Modern Descendants of Odysseus: From Settlement to Displacement—Twentieth-Century Greeks in Urban China

This study uncovers the little-known Greek presence in nineteenth- and twentieth-century China, using diplomatic documents from archives in Athens, Shanghai and Tianjin, as well as rare photographs and secondary sources. It traces the experiences of Greek settlers whose destinies were dramatically altered by the Japanese invasion of 1937, World War II and the rise of the Chinese Communist Party in 1949, culminating in their displacement from China’s urban centres in the early 1950s. Moving beyond existing literature, particularly Greeks in the Far Orient (2011), this research employs a comparative and synthetic framework to analyse the gendered and sociopolitical dynamics of Greek migration in Asia. By integrating new archival and visual materials, this study not only enriches the fields of diaspora, transnational mobility and displacement studies but also foregrounds the overlooked Greek role in Asian migration histories, thus broadening the conceptual scope of global migration literature.