The Greek Comparative Education Society (GCES)

Since the early national period in the late 1820s, Greece has been open to the outside world. During the first part of the 19^th century, many intellectuals, statesmen and merchants who had lived and worked abroad returned to the new nation state. Many merchants gave economic support to the floundering state, and brought their cosmopolitanism to the traditional and rather backward Greek society. Intellectuals, who had been influenced by the European Enlightenment and had made a name for themselves abroad, brought ideas and inspiration that contributed to the development of the national institutional infrastructure. Ordinary people too, especially displaced farmers who had travelled abroad to seek their fortunes in the communities of the Greek Diaspora, provided new experiences and diverse cultural outlooks (Tsoukalas 1975; Svoronos 1978).