Gaston Deschamps, who arrived in Athens as a resident of the French School of Archaeology in 1885, wrote about his own "modern Greece," which is also the original title of the work, referring to Greece in the 1880s. The book, published in France in 1892, was an immediate success with the French audience and follows in the literary footsteps of his colleague Edmond About, who wrote about Greece under Otto about thirty years earlier.

Deschamps created a mosaic of Greece during the era of Trikoupes, describing the Athenian landscape as well as Athenian society in many of its aspects, examining politics, modernization efforts, the language issue, the economy, justice, and much more. He also documented his travels in the Greek countryside.

As an archaeologist, he conducted excavations on Amorgos, mingling with the locals, while traveling through Central Greece and Thessaly, regions that had recently been annexed to the Greek state. His perspective is penetrating, occasionally critical, but always well-intentioned.

Greece, despite its inconsistencies that sometimes disarrange and disappoint its best friends, will surprise the gloomy and uninformed publicists who do not see that its progress, after all, has been rapid [...]. When you traverse this heroic and enchanting land, so glorious and so sweet, you see, amidst the hesitations and some regrettable situations of the present, a future that may be worthy of the past.

At the foot of the Acropolis, where artists admire a small temple that seems enormous and where the craftsmen of that time gave such beauty that has never been repeated, there is a people who surely would not be so intensely devoted to life if they were not supported by a great hope. This active people may live with some light-heartedness, but they live—and that is the most important thing.

Excerpt from the book. Deschamps’ comments on the permanent residents of Greece are equally well-intentioned, from George I, whose simplicity and amiability impressed him, to the fishermen of Amorgos and the farmers of Spercheios, with whom he spent countless hours chatting during the stops of his long journeys.

From the preface by N. K. Alivizatos