Arvanites
Arvanites are a population group in Greece of Albanian origin. For many centuries the Arvanites regarded themselves and were regarded by Greeks as a distinct ethnic community. Their important role in the Greek War of Independence and the common Christian Orthodox religion they shared with the rest of the Greek-speaking population, led to them being regarded as an integral part of the Greek nation in the 19th century and they were exposed to increasing assimilation by the modern Greek state.
During the 20th century, Arvanites in Greece began to dissociate themselves much more strongly from the Albanians, stressing instead their national self-identification as Greeks. The Greek government pursued policies that actively discouraged the use of Arvanitika, and today, almost all Arvanites self-identify as Greeks and do not consider themselves Albanian.Trudgill/Tzavaras. Nowadays, they are bilingual, traditionally speaking Arvanitika – an Albanian variety – along with Greek. Arvanitika is currently in a state of attrition due to a language shift towards Greek, the large-scale internal migration to the cities, and the subsequent intermingling of the Arvanite community with the wider Greek population during the 20th century onwards.
Albanians were first recorded as settlers who came to what is today southern Greece in the late 13th and early 14th century, with the last old migratory wave occurring in the second half of the 18th century. They were the dominant population element in parts of the Peloponnese, Attica, and Boeotia up until the 19th century. After settling in Greece, numerous groups from these Albanian communities began to migrate to Italy during the 15th–16th centuries, and now form part of the Arbëreshë community.
Names
The name Arvanites and its equivalents are today used both in Greek and in Arvanitika itself. In Standard Albanian all three names are used. The name Arvanites and its variants are based upon the root arb/alb of the old ethnonym that was at one time used by all Albanians to refer to themselves. It refers to a geographical term, first attested in Polybius in the form of a place-name Arvon, and then again in Byzantine authors of the 11th and 12th centuries in the form Arvanon or Arvana, referring to a place in what is today Albania. The name Arvanites originally referred to the inhabitants of that region, and then to all Albanian-speakers. The alternative name Albanians may ultimately be etymologically related, but is of less clear origin. It was probably conflated with that of the "Arbanitai" at some stage due to phonological similarity. In later Byzantine usage, the terms "Arbanitai" and "Albanoi", with a range of variants, were used interchangeably, while sometimes the same groups were also called by the classicising names Illyrians. In the 19th and early 20th century, Alvani was used predominantly in formal registers and Arvanites in the more popular speech in Greek, but both were used indiscriminately for both Muslim and Christian Albanophones inside and outside Greece. In Albania itself, the self-designation Arvanites had been exchanged for the new name Shqiptarë since the 15th century, an innovation that was not shared by the Albanophone migrant communities in the south of Greece. In the course of the 20th century, it became customary to use only Αλβανοί for the people of Albania, and only Αρβανίτες for the Greek-Arvanites, thus stressing the national separation between the two groups.There is some uncertainty to what extent the term Arvanites also includes the small remaining Christian Albanophone population groups in Epirus and West Macedonia. Unlike the southern Arvanites, these speakers are reported to use the name Shqiptarë both for themselves and for Albanian nationals, although these communities also espouse a Greek national identity nowadays. The word Shqiptár is also used in a few villages of Thrace, where Arvanites migrated from the mountains of Pindus during the 19th century. However they also use the name Arvanitis speaking in Greek. In Epirus the designation Chams is today rejected by Albanian speakers. The report by GHM subsumes the Epirote Albanophones under the term Arvanites, although it notes the different linguistic self-designation, on the other hand, applies the term Arvanites only to the populations of the compact Arvanitic settlement areas in southern Greece, in keeping with the self-identification of those groups. Linguistically, the Ethnologue identifies the present-day Albanian/Arvanitic dialects of Northwestern Greece with those of the Chams, and therefore classifies them together with standard Tosk Albanian, as opposed to "Arvanitika Albanian proper". Nevertheless, it reports that in Greek the Epirus varieties are also often subsumed under "Arvanitika" in a wider sense. It puts the estimated number of Epirus Albanophones at 10,000. Arvanitika proper is said to include the outlying dialects spoken in Thrace.
History
Arvanites in Greece originate from Albanian settlers who moved south from areas in what is today southern Albania during the Middle Ages. These Albanian movements into Greece are recorded for the first time in the late 13th and early 14th century. The reasons for this migration are not entirely clear and may be manifold. In many instances the Albanians were invited by the Byzantine and Latin rulers of the time. They were employed to re-settle areas that had been largely depopulated through wars, epidemics, and other reasons, and they were employed as soldiers. Some later movements are also believed to have been motivated to evade Islamization after the Ottoman conquest.Groups of Albanians moved into Thessaly as early as 1268, as mercenaries of Michael Doukas. The Albanian tribes of Bua, Malakasioi and Mazaraki were described as "unruly" nomads living in the mountains of Thessaly in the early 14th century in Emperor John VI Kantakouzenos' 'History'. They numbered approximately 12,000. Kantakouzenos describes a pact they made to serve the Byzantine Emperor and pay tribute to him ca. 1332 in exchange for using the lowland areas of Thessaly in the summer months. Albanian groups were given military holdings Fanari in the 1330s and by the end of the 14th century and the Ottoman takeover of the region, they were an integral part of the military structures of Thessaly. Two of their military leaders known in Byzantine sources as Peter and John Sebastopoulos controlled the small towns of Pharsala and Domokos. Ottoman control began in the late 14th century with the capture of Larissa in 1392-93 and consolidated in the early 15th century. Nevertheless, Ottoman control was threatened throughout this era by groups of Greeks, Albanians and Vlachs who based themselves in the mountainous areas of Thessaly.
The main waves of migration into southern Greece started from 1350, reached a peak some time during the 14th century, and ended around 1600. Albanians first reached Thessaly, then Attica, and finally the Peloponnese. One of the larger groups of Albanian settlers, amounting to 10,000, settled the Peloponnese during the reign of Theodore I Palaiologos, first in Arcadia and subsequently in the more southern regions around Messenia, Argolis, Elis and Achaea. Around 1418, a second large group arrived, possibly fleeing Aetolia, Acarnania and Arta, where Albanian political power had been defeated. After the Ottoman incursion in 1417, other groups from Albania crossed western Greece and may have infiltrated into Achaea. The settled Albanians practiced a nomadic lifestyle based on pastoralism, and spread out into small villages.
In 1453, the Albanians rose in revolt against Thomas and Demetrios Palaiologos, due to the chronic insecurity and tribute payment to the Turks; they were also joined by the local Greeks, who by then had a common leader in Manuel Kantakouzenos. Following the Ottoman conquest, many Albanians fled to Italy and settled primarily in the Arbëreshë villages of Calabria and Sicily. On the other hand, in an effort to control the remaining Albanians, during the second half of the 15th century, the Ottomans adopted favorable tax policies towards them, likely in continuation of similar Byzantine practices. This policy had been discontinued by the early 16th century. Albanians often took part in wars on the side of the Republic of Venice against the Ottomans, between 1463 and 1715.
During the Greek War of Independence, many Arvanites played an important role on fighting on the Greek side against the Ottomans, often as national Greek heroes. With the formation of modern nations and nation-states in the Balkans, Arvanites have come to be regarded as an integral part of the Greek nation. In 1899, leading representatives of the Arvanites in Greece, including descendants of the independence heroes, published a manifesto calling their fellow Albanians outside Greece to join in the creation of a common Albanian-Greek state.
After the Greek War of Independence, Arvanites contributed greatly to the fulfilment of irredentist concept of Megali Idea which aimed to see all Greek populations in the Ottoman Empire freed and came to a halt with the end of the Greco-Turkish war in 1922. Up to the early 20th century, Albanian, in the form of the Arvanitika dialect, was the main language of the Greek naval fleet, because a high proportion of its sailors came from Albanian-speaking islands of Greece. For example, in Hydra men spoke both Albanian and Greek, with the former used to speak with each other and sing songs in the sea. Many women though spoke only Albanian.
In the small 19th-century Kingdom of Greece, and specifically in, it is estimated that around 16–25% of the population was Albanian ; in, after the incorporation of the Ionian Islands, it is estimated that it was about 11.3% of the population. That population spoke Albanian as its mother language, even in the absence of Albanian schools and alphabet, as the state discouraged any expression of Albanian national identity and nationalism. Although the Albanian speakers were considered Greeks, which they were not, there was a glimpse of Albanianism as expressed by some intellectuals such as Tasos Neroutsos, Anastas Kullurioti, Anastas Byku and Panayotis Koupitoris.
During the 20th century, after the creation of the Albanian nation-state, Arvanites in Greece have come to dissociate themselves much more strongly from the Albanians, stressing instead their national self-identification as Greeks. At the same time, it has been suggested that many Arvanites in earlier decades maintained an assimilatory stance, leading to a progressive loss of their traditional language and a shifting of the younger generation towards Greek.
File:Pelopones ethnic.JPG|thumb|289x289px|Alfred Philippson's ethnographic map of the Peloponnese, 1890; Albanian-speaking areas in red.
At some times, particularly under the nationalist 4th of August Regime under Ioannis Metaxas of 1936–1941, Greek state institutions followed a policy of actively discouraging and repressing the use of Arvanitika. The Arvanitika-speaking communities in the Athens area came under greater pressure, as their presence was seen as damaging the purity of the ethnic heritage. The Arvanites were persecuted by the state in different ways. During World War II their position improved to some degree after members of the community helped other Greeks serving in the Albanian front. In the decades following World War II and the Greek Civil War, many Arvanites came under pressure to abandon Arvanitika in favour of monolingualism in the national language, and especially the archaizing Katharevousa which remained the official variant of Greek until 1976. This trend was prevalent especially during the Greek military junta of 1967–1974.