Arvanites: are they Greeks or Albanians?

[Tomorr]

Υοu should calm down, actually.
You have a group of people that probably shared ancestry with Albanians 400-500 years ago and had nothing to do with them after half millenium, to the point that they fought for another country and you keep focusing on them.
Look the whites of USA. What do they call themselves? Americans. They might were English, Danish , French or whatever 500 years ago, but now they are Americans. They are fighting for USA, and they side for America. You won't say ''Oh look what this Dane did, fuck you USA for stealing those heroes''.

You seem to have a problem understanding what i said. You're being unreasonable.
It is not a probability, it is a fact that Arvanites were Albanian, and the word Arvanite in Greek means Albanian, they spoke Albanian and had an Albanian consiousness, and very much had something to do with each other. Which concerns the history of our people. They are Greek national heroes of course, no denying it, and they are a part of your history as well. It is unfortunate though that they have been pressured by the Greek state into assimilation and to abandon their language, that is very disrespectful to do such a thing to national heroes.

[Papastratosels26]

Arvanites in Greece originated from Arbanitai, Albanian settlers [7][8] who moved south at different times between the 13th and 16th century from the region Arvanon (Άρβανον) or Arvana (Άρβανα) at that time part of the Byzantine Theme of Dyrrhachium, a region in what is today part of modern Albania[7][pageneeded][9] and later Principality of Arbanon, an autonomous principality within the Byzantine Empire until 1204 and from 1205 within the Despotate of Epirus.[10] The reasons for this migration are not entirely clear and may be manifold.[11] In many instances the Arvanites 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.[12][13] Some later movements are also believed to have been motivated to evade Islamization after the Ottoman conquest. The main waves of migration into southern Greece started around 1300, reached a peak some time during the 14th century, and ended around 1600.[14] Arvanites first reached Thessaly, then Attica, and finally the Peloponnese.[15]

The poem "Thourios" by the 18th-century poet and Greek national hero Rigas Feraios included a call upon Arvanites, as upon other Christian Orthodox peoples living at the time in the general area of Greece, to join in rebelling against Ottoman rule. Indeed, 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, among them are the 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.[16]

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,[17] leading to a progressive loss of their traditional language and a shifting of the younger generation towards Greek. 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.[18] 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 mostly during the Greek military junta of 1967–1974.

[Papastratosels26]

Arvanites were regarded as ethnically distinct from the Greeks in the 19th century. Amongst the Arvanites, this difference was expressed in words such as shkljira for a Greek person and shkljerishtë for the Greek language that had until recent decades negative overtones.[36] These words in Arvanitika have their related counterpart in the pejorative term shqa used by Northern Albanians for Slavs.[37] Ultimately these terms used amongst Albanian speakers originate from the Latin word sclavus which contained the traditional meaning of "the neighbouring foreigner".[37]

With participation in the Greek War of Independence and the Greek Civil War, this has led to increasing assimilation amongst the Arvanites.[2] The common Christian Orthodox religion they shared with the rest of the local population was one of the main reasons that led to their assimilation.[38] Although sociological studies of Arvanite communities still used to note an identifiable sense of a special "ethnic" identity among Arvanites, the authors did not identify a sense of 'belonging to Albania or to the Albanian nation'.[6] Many Arvanites find the designation "Albanians" offensive as they identify nationally and ethnically as Greeks and not Albanians.

[Papastratosels26]

Bumb

[Morlak]

I met one Arvanite and he was also very pro-Greek, and he actually really disliked Cham Albanians because of their involvement in axis invasion of Greece. They seem like a nice people.

[Papastratosels26]

I met one Arvanite and he was also very pro-Greek, and he actually really disliked Cham Albanians because of their involvement in axis invasion of Greece. They seem like a nice people.

Agree

[Papastratosels26]

Why thumb me down wwwvw?Explain

[Papastratosels26]

The Albanian ethnogenesis came too late to inflence the Arvanites. When Greece gained its independence in the early 19th century, the Arvanites fought alongside Greek-speaking populations because they were Christians. They had no notion of being “different”, because there was no other identity to embrace. By the time Albanian nationalism came along, the Arvanites had already spent a century living next door to the Greek capital, the political and cultural center of the Greek nation-state, and had become an integral part of the Greek establishment. Therefore, theirs would not be a transition from isolated Albanian-speaking community with no clear ethnicity. It would entail reneging on being Greek and embracing an Albanian identity.

That could never happen for several reasons. Firstly, the Albanian state never had the kind of money or influence to finance such a propaganda campaign, “educating” the Arvanites on their true ethnicity. Secondly, if they, or one of the Great Powers for their own reasons, had mounted this campaign, they would be trying to convince the Arvanites to trade a mainsream position in a country relatively developed -by Balkan standards- for the doubtful privilege of becoming an Albanian minority, ie for belonging to an even more impoverished people. Also, keep in mind that the mainstream image of an Albanian in Greek folclore are the Turkalvanoi, Albanian speakers hired by the Turkish pashas as guards and to do all the dirty-work, ie terrorize their Christian subjects, including the Arvanites. Not their favorite people on this world.

Things might have gone a different way if they had been living up on a mountain and had remained isolated long enough for Albanian iridentism to come along, but as I said they were too hellenized to care.

[Papastratosels26]

bump

[brennus dux gallorum]

Why thumb me down wwwvw?Explain

let me explain for wwww/Raine
Because
1)there are already 1 thousands of similar threads, for a minority that make up the 0,8%-3%, smaller than Arberesh in Italy, and nobody, anywhere in the world, from USA to Greece and from Greece to China cares about, with the exception of Albanians (for obvious reasons)
2)You clearly have an agenda. Otherwise i can't really explain why you would "bump" such a thread, that is clearly "informative" and has nothing to be discussed. no offense but that really strikes.