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September 1923-1930General source · 2 sourcesWell documented

A League of Nations Commission Resettles Over a Million Refugees

An international body plants Asia Minor refugee families on exchanged land across Macedonia and doubles the population of Athens in eight years

On the timeline · around September 1923-1930 · Independence and the Modern StateIndependence and the Modern StateModern GreeceA League of Nations Commission Resettles Over a Million Refugees1890190019101920193019401950

Quick facts

Commission established
September 1923, by the League of Nations
Refugee families settled by 1926
147,751 (116,226 in Macedonia, 16,625 in Thrace)
Athens population growth, 1920-1928
Doubled (7.4% average annual rate)
Commission wound down
31 December 1930

What happened

In September 1923, at the Greek government's request, the League of Nations established the Refugee Settlement Commission, an internationally staffed body with a legal status independent of the Greek state, to resettle the more than one million Orthodox Christian refugees who had arrived from Asia Minor and Eastern Thrace since 1922. The Commission focused on agricultural resettlement, granting refugee families arable land, much of it property left behind by Muslims under the population exchange, along with farm animals, tools, seed, and housing; by 1926, it had settled 147,751 refugee families, 116,226 of them in Macedonia and 16,625 in Thrace, financed partly through a 1924 loan of ten million pounds sterling raised under League auspices. In cities the strain was just as severe: the population of Greater Athens doubled between 1920 and 1928, an annual growth rate of 7.4 percent the city had never seen before, straining housing and infrastructure that existed for a much smaller population. The Commission wound down its work at the end of 1930.

Why it matters

The resettlement effort transformed Greek Macedonia, where refugees made up close to half the population by the late 1920s, and it changed the demographic and political character of the Greek countryside and its cities within less than a decade. It also stands as one of the largest internationally coordinated refugee resettlement operations of the interwar period, undertaken by an institution, the League of Nations, that would fail to prevent the far larger catastrophes of the following decade.

How we know

The Refugee Settlement Commission's mandate, financing, and resettlement figures are documented in Greek historical-institutional archives and in a dedicated Greek research foundation project on Asia Minor refugee history, both drawing on the Commission's own records and interwar Greek census data.

Sources

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