Greek

The Greeks are the Greek-speaking people of the Aegean and Ionian seas, present in the Greek peninsula, Aegean islands, Constantinople and western Anatolia since the Mycenaean age. Their city-states, led in different ages by Athens and Sparta, created classical Mediterranean civilization, and Alexander the Great's conquests carried Greek language and settlement across the Near East.

Under Rome the Greek east was the empire's wealthier half, and after Constantinople's foundation in 330 Byzantium became a Greek-speaking Christian civilization. The Fourth Crusade of 1204 shattered it; though the Palaiologan dynasty recovered Constantinople in 1261, by 1337 the empire held little beyond the capital, Thrace and the Morea, and Trebizond survived on the Black Sea coast.

Ottoman conquest ended with Constantinople's fall in 1453; Greeks lived as Orthodox subjects of the sultan, administered through their millet, with the Phanariots rising in imperial service. The War of Independence begun in 1821 led to a Kingdom of Greece in 1832, though large Greek communities remained under Ottoman rule.