The book studies the Greek Orthodox communities of Asia Minor during the period between the 19th century and 1919, in the context of a war (1919-1922), that is, from the perspective of the transition from a multi-ethnic and multi-religious reality to national realities - a transition marked by a war.

This does not mean, of course, that the outcome - the war - of a historical process of transition is considered fatal or inevitable; on the contrary, it demonstrates how the mechanisms of rupture between populations are formed through this specific process, thereby also showing the mechanisms for legitimizing a war in the collective consciousness or, more accurately, in the consciousness of those who emerge as the articulators of the collective consciousness.

Through the example of the communities, therefore, the upheavals with a dynamic of rupture are initially observed, and subsequently the fields in which they manifest, as well as the agents of such upheavals.

Because the entire historical process of the 'East' in the 19th century unfolds, in most studies to date, through the framework of the 'particularities' of the 'East' in relation to the 'West', to the extent that the 'East' itself is reduced to a 'particularity', a particularity that ultimately transcends history itself, this book attempts through the communities to approach the issues that allow us to understand the process of forming certain particularities, as results of this process and not as inherent, metaphysical values.

The unique elements that are initially considered given and in relation to which the communities are studied are the geographical Ottoman space, the political framework - the Ottoman authority - and the 'ethno-religious framework' - the millet of the Rum.

However, the fact that they are considered as given does not mean that the content of the terms used to describe the frameworks within which the communities are integrated, the very boundaries of these frameworks, and finally, the mechanisms of integration of the communities and their functioning within them are regarded as equally given.

Therefore, the communities are studied integrated within the spaces - geographical, political, ethno-religious - in relation, however, to the changes that these spaces undergo, that is, in relation to the factors that shape the terms of the evolution of the communities themselves.

[Excerpt from the text on the back cover of the edition]