The Economist<\/a> | May 1st 2008<\/p>\nWHEN Smyrna\u2014modern Izmir\u2014fell to the Turkish army in 1922, and much of it was destroyed by fire, the city’s role as a bastion of Greek and Christian culture, going back nearly 2,000 years, came to an abrupt end. Before that, the port had been home to a diverse and cosmopolitan population; by the standards of the region, it was a beacon of tolerance and prosperity.<\/p>\n
In addition to the Greeks, Armenians, Jews and Turks, there were also Americans and Britons and what Giles Milton calls the \u201cLevantines\u201d, rich families of European descent, who spoke half a dozen languages and occupied vast villas. Their dynasties dominated the trade and industry of the region. Some (like the Whittalls) retained British nationality over generations of Ottoman life, and it is their English-language diaries, letters and documents that provide Mr Milton with his best material. Although this slant is unrepresentatively British and privileged\u2014lots of parties and picnics\u2014it allows the author to be fair towards the Greeks and the Turks, who still blame one another entirely for the disaster.<\/p>\n
The city’s destruction\u2014still known in Greece as \u201cthe catastrophe\u201d\u2014had its roots in the first world war and the effort by the great powers to grab pieces of the disintegrating Ottoman empire.<\/p>\n
Britain, America and France backed Greece’s charismatic leader, Eleftherios Venizelos, in his pursuit of the megali idea (\u201cgreat idea\u201d), the dream of creating a greater Greece by occupying Smyrna and swathes of Anatolia. Having licensed a war by proxy, the allies in varying degrees turned cool on it. They looked on passively as Mustafa Kemal (later Ataturk, republican Turkey’s founder) and his troops routed the Greeks from Anatolia and reoccupied Smyrna, bent on revenge for Greek atrocities in the city and further east.<\/p>\n
The port was ransacked and looted for days. Women were raped and mutilated, children were beheaded and more than 100,000 people killed. Meanwhile, 21 allied warships sat in the harbour. Hundreds of thousands of refugees were trapped on the city’s quayside, yet officers on the ships still dressed for dinner and ordered louder music to drown out the screams. \u201cParadise Lost\u201d is a timely reminder of the appalling cost of expansionist political ambitions; it tells a fascinating story with clarity and insight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Source: The National Herald A never-before-seen video containing historic scenes from the destruction of Smyrna in 1922, which was shot by George Magarian was made public by his grandson Robert Magarian, who discovered the film at his grandmother’s New York home, where it had laid forgotten for decades. Source: The Economist | May 1st 2008 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9932,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1784],"tags":[13,1647],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9931"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9931"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9931\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9935,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9931\/revisions\/9935"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/burning-of-smyrna.png\" "\\"burning-of-smyrna\\"")
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