The book examines the Greek Orthodox communities of Asia Minor during the period between the 19th century and 1919, in the perspective of a war (1919-1922), in the perspective of the transition from the 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 transition process is considered inevitable or unavoidable; on the contrary, it demonstrates how the mechanisms of rupture between populations are formed through this specific process, and thus the mechanisms of legitimizing a war in collective consciousness or, rather, in the consciousness of those who emerge as the expressions of collective consciousness. Through the example of communities, therefore, the book first examines the upheavals with dynamic rupture and then the fields in which they are manifested, 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 "specificities" of the "East" in relation to the "West", to such an extent that the "East" itself is reduced to a "specificity", a specificity that ultimately surpasses History itself, in this book, through the communities, an attempt is made to approach the problems that allow us to understand the process of shaping certain specificities, as results of this process and not as inherent, metaphysical values.

The only elements that are initially considered given and studied in relation to the communities are the Ottoman geographical space, the political framework of "Ottoman power" and the "religious framework" - the millet of the Greeks. However, the fact that they are considered given does not mean that they are equally given. Firstly, the content of the terms used to describe the frameworks within which the communities are integrated, secondly, the boundaries of these frameworks themselves, and finally, the mechanisms of integration of the communities, as well as their functioning within them. Therefore, the communities are studied integrated into the spaces - geographical, political, religious - but in relation to the changes that these spaces undergo, in relation to the factors that shape the terms of the evolution of the communities themselves.