Professor Anastasios Tamis’ book Greeks in the Far Orient explores the plight of a group of 40,000 Greek and Cypriot immigrants who settled in Asia at the end of the 19th century. The book took five years of research and saw the team travel to 12 different countries.
Professor Tamis will present his research in Adelaide on Friday 4 November. The book contains a historical account and 480 rare photographs, chronicling the wave of emigration to India, China, Manchuria, Japan, Korea and the Philippines. Professor Tamis has previously written a number of books on the subject of Greeks who migrated to Australia and New Zealand, with the help of access to the legal constitutions of the major settlements in the Australian cities, personal archives, oral testimonies and the published word of Greek settlers.
For Greeks in the Far Orient, Professor Tamis was faced with the challenge of limited primary resources and had to travel far and wide to find bits of information. In the book, Professor Tamis and his team follow the Greek migrants’ movements to Asia, and after three generations of settlement in the Far East, their expulsion and expropriation to Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the US, Latin America, Greece and Europe. His painstaking approach involved listening to recordings of interviews and oral history, accessing Greek diplomatic archives by utilising bilingual translators, and translating from Japanese and Chinese governmental archives.
The book is available in English, is translated in Greek and is expected to be available in Chinese. Professor Tamis will be presenting ‘Greeks in the Far Orient’ in Adelaide on Friday 4 November.