Last week I published an item here that showed a new map for Greece, published in 1920, which depicted the portions of Anatolia it believed it had separated from Turkey. Cultural Greeks did live in those places, but they went far beyond those areas where Greeks were the majority.
And Greek troops went far beyond those places.
Italians took a set of islands off Anatolia as well.
Italy had already taken territory from the Ottomans by that time. More specifically, they'd taken Libya in 1912 as a result of the Italo-Turkish War. Italians, in the form of Romans, had governed Libya at one time, but hadn't since the collapse of the Roman Empire.* If a person wished to be more generous, Greco Roman culture hadn't governed there since the Byzantine Empire had been pushed out in 647, although at least one Christian city remained as late as the 1400s at the absolute latest.
Basically, both powers were asserting claims to territory they hadn't actually governed since 1453.
Yesterday we looked at the French conquest of Syria. The French had been very influential in Syria. . . up until the 1190s. At least that claim was there, however, which it really wasn't for Algeria which the French started colonizing in 1830.
What the heck, however.
*Italian immigrants would ultimately make up 20% of the Libyan population.
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