The interwar period, that is, the years 1922-1940, is the most significant period in the modern history of Greece. It was during this time that the foundations were essentially laid for the reality we live in today.

This book will present aspects of the social history of the Greeks that certainly do not concern only Macedonia. The formation of the networks of politicians, their strategies for garnering votes, the expression and management of the myriad demands of the rural voters, the conflicts between locals and refugees regarding land, and the intense political passions of the divided Greeks into Venizelists and anti-Venizelists are some of the elements analyzed in this study, which characterize the entire Greek countryside of the interwar period.

The focus of the study is on two groups, both of whom were "foreign": the refugees who came to a new homeland very different from the one they left, and the Slavic-speaking people who were also in a way "foreign." The central question that runs through this book is what is the role of the state in the effort to integrate the Slavic speakers and the refugees into Greek society and how the parliamentary system affected the formation of national and political identities in interwar Macedonia.