To make a land Hellenic: toward a national(ist) landscape in southern Macedonia, 1896-1932

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the Greek state engaged in a campaign that opted to present southern Macedonia as a genuinely Hellenic space. The goal was to inhibit rival national discourses that emphasized the primordial presence of non-Greek ethnic groups in the province which legitimized expansionist claims by other states. To achieve this, many Greek governments at the time employed agents and institutions who used three devices to spatialize the Hellenic past of the province: Travelogues, monuments, and excavations. This paper explores and assesses their impact on defining southern Macedonia as a Greek land.