Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-p9bg8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T10:04:11.841Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

From Structure to Agency to Comparative and ‘Cross-national’ History? Some Thoughts Regarding Post-1974 Greek Historiography

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 April 2010

KONSTANTINOS CHATZIS  and
GEORGIA MAVROGONATOU
KONSTANTINOS CHATZIS
Affiliation:
Dr Konstantinos Chatzis, LATTS-Ecole des Ponts ParisTech, 6 et 8 avenue Blaise Pascal – Cité Descartes, 77455 Marne-la-Vallée cedex 2, France; chatzis@mail.enpc.fr.
GEORGIA MAVROGONATOU
Affiliation:
Dr Georgia Mavrogonatou, School of Applied Mathematical and Physical Sciences, Department of Humanities, Social Sciences and Law, National Technical University of Athens, Polytechneioupolis, 15780 Zografou, Athens, Greece; gmavr@central.ntua.gr.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.
Image of the first page of this content. For PDF version, please use the ‘Save PDF’ preceeding this image.'
Type
Review Article
Information
Contemporary European History , Volume 19 , Issue 2 , May 2010 , pp. 151 - 168
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 The main journals in which this group of researchers expressed their views were Sygchrona Themata (1962, republished in 1977), a general social sciences journal, and the following historical journals: Mnimon (1971), Ta Istorika (1983), Istor (1990) and Historein (founded in 1999, it is an English-language review).

2 Concerning historiographical production on modern Greece in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, see Sygchrona Themata, special issue, nos. 35, 36 and 37 (December 1988); Paschalis Kitromilidis and Triantafyllos Sklavenitis, eds., Istoriografia tis neoteris kai sygchronis Elladas, 1833–2002 (Athens: Institute for Neohellenic Research, 2004). See also in English Kitroeff, Alexander, ‘Continuity and Change in Contemporary Greek Historiography’, European History Quarterly, 19 (1989), 269–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Liakos, Antonis, ‘Modern Greek Historiography (1974–2000): The Era of Tradition from Dictatorship to Democracy’, in Brunbauer, Ulf, ed., (Re)Writing history: Historiography in Southeast Europe after Socialism (Münster: LIT Verlag, 2004), 351–78Google Scholar; Lambropoulou, Dimitra, Liakos, Antonis and Yannitsiotis, Yannis, ‘Work and Gender in Greek Historiography during the Last Three Decades’, inWaaldijk, Berteke, ed., Professions and Social Identity: New European Historical Research on Work, Gender and Society (Pisa: Edizioni Plus–Pisa University Press, 2006), 1–14Google Scholar. This bibliography is purely indicative.

3 ‘Modernisation’ is a very loaded term and modernisation theory has come in for much criticism. For the purpose of this review essay, we accept that certain features of the developed Western world may be labelled as ‘modern’, and modernisation is therefore used as a type of shorthand for a comparison of those specific features found in the ‘developed’ world and elsewhere, Greece in our case. See Gallant, Thomas, Modern Greece (London: Arnold, 2001), xiiiGoogle Scholar.

4 With regard to the role played by the ‘modernisation issue’ in the Greek historiographical production of the period see also Liakos, ‘Modern Greek Historiography’.

5 Dimaras, K. T., Neoellinikos diafotismos (Athens: Ermis, 1977)Google Scholar; idem, Ellinikos romantismos (Athens: Ermis, 1982). See also Dimaras, C. T., La Grèce au temps des Lumières (Geneva: Droz, 1969)Google Scholar and Svoronos, Histoire de la Grèce moderne (Paris: PUF, 1953).

6 The revival of Greek historiography in the early post-Junta years was in large part the result of a generation of historians (Philippos Iliou, Spyros Asdrachas, Vassilis Panagiotopoulos, Giorgos Dertilis, etc.) whose work was imbued with both the ‘school of Enlightenment’ (Dimaras) and the Marxist problematic (Svoronos). See Liakos, ‘Modern Greek Historiography’.

7 This observation is less valid for the history of ideas: here we find studies that also investigate ‘microscopic’ fields of analysis (the views of specific thinkers, the ‘micro’-processes by which modern ideas were transfused to Greece, and so on).

8 Petropulos, J., Politics and Statecraft in the Kingdom of Greece, 1833–1843 (Princeton University Press, 1968)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Tsoukalas, Konstantinos, Koinoniki anaptyxi kai kratos. I sygkrotisi tou dimosiou chorou stin Ellada (Athens: Themelio, 1981)Google Scholar. In English, see Constantine Tsoucalas, ‘On the Problem of Political Clientalism in Greece in the Nineteenth Century’, Journal of the Hellenic Diaspora, 5, 1 (1978), 5–15; 5, 2 (1978), 5–17. According to the dominant interpretations of the era this happened, first, because the absence of major industry in nineteenth-century Greece meant that the country did not witness the emergence of a robust bourgeoisie; and, second, because the ‘appropriation’ over an extended period of time of former Ottoman land by the independent Greek state after the 1821 Revolution became an obstacle to the emergence of a powerful class of landowners.

10 See Mouzelis, Nikos, Modern Greece: Facets of Underdevelopment (London: Macmillan, 1978)Google Scholar; idem, Politics in the Semi-periphery: Early Parliamentarism and Late Industrialisation in the Balkans and Latin America (London: Macmillan, 1986).

11 Dertilis, Giorgos, Koinonikos metaschimatismos kai stratiotiki epemvasi, 1880–1909 (Athens: Exantas, 1977)Google Scholar.

12 We should note here that the majority of historians who brought about a revival of Greek historiography in the 1970s specialized in the history of Hellenism in the Ottoman Empire and the Venetian dominions. See, for example, the recent book by Spyros Asdrachas and collaborators, Elliniki oikonomiki istoria, 15os–19os aionas (Athens: Politistiko Idryma Omilou Peiraios, 2003).

13 Some major contributions of the period include Agriantoni, Christina, Oi aparches tis ekviomichanisis stin Ellada ton 19° aiona (Athens: Emporiki Trapeza tis Ellados, 1986)Google Scholar; Kostis, Kostas, Agrotiki oikonomia kai Georgiki Trapeza. Opseis tis ellinikis oikonomias sto mesopolemo (1919–1928) (Athens: MIET, 1987)Google Scholar; Hatziiosif, Christos, I giraia selini. I viomichania stin elliniki oikonomia, 1830–1940 (Athens: Themelio, 1993)Google Scholar.

14 See Lambropoulou et al., ‘Work and Gender’, 4–5; Lida Papastefanaki, ‘Misthoti ergasia’, in Kostas Kostis and Sokratis Petmezas, eds., I anaptyxi tis Ellinikis oikonomias ton 19o aiona (Athens: Alexandreia, 2006), 253–91, esp. 254–60.

15 Kitromilidis, Paschalis, Neoellinikos Diafotismos (Athens: MIET, 1996)Google Scholar, esp. chapter 10 and the conclusion (the book is based on the author's doctoral dissertation, ‘Tradition, Enlightenment and Revolution’, Harvard University, 1978). See also Diamandouros, Nikiforos, Cultural Dualism and Political Change in Post-authoritarian Greece (Madrid: Instituto Juan March de Estudios e Investigaciones, 1994)Google Scholar. The cause of this ‘failure’ is rooted, in the authors’ opinion, in an indigenous cultural tradition formed over time by the Byzantine experience, the Orthodox Church and the Ottoman past.

16 See, e.g., Kostas Kostis, ‘Dimosia oikonomika’, in Kostis and Petmezas, I anaptyxi, 293–335; Giorgos Dertilis, Istoria tou Ellinikou kratous, 1830–1920 (Athens: Estia, 2005), I, part 4, ch. 3. In this two-volume work, Dertilis, one of the protagonists of the discussion in the 1970s on the character of Greek society, revised several of his initial positions in the light of subsequent research carried out by him and other historians. For a close critical reading of this work by the most prominent historian of Greek industry, see Christina Agriantoni, ‘Giorgos B. Dertilis, Istoria tou Ellinikou kratous 1830–1920’, Sygchrona Themata, no. 94 (July–September 2006), 9–15. The authors provide new (and more solidly grounded) quantitative data, while noting that the ‘bloated’ Greek state apparatus during its early years can largely be accounted for by the specific needs common to all new states at their foundation.

17 This is the case with the following, for example: Agriantoni, ‘Giorgos B. Dertilis’; Dertilis, Istoria tou Ellinikou; Kostas Kostis and Sokratis Petmezas, ‘Eisagogi’, in Kostis and Petmezas, I anaptyxi, 21–37; Fragkiadis, Alexis, Elliniki oikonomia, 19os–20os aionas (Athens: Nefeli, 2007)Google Scholar. For macroeconomic data see Giorgos Kostelenos, ‘Makrooikonomika megethi’, in Kostis and Petmezas, I anaptyxi, 39–79. For comparisons with ‘developed’ countries, see Bairoch, Paul, Victoires et déboires. Histoire économique et sociale du monde du XVIe siècle à nos jours (Paris: Gallimard, 1997), II, 241Google Scholar and passim.

18 See, e.g., Christina Agriantoni, ‘Viomichania’, in Kostis and Petmezas, I anaptyxi, 219–51, esp. 221–2; Dertilis, Istoria tou Ellinikou, I, Introduction, ch. 4.

19 Concerning the term ‘occidentalism’, see Carrier, James G., ed., Occidentalism. Images of the West (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995)Google Scholar. The use to which it is put here is a personal one.

20 See, for example, the introductory remarks by Gunnar Hering in his monumental work Die politischen Parteien in Griechenland, 1821–1936 (Munich: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1992). Hering recalls, for example, that vote buying was not an unknown phenomenon in countries as advanced as nineteenth-century Britain. In France, proven clientelistic practices under the July Monarchy have even been theorised by Guizot (see, e.g., Jaume, Lucien, ‘Un libéralisme élitaire. Guizot et les doctrinaires’, in idem, L'individu effacé ou le paradoxe du libéralisme français (Paris: Fayard, 1997), 119–69)Google Scholar. Staying with France and returning to Kitromilidis's position concerning the weakness of political liberalism as a political culture in Greece (see above), we should remember that even in a country like France, (political and economic) liberalism did not really catch on if we are to believe Pierre Rosanvallon when he depicts the French political model as an ‘illiberal democracy’. See Pierre Rosanvallon, Le modèle politique français. La société civile contre le jacobinisme de 1789 à nos jours (Paris: Seuil, 2004). The tendency to idealise the West when making comparisons is not merely a Greek phenomenon. The debate on the German Sonderweg seems also to have been based, at least to a considerable extent, on an idealised vision of the British situation. See Kocka, Jürgen, ‘German history before Hitler: The Debate about the German “Sonderweg”’, Journal of Contemporary History, 23, 1 (1988), 3–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 They are not the only ones. The interest in how individual and social identities are formed is one of the defining characteristics of recent Greek historiographical production. In English, see, e.g., Voglis, Polymeris, Becoming a Subject: Political Prisoners during the Greek Civil War (1945–1950) (New York: Berghahn, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Other references can be found in Liakos, ‘Modern Greek historiography’; Lambropoulou et al., ‘Work and Gender’.

22 Clearly, for the authors of the present review essay, the choice of these three books does not mean that there are no other significant works in recent Greek historiography. Moreover, to the reasons for choosing these three books we have already presented in the main text, we should also add a further one: the affinity of the works in question with the interests of the authors of the present review.

23 The author has published some of the findings of her analysis in English in Avdela, Efi, ‘Emotions on Trial: Judging Crimes of Honour in Post-civil-war Greece’, Crime, History & Societies, 10, 2 (2006), 33–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 See, e.g., Avdela, Efi, Le genre entre classe et nation: essais d'historiographie grecque (Paris: Editions Syllepse, 2006)Google Scholar. This book contains numerous references to women and gender studies in Greece.

25 Avdela, Efi, Dimosioi ypalliloi genous thilykou. Katamerismos tis ergasias kata fyla ston dimosio tomea, 1908–1955 (Athens: Idryma Erevnas kai Paideias tis Emporikis Trapezas tis Ellados, 1990)Google Scholar.

26 For her research purposes, the author took a sample of 340 cases from the Athens daily press during the period 1949–67 (p. 17) and accessed the records of approximately fifty trials (p. 18).

27 The author refers to, among others, the classic work by Campbell, John K., Honour, Family and Patronage: A Study of Institutions and Moral Values in a Greek Mountain Community (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964)Google Scholar. On John Campbell and his work see the recent book edited by Mazower, Mark, Networks of Power in Modern Greece: Essays in Honour of John Campbell (London: Hurst, 2008)Google Scholar.

28 The reader may recall that in his novel Stoicheia gia ti dekaetia tou ’60 (Athens: Stigmi, 1989), Thanasis Valtinos had already used the daily press to depict 1960s Greece and even reproduced several extracts from articles concerning ‘crimes of honour’. Avdela mentions this and pays homage to the author on page 15 of her book..

29 Unfortunately, the author does not clarify exactly what she means by ‘authoritarian modernisation’, a term that has been used to characterise policies pursued by regimes ranging from the Brazilian military junta of the 1960s and 70s, to Kemalist Turkey, or even Nazi Germany and Stalinism.

30 On the relations between class and gender, for example, see pp. 185–6. Here, the author refers to the Greek-language version of Avdela's article, ‘Classe, ethnicité et genre dans la Thessalonique post-ottomane’, in idem, Le genre entre classe, 131–51.

31 The reference (pp. 72–3) to Harry Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1974), for example is, in our opinion, ill-chosen. Braverman tackles certain subjects (scientific management, numerically controlled machine tools, etc.) that are absent from Fountanopoulos's field of research. Moreover, for Braverman, skill can be objectively evaluated and observed, whereas Fountanopoulos (p. 161 and ch. 2) sees skill as a socially constructed phenomenon (i.e., the main reason a given kind of work is regarded as ‘skilled’ or not has less to do with its ‘objective’ content than the worker's power to present to and to impose their work on other industrial actors as ‘skilled’). In our opinion, Stephen Marglin – another ‘radical’ author – would complement Fountanopoulos's approach more precisely: Stephen A. Marglin, ‘What Do Bosses Do? The Origins and Functions of Hierarchy in Capitalist Production’, Review of Radical Political Economics, 6, 2 (1974), 60–112.

32 Antonis Liakos (who supervised Fountanopoulos's thesis, which forms the basis for this book) had already referred to Thompson in his own work. See, e.g., Liakos, Antonis, Ergasia kai politiki stin Ellada tou mesopolemou (Athens: Idryma Erevnas kai Paideias tis Emporikis Trapezas tis Ellados, 1993), 93–4Google Scholar.

33 This is true of economic historians who, within the larger framework of industrialisation in Greece, have debated a series of themes such as the ethnic and gender composition of the labour force, the cost of labour, salary levels, the seasonal nature of industrial work and so on (see above). It is also true of other researchers – mostly labour law specialists – who have focused on union rights, collective bargaining agreements and so on. See Antonis Liakos, ‘I istoriografia tou ergatikou kinimatos’, 161–70.

34 Or rather ‘lingustic turns’ in the plural as Miles Taylor rightly points out in his ‘The Linguistic Turns in British Social History’, Bollettino del diciannovesimo secolo, 4 (1995), 5–13. Taylor stresses that British social historians have taken at least three linguistic turns: the ‘culturalist’ linguistic turn of E. P. Thompson, the ‘contextualist’ linguistic turn most closely identified with Gareth Stedman Jones, and the ‘post-modernist’ linguistic turn championed by Patrick Joyce. Fountanopoulos refers to all of these authors.

35 The multi-ethnic character of this movement was reflected in the existence of several types of – ‘mixed’ and ‘mono-ethnic’ – professional association. Following the gradual departure of Muslims from the city between 1912 and 1925, Thessalonica was left with two ethnic communities, Greeks and Jews. See Mazower, Mark, Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims and Jews,1430–1950 (London: Harper Perennial, 2005)Google Scholar.

36 Concerning state-sponsored violence see Mark Mazower, ‘Violence and the State in the Twentieth Century’, American Historical Review, 107 (2002), 1158–78, which deals with mass violence (genocide, ethnic cleansing, deportations); and Alain Dewerpe, Charonne 8 février 1962. Anthropologie historique d'un massacre d'Etat (Paris: Gallimard, 2006), which focuses on violence perpetrated by the state in representative democracies.

37 There was also a very high rate of worker unionisation from a nationwide perspective: in 1919, seven out of ten workers in Thessalonica belonged to unions (p. 313).

38 Concerning this phenomenon, for other (Greek and non-Greek) examples see, among others, Herzfeld, Michael, Cultural Intimacy: Social Poetics in the Nation-State (New York and London: Routledge, 2004)Google Scholar.

39 The organisation of work in Greek firms in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is a relatively neglected topic in general. Nevertheless, the reader may refer to Papastefanaki, Lida, Ergasia, technologia kai fylo stin Elliniki viomichania. I klostoÿfantourgia tou Peiraia, 1870–1940 (Herakleon: Panepistimiakes Ekdoseis Kritis, 2009)Google Scholar, ch. 7 in particular.

40 One can mention the work focused on Greek capitalists in the first half of the twentieth century by Aliki Vaxevanoglou, Oi Ellines kefalaiouchoi, 1900–1940: koinoniki kai oikonomiki proseggisi (Athens: Themelio, 1994). Probably because of their major role in national political developments, it is the military that have most attracted the attention of Greek researchers interested in professional groups. See Veremis, Thanos, The Military in Greek Politics: From Independence to Democracy (London: Hurst, 1997)Google Scholar, which also contains other relevant references.

41 On Greek military engineers see Konstantinos Chatzis, ‘Des ingénieurs militaires au service des civils: les officiers du Génie en Grèce au XIXe siècle’, in Chatzis and Efthymios Nicolaïdis, eds., Science, Technology and the Nineteenth Century State: The Role of the Army (Athens: National Hellenic Research Foundation, 2003), 69–90; Fotini Assimacopoulou, Konstantinos Chatzis and Georgia Mavrogonatou, ‘Implanter les “Ponts et Chaussées” européens en Grèce: le rôle des ingénieurs du corps du Génie, 1830–1880’, Quaderns d'Història de l'Enginyeria, 10 (forthcoming).

42 This limited presence can be explained by the two-tier structure of Greek industry during this period: a great number of small-scale, low-productivity industries with outdated technological equipment existed alongside the larger industrial units characteristic of the Second Industrial Revolution.

43 On these female engineers see Chatzis, Konstantinos and Nicolaïdis, Efthymios, ‘A Pyrrhic Victory: Greek Women's Conquest of a Profession in Crisis, 1923–1996’, in Canel, Annie, Oldenziel, Ruth and Zachmann, Karin, eds., Crossing Boundaries, Building Bridges: Comparing the History of Women Engineers, 1870s–1990s (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 2000), 252–78Google Scholar, esp. 261–4.

44 See also in English Antoniou, Yiannis, Assimakopoulos, Michalis and Chatzis, Konstantinos, ‘The National Identity of Inter-war Greek Engineers: Elitism, Rationalization, Technocracy, and Reactionary Modernism’, History and Technology, 23, 3 (2007), 241–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45 Herf, Jeffrey, Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture, and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich (Cambridge University Press, 1984)Google Scholar.

46 Vasilis Vogiatzis, ‘Epistimoniko ideodes kai dianoïtikes oikeiopoiiseis tis technologias ston Elliniko mesopolemo (E. Venizelos, I. Metaxas, G. Theotokas, D. Glinos – ‘Archeion Philosofias’)’, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Athens, 2009.

47 Such ‘defects’ in comparative analysis are far from being a purely Greek phenomenon. See, e.g., the remarks by Heinz-Gerhard Haupt in his essay ‘Comparative History – a Contested Method’, Historisk Tidskrift, 127 (2007), 697–714, and John Breuilly, ‘Introduction: making comparisons in history’, in Breully, Labour and Liberalism in Nineteenth-Century Europe: Essays in Comparative History (Manchester University Press, 1992), 1–25.

48 Here we should mention three recent works that focus on the Greece–Turkey tandem: Faruk Birtek and Thalia Dragonas, eds., Citizenship and the Nation-State in Greece and Turkey (London: Routledge, 2005); Frangoudaki, Anna and Keyder, Caglar, eds., Ways to Modernity in Greece and Turkey: Encounters with Europe, 1850–1950 (New York: I. B. Tauris, 2007)Google Scholar; Ozkirimli, Umut and Sofos, Spyro R., Tormented by History: Nationalism in Greece and Turkey (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008)Google Scholar. We should also mention Augustinos, Gerasimos, ed., Diverse Paths to Modernity in Southeastern Europe: Essays in National Development (New York: Greenwood Press, 1991)Google Scholar.

49 For a typology and discussion of different types of comparison, see, among others, A. A. van den Braembussche, ‘Historical Explanation and Comparative Method: Towards a Theory of the History of Society’, History and Theory, 28 (1989), 1–24.

50 Concerning the objectives and different ways of practising comparative analysis, see Breuilly, ‘Introduction: making comparisons’; Historisk Tidskrift, 127 (2007), special issue; Cohen, Deborah and O'Connor, Maura, eds., Comparison and History: Europe in Cross-national Perspective (New York: Routledge, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

51 For a comparative analysis of the Greek and Spanish civil wars see Stathis Kalyvas, ‘How Not to Compare Civil Wars: Greece and Spain’, in Martin Baumeister and Stephanie Schüler-Springorum, eds., ‘If You Tolerate This . . .’: The Spanish Civil War in the Age of Total War (Frankfurt and New York: Campus Verlag, 2008), 247–63. We should note that the Greek civil war currently constitutes one of the most dynamic areas of Greek historiography. See, for instance, the two recent compilations in English: Mark Mazower, ed., After the War Was Over: Reconstructing the Family, Nation, and State in Greece, 1943–1960 (Princeton University Press, 2000); Philip Carabott and Thanasis Sfikas, eds., The Greek Civil War: Essays on a Conflict of Exceptionalism and Silences (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004).

52 Under the heading of ‘cross-national’ we include a number of approaches which, in spite of their differences, give due emphasis to circulations and connections (‘transnational history’, ‘connected history’, ‘histoire croisée’, ‘Transfergeschichte’). Comparative and ‘cross-national’ analyses are sometimes presented as being somewhat antagonistic. We subscribe to the ‘conciliatory’ theses of Jürgen Kocka, who advocates combining both approaches. See Kocka, Jürgen, ‘Comparison and Beyond’, History and Theory, 42 (2003), 39–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a discussion on comparative history and ‘cross-national’ history and the relations between the two, see the references in note 52 and the following books and articles: Werner, Michael and Zimmermann, Bénédicte, eds., De la comparaison à l'histoire croisée (Paris: Seuil, 2004)Google Scholar; Iriye, Akira and Saunier, Pierre-Yves, eds., The Palgrave Dictionary of Transnational History (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Haupt, Heinz-Gerhard and Kocka, Jürgen, eds., Comparative and Transnational History: Central European Approaches and New Perspectives (New York: Berghahn Books, forthcoming)Google Scholar.

53 ‘Cross-national’ history is not totally foreign to Greek historians, particularly those focusing on migration. See, e.g., the essays on this topic published in Sygchrona Themata, no. 92, January–March 2006, 21–86. And, even if it is not intended as such, Liakos, Ergasia kai politiki, may be read as a contribution to the history of a transnational institution, the International Labour Organisation (one may consult the online proceedings from the conference ‘Transnational Social Policies: Reformist Networks and the International Labour Organisation, 1900–2000’, Geneva, 7–9 May 2009). The same is true of the book by Giorgos Stathakis on the Marshall Plan in Greece: To dogma Truman kai to schedio Marshall. I istoria tis Amerikanikis voïtheias stin Ellada (Athens: Vivliorama, 2004). Concerning the Marshall Plan as a subject of transnational analysis, see, e.g., Kroen, Sheryl, ‘Negotiations with the American Way: The Consumer and the Social Contract in Post-war Europe’, in Brewer, John and Trentmann, Frank, eds., Consuming Cultures, Global Perspectives: Historical Trajectories, Transnational Exchanges (Oxford: Berg, 2006), ch. 10Google Scholar. The authors of this review essay have also sought to adopt a ‘cross-national’ perspective on Greece in a number of their publications; see, e.g., Konstantinos Chatzis and Georgia Mavrogonatou, ‘Eaux de Paris, eaux d'Athènes, 1830–1930: histoires croisées d'un réseau urbain’, Almagest (forthcoming); see also F. Assimacopoulou et al., ‘Implanter les “Ponts et Chaussées”’; Chatzis, Konstantinos, ‘Ecrire les sciences de l'ingénieur en grec: autour de deux livres pionniers en matière de technologie antisismique’, Etudes Balkaniques, 43, 2 (2007), 111–124Google Scholar; Konstantinos Chatzis, ‘“Sous les yeux de l'Occident”: Statistiques et intégration européenne au XIXe siècle, l'exemple de la Grèce’, Histoire & Sociétés, no. 21, March 2007, 8–17.

54 Concerning the relations between Greek and other national historiographies, see, among others, the reflections by Gallant, Thomas, ‘Greek Exceptionalism and Contemporary Historiography: New Pitfalls and Old Debates’, Journal of Modern Greek Studies, 15, 2 (1997), 209–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Concerning the national historiography of another ‘peripheral’ country, Portugal, see Mafalda Soares da Cunha and Pedro Cardim, ‘From Periphery to Centre: The Internationalisation of the Historiography of Portugal’, Historisk Tidskrift, 127 (2007), 643–57.