History
Further information: History of GreeceThe Greeks speak the Greek language, which forms its own unique branch within the Indo-European family of languages, the Hellenic language. They are part of a group of pre-modern ethnicities, described by Anthony D. Smith as an "archetypal diaspora people".
The modern Greek state was created in 1832, when the Greeks liberated a part of their historic homelands, Peloponnese, from the Ottoman Empire. The large Greek diaspora and merchant class were instrumental in transmitting the ideas of western romantic nationalism and philhellenism, which together with the conception of Hellenism, formulated during the last centuries of the Byzantine Empire, formed the basis of the Diafotismos and the current conception of Hellenism.
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