the author of the last volume of The Edinburgh History of the Greeks, with Emeritus Professor Antonis Liakos of the University of Athens, which reconsiders the history of Greece, Cyprus and the diaspora from 1912 through to the present. It will appear in 2023. The Greek translation of his Before the Nation (2013), which discusses Greek life in the Late Ottoman Empire, has just been published in Athens by Papadopoulos Press (Find out more: www.epbooks.gr/shop/biblia-gia-enilikes/istoria-martyries/prin-apo-tin-katastrofi/)
When: 2 June 2022, 7pm
Online Platforms: Facebook and Youtube