Greek diaspora
Such places historically (dating to the ancient period) include, Albania, North Macedonia, southern Russia, Ukraine, Asia Minor and Pontus (in today's Turkey), Georgia, Egypt, Sudan, southern Italy (the so-called "Magna Graecia"), Sicily, Cargèse and Marseille in France.
[3] Examples of its influence range from the role played by Greek expatriates in the emergence of the Renaissance, through liberation and nationalist movements involved in the fall of the Ottoman Empire, to commercial developments such as the commissioning of the world's first supertankers by shipping magnates Aristotle Onassis and Stavros Niarchos.
[6] Many Greeks migrated to the new Hellenistic cities founded in Alexander's wake, as geographically dispersed as Uzbekistan[7] and Kuwait.
Greeks continued to live around the Levant, Mediterranean and Black Sea, maintaining their identity among local populations as traders, officials, and settlers.
Soon afterwards, the Arab-Islamic Caliphate seized the Levant, Egypt, North Africa and Sicily from the Byzantine Greeks during the Byzantine–Arab Wars.
The Phanariots helped administer the Ottoman Empire's Balkan domains in the 18th century; some settled in present-day Romania, influencing its political and cultural life.
[citation needed] A larger-scale movement of Greek-speaking peoples in the Ottoman period was Pontic Greeks from northeastern Anatolia to Georgia and parts of southern Russia, particularly the province of Kars Oblast in the southern Caucasus after the short-lived Russian occupation of Erzerum and the surrounding region during the 1828–29 Russo-Turkish War.
Those who settled in Ukraine and southern Russia became a sizable proportion of cities such as Mariupol, but generally assimilated with Christian Orthodox Russians and continued to serve in the Tsarist army.
Greek merchant families had contacts in other countries; during the disturbances, many set up home bases around the Mediterranean (notably Marseilles in France, Livorno, Calabria and Bari in Italy and Alexandria in Egypt), Russia (Odesa and St. Petersburg), and Britain (London and Liverpool) from where they traded (typically textiles and grain).
[14] As markets changed, some families became shippers (financed through the local Greek community, with the aid of the Ralli or Vagliano Brothers).
Financial assistance from overseas was channeled through these family ties, providing for institutions such as the National Library and sending relief after natural disasters.
During the 20th century, many Greeks left the traditional homelands for economic and political reasons; this resulted in large migrations from Greece and Cyprus to the United States, Australia, Canada, Brazil, The United Kingdom, New Zealand, Argentina, The United Arab Emirates, Singapore, Germany, Norway, Belgium, Georgia, Italy, Armenia, Russia, Chile, Mexico and South Africa, especially after World War II (1939–45), the Greek Civil War (1946–49) and the Turkish Invasion of Cyprus in 1974.
[18] After World War I, most Pontian and Anatolian Greeks living in Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey) were victims of Muslim Turkish intolerance for Christians in the Ottoman Empire.
[18] With the fall of Communism in eastern Europe and the USSR, Greeks of the diaspora immigrated to modern Greece's main urban centers of Athens, Thessaloniki, and Cyprus; many came from Georgia.
[20][21][22] Centers of the Greek diaspora are New York City,[23] Boston,[24] Chicago,[25] Los Angeles, Munich, London, Melbourne, Wellington,[26] Sydney, Auckland, Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, Johannesburg, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Culiacán, Mexico City, and Buenos Aires.
According to the US Department of State, the Greek-American community numbers about three million and the vast majority are third- or fourth-generation immigrants.
According to the Catholic Church,[32] the Eparchy of Nossa Senhora do Paraíso em São Paulo (Melkite Greek), the Eparchia Dominae Nostrae Paradisis S. Pauli Graecorum Melkitarum had a 2016 membership of 46,600.
The World Council of Churches estimates that the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch has a membership of 90,000 in Latin America, the majority of whom live in Brazil.
