Greek Society in the Making, 1863-1913: Realities, Symbols and Visions [Reprint ed.] 1138315559, 9781138315556

Table of contents :
Contents
Editor’s Preface
A Note on References Cited
Acknowledgements
About the Contributors
Part I: Social groupings and latent class antagonism
1. Class structure and class antagonism in late nineteenth-century Greece • Christos Hadziiossif
2. Social solidarity on the periphery of the Greek kingdom: the case of the Workers’ Fraternity of Corfu • Grigoris Psallidas
3. ‘All for one and one for all’: anarchists, socialists and demoticists in the Labour Centre of Volos (1908–1911) • Lito Apostolakou
4. Ioannis A. Valaoritis: the life of a typical Greek nineteenth-century bourgeois? • Helen Gardikas Katsiadakis
Part II: Images and symbols
5. The excavations at Olympia, 1868–1881: an episode in Greco-German cultural relations • Suzanne Marchand
6. The nation and the individual: social aspects of life and death in Greece (1896–1911) • George Margaritis
7. Social gatherings and Macedonian lobbying: symbols of irredentism and living legends in early twentieth-century Athens • Basil C. Gounaris
Part III: Facets of modernization
8. Literacy and unredeemed peasants: late nineteenth-century rural Crete faces education • Kalita Kalliataki Merticopoulou
9. Illusions and realities at the end of the nineteenth century: an attempt to construct a railway line on the island of Syros • Christos Loukos
10. Voluntary associations and new forms of sociability: Greek sports clubs at the turn of the nineteenth century • Christina Koulouri
11. Feminist awareness and Greek women writers at the turn of the century: the case of Kallirroe Parren and Alexandra Papadopoulou • Maria Anastasopoulou
Part IV: Undercurrents of change
12. Secularization and the Greek Orthodox Church in the reign of King George I • Vasilios N. Makrides
13. The changing language of political contention in the era of King George I • Katerina Gardtkas Alexander
14. Regularization and resistance: urban transformations in late nineteenth-century Greece • Eleni Bastea
Index

Citation preview

GREEK SOCIETY IN TH E MAKING, 1 8 6 3 -1 9 1 3

Centre for Hellenic Studies, King’s College London Publications 3

TH ING ’S J \^ C o lleg e LONDON Founded 1829

GREEK SOCIETY IN THE MAKING, 1863-1913 Realities, Symbols and Visions

edited by

Philip Carabott

First published 1997 by Ashgate Publishing Reissued 2018 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY I 0017, USA Routledge is an imprint ofthe Taylor

& Francis Group, an informa business

Copyright © 1997 Centre for Hellenic Studies, King's College London. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Publisher's Note The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent. Disclaimer The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and welcomes correspondence from those they have been unable to contact. A Library of Congress record exists under LC control number: 97017845 Typeset by Manton Typesetters, 5-7 Eastfield Road, Louth, Lincolnshire, LNl 1 7A], Great Britain. ISBN 13: 978-1-138-31555-6 (hbk) ISBN 13: 978-0-429-45623-7 (ebk)

THE CENTRE FOR HELLENIC STUDIES, KING'S COLLEGE LONDON, PUBLICATIONS 3

Contents

Editor’s Preface

vii

A Note on References Cited

ix

Acknowledgements

x

About the Contributors

xi

I Social groupings and latent class antagonism 1.

Class structure and class antagonism in late nineteenthcentury Greece Christos Hadziiossif

2. Social solidarity on the periphery of the Greek kingdom: the case of the Workers’ Fraternity of Corfu Grigoris Psallidas 3.

4.

‘All for one and one for all’: anarchists, socialists and demoticists in the Labour Centre of Volos (1908-1911) Lito Apostolakou

5.

19

35

Ioannis A. Valaoritis: the life of a typical Greek nineteenth-

century bourgeois? Helen Gardikas Katsiadakis II

3

55

Images and symbols The excavations at Olympia, 1868-1881: an episode in Greco-German cultural relations Suzanne Marchand

v

73

CONTENTS

VI

6.

7.

III 8.

9.

10.

11.

The nation and the individual: social aspects of life and death in Greece (1896-1911) George Margaritis

87

Social gatherings and Macedonian lobbying: symbols of irredentism and living legends in early twentieth-century Athens Basil C. Gounaris

99

Facets of modernization Literacy and unredeemed peasants: late nineteenth-century rural Crete faces education Kalita Kalliataki Merticopoulou

115

Illusions and realities at the end of the nineteenth century: an attempt to construct a railway line on the island of Syros Christos Loukos

131

Voluntary associations and new forms of sociability: Greek sports clubs at the turn of the nineteenth century Christina Koulouri

145

Feminist awareness and Greek women writers at the turn of the century: the case of Kallirroe Parren and Alexandra Papadopoulou Maria Anastasopoulou

161

IV

Undercurrents of change

12.

Secularization and the Greek Orthodox Church in the reign of King George I Vasilios N. Makrides

179

The changing language of political contention in the era of King George I Katerina Gardtkas Alexander

197

Regularization and resistance: urban transformations in late nineteenth-century Greece Eleni Bastea

209

13.

14.

Index

231

Editor’s Preface

Traditionally, historical writing on the emergence and development of modern Greece has concentrated on ‘getting the facts right’ and assessing the paramount role of foreign powers in the moulding of Greek society. Treatises on foreign policy, studies on the Megali Idea and irredentism, descriptive accounts of military confrontations and ‘momentous’ events (e.g. the Battle of Navarino in 1827 or the Goudi coup of 1909), monographs on the ‘great men of history’ and their heroic deeds (usually uncritical of their subject matter) abound. Notwithstanding their scholarly value, such works tend to view domestic processes as the end product of exogenous factors (whether military or economic), while indigenous forces are treated as static, a-historical actors, whose potency in effecting changes or influencing the course of events is minimal when compared to that of politicians, generals or diplomats, Greek and foreign alike. In recent years, however, Greek historians, most of whom have studied abroad, have branched out into new fields of inquiry. Their aim has been to overcome the limitations of this tradition of historical writing as an instrument of political practice and to question the validity of firmly established views with regard to the nature and content of Greek historiography. Keeping abreast with historiographical developments in western Europe and the United States but aware of the inherent obstacles of perfunctorily applying theoretical models to the Greek case, they have produced innovative monographs on the economic, social, and intellectual history of modern Greece, at either a local or a national level. The papers in this volume, which derive from a conference held at King’s College London in September 1995 on Greek Society, Politics and Culture in the Era of King George /, 1863-1913, constitute an eloquent attestation of this new genre in Greek historical writing. The traditional emphasis on political and diplomatic history is replaced by an examination of the dynamics of social forces and groupings and an assessment of the underlying currents of the internal structures of Greek society. Most analyses revolve around the challenges of modernity and the claims of vii

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EDITOR’S PREFACE

tradition as these were disseminated in - experienced, as well as opposed by - a society in the making. Using a wide array of sources and being informed by scholarly studies on similar processes in contemporary Europe, contributors examine several expressions of the fundamental changes that characterized the period from the 1860s to the first decade of the twentieth century. A period which, perhaps more so than other epochs of modern Greek history, has not been the object of thorough historical research. This is accounted for partly because it was a relatively peaceful period, partly because the pace of change and its impact were slow in taking root, while in some cases the processes which heralded these changes either remained incomplete or were concluded only during the ‘golden era’ of Venizelism, and partly because until recently access to pertinent archival sources had been rather limited. This collection of essays makes no claim to completeness. Nor does it proffer the definitive account of the changes, whether patent or latent, which marked the transition of Greek society from the nineteenth to the twentieth century. It does, nonetheless, succeed in casting light on hitherto neglected aspects of the period, putting forward a number of critical and often revisionist interpretations, and offering more than a glimpse of society from below. As such, the volume if reflective as well as constitutive of the innovative trends shaping contemporary Greek historiography on modern Greece. Philip Carabott Kings College London February 1991

A Note on References Cited

References to sources have been harmonized throughout the volume and, in the case of published works, the ‘author-date’ system has been employed. The author’s name and the date of publication are cited in the text or notes and, where the author is unknown (i.e. Stenographische Benchte Uber die Verhandlungen des Deutschen Reichtstages), a clearly identifiable short title is used, followed by the date of publication (i.e. ‘Stenographische Berichte’ 1880). Full bibliographical details of all published works cited can be found in the References Cited section at the end of each contribution.

IX

Acknowledgements

Held under the auspices of the Department of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies and the Centre for Hellenic Studies, King’s College London, the conference from which the present volume derives was made possible by a generous donation from the J. Costopoulos Foundation (Athens), as well as the financial assistance of: The British Academy, the Esmee Fairbairn Charitable Trust, the London Hellenic Society, and the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies. I would like to take this opportunity to extend my gratitude to all of the above. I would also like to thanks the volume’s contributions for tolerating my questioning and patiently responding to my queries and suggestions. I am also grateful to Professor Judith Herrin (Director, Centre for Hellenic Studies) for her encouragement, Professor Roderick Beaton (King’s College London), Professor Peter Mackridge (St Cross College, Oxford), Dr Mark Mazower (University of Sussex), Dr David Ricks (King’s College London) and Professor Panayiotis Vatikiotis (St Anthony’s College, Oxford) for chairing conference sessions, and Dr Lito Apostolakou and Dr Alexandra Georgakopoulou for their generous judgements. Finally, I am indebted to Dr Eleni Calligas for her intellectual support and much more.

x

About the Contributors

M aria A nastasopoulou was Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Athens for over twenty years, and a founding member of the Greek Association of Comparative Literature. Since 1992 she has been living in Maryland where she teaches seminars on modern Greek literature and culture at the Hellenic American Academy of Potomac, and pursuing a career as an independent scholar, translator and creative writer. She has published extensively on feminist theories and womens’ literature, both Greek and American. Lito Apostolakou studied history at the University of Athens and holds an MA in contemporary European history from Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London. In 1995 she completed her doctorate on Politics, Industry Building and Organized Labour in a Greek Setting: The Tobacco Workers of Volos, c. 1914-1936 at King’s College London. She has published a number of articles on the social history of inter-war Greece, and is co-editor of Histor (Athens). Eleni Bastea was trained as an architect and architectural historian at the University of California, Berkeley (M. Arch. 1982, PhD 1989). She has been teaching architectural history at the School of Architecture, Washington University in St Louis, Missouri, since 1989. Her teaching and research have focused on nineteenth-century European urban history and theory, and on issues of architectural education. She has published essays on Greek neoclassical and vernacular architecture, the planning of modern Athens, and on the notion of place and memory in contemporary Greece. In her forthcoming book, Modern Athens: Planning the Myth, she examines the significance of the built environment (proposed and existing) in forging the identity of the modern Greek nation. K aterina G ardikas A lexander graduated from the Department of History and Archaeology, University of Athens in 1972. In 1988 she

xi

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ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

completed her doctorate on Parties and Politics in Greece, 1875-1885: Towards a Two-Party System, at King’s College, University of London. Between 1975 and 1991 she was a researcher at the Centre for Neohellenic Research of the National Hellenic Research Foundation in Athens. She has published a catalogue of the Alexandros Karatheodori papers, deposited at the CNR, and a number of articles on nineteenthcentury Greek social and political history. She is currently preparing a study and edition of a series of tax collectors’ registers from the last years of Ottoman rule in the Peloponnese and an analysis of the leading articles of the Trikoupist newspaper Ora. H elen G ardikas K atsiadakis is a researcher at the Centre for the Research of Modern Greek History of the Academy of Athens. She graduated from the Department of History and Archaeology, University of Athens in 1972, and completed her doctorate at King’s College, University of London. She is the author of Greece and the Balkan Imbroglio. Greek Foreign Policy 1911-1913 (Athens 1996). She has published a number of articles on the diplomatic and political history of Greece in the early twentieth century. An annotated edition of the letters written by General Leonidas Paraskevopoulos to his wife during the Balkan Wars (1912-13) is forthcoming. Currently she is preparing a biography of Ioannis Valaoritis. Basil G. Gounaris holds a BA and MA in history from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and a DPhil from Oxford University (St Anthony’s College). He is a member of the Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism and since 1990 has been head of the research department at the Museum of the Macedonian Struggle (Thessaloniki). He has published numerous articles on the social and economic history of Macedonia. His book, Steam over Macedonia: Socio-Economic Change and the Railway Factor (New York 1993), received a Greek Academy award in 1995. Christos Hadziiossif is Associate Professor of Contemporary History at the Department of History and Archaeology, University of Crete. He studied law, political economy and history in Athens, Heidelberg and Paris. He is the author of Ή γηραιά σελήνη. Ή βιομηχανία στην Ελλάδα, 18301940 (Athens 1993), and has published numerous articles on the economic and social history of Greece in the nineteenth and twentieth century and on modern European historiography. Kallia Kalliataki Merticopoulou is a researcher at the Centre for the Research of Modern Greek History of the Academy of Athens. She holds

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

xiii

an MA from the London School of Economics, and a PhD from the University of Athens. Her main field of interest is on Cretan history in the nineteenth century. Her publications include Ελληνικός άλυτρωτισμός καί όθωμανικές μεταρρυθμίσεις. Ή περίπτωση τής Κρήτης, 1868-1877 (Athens 1988) and, in collaboration with Eleftherios Prevelakis, Epirus, Alt Pasha and the Greek Revolution. Consular Reports of William Meyer from Preveza, 2 vols (Athens 1996). Currently she is working on a study of the cultural and educational history of Crete in the late nineteenth century. Christina Koulouri studied history and archaeology at the University of Athens and holds a doctorate from the Sorbonne (Paris I - Pantheon). From 1990 to 1993 she taught modern and contemporary Greek history at the University of Crete. Since 1993 she has been Assistant Professor at the Department of History and Ethnology, University of Thrace. She is the author of numerous articles in Greek, French and English on the history of education, historiography and sports, on geography and Greek national identity. Her most recent publications include Dimensions ideologiques de Thistonciti en Grece (1834-1914): les manuels scholaires d'histoire et de giographie (Frankfurt 1992); Μ ϋθοι καί σύμβολα μιας έθνικής έπετείον (Komotini 1995); and (with Christos Loukos) Τά πρόσωπα τοϋ Καποδίστρια. Ό πρώτος Κυβερνήτης τής Ελλάδας καί ή νεοελληνική ιδεολογία, 1831-1996 (Athens 1996). C h risto s L oukos is Professor at the Department of History and Archaeology, University of Crete. He is the author of numerous articles on the political and social history of Greece in the nineteenth century. His main publications include Ή άντιπολίτευση κατά τοϋ Κυβερνήτη 9Ιωάννη Καποδίστρια, 1828-1831 (Athens 1988); (with Popi Polemi) Οικονομικές συμπεριφορές, ψ υχολογία καί βιοτικό επίπεδο ενός Σ υριανού τοκιστή (Athens 1991); and (with Christina Koulouri) Τά πρόσωπα τοϋ Καποδίστρια. ' Ο πρώτος Κυβερνήτης τής Ελλάδας καί ή νεοελληνική ιδεολογία, 1831-1996 (Athens 1996). Currently he is completing a monograph on ‘Death in Syros in the nineteenth century’. Vasilios N. Makrides teaches religiology and religious education at the University of Thessaly (Greece). He is the author of Die religiose Kritik am kopernikantschen Weltbild in Griechenland zwischen 1794 und 1821 (Frankfurt a.M. 1995) and numerous articles on the religious history of modern Greece, the sociology of Eastern Orthodox Christianity, the relationship between science and religion, and the history of modern religions. Suzanne M archand received her BA from the University of California, Berkeley, and her PhD from the University of Chicago. She is now

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ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

Assistant Professor of European Intellectual History at Princeton University. Her book, Down from Olympus: Archaeology and Philhellenism in Germany, 1750-1970, was published by Princeton University Press in 1966. Her new work considers popular writings on the Orient, Africa, and Latin America in the context of German colonializing ventures. George Margaritis is Assistant Professor at the Department of History and Archaeology, University of Crete. He is the author of ’Από την ήττα στην εξέγερση. Ελλάδα, άνοιξη 1941 - φθινόπωρο 1942 (Athens 1993), and has published numerous articles on the political and social history of modern and contemporary Greece. Currently he is completing a monograph on ‘Youth suicide epidemics in Greece, 1880-1940’. Grigoris Psallidas is Assistant Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at the Department of History, and Director of the Centre for European History, Ionian University.

Part I Social Groupings and Latent Class Antagonism

1 Glass Structure and Glass Antagonism in Late Nineteenth-Century Greece Christos Hadziiossif Fixing the limits of a historical period has always been a thorny affair which is often resolved in an arbitrary manner. I consider it, therefore, to be a fortunate circumstance that the beginning and end of the reign of King George I, marking the period under consideration in this volume, do actually lie within two crucial phases of Greek social history. In both phases the unstable equilibrium between social classes was shifting, and the political leadership of the country sought to guarantee property and to consolidate the power of the dominant economic and social groupings by means of a new institutional order. In both cases a new constitution was introduced as well as important social legislation. The constitution of 1911 and the accompanying social legislation have been extensively analysed and brought into perspective with the emergence of an urban working class and a new labour movement.1 However, until recently, historical research has attached very little weight to the constitutional change of 1864 and its surrounding circumstances. The change of dynasty and the introduction of a new constitution were not mere political accidents, for since the dawn of modern times until well into the twentieth century the monarchy had been considered as the guarantor of the established order and especially of property rights. The absence of a monarchical tradition in independent Greece did not hinder the king from fulfilling this function, and that was the main reason, next to foreign backing, for the resilience of King Otto’s regime, despite the flagrant shortcomings of this monarch. The National Assembly, convened after the ousting of the Bavarian king, promulgated a democratic constitution. Its main provisions guaranteed civil rights, introduced 1 1 Leon 1978; Mavrogordatos 1983; Mavrogordatos and Hadziiossif 1988.

From Greek Society in the Making, 1863-1913: Realities, Symbols and Visions, ed. Philip Carabott. Copyright © 1997 by Philip Carabott. Published by Variorum, Ashgate Publishing Ltd, Gower House, Croft Road, Aldershot, Hampshire, GU11 3HR.

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CHRISTOS HADZIIOSSIF

universal male suffrage, and invested a single chamber with legislative power. Last minute efforts by the entourage of the new king to bend the will of the Assembly in a conservative direction failed to succeed. Contemporary observers considered the constitution of 1864 as one of the most democratic constitutions in the world, ‘more democratic than the constitutions of Norway and the United States’, according to the French envoy in Athens, who especially resented the absence of an upper chamber or senate.2 Four years later, on the occasion of a hotly disputed general election, the London Times, usually not very friendly to the Greeks, published a series of dispatches praising the Greek constitution in the most flattering terms: Greece has passed triumphantly through the difficulties that were supposed to be the certain attendant on a general election where there is only one Chamber, where universal suffrage exists, and vote by ballot is practised. The constitution of Greece exhibits some of the tendencies of political principles on the Continent in a prominent manner, and causes alarm to those who fear democracy, as an uncontrollable agent. But the conflicting action of monarchical, centralizing, and democratic parties may be traced in its provisions, and it is very probable that it foreshadows many things that must occur before many years elapse in the greater monarchies and even empires of the Continent.3

Today, the majority of social scientists dismiss the radical character of the 1864 constitution as a mere theoretical exercise with no real implications. The underlying argument is that Greek society was not yet clearly divided into antagonistic classes and the dominant groups could concede political liberties without any risk to their vested interests. On the contrary, they exploited the liberal provisions of the constitution and with the help of patronage they managed to turn the political system to a kind of ‘oligarchical parliamentarism’.4 This view on the absence of class conflict in late nineteenth-century Greece is based on two assumptions. The first, a tacit one, associates class conflicts with the emergence of an industrial working class and its opposition to the bourgeoisie. Since Greece was a predominantly agricultural society it could not develop social antagonisms of the kind that could lead to serious clashes and eventually to social revolution. It 2 Archives du M inistere des Affaires Etrangeres, Quai d ’Orsay, Paris (AMAE), Correspondance Politique, Grece, vol. 89 (Athens, 29 September 1864). 3 The Times (17 April 1868); see also the issues of 9 and 14 April 1868. However, when the constitution was promulgated in 1864, the commentaries of the newspaper were downright negative. The change in its attitude reflects a general shift of its editorial line towards democratic positions, exemplified by its engagement in favour of electoral reform in Britain and the democratization of the Second Empire in France. 4 Mouzelis 1986.

CLASS STRUCTURE AND CLASS ANTAGONISM

5

is not very different from the claim of the French envoy in Athens a few months before the uprising which ousted King Otto, namely that revolution, an ‘emeute’, was out of the question because Athens and Greece did not possess ‘workshops’ and an urban working class.5 The second postulation, an explicit one, maintains that class conflicts were absent from the agricultural sector because it was dominated by smallholdings. It admits class antagonisms only as a local phenomenon in the big landholdings of Attica, Euboea and especially Thessaly. However, even there, big estates not being directly farmed by the landowners but divided into small plots, the antagonism between big landowners and tenants was less acute than it would otherwise be between owners and wage earners in the case of direct labour on the estates. We can trace back this theory of class structure in late nineteenthcentury Greece to the work of K. Vergopoulos (1975). His book was the first attempt to build a comprehensive model of the agricultural sector, showing the connections between its various groups and their relationship to the state, and has exercised a stimulating effect on historical research. According to Vergopoulos the main social opposition in the countryside was between the peasants and the state. This was due to the fact that, after independence, the state had nationalized the former Turkish properties so that they would not be taken over by the notables. In this way, the merchants and the functionaries who controlled the state apparatus hindered the formation of a class of big landowners. The peasants squatted the national estates and claimed their distribution, which they eventually obtained in 1871. Thus agricultural reform consolidated smallholdings, which were instrumental in the expansion of commercial plantations and especially of the culture of currants.6 The number of big estates rose after the annexation of Thessaly in 1881, but even there cultivation was carried through small family holdings. As a result, the Greek peasantry was integrated into the capitalist system through the market and not by means of the production process. The model of Vergopoulos has been subsequently adopted by other historians and social scientists. In 1978, N. Mouzelis referred explicitly to Vergopoulos when arguing that ‘contrary to a widespread myth, the land which had belonged to the Turkish landlords was not taken over on their leaving by their Greek counterparts, but by the State’.7 Furthermore, Mouzelis added that half a century later, in 1871, when the Greek State decided to distribute the national lands among peasants, its main concern was again to ensure S AMAE Correspondance Politique, Grece, vol. 83 (Athens, 3 April 1862). 6 Vergopoulos 1975: 112-3. 7 Mouzelis 1978: 7.

6

CHRISTOS HADZIIOSSIF that the reform would not result in the concentration of land in private hands.

These assertions were based on no statistical evidence. The only relative data to be found in the work of Vergopoulos concerned the geographical distribution and the total surface area of the estates which were expropriated after 1923. In order to validate his argument it would be more appropriate to provide a break-down of the total agricultural property in separate classes according to the size of the holdings. We also lack data about the effective distribution of the national estates in 1871. The only supporting evidence to the claim that the state favoured small peasants is a passage from a pamphlet published in 1945.8 Initially, Mouzelis contented himself with the scanty evidence brought forward by Vergopoulos; only in a later work did he examine the distribution of the national estates to the peasants by furnishing additional evidence.9 The new data showed that some 357,217 cession deeds were issued for about 662,500 acres of national land and, at first sight, seemed to confirm the thesis on the fragmentation of land ownership. In reality, however, these numbers do not help us, because they do not indicate how many cession deeds were immediately sold to third parties; and we know from other sources that such retrocessions were quite numerous in the currant growing areas.101 The same basic assumptions on class structure and class antagonism in the countryside are to be found in all analyses of nineteenth-century Greek society. In 1977, Y. Dertilis distinguished between big landowners, bourgeois and peasants but traced no influence of a persistent class conflict. According to him, the liberal constitutions were the result of political compromise between warring factions rather than of naked class struggle. Political parties and factions were socially heterogeneous groups, each of them appealing to all classes of society. Power therefore belonged to a political and not to a social elite.11 In subsequent works, Dertilis further emphasized the homogeneous character of agricultural society, and elaborated on this basis a comprehensive theory of the social and political evolution in Greece.12 In his last works, big landowners are ignored, and the focus is put on the peasantry, which is assumed to present little internal social stratification and to farm family-type holdings of equal size. Universal suffrage permitted the peasants to use their numerical superiority to extract from the state fiscal alleviations and other political 8 Vergopoulos 1975: 112. 9 Mouzelis 1986: 233. 10 See Franghiadis 1990. 11 Dertilis 1977: 106-7. 12 See Dertilis 1992, 1993a and 1993b.

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concessions. Nevertheless, the domination of the peasants was mitigated by patronage networks, whose social basis becomes, in Dertilis’ model, somewhat indefinite. Similarly, K. Tsoukalas assumed that big estates constituted an exception, and that they were strictly confined to certain provinces. Commercial plantations developed in regions where small landownership was predominant. Furthermore, he agreed with Vergopoulos that the peasantry was socially integrated into the emerging Greek capitalism and the capitalist world system by means of taxation, the market, and usury.13 Tsoukalas was the first to bring a new element into the model by pointing to the spoliation of Turkish and later of national estates by local notables, who in this way managed to form landholdings of considerable size.14 However, he was unable to put forward an estimate of the extent of this phenomenon, and subsequently failed to consider its implications for the functioning of the model. Several years later, W. McGrew, in a specialized work on land tenure in modern Greece, cited individual cases of big landowners who carved out considerable pieces of the national estates, but otherwise he clung to the view that the backwater character of most of the country’s agriculture discouraged investors and attracted only the poorest classes... The archon class was deterred from becoming more directly involved in agricultural production by the negative features of agriculture, by the state’s land policy and by the prevailing social ethic which viewed cultivation with disdain.15

Given the unanimity among senior scholars on the predominant character of family-type peasant ownership and its decisive role in the expansion of commercial cultures, it is quite natural that younger scholars and non-Greek historians have taken this model for granted. The citation of the respectable chain of these authors gives credit to the derivative arguments of younger researchers and compensates for the want of empirical evidence. Nevertheless, the fact remains that there is no available statistical data from the nineteenth century on the distribution of landed property according to the size of the holdings. Spiliotakis, in the preface to the edition of the findings of the agricultural census of 1861, merely mentioned that most farms in the mountain and insular provinces measured between 0.5 and 1 hectares, and that they were divided into several plots, whereas the size of farms on the mainland varied between 5 and 20 hectares, with some exceeding 100 hectares.16 13 Tsoukalas 1977: 79, 91-3. 14 Ibid.: 79-80. 15 McGrew 1985: 185-6, 219-21. 16Spiliotakis 1864: xii.

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8

It is probably too much to ask of sociologists and political scientists to treat the gross empirical material in such a way as to extract more accurate data. On the other hand, if precise quantitative evidence is lacking, there are many testimonies to the egalitarian character of nineteenth-century Greek society and the equal distribution of property - or more precisely to the absence of wide inequalities. I have had the opportunity elsewhere to point to the apologetic character of such statements.17 They tell us more about the social ideal of nineteenth-century Greece than about the real situation. However, this ideological stance has proved to be very pervasive, and I think it is what influenced social scientists in applying retro­ spectively to the nineteenth century the situation which emerged in the distribution of landed property after the agricultural reform of 1923. The historian’s task should therefore be to examine critically this qualitative evidence and to take into account the scattered indirect statistical data as the prerequisite for a new and perhaps more accurate evaluation of the distribution of landed property in the nineteenth century, as well as its economic, political and social implications. The first clear indication that social stratification in the countryside was sharper than is usually assumed, is to be found in the terminology used in documents of the time to denote the various social groups involved in the agricultural production process. The terms most often employed are ergatis, yeorgos, and ktimatias - worker, peasant, and landowner. The meaning of ergatis is clear enough: it is the worker who, in the precise situation referred to in the documents, tills another’s land on which he has no real rights. The difference between ktimatias and yeorgos is less clear for the contemporary reader, and the confusion becomes greater when we come across the composite term yeorgoktimatias. Nevertheless, once one becomes accustomed to such documents (newspapers, legal and literary texts, etc.), one gains the impression that the term ktimatias carried greater social prestige than the word yeorgos. Moreover, yeorgoktimatias may be read as a mark of courtesy towards a simple yeorgos rather than merely denoting an intermediate category. The use of the terms ktimatias and yeorgos in the official statistics on the active population of Greece indicates that in the nineteenth century the difference in status corresponded to an easily discernible difference in occupation, despite the fact that for both groups agricultural revenue constituted the principal source of income. The sharecropping agreements in the currant cultivation of that time offer a tentative answer to this question. As a rule, in these legal documents the owner of the farm is called ktimatias, the cultivator usually yeorgos, and less often yeorgoktimatias, whereas he is virtually never referred 17 Hadziiossif 1993: 381-2.

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to as ktimatias.18 Thus we can conclude that, normally, ktimatias was a landowner who did not perform personal manual work on the farm which he exploited by employing sharecroppers and/or hiring workers. According to official population censuses, the percentage of ktimaties within the total active population was 4.95% in 1861, rising to 6.67% by 1870. This increase was probably due to the large contingent of ktimaties in the Ionian islands, ceded by Britain to Greece in 1864. The percentage of the yeorgoi was 45.26% and 46.57% respectively. Another 7% to 12% were listed as shepherds.19 It is obvious that underlying the occupational variances were differences in the size of property. A farmer could afford not to work personally and take on the role of a ktimatias only when his property was big enough to accommodate a sufficient number of sharecroppers or labourers whose surplus work would sustain him. The minimum size of a landed property which enabled a yeorgos to become a ktimatias varied with the type of crop and the agricultural techniques employed. It therefore makes little sense to lecture indiscriminately about large and small farms without reference to the actual crop concerned. It was estimated at the time that to harvest an average cereal farm of a size of six hectares, twenty man-days of hired labour were needed.20 On a current plantation, the same amount of labour was needed to cultivate a piece of land of only 0.5 hectares.21 This means that as currant growing was a more labour intensive business, the threshold of the farm size, which it was impossible to cultivate by the workforce of the peasant family alone, lay much lower than on cereal farms. Another significant difference between the two kinds of culture was that on cereal farms the harvesters were usually paid in kind, whereas in the currant growing areas workers were normally paid in cash. Thus wage labour entered the scene in currant cultivation at a lower level, and had deeper social repercussions than in other forms of agriculture. Therefore, at least on the microeconomic level, it is doubtful whether currant growing has ever had the stabilizing effects on social structure and politics which most historians and social scientists have ascribed to it. On a general level, currant growing needed the mobilization of ever growing population numbers, which the currant growing provinces could not provide. In 1863 the total area cultivated with currants in mainland Greece covered 17,980 hectares, in 1871, when the agricultural reform was promulgated, it rose to 27,123 hectares, reaching 35,916 by 1878. To pick 18 For example, see the thirty-one sharecropping agreements published in Kalafatis 199092: II, appendix. 19 See Makris 1972. 20Efimetis its Synelefseos: III, 10 (23 March 1863). 21 Estimate based on data provided in Chairetis 1883: 3787-9. I assume a harvesting period of three weeks.

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the grapes on such an extensive area required 45,000 labourers in 1863, 67,000 in 1871, 90,000 in 1878, and more than 130,000 ten years later.22 These numbers exceeded the demographic potential of the currant growing provinces, the area under cultivation growing faster than the population. Hence family farms were not able to play the role of the driving force behind the expansion of the culture, as it is currently assumed by historians. In order to ‘salvage’ the farm model, A. Franghiadis, in an informative doctoral thesis on the subject, assumes that the cultivation of currants became virtually a monoculture, occupying the whole of the agricultural population in currant growing provinces.23 This argument contradicts two kinds of evidence. Firstly, as Franghiadis himself admits, the peasants of the currant growing regions continued to cultivate other crops as well. Secondly, evidence is available about the seasonal movements of labourers from the mountain areas to the coastal currant growing provinces during the peak of the cultivation process. One contemporary estimate of the number of seasonal workers from outside the province required to harvest the currant crop in the region of Elia put their number at more than 10,000 in 1863.24 T. Kalafatis has estimated that in Aeyialeia, a province with a population of 17,000, as many as two to three thousand non-local, seasonal workers were employed during harvest time.25 In order to accommodate this influx of labourers into the framework of the farm model, Franghiadis stretched the notion of the family farm to include units which employed about ten hired labourers. In this way, he created ‘family’ farms of two and three times the normal size of one hectare. But even if one accepts this arbitrary extension of the notion of peasant farming, the fact of the matter remains that the expansion of currant cultivation was due, in no small measure, to the existence of even larger estates. The great majority of the migrant labourers were smallholders from the central Peloponnese, who profited from the different harvest times of cereals and currants and earned extra income by working temporarily on currant plantations. As wage-earners, they were objectively in conflict with their employers, the ktimaties\ as smallholders, they were in solidarity with them against any threat to private property and the established order. As long as the currant trade was booming and wages in the plantations were maintained at sufficient levels, class solidarity prevailed over class conflict. Smallholders were temporarily abased by accepting dependent labour, but, in the long run, they preserved their status as independent producers. The 22Chairetis 1883: 390-1; Loverdos 1901: 31. n Franghiadis 1990: 35. 24Efimeris tis Synelefseos: III, 10 (20 May 1863). 25 Kalafatis 1990-92: I, 134.

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ktimaties, however, perceived only the conflictual dimension of the relationship between employer and employee, reified into the wage; the other character of the wage-earners, that of the smallholder and of their potential solidarity with the ktimaties, was not immediately perceptible to them. They therefore developed a vivid sensitivity to the threat to their property posed by their workers, rather than a feeling of unity. This fear surfaced quite often, even in minor incidents, betraying the inherent insecurity of landowners, who depended on hired labour to farm their plantations. In 1866, the abduction of a member of parliament and a ktimatias by brigands, made landowners feel so uneasy amidst their harvesters, that ‘they abandoned their crops at the whim of the workers and fled to the cities’.26 The objective economic roots of this insecurity are discernible on other occasions, as for example in the rejection of a price-guarantee scheme in 1905, on the grounds that the application of these measures would be tantamount to abandoning the plantations to the workers.27 The internal cleavages of landed society appeared sharper in times of crisis such as the interregnum years 1862-64, from the ousting of King Otto until the promulgation of the new constitution. Among the questions dividing society at that crucial time were taxation and the distribution of the national estates, both intrinsically related to property. The participants in the debate repeatedly referred to the egalitarian character of Greek society, as opposed to the extreme inequalities prevailing in western Europe, which debased the working class to ‘the state of beasts’. In reality, the objective of those comparisons was to preserve the fiscal immunity or other benefits that some categories of property owners enjoyed, by concealing the real inequalities in Greek society.28 Otherwise, it was common to distinguish between four classes: megaloktimaties or yeoktimones, ktimaties, yeorgoi, and imeromisthioi ptochoi - the large landowners of the former Turkish chiftliks, landowners, peasants, and poor wagelabourers. According to a member of the National Assembly, only farmers with less than one hectare of property belonged to the ‘peasant class’.29 The various categories of landed society were at variance on the subjects of taxation and distribution of the national estates. Peasants favoured a general reduction of land taxes, both on private and national land, whereas landowners opposed any reduction in the rate of the usufruct right or the rent paid by peasants for farming national estates. Landowners feared that lower rents would render the cultivation of 26 Sotiropoulos 1867: 97. 27 Efimeris ton Syzitiseon: 982 (12 July 1905). 28 Efimeris tis Syne/efseos: IV, 61 (8 November 1863). 29Ibid., Ill, 582 (3 May 1863); VI, 409 (12 September 1864).

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national estates more appealing to peasants, and they would thus face the risk of not finding a sufficient number of labourers for their own farms.30 Eventually, the majority of the Assembly followed the opinion of the representatives of the urban classes, who opposed any cuts in tax rates, fearing that such measures could endanger the financing of essential state services and have adverse effects on the already difficult maintenance of law and order. The debates on the distribution of the national estates were among the most heated in the National Assembly. The proposals submitted to the representatives on this matter may be divided into three groups. The first two tied land distribution to military services rendered during the War of Independence. One group advocated the distribution of land only to professional soldiers. The other wanted to extend the measure to cover every head of family. This second proposal was based on two assumptions. The first was that before the Ottoman conquest all land was private property, to which all the descendents of pre-independence Greeks were equally entitled. The second maintained that, since all Greeks had participated in the struggle for independence in one way or another, the whole population was entitled to the distribution of the national estates. Underlying this assumption was a defiance of the notables, and more generally egalitarian views of the state and society. I respect the Revolution so much, that I do not want the smallest particle of it to be neglected; the distribution should be equal, because anything that is not equal is tyrannical, it is lawless,31

exclaimed General Zervas, representative for the province of Kranidi. For his colleague Londos, the ideal size of equal plots should be 1.5 hectares for each Greek family. In the early days of the Assembly, when passions were still running high and public order was precarious, egalitarian opinions often carried the day. When the representatives accepted the sale of the national olive plantations of Amfissa, in order to reimburse the National Bank for its advances to the Treasury, they decreed that the lots should not exceed one hundred olive trees nor should anyone be allowed to possess a larger olive grove by acquiring additional lots. A similar condition was imposed on the village communities to which the state passed the right to lease the surrounding pasture lands. Nobody was entitled to graze on those lands more than a hundred small animals and ten cattle.32

30Ibid., Ill, 338, 469 (23 March and 19 April 1863). 31 Ibid., V, 194 (15 July 1864). 32 Ibid., IV, 201-22, 235 (27 November and 14 December 1863).

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Representatives who were either planters themselves or were close to merchant and banking interests, advocated the distribution of national plantations only, with special attention given to currant growers. According to this third category of proposals, planters would obtain full ownership of half the illegally planted national land on the condition that they would relinquish the other half to the state. Some amendments to the initial project called for an upper limit of four hectares to the size of plots to be reclaimed. An additional four hectares could be obtained if, after the initial phase of distribution, there were still national plantations in the area which had not been reclaimed.33 Under this scheme the majority of peasant families would be excluded from the distribution, because only the ktimaties, merchants and members of the liberal professions had planted significant areas with currants. It is interesting to note that the proposal to limit the distribution to the plantations only was put forward at a time when the less egalitarian elements of the Assembly were heartened by the arrival in Greece of the new king. Moreover, it coincided with the final and unsuccessful assault of the conservatives and the court on the democratic provisions of the constitution. These circles profited from the inherent contradictions in the ideology of many radical members of the Assembly: for instance, the egalitarian General Zervas and other political leaders with similar ideas would hesitate to embark on an open confrontation with the king, since, for them as well, the monarch represented the guarantor of order and property, however small the latter may have been. In the event, the Assembly was adjourned before reaching an agreement on the subject of the national estates. At the time of the agricultural reform of 1871 the political balance both in parliament and in the country had shifted in favour of the great currant growers. On the one hand, the radical representatives of the National Assembly of the 1862-64 period had either failed to be re-elected or they had adhered to more moderate views. On the other hand, as the distribution of the national estates was considered to be imminent, the number of unauthorized plantations on public land increased dramatically, intensifying social pressure for their privatization. The solution eventually adopted by the lawmakers was more favourable to the planters than any distribution scheme put forward in the National Assembly seven years earlier. Parliament divided the national estates into two categories, plantations and barren land, and passed separate laws for each category of land. According to Law CCXCVI/1871 all planters of currants, vineyards, olive, fig and mulberry trees could claim full ownership of their plantations without size limitations, and irrespective of their legal status, i.e. whether they had planted with or without official authorization. The 33 Article 7 of Law CLXXI/1871; text in Psychoyios 1994: 301-9.

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price to be paid for the cession was calculated on the value of barren land, and it was substantially lower than the market price for plantations.34 Law CLXXI/1871 was promulgated one day later, on 25 March, and provided for the distribution of barren land only. Peasants were allowed to claim ownership of the plots of the national estates they were already cultivating up to the size of eight hectares. If after this first round of distribution there were still national estates unaccounted for in the district of the village, inhabitants of other villages and townsmen had the right to apply for ownership, on the same conditions as the villagers. Planters of national estates were excluded from the distribution of barren land.35 The provisions of these two laws, and the protracted parliamentary debate which preceded their approval, demonstrate that those who had the majority in parliament sought to consolidate the larger commercial plantations rather than strengthen the position of smallholders. The limitation of peasant holdings to eight hectares was not inspired by egalitarian principles, but aimed at securing the necessary workforce for the larger plantations. Family plots of less than eight hectares (the initial proposal had put the limit at only six hectares) made the peasants dependent on complementary earnings for their survival. They were, therefore, forced to accept employment as wage-earners on the plantations of the ktimaties. T hese features of the 1871 reform do not allow us to speak indiscriminately of the distribution of the national estates, and render the use of average figures for the land ceded rather meaningless. Indeed, the available empirical evidence suggests that the reform sharpened inequalities in rural society. Franghiadis has demonstrated that in the district of Amaliada the ktimaties, merchants and members of the liberal professions consolidated currant farms of several hundred stremmata (one stremma = 0.10 hectares) by repurchases in the aftermath of the distribution of the national estates. This was due to the fact that the cost of any profitable use of purchased national lands was thus inaccessible to peasant families, who therefore limited their purchases in [sic] the tiny plots they were able to intensively cultivate by planting a few trees, some vines or by creating small orchards. Conversely, the live interest [sic] of ‘upper class’ families in concentrating large areas of national lands was connected to the fact that they were able and interested in financing the creation of extensive currant vineyards.36

Kalafatis, using a different set of data, reached the same conclusions for the province of Aeyialeia; after the reform, the percentage of large 34 Article 1; text in ibid., 295-300. 35 Article 2; text in ibid., 301-9. 36 Franghiadis 1990: 123

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estates in the total cultivated area increased, whereas that of the smallholdings declined, and that of the medium-sized farms remained stable.37 Psychoyios, studying the district of Myrtountia in the province of Elia, found that the new regime of land tenure benefited all peasants of the district but in an unequal manner. Access to national estates was determined by the social and economic status of each inhabitant, and sharpened the existing differences in wealth.38

He also noticed that distribution was more unequal in the case of plantations than in that of barren land. In the last decade of the nineteenth century expansion came to a halt. The loss of the French market for currants provoked a sharp and protracted fall in their price; in response, the ktimaties attempted to reduce wages and to intensify work on the farms by hiring fewer people. This caused a fall in the revenue of the smallholders, who had problems of their own with the price of cereals and declining yields. The economic crisis transformed itself into an ideological and social crisis as bandits, fugitives from the law, anarchists, socialists and various kinds of Greek Orthodox radicals roamed over the countryside of the Peloponnese. Historians consider these phenomena as the prelude to the modern urban working movement in Greece.39 However, I believe that it would be more accurate to see in them the epilogue of the old order in the Greek countryside. As the agrarian upheavals were compounded with the activities of the urban labour movement, intellectuals and the propertied classes were led to a new awareness of the social question. The first wave of workers’ strikes in Athens and Piraeus, the creation of the Confederation of Greek Industrialists, the publication of Yeoryios Skliros’ Τό κοινωνικό μας ζήτημα (Our Social Issue), all these events took place almost simultaneously during 1906-07. They prepared the ground for the military pronunciamento of August 1909 and the reforms of the first Venizelos governments. But as usual in Greece, the perception of social antagonisms led, even on this occasion, to their negation. Thus, for the first time, the 1907 census listed the active population of the countryside no more according to their particular occupational and social status: ktimaties and yeorgoi were fused together under the heading ‘agriculture’, industrialists and workers under ‘manufacturing’. In light of the above, the discourse about the homogeneous character of rural society in Greece proves to be unsubstantiated. However, there is always the danger of falling into the opposite extreme, in as much as 37 Kalafatis 1990-92: II, 77. 38 Psychoyios 1994: 220. 39 Kordatos 1972: 75-92.

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social cleavages were not the same and did not present the same intensity in every province. For instance, E. Karouzou (1995), studying the province of Argos, where currant growing was rather marginal, has found a more equal pattern of land distribution than in the northern and western Peloponnese. This suggests that a prerequisite for any approach to the political behaviour of the Greek peasantry is the careful choice of the appropriate scale of study. The ‘small community’ of social anthropologists and the ‘nation-state’ of historians cannot offer new insights any more. The province, or the natural region around an urban centre, seem to me to offer a more appropriate scale for the study of the functioning of the Greek political system during the late nineteenth century.

References Cited Chairetis, M. 1883. Χαφέτης, Μ. Καλλιέργεια τής σταφιδαμπέλου. Athens. Dertilis, Y. 1977. Δερτιλής, Γ. Κοινωνικός μετασχηματισμός καί στρατιωτική έπέμβαση, 1880-1909. Athens. Dertilis, Υ. 1992. ‘Terre, paysans et pouvoir economique (Grece XVIII-XIX siecle)’. Annates, 47: 273-91. Dertilis, Y. 1993a. ‘Terre, paysans et pouvoir politique (Grece XVIII-XIX siecle)’. Annates, 48: 85-107. Dertilis, Y. 1993b. Δερτιλής, Γ. ’Ατελέσφοροι ή τελεσφόροι; φόροι καί έξουσία στό νεοελληνικό κράτος. Athens. Franghiadis, A. 1990. Peasant Agriculture and Export Trade: Current Viticulture in Southern Greece, 1830-1893. Unpublished doctoral thesis, European University Institute, Florence. Hadziiossif, C. 1993. Χατζηιωσήφ, X. Ή γηραια σελήνη. Ή βιομηχανία στην Ελλάδα , 1830-1940. Athens. Kalafatis, Τ. 1990-92. Καλαφάτης, Θ. ’Αγροτική πίστη καί οικονομικός μετασχηματισμός στη Β. Πελοπόννησο: Αίγιαλεία τέλη 19ον αιώνα. Athens, 3 vols. Karouzou, Ε. 1995. Culture maraichere dans la Mediterrannee. Les transformations de la plaine et de la societe argolique, 1860-1910. Unpublished doctoral thesis, European University Institute, Florence. Kordatos, Y. 1972. Κορδάτος, Γ. Ιστορία τοϋ έλληνικοϋ έργατικοϋ κινήματος. Athens, 7th ed. Leon, G. 1978. ‘The Greek labor movement and the bourgeois state, 1910-1920’. Journal of the Hellenic Diaspora, 4: 5-28. Loverdos, S. 1901. Λοβέρδος, Σ. Ό έΟνικός πλοϋτος. Athens. McGrew, W. 1985. Land and Revolution in Modern Greece, 1800-1881. The Transition in the Tenure and Exploitation of Land from Ottoman Rule to Independence. Kent, Ohio. Makris, E. 1972. Μακρής, Εύ. Ό οικονομικός ενεργός πληθυσμός και ή άπασχόλησις αύτοϋ, 1821-1971, in Μ. Houliarakis et al., Στατνστικαϊ μελέται. Athens, 113-212.

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Mavrogordatos, G. 1983. Stillborn Republic: Social Coalitions and Party Strategies in Greece, 1922-1936. Berkeley. Mavrogordatos, G. and Hadziiossif, C. 1988 (eds). Μαυρογορδάτος, Γ. and Χατζηιωσήψ, X. Βενιζελισμός καί άστικός έκσνγχρονισμός. Iraklion. Mouzelis, Ν. 1978. Modern Greece. Facets of Underdevelopment. London. Mouzelis, N. 1986. Politics in the Semi-Periphery: Early Parliamentarism and Late Industrialization in the Balkans and the Latin America. London. Psychoyios, D. 1994. Ψυχογιός, Δ. Τό ζήτημα των έθνικών γαιών. Athens. Sotiropoulos, S. 1867. Σωτηρόπουλος, Σ. Τριάκοντα έ'ξ ήμερων αιχμαλωσία καί συμβίωσές μετά ληστών. Athens. Spiliotakis, I. 1864. Σπηλιωτάκης, Ί. Στατιστική της γεωργίας. Athens. Tsoukalas, Κ. 1977. Τσουκαλάς, Κ. ’Εξάρτηση καί άναπαραγωγή. Ό κοινοτικός ρόλος των έκπαιδεντικών μηχανισμών, 1830-1922. Athens. Vergopoulos, Κ. 1975. Βεργόπουλος, Κ. Τό άγροτικό ζήτημα στήν Ελλάδα. Τό πρόβλημα της κοινωνικής ένσωμάτωσης τής γεωργίας. Athens.

2 Social Solidarity on the Periphery of the Greek Kingdom: The Case of the Workers’ Fraternity of Corfu Grigoris Psalltdas In the increasingly industrial society of nineteenth-century Europe workers sought to improve their position through a variety of organizations, the most representative of which were self-help societies, co-operatives and trade unions. Self-help or ‘friendly’ societies were among the oldest, most customary forms of workers’ organizations.1 Given the total lack of state provision for the labouring classes, these organizations, which operated mainly in western and central Europe (including Russia), undertook philanthropic works and provided private self-insurance. The theoretical foundations of the friendly societies, however, are rooted in laissez-faire philosophy and, more particularly, in the works of Frederick Morton Eden and Malthus, both of whom were of the opinion that the labouring classes should take care of themselves. This view was reinforced by Samuel Smiles, the author of Self-Help (1859) and Thrift (1875).12 In Britain workers’ self-help organizations were highly successful. In England and Wales alone there were about 7,000 in 1801, with a total of 600,000 to 700,000 members. Seventy years later membership had grown to almost four million, four times the number of trade union members, rising to six and a half million by 1913.3 Their success was helped decisively by official state recognition, expressed in legislative acts such as those of 1793 (Roses Act), of 1855 (Friendly Societies Act) and of 1875 (Friendly Societies Consolidating Act), which laid down the framework for their organization and financial management. Thus, up to the introduction of National Insurance in 1911, the friendly societies played 1 May 1987: 224. 2 Taylor 1988: 405. 3 May 1987: 224-5.

From Greek Society in the Making, 1863-1913: Realities, Symbols and Visions, ed. Philip Carabott. Copyright © 1997 by Philip Carabott. Published by Variorum, Ashgate Publishing Ltd, Gower House, Croft Road, Aldershot, Hampshire, GU11 3HR.

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an important role in covering workers’ vital needs, especially in the event of illness and unemployment.4 The relationship between self-help organizations and the trade unions dates back to the early nineteenth century, when some of the latter took advantage of the Roses Act and registered as friendly societies, so as to circumvent the Combination Laws (1799-1800) that had denied them a legal overt existence. As a result, friendly societies were suspected of nurturing revolutionary objectives and offering cover for subversive activities. Despite these fears, the societies were attractive to governments aware of rising poverty in the 1790s, because they shifted responsibility for social provision from the community to the individual, who was encouraged to develop the values and habits of thrift and independence. However, for all their great impact among British workers in the nineteenth century, friendly societies functioned as a supplement to rather than a substitute for trade unions.5 In France mutual aid societies {societes professionelles de secours mutuels) were a common form of association among nineteenth-century craftsmen. Some of these stemmed from the compagnonnages, an archaic form of journeymen organizations. The main purpose of mutualist societies was to accumulate funds by collecting dues from their members as protection against sickness, accident and unemployment. At the same time, they served the interests of defense professionelle, although often in secret. In 1895 about 2,300 such societies existed, numbering some 394,000 members. Many of the mutualist societies were set up after the 1820s, in 1848 or as late as 1870, and provided an organizational basis for strike activity, concealing militant ambitions under innocuous self-help labels.6 For this reason, especially between 1878 and 1890, successive French governments attempted to dissolve the mutual aid organizations. The same was the case in Germany. Although they constituted an important force in the traditional guild society, during the period in which the law against the socialists (Socialistengesetz) was in force the friendly societies were organizations directly opposed to the Second Reich.7 In Belgium, on the contrary, the aim of mutual aid societies was to assist the social integration of their members. For example, the Societe d'ipargne pour Γachat de provisions d'hiver was founded in Antwerp in 1850, at the instigation of the municipal authorities, in order to enable poor families to buy food and fuel cheaply during the winter months. Its funds came from two sources. All propertied burghers were asked to become 4 Taylor 1988: 405-7. s Thomis 1974: 129. 6 Shorter and Tilly 1974: 176-7. 7 Geary 1981: 64.

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honorary members of the society and to provide an annual contribution, while working-class families made a weekly contribution and were considered active members. Food and fuel were bought at wholesale prices in the summer and distributed among the active members, in proportion to their contributions, during the winter.8 In late nineteenth-century Russia the phenomenon of mutual aid organizations was more complex and idiosyncratic because of the appearance of the kassa, a type of self-help fund. The first kassa had been set up by foreigners, but it was later adopted by Russian workers as well, particularly in large industrial centres such as St Petersburg. Under the supervision of the socialists, the stocking-makers of Vilna organized what may well have been the first kassa in the early 1880s. Later in the decade other self-help funds were formed by printers, tailors, carpenters, locksmiths, and cigarette-makers in Minsk and elsewhere. The early kassy were not specifically designed to aid members during strikes and, for the most part, they appear to have operated as general mutual aid societies. The origins of the kassy pose a special problem and the question of whether they were an outgrowth of the medieval guilds has been the subject of considerable discussion and controversy. In addition, they were seen as antagonistic to the Jewish workers’ movement in Russia, where the old guild system continued to flourish at the same time as the kassy were being established. As the guilds and the kassy regarded each other with mutual suspicion and enmity, so did the self-help societies of Jewish factory workers and the kassy. Although factory workers did not have guilds, they occasionally formed mutual help funds, motivated by a desire to protect themselves against frequent crises and unemployment. In certain instances, these organizations had been founded on the initiative of factory owners.9 The main difference which appears to have existed between the kassy and the other self-help organizations was that the former aimed at the workers’ ideological and political emancipation rather than merely social integration. This was more marked in the case of the Jewish kassy, whose members refused to remain in the same guild with their employers or to continue the traditional way of life dictated by their religion,101as well as in the case of the St Petersburg kassy which supported socialist workers in their effort to be relieved of the tutelage of the intellectuals and comrades who shared their ideas.11

8 Lis 1986: 132. 9 Mendelsohn 1970: 41, 43. 10 Ibid., 42. 11 Wildman 1967: 94.

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Most of the friendly societies set up in Greece were organized on a narrow occupational or regional basis.12 In the Ionian islands the workers’ mutual aid organizations were a fairly widespread phenomenon in the late nineteenth century. The Workers’ Fraternity of Corfu was followed in 1894 by the Workers’ Union of Corfu, the Workers’ League ‘Mutual Help’ in Argostoli and the Workers’ League ‘Brotherhood’ in Lixouri, Cephalonia.13 While belonging to the category of friendly societies, the Fraternity continues to operate up to the present day, but with different objectives and under a different legal status.14 The establishment of the Fraternity on 10 May 1887, on the initiative of twenty-eight Corfiots from various social classes and trades, received broad social recognition. It made a favourable impression on virtually all the local press and soon won the support of the local government of Corfu. Performing a ‘useful public work which brings honour to Corfiot society’, less than two years after its establishment the Fraternity was said to represent a ‘symbol of co-operation in compassion and mutual help for the workers in fraternal love’.15 At the same time, the municipal authorities began paying a permanent financial contribution to the Fraternity,16 a fact which both reflected and consolidated the organization’s conservative social orientation. Less than six months after its foundation, the Fraternity had a total of 370 members, at a period when the workers of Corfu numbered a little over 1000,17 according to estimates by the Fraternity’s Administrative Board. In 1888, membership rose to 468 but, owing to a number of expulsions, it soon fell to 431. With slight fluctuations, it remained at approximately the same level for nearly twenty years.18 The initial rapid increase in membership is explained both on account of the fact that the Fraternity was accepted by state officials on

12 For the statues of typical late nineteenth-century societies, see Efimeris tis Kyverniseos, 2 (23 December 1895), 20-2, and 2 (20 April 1896), 125-6. Also see Liakos 1993: 376 13 Loukatos 1994: 13-17. 14 Precisely because of the Fraternity’s longevity, its archive has been preserved almost intact. Housed at its premises in Corfu, the archive has recently been made available to researchers. This paper is based on the first thorough examination of that part of the archive which includes full and detailed minutes of regular and extraordinary assemblies held from the Fraternity’s establishment to 1911. As a whole, the archive constitutes the most reliable source on the Fraternity’s activities. 15 Font (14 January 1888 and 2 January 1889). 16 Archive of the Workers’ Fraternity of Corfu (AWF'C), Corfu: Minutes of General Assembly no. 6 (10 July 1888). 17 It is not known whether this figure is included in the data which Vergopoulos (1977: 84) provides on the total number of workers in Greece for 1873 (7,342) and 1893 (17,152). 18AWFC: Minutes of General Assemblies nos 4 (10 January 1888), 8 (22 January 1889) and 71 (11 July 1911).

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the island and the notables of Corfiot society and also because it sought to cover vital needs of the town’s manual labourers. The Fraternity aimed at ‘the union of the working class’ and at selfhelp among the workers of the town irrespective of their nationality or trade, with a view to caring for the sick and the aged, providing relief to widows and orphans, and supporting ‘all poor and unfortunate fellow workers’.19 According to its charter, which was published at the Government Gazette, the Fraternity was to focus on addressing four main exigencies: a) In the event of dismissal, to help members secure a job in the same guild in which they had hitherto been employed; b) In the event of illness, to cover part of the medical and subsistence costs, for a period of up to twelve months; c) In the event of permanent inability to work, to provide a reduced disability pension; and d) In the event of death, to arrange for a decent burial and ensure that a lump sum was paid to the family of thie deceased.20 These needs were quite common among the lower strata of a regional society such as that of Corfu. As town dwellers, their links with the agrarian community, where some kind of a rudimentary collective solidarity did operate, had been weakened. As a result, sick and unemployed workers and their families had to depend on charity for their existence, for the Greek state never seriously considered social legislation before the rise to power of Eleftherios Venizelos in the early 1910s.21 However, it should be pointed out that the right to enjoy the benefits of the self-help society was subject to strict limitations and was granted only after certain conditions were met. Thus, members should have paid contributions over a long period of time which, depending on the claim made, ranged between three and ten years, while no benefits were provided in the event of dismissal due either to venereal disease or the use of alcoholic beverages.22 Hitherto, in the relevant literature on social movements in modern Greece, the Fraternity has been erroneously described as an ‘association of labour unions’, and has been often confused with the Workers’ Union of Corfu.23 This confusion stands in the way of explaining a phenomenon that has not yet been fully examined. Indeed, it has been argued, though no supporting evidence is provided, that the Workers’ Union was one of the first labour centres in Greece, and that the Fraternity represents the first attempt to establish a labour movement in the Ionian islands, and specifically in Corfu, under the influence of socialist ideology.24 Empirical 19 Ibid.: Minutes of General Assembly no. 4 (10 January 1888). 20 Articles 33 to 39, in Efimeris its Kyverniseos, 127 (1889), 580. 21 See Leon 1978. 22 Articles 32-35 and 37 of the Fraternity’s charter (see note 20). 23 Inter alia, see Kordatos 1972: 52, and Noutsos 1990: 92. 24Noutsos 1990: 92, and Loukatos 1994: 26.

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approaches seem to identify (and occasionally associate) any expression of workers’ collective solidarity with the socialist movement that was emerging in Greece at the time, even if such expressions solely represented an attempt to mitigate the most painful effects of the workers’ financial predicament and to seek the social integration of the poorest classes. Such a reasoning, together with groundless comparisons with other countries, has often led to inaccurate and misleading conclusions with regard to the origins of self-help organizations in late nineteenth-century Greece, such as the Corfiot Fraternity. The significant presence of Roman Catholics and Jews among the founding members of the Fraternity,25 in addition to the fact that nonGreeks accounted for more than one quarter of its regular members during the early years of its existence,26 would seem to indicate that the origins of the Fraternity can be traced to the secular brotherhoods which had flourished during the period of Venetian rule. In the Ionian islands, as in most of the former Latin-held regions of Greece, these brotherhoods represented an expression of popular religious feeling that was widespread throughout the Roman Catholic world.27 As ‘associations of the faithful’, brotherhoods were intended to foster a fuller form of Christian life among their members, to perform charitable works and to encourage public worship. In Greece they were set up in areas where there was a Roman Catholic community (Tinos, Mykonos, Thera, Naxos, Syros and the Ionian islands), either as a result of military conquest or because of commercial interests. In Corfu Roman Catholic brotherhoods emerged as social entities, usually under names like confraternita, scuola, sodalitas, amidst a heterodox, Greek Orthodox society.28 More so than on other Ionian islands, the long years of Latin rule determined significantly the composition of the Roman Catholic community of Corfu. In addition, the island’s social structures facilitated the establishment of stronger than usual social bonds amongst the community’s members, who as a rule were not born on the island and had not been integrated into society. In the long run, therefore, the 25 The idea of establishing a self-help organization was first put forward by two foreign workers (one Roman Catholic and one Jew) and one Greek. 26AWFC: Minutes of General Assembly no. 13 (28 January 1890). Non-Christian residents of the island (e.g. Jews) were considered foreigners, as were Christians of other faiths (e.g. Roman Catholics). They were the descendants of non-Greek populations which had settled on the island during the periods of Venetian and British rule. In the aftermath of the Ionian islands’ cession to Greece in 1864, most of them had not acquired Greek citizenship for a number of (mainly subjective) reasons. 27 Unless otherwise stated, the following discussion is based on Karydis 1990-91. 28 From the mid-sixteenth to the mid-nineteenth century the Roman Catholic inhabitants comprised between two and four per cent of the island’s total population.

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Corfiot brotherhoods came to constitute a kind of substitute for the extended family as a unit of social organization. There were ten secular brotherhoods among Corfiot Roman Catholics, most of which were established in the seventeenth century. In eight of them, the main membership criterion was that of religious affiliation. The remaining two were guild-type brotherhoods whose members belonged to a specific occupational profession or trade. (There was, for example, the brotherhood of the mistri, mureri, maragoni e tagliapietra.) However, they did not form bodies which operated like the guilds of contemporary western Europe,29 and in practice their activity was restricted to mutual help among members. Given that religious affiliation did not constitute the main criterion for the admission of new ‘brothers’, it is fair to assume that non-Roman Catholics could also become members. Whatever the case may have been, the fact of the matter is that the charitable activities of some of these brotherhoods, which included the provision of medical care to sick members and dowries to impoverished girls, catered for the needs of both the Roman Catholic and the Greek Orthodox communities without discrimination.30 Due to the intervention of Roman Catholic bishops, the secular brotherhoods enjoyed only a limited authority, while their activities were essentially regulated and controlled by the state, as was to be the case later with the Workers’ Fraternity of Corfu. Each one had its own statutes which formally laid down the rules governing its organization, operation and financial management in the form of a set of duties and behaviours. Frequently, however, the civil authorities interfered by placing various restrictions on the activities of the brotherhoods, as a result of which the latter gradually lost their independence. In the event, although the British did not adopt an interventionist stance, by the 1850s the Roman Catholic brotherhoods had ceased to exist. The fact that the Workers’ Fraternity indirectly sprang from secular brotherhoods composed mainly of non-Greeks, and that it continues to operate today, albeit in a vestigial form, would seem to indicate that perhaps it constitutes yet another example of historical continuity, a common characteristic of local societies with a prosperous past, such as that of Corfu under Latin rule. This continuity is also manifested by the mutation and adoption of age-old traditions and deeply rooted attitudes throughout the nineteenth and even the twentieth century, a rare 29 Characteristically, as late as the 1890s the term συντεχνία (guild) in Greece was used to denote groups of craftsmen, usually of bourgeois origin, or even trade unions; see Veremis 1977: 266. 30 However, it appears that doctrinal differences and mutual distrust prevented any socializing between the two communities.

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phenomenon considering the massive and rapid changes which Corfiot society had undergone in the meantime. The analogies one observes in the administrative structure of the Workers’ Fraternity with that of the Roman Catholic secular brotherhoods might perhaps be considered coincidental, were it not for similarities in the unwritten tradition as well, i.e. in procedures, regulations and practices in general. It was not only that the general assembly, the administrative board, the president, secretary and moderator of the Fraternity corresponded to the capitolo, the banca, the priore, the scrivano and the nonzolo of the brotherhoods. Similarities are apparent in the calling of meetings and the definition of a quorum, in the tabling of motions to be voted on, in the declaration of candidacies for office, in the election (usually by acclamation) of officers under certain extraordinary circumstances, in the use of the Fraternity’s banner (penello) at litanies, funerals and other public ceremonies, etc. The Fraternity was administered by a nine-member Administrative Board, elected by secret ballot for a period of two years. Board members were elected to a specific office (president, secretary, treasurer, etc.) and their candidacies had to be supported by a fixed number of Fraternity members. The Board administered the Fraternity’s assets which comprised the contributions of members and donors as well as donations and bequests. It also appointed a three-member Council of Trustees which was charged with a variety of duties. The Council verified the illness, inability to work and destitution of any member seeking the assistance of the Fraternity and calculated the amount of daily compensation and the length of time for which it would be provided; it found work for unemployed members, certified the poverty of a deceased member’s family and budgeted funeral and subsistence costs; finally, it was obliged to supervise the social conduct of the Fraternity’s members and, in the event of infringement, inform the Board and strike the individual concerned off the members’ register. In addition to honorary ones, there were two main categories of Fraternity members: ‘donors’ and workers, i.e. benefactors and bene­ ficiaries. Donors usually came from the middle class or higher social strata; many were wealthy employers of guild members who bestowed a fixed annual amount to the self-help fund. During the first two years of the Fraternity’s existence, donors comprised twelve to fourteen per cent of the total number of members, rising to nearly sixteen per cent twenty years later.31 This would seem to imply that late nineteenth-century Greek society had not changed its views either on the treatment of the poor or

31 See note 18.

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on the value of charitable activities, views which had been formed in the context of a growing spirit of Protestantism and liberalism with respect to labour. On the other hand, the British colonial attitude in treating the poor as being socially stigmatized and identifying workers with beggars was to a large extent similar to that which had governed the issuing of ‘poverty certificates’ in the Ionian islands in the aftermath of their cession to Greece.32 Thus, in the light of the above, it could be argued that the general attitude and the motives of the Fraternity’s donors were probably not radically different from those governing similar initiatives in western and central Europe at the time. There is no doubt that some members of the Corfiot middle and upper classes sincerely sympathized with the poor and dispensed their funds for purely humanitarian reasons. Overall, however, the philanthropy of the bourgeoisie was clearly informed less by altruism than by the conviction that paternalistic initiatives helped to uphold the existing social order. As a contemporary commentator put it: Philanthropy is the soul of civilization..., it makes the needy understand the necessity of maintaining social inequality; it erects a dam against the riotous passions emanating from their humble position; it dispels their immoderate desire to break out... [Because] to bind the populace to the solidarity and unity of social life, there are only two paths: submission to an order strictly determined by law, or mutual agreement.33

Workers had to pay their monthly dues without interruption, to possess irreproachable morals and to demonstrate exemplary conduct, otherwise they were struck off the m embers’ list, losing all rights to the contributions paid so far and to any benefits from the Fraternity. The first mass expulsion of members for delaying payment of dues took place in 1888;34 from then onwards, it became a customary if not frequent phenomenon. Late or non-payment of dues, together with cases of death or emigration, account for the fact that although in 1910 the serial number in the members’ register had passed the 2,500 mark, active members did not exceed 500.35 Monthly dues, which in 1889 were set at one drachma and were to remain fixed for more than twenty years,36 appear to have constituted a very heavy burden for wage-earning workers who led a handto-mouth existence and who for this very reason needed the help and support of the Fraternity more than others. Consequently, long-standing members of the Fraternity tended to be these who, in terms of earnings, 32 See Liakos 1993: 372-3. 33 Cited in Lis 1986: 133, 130. 34See AWFC: Minutes of General Assembly no. 6 (10 July 1888). 35 Ibid.: Members’ Register of the Workers’ Fraternity of Corfu. 36 In 1910 a proposal to increase dues by ten lepta (100 lepta - 1 drachma) was rejected triumphantly’; see ibid.: Minutes of General Assembly no. 66 (10 January 1910).

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could be considered mutatis mutandis to be the counterparts of skilled workers in the industrial countries of western Europe. However, it should be pointed out that the term ‘worker’, as this was applied in economically developed countries, should not be used to refer to the majority of manual workers in late nineteenth-century Corfu. A similar observation should be made with regard to the nature of the ‘working class’ in other Greek towns: most of the workers employed in small - often family-run workshops performed almost all the phases of the labour process themselves (i.e. there was virtually no division of labour),37 while the trades they practised were of a petty bourgeois nature. The Fraternity placed great emphasis on traditional values which reflected the codes of conduct in force in the context of closed guildtype trade unions or small rural communities with strong elements of hierarchical structure and paternalism. However, its marked devotion to dignity reflected more than the need to arouse philanthropic sentiment; it represented a conscious attempt to inculcate certain values of the bourgeois society of late nineteenth-century Corfu in the collective mentality of the workers. In other words, workers should be supported to better their moral status so as to ‘resist the high waters of destitution’ rather than improve their economic position as such. In this way, the Fraternity came to espouse the view of European jurists and professors, who in 1864 had argued that in every society, no matter how free and powerful, there shall always be alongside the rich and powerful the poor and powerless; the latter shall always need assistance, not only of material sort, but also of the moral sort, not only temporary and contingent support, but also continuing help, embracing the whole of life in all its phases. Such help we call patronage.38

However, this paternalistic moral stance placed the Corfiot workers in the position of adults who had to be trained according to a behaviour model which was foreign to their way of life and to their real problems, the most important of which was that of constant financial insecurity.39 Within the same context of traditional ‘dignity’ was the Fraternity’s categorically expressed refusal to become involved in politics and its strict ban on any religious or political discussions taking place in its premises. According to the Fraternity’s charter, its offices were to close two weeks before and one week after local or national elections. It could be argued that in this way any benefits which members were to claim (or had already received) from the Fraternity were not to be conditional upon 37 See Vergopoulos 1977: 84. 38 Cited in Lis 1986: 130. 39 See Liakos 1993: 374.

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their voting behaviour. On the other hand, the prohibition of any sort of political discussion indicates a conscious attempt on the part of the Fraternity to preserve the unity of the workers (in the pre-industrial sense of the term), irrespective of their status and earnings. Thus, the independent development of social awareness was not fostered among those who, within the framework of the old ‘working class’, were neither employees nor self-employed. On the contrary, they were discouraged from associating with the ideological and political tenets of labour radicalism which were beginning to be cultivated by a local intelligentsia principally influenced by developments in nearby Italy. Nevertheless, during the First twenty-four years of its existence, the Fraternity experienced two major crises which constitute turning points in its history. At first sight, these crises and the changes they brought about can be said to have originated from differences of a personal and an as yet undetermined social nature which are inevitable within the ranks of an organization without an officially accepted political or ideological frame of reference. In reality, however, they were linked to the more general social, ideological and political processes of the time which were manifested not only on a local or community level but in the entire relationship between the central political authorities and regional urban societies. Thus, the crisis of 1889-90 stemmed from the direct intervention of the central political authorities while that of 1910-11 occurred in the aftermath of the Goudi military coup of 1909. The process of establishing the Fraternity lasted for two years and did not end until 1889, when it was officially recognized by the Greek state. However, the Fraternity’s charter was approved by the government only after the article which referred to the objectives of the association had been amended. Thus, whereas in 1887 the founding assembly had set as its task to bring about the ‘union of the working class in Corfu of any nationality’ and to provide mutual aid among workers, when published in the Government Gazette two years later the relevant article spoke of the ‘union of the Greek working class in Corfu’ and of ‘self-help among Greek workers’ (my italics). Inevitably, this governmental intervention entailed the expulsion from the Fraternity of non-Greek members - despite the fact that they constituted at least one third of all members, had paid contributions for two years, while some, upon their death, had bequeathed property to the Fraternity. Admitting that the initiative of establishing the Fraternity belonged to non-Greek members, the Administrative Board protested against this injustice, maintaining that the Fraternity constituted a kind of ‘extended family’ organization, similar to those that existed during the period of Venetian rule. Subsequently, a Royal Decree was issued in late 1889 which provided that non-Greeks could be registered as members with full rights,

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reaffirming at the same time the official aims of the Fraternity (i.e. to further the needs and interests of Greek workers). This compromise solution, however, did not completely satisfy all non-Greek members,40 some of whom accused the Board of being responsible for the disruption caused and demanded a return to the previous state of affairs. As a result, they were expelled and in January 1890 the incumbent Board was triumphantly returned to office for another term.41 Four years later, the General Assembly of the Fraternity amended yet again its charter; this time around its aim was to provide relief through mutual aid for Corfiot workers, without any ethnic or religious distinction.42 In this way, the spirit which prevailed at the Fraternity’s foundation was restored, and many of those who had been expelled returned to its ranks. The intervention of the central political authorities through the imposition of bureaucratic regulations constituted an attempt to perfunctorily adapt the Fraternity’s charter to the legislation governing the operation of associations and the rights of their non-Greek members. We do not know whether analogous crises arose in other workers’ mutual aid organizations, particularly those which operated in a multi-ethnic environment similar to that of late nineteenth-century Corfu; nor do we know what made the Ministry of the Interior eventually recognize the rights of the Fraternity’s non-Greek members. Nevertheless, whatever the intentions and motives, the crisis of 1889-90 served as a reminder of the religious and ethnic ‘otherness’ of nonGreeks in relation to the majority of Corfiot society and occurred at a time when the Greek state was seeking the ideological assimilation of the lower social strata and the propagation of a Greek national consciousness by unreservedly adopting irredentist nationalism. Such a policy was particularly manifested in regions with a marked local independent political identity fed by strong historical traditions, as was the case with Corfu. The immediate response of the Fraternity’s Board - which was controlled by the ‘philanthropic donors’ - and its demand that non­ members ought not be discriminated against should not be seen as a manifestation of class solidarity or indeed as an indication of a growing working-class internationalism. Rather it constituted an attempt to maintain a certain degree of cohesion amongst the Corfiot lower strata, which were hardly hit by the gradual process of capitalist development, and to preserve as far as possible the local societv’s independence in the face of persistent measures of intervention and integration by the state. 40 According to data preserved at the AWFC, 46 non-Greek members accepted the compromise solution, 55 condemned it and an unspecified number adopted a ‘neutral’ stance. 41 See AWFC: Minutes of General Assembly no. 13 (28 January 1890). 42 Ibid.: Minutes of General Assembly no. 28 (5 March 1894).

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The indignation which non-Greek members felt at being excluded from the activities of the Fraternity, as well as forfeiting the limited benefits which Greek members enjoyed, is scarcely surprising, especially since many had lived and worked in Corfu longer than their Greek counterparts and had been instrumental in founding the Fraternity However, the fact that a significant number of them (probably more than half) refused to accept the compromise solution which the Royal Decree of late 1889 had provided for would seem to indicate their belief in the system of social values which hitherto had enabled them to participate on an equal basis in most collective activities of the local society had been badly shaken. Indeed, their already weak position as members of the ‘common folk’, which together with the ‘nobles’ and the ‘bourgeois’ had comprised the three ‘distinct classes’ of Ionian society since the era of the Venetian domination,43 was further eroded and the imposition of ‘national’ criteria (i.e. the possession of Greek citizenship) placed them at the margins of the social pyramid. As mentioned above, from the late 1880s to 1910 the total number of the Fraternity’s members did not fluctuate significantly and it never passed the five hundred mark, despite the fact that local conditions favoured a modest, if not substantial, increase. For example, by the first decade of the twentieth century a considerable number of productive units in the manufacturing sector had moved beyond the craft level to the early industrial stage. In 1912 labour inspectors reported that the twenty-four largest units of the island employed as many as 771 workers (685 men and 86 women), the majority of whom worked and lived under deplorable conditions.44 Given the quantitative and qualitative growth of the Corfiot labour force (an average of more than thirty workers per plant), the inability of the Fraternity to increase its membership should be attributed to its socially conservative, entrenched and introverted attitude as well as to the establishment on the island of trade unions with a marked political and ideological orientation.45 Although the Fraternity took some steps towards keeping pace with the more general changes that had occurred since its foundation,46 its acceptance of models which harked back to the hierarchical guild structure of craft organizations and its conscious 43 Cf. Karydis 1990-91: 240. 44 Leon 1987: 13. This figure does not include those who worked in small and medium­ sized plants. 45 See Noutsos 1991b. 46 For example, in 1899 the Fraternity came out in favour of making Sunday a public holiday, in 1907 it protested against the introduction of a tax on cereals, the main dietary staple of the working classes, and in 1910 it theoretically considered the possibility of allowing female workers to become members; see AWFC: Minutes of General Assemblies nos 43 (20 April 1899), 60 (14 January 1907) and 66 (10 January 1910).

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endeavour to cultivate a relationship of dependence between charitable benefactors (donors), who as a rule were merchants, and grateful beneficiaries (workers) were clearly out of touch with the needs of the local labour force. Responding to this state of affairs, in late 1910 fifty-one regular members demanded that key articles of the Fraternity’s charter should be revised so as to ensure that members were given a far greater say in the Fraternity’s activities which hitherto had been principally regulated and exercised by the Administrative Board. Furthermore, it was proposed that the period of medical and pharmaceutical coverage should be extended, that disability pensions should be increased, and that a working committee should be set up to consider ways of raising additional revenue. Finally, in line with contemporary notions of the need to educate and ‘enlighten’ workers, it was suggested that members should attain a series of lectures, free of charge. These demands and suggestions were perceived by the incumbent Board as constituting in essence a motion of censure, whereupon its members resigned. In the event, and following heated discussions, a new Board was elected, with a marginal difference, which set about drafting a new charter.47 The precise content and nature of the policies which the new Board sought to implement as well as the responses these elicited fall outside the purview of this essay. Suffice it to note that the first official declarations of the new Board were marked by an attempt to appeal to the working-class origins of the Fraternity’s members and to break away from age-old customs such as the almost religious respect for the principle of obliging members to refrain from political discussions. Such a radical break with the past, which was further demonstrated by the downgrading of the donors’ role in the management of the Fraternity,48 occurred at the dawn of a new era for the country as a whole. In Corfu the far-reaching structural and political changes which followed the Goudi military coup of August 1909, inter alia, found their expression in the gradual emergence of a new collective awareness among the local labour force which was articulated and to a lesser extent codified by the Workers’ Fraternity. In many respects, therefore, some twenty-five years after its foundation, and with the transition from pre-capitalist to early capitalist structures nearing completion, the Fraternity had come of age and was now in a position to genuinely speak on ‘behalf of the working class’ of the island.

47See ibid.: Minutes of General Assemblies nos 68 (17 October 1910), 69 (11 January 1911) and 70 (27 February 1911). 48 Already by 1900 the donors’ right to vote had been formally removed; see ibid.: Minutes of General Assembly no. 45 (9 January 1900).

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References Cited Geary, D. 1981. European Labour Protest, 1848-1939. London. Karydis, S. 1990-91. Καρύδης, Σ. Λατινικές αδελφότητες λαϊκών στην Κέρκυρα στα χρόνια τής ενετοκρατίας (1386-1779). Ekklisiastikos Faros (Addis Ababa), 68: 219-84. Kordatos, Y. 1972. Κορδάτος, Γ. Ιστορία τοϋ έλληνικοϋ έργατικοϋ κινήματος. Athens. Liakos, A. 1993. Λιάκος, Ά. ’Εργασία καί πολιτική στην Ελλάδα τοϋ Μεσοπολέμου. Athens. Leon, G. 1978. ‘The Greek labor movement and the bourgeois state, 1910-1920’. Journal of the Hellenic Diaspora, 4: 5-28. Lis, C. 1986. Social Change and the Labouring Poor, Antwerp 1770-1860. New Haven and London. Loukatos, S. 1994. Λουκάτος, Σ. Ό πρώιμος εργατικός συνδικαλισμός στα Επτάνησα στα τέλη τοϋ 19ου αιώνα. Kymothoe (Argostoli), 5: 7-33. May, Τ. 1987. An Economic and Social History of Britain, 1760-1970. London. Mendelsohn, E. 1970. Class Struggle in the Pale. The Formative Years of the Jewish Workers' Movement in Tsarist Russia. Cambridge. Noutsos, R 1990. Νοϋτσος, Π. Ή σοσιαλιστική σκέ'ψη στήν Ελλάδα άπό τό 1875 ώς τό 1974. Athens, vol. I. Noutsos, Ρ. 1991b. Νοϋτσος, Π. Τό Σοσιαλιστικόν Κέντρον και ό Σοσιαλιστικός *'Ομιλος Κέρκυρας. Ή περίπτωση τοϋ Κ. Θεοτόκη. Porfyras (Corfu), 57-58: 250-3. Shorter, Ε. and Tilly, C. 1974. Strikes in France, 1830-1968. Cambridge. Taylor, D. 1988. Mastering Economic and Social History. London. Thomis, M. 1974. The Town Labourer and the Industrial Revolution. London. Veremis, A. 1977. Βερέμης, Ά. Τό στρατιωτικό κίνημα τοϋ 1909, in Ιστορία τοϋ έλληνικοϋ έθνους. Athens, vol. XIV: 258-66. Vergopoulos, Κ. 1977. Βεργόπουλος, Κ. Ό ανανεωμένος εθνισμός, in Ιστορία τοϋ έλληνικοϋ έθνους. Athens, vol. XIV: 56-87. Wildman, A. 1967. The Making of a Workers Revolution. Russian Social Democracy 1891-1903. Chicago and London.

3 ‘A ll for One and One for ΑΠ’: Anarchists, Socialists and Demoticists in the Labour Centre of Volos (1908-1911) Lito Apostolakou On 21 November 1908 the newspaper Ergatis published a proclamation entitled ‘To our brothers, the workers of Volos’. In this some fourteen workers and craftsmen, including three cigarette makers, two shoe-makers, a weaver, a hat-maker, a stevadore and an oil painter, asserted their resolution to set up a labour centre. They meant it to be ‘neither a trade union nor an association, have no president and [call] no elections, [since] all these things are very troublesome for people like us’. Their aim was to establish a plain labour centre, a lounge which will be our club as well as a school and reading room, [where] we will get used to concord, [have] sensible discussions [and] feel the great importance of solidarity and mutual support... By getting together we will be able to defend the rights of our class [and] more importantly we will be enlightened by popular social education. In this we will get help from educated people, friends of our class and defenders of our rights... The centre will teach, will shape characters, will mould souls, will eventually unite the workers; and it will be easy then to create a strong labour party which will work effectively for the elevation of our banner of principles... Let our slogan be, all for one and one for all.1

The Voliote artisans’ venture finds many parallels among earlier organizational attempts of workers and craftsmen in western Europe. General artisans’ clubs (Handwerkervereine) and workers’ educational societies (Arbeiterbildungsvereine), which were set up in Germany during the first half of the nineteenth century, were non-craft-specific organizations,1 1All subsequent references to Ergatis are from Koliou 1988.

From Greek Society in the Making, 1863-1913: Realities, Symbols and Visions, ed. Philip Carabott. Copyright © 1997 by Philip Carabott. Published by Variorum, Ashgate Publishing Ltd, Gower House, Croft Road, Aldershot, Hampshire, GU11 3HR.

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open to reform-minded citizens, intellectuals and professionals. They emphasized education as a means of self-help and social progress, and were used by middle-class reformers as a platform for the propagation of radical and socialist tenets.2 Similar organizational ventures were taken up in Italy. It is interesting that the pronouncement by a member of the Circolo Avvenire (Circle of the Future), an ‘educational and recreational institution’ set up in 1905 by local artisans in the small Italian town of Sesto, was very similar to the proclamation of the Voliote Centre’s founders: Our desire and our aspiration [is] to have a... circle which will be filled with numerous members and which will aid in their education and economic betterment, and gradually to obtain that intellectual formation which allows to build strong organizations..., until finally each man is able to live easily on his own.3

In Spain, the circles {circulos) and labour centres {centros obreros) served as gathering places not only for workers but also for those ‘intellectually inclined middle-class professionals who considered themselves as freethinkers’. La Luz, one of the best known centros of Barcelona, was predominantly a republican club, although its members included anarchists and socialists as well.4 It was not long, however, before the ‘mutual help’ and ‘educational’ objectives of such organizations would be infused with political activism. For one, the Circolo Awenire would ‘attempt to better the political and economic circumstances’ of its members ‘through agitation and political action’.5 When the Socialist Party of Italy was founded in 1911, the Circolo Awenire would provide a base for political mobilization, Similarly, the Labour Centre of Volos was one of the principal supporters of the Labour-Farmer Party which was founded in April 1910 and took part in the national elections four months later. The Voliote Centre was the first such organization in Greece and served as a platform for the propagation of diverse ideological tenets which appeared to converge in an explosive combination. The workers, clergymen, manufacturers and bourgeois professionals who attended the Centre’s inauguration ceremony on 14 December 1908 could probably not have imagined that less than three years after its foundation the Centre would come to be labelled as a ‘nest of atheists and national renegades’.6 In 1914, members and supporters of the Labour Centre would be brought to trial - the notorious Diki ton Atheikon (Trial of the Atheists). However, 2 Kocka 1986: 330-1. 3 Quoted in Bell 1978: 9-11. 4 Esenwein 1989: 130. 5 Bell 1978: 9-11. 6 Dimitriou 1985: 17.

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on 14 December 1908, it seemed that the portraits of the poet laureate of Greece, Dionysios Solomos, ‘crowned with the blue and white colours of the Greek flag’, of Karl Marx, ‘enwrapped in red velvet’, and of Jesus coexisted harmoniously on the wall behind the podium. The town band and a mandolin orchestra played ‘marvellous marches’, while speeches were delivered by the cigarette makers N. Mardelis and Y. Kossyvas, the Archimandrite R Zachos, the lawyer I. Chrysovelonis, the manufacturer M. Stamatopoulos, and the town’s mayor K. Glavanis.7 The latter was one of the first Voliote manufacturers, seeking to project himself as a new contender in local politics. Aware of the fact that an increasing segment of the public in Volos, as elsewhere in Greece, was trying to find ways of expressing its hostility to the tzakia,8 Glavanis eagerly embraced the activities of those who, at least in class terms, were his ‘enemies’. In November 1908, he asserted the ‘obligation [of the municipality] to care for the labourer, who, working from dawn to nightfall, contributes greatly to our town’s trade and industry’.9 Fifteen years earlier, in a leader on European socialist trends, the newspaper Volos had rejoiced that in Greece ‘such anti-national creeds are fortunately rejected by the working class’.10 By 1905, this conviction was still held by local officials. There existed among them no apprehension of the workers challenging the status quo; only the desire to prevent discontent, remedy the flaws of the social system, and proffer a helping hand to the hardworking members of society. However, if Volos lacked a coherently structured middle or working class at the time, there is little doubt that the town was by then experiencing tangible political and social realignments the like of which it had never witnessed before. The first decade of the twentieth century was an era when, as a professor of political economy would put it in 1944, one could discern 7 For a detailed account of the centre’s inauguration ceremony, see Ergatis (20 December 1908). 8 Formed during the period of Ottoman rule, the tzakia consisted of personal and local cliques or factions which had managed to build around them a network of interrelationships based on economic interests and family bonds. The two local factions of Volos, led by Y. Kartalis and K. Topalis respectively, dominated both municipal and national elections, alternating in office. In 1895, however, Kartalis and Topalis united against the intruder Y. Lanaras, an independent candidate, who ran for mayor and managed to rally around him a large segment of the population opposed to the merchants. Lanaras is said to have represented the ‘artisan guilds’ which were reacting against the monopolization of power by the ‘merchant aristocracy’. He also spoke on behalf of a group of investors who imported machinery from western Europe and had founded the first quasi-industrial plants in Volos in the last decade of the nineteenth century. The two factions managed, nevertheless, to get their joint candidate, the doctor N. Yeoryiadis, elected. 9 Quoted in Koliou 1988: 120. 10‘ Koinonismos’, Volos (26 June 1883), quoted in Charitos 1984: 81.

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the ‘awakening of egotistic sentiments, if not yet class consciousness among Greek workers’.11 This was a time when the demoticists were engaged in heated discussion on the interrelation of the language issue with the socio-political problems of contemporary Greece; an epoch when Marxist theory inspired enlightened Christians, liberals, nationalists, demoticists and syndicalists, and appealed as much to workers as it did to reformminded bourgeois. Yet, at the same time, Greek society was becoming increasingly disillusioned with the political status quo. The humiliation Greece had suffered as a result of the disastrous Greco-Turkish war of April 1897 and the imposition of an International Financial Control Commission to oversee the country’s economy made the decade which followed the defeat one of ‘confusion, isolation, introspection and questioning’.112 The unsuccessful attempt on King George I’s life in 1898, the Gospel riots of 1901, the violent clashes between army forces and currant growers in the Peloponnese, and the assassination of prime minister Diliyiannis in 1905 attested to widespread popular discontent, which politicians found themselves unable to cope with. A section of the bourgeoisie was rallying around the demand for anorthosis (recovery), and was urgently seeking a long-awaited ideological renewal. At the same time, the growing numbers of artisans and manual workers in the emerging urban centres were becoming more organized. It was actually the Panergatikos Syndesmos Volou (All-Labour League of Volos) that corroborated the notion of labour collectivity in a town which was experiencing a process of steady urbanization. Comprising twentythree guilds and five hundred members, the Panergatikos was set up in November 1907. Its aims were the promotion of the workers’ moral and cultural development, the bolstering of their consciousness as regards their rights as citizens and as a social class, the enactment of protective social legislation, and the proffering of mutual support to any of the workers’ material and moral needs.13 To dissociate itself from the dubious practices of politics and to avoid being used as a springboard for the ambitions of aspiring politicians,14 the Panergatikos fashioned its internal organization accordingly: members of the administrative council were elected by lot by each guild for a period of no more than three months, while the league’s president was appointed for life provided he would neither deny its principles nor enter politics.15 Its newspaper Ergatis, ‘organ of the 11 Koronis 1944: 28 (emphasis in the original). 12 Clogg 1979: 94. 13 Koliou 1988: 79. 14 It was common, particularly after 1900, for workers’ associations to appoint to their administrative councils individuals outside their profession, usually employers and lawyers with political aspirations. See Goutos 1988: 102. 15 Koliou 1988: 79-80.

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Panergatikos Syndesmos I Adelfotis’, was first published on 23 December 1907. Originally edited by the league’s president, the lawyer K. Zachos, the front page of Ergatis bore on either side of its title the two catch-all slogans - with unmistakable connotations - ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity’, and ‘God is our Right’. In the months preceding the foundation of the Labour Centre, the editorials and articles published in Ergatis were expressive of a variety of socialist tenets - an amalgam of Christian Socialist, anti-monarchical, antiplutocratic, reformist, social democratic and anarchist ideas - propagated at the time by intellectual activists like Platon Drakoulis and Stavros Kalleryis. Such ideas had already found a receptive audience in Volos. As early as 1894, the Voliotes had gone en masse to listen to the representative of Kalleryis’ Athens-based Socialist Association. ‘I protest on behalf of human rights,’ S. Nagos had cried out, ‘on behalf of producers, on behalf of the creators of social wealth, on behalf of those whom society unjustly elbows aside.’16 Kalleryis’ socialism was more coherent and militant than the eclectic mixture of Utopian and Christian socialism cultivated by Drakoulis, but it was the spirit of the latter that originally ran through the editorials of Ergatis. The leader of its first issue is indicative: ‘T he Son of God, the liberator of the world, the [embodiment of] Truth is born in a stable. The Great Teacher, the Great Socialist, the Revolutionary of Spirit, Jesus Christ is born!’. A month later, Ergatis claimed that the struggle of the Panergatikos had been embraced by all fair-minded people, ‘all the followers of Socialism and Christianity (which are both one and the same thing)’. However, this did not prevent the newspaper’s editors from publishing a translation of the Communist Manifesto,17 as well as extracts from the works of Peter Kropotkin,18 Robert Blatchford,19 Beatrice Webb, the Fabian socialist Edward Pease, and the Fourierist author of the Internationale Eugene Pottier. However, it was the newspaper’s use of demotic language that principally appealed to influential elements of the demoticist movement

16 Ό Sosialismos sto Volo’, Volos (10 June 1894), quoted in Koliou 1988: 30. 17 The first Greek translation of the Manifesto was undertaken by the demoticist Kostas Hatzopoulos. In many instances, the meaning was distorted and some parts of the original were omitted. Moreover, Hatzopoulos took the liberty of inserting in his translation extracts from Drakoulis’ work Έγχεφίδιον τον έργάτον (The Worker's Manuat)\ Charitos 1989: I, 62-3. ^Indicative of the ideological confusion prevailing in socialist circles at the time was the fact that Drakoulis’ newspaper ArJtn , first published in 1885, had arranged to distribute free of charge a translation of Kropotkin’s To the Young. 19 Blatchford was a self-taught journalist affiliated to the Independent Labour Party. His newspaper The Clarion was successful in generating a rapid expansion of socialism in the north of England in the 1890s.

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centred around the Athens-based periodical Noumas. In one of the many enthusiastic letters sent to Ergatis (9 February 1908), Chatzopoulos hailed the ‘proletarians’ of Thessaly and the workers of Volos, ‘the young righteous and refined men of Ergatis, who open the road which will eventually bring Greece to civilization’. In fact, after the publication of Yeoryios Skliros’ work To κοινωνικόν μας ζήτημα (Our Social Issue) in 1907, a section of the demoticists warmly embraced the views of the Egypt-based intellectual. Implementing some of the basic principles of Marxist theory in his analysis of the social structure of Greece, Skliros actually placed the language issue within the context of the political and social system. Moreover, he maintained that the demoticist movement was in its essence a social movement inextricably linked to class interests.20 While the social and political dimensions of the language issue had already been underlined by the doyen of demoticism Yiannis Psycharis in his classic work To ταξίδι μου (My Journey), Skliros’ treatise gave a new boost to an ongoing debate. Only by forging an alliance with the proletarians, ‘the healthier, most courageous and most fanatic element of society’, Skliros argued, could the demoticists resolve the language issue and become a strong social force.21 Given his ‘potent’ intervention, it was perhaps inevitable that the demoticist movement would split into two contending blocs, the ‘socialists’ and the ‘nationalists’.22 The case of Alexandras Delmouzos highlights the ideological switch that many demoticists experienced following the publication of Our Social Issue. Originally imbued with ‘socialist’ ideas, Delmouzos was appointed director of the newly-established Parthenagoyio (Girls’ School) of Volos, two months before the foundation of the Labour Centre. In February 1908, he had sent a letter to the editor of Ergatis in which he described the newspaper’s struggle as the most noble and sagacious struggle that ever took place in our country; the most sagacious because it is born out of necessity and is based on a class of people linked to each other by economic interest; the most noble because its objective is... to awaken the masses, make them feel them their strength, and take their fate in their own hands; the [labour] movement will fight against what neither the school nor the intellectual elite can.23

Notwithstanding such enthusiastic comments, Delmouzos gradually began to disassociate himself from the activities of the Labour Centre. With the exception of his letter to Ergatis, which quite predictably the prosecution used against him as incriminating evidence during the Trial of the 20Skliros 1907: 54. 21 Ibid., 55-6. 22 Stavridi-Patrikiou 1976: x, xx. 23 Ergatis (16 February 1908).

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Atheists,24 and three lectures which he delivered to the Centre’s night school, he did not venture to involve himself actively in its internal affairs. Instead, he became an exponent of ‘educational demoticism’ and endeavoured to promote in his Parihenagoyio the national and religious ideas of the ethnos. Although Ergatis’ use of demotic was seen by some as a necessary prerequisite for the moral elevation of workers,25 for others it invited allegations that it was funded by Alexandros Pallis, whose translation of the Gospels in the ‘language of the people’ had led to the so-called Evangelika riots of November 1901, in the course of which eight demonstrators were killed and upward of sixty wounded.2627In May 1908, Chatzopoulos informed a fellow-demoticist of Zachos’s request that he write in plain language (apli glossa) and not in vulgar (malliari), because their opponents accused them of being paid by Pallis. At the first hurdle he encountered, he gave in. This is the good old Greek socialism. Motherland, religion, katharevousa\ these are its foundations... Fear, chaos, palaver; these are the features of ErgatisP

However, his disappointment was not borne out by the facts. Ergatis continued to use demotic, and as 1908 drew to a close its editorials became increasingly militant, inveighing against corrupt politicians, plutocrats, pretentious clergymen, the ‘pseudo-charitable’ rich.28 On 14 December 1908 it was subtitled ‘The First Greek Socialist Newspaper’ with the motto ‘Workers! United in your Centre’, and a month later, Organ of the Interests of the Working Classes’. These were more than semantic changes, marking the succession to the Panergatikos of the Labour Centre, and attesting to the rise of a new generation of workers who were joining the ranks of the nascent Voliote labour movement. The initiative for the foundation of the Labour Centre was taken up by cigarette makers who had emigrated to Volos from Egypt in the late 1900s.29 The Egyptian cigarette industry was virtually controlled by Greek entrepreneurs and employed the largest concentrations of labour in Egypt.30 The workplace hierarchy was headed by highly skilled Greek workers, the rollers, who as early as the 1890s had begun to organize and push for higher wages, shorter hours and better working conditions.31 The 24 See Praktika 1976: 153. 25 For example, see Ergatis (16 February 1908), publishing a letter from the editor of the Athenian newspaper Rizospastis. 26 See Carabott 1993. 27 Quoted in Charitos 1989: I, 63. 28 For example, see ‘Apanthropo kathestos’, Ergatis (14 November 1908). 29 Kordatos 1972: 135. 30 See Kitroeff 1989: 102-10. 31 Beinin and Lockman 1987: 50-1.

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refusal of a number of tobacco manufacturers in Cairo to grant wage increases to their workers resulted in a sudden, although coordinated and apparently widespread strike which was called in December 1899 and ended in victory two months later. Spearheaded by Greek cigarette makers, this strike marked the beginning of ‘substantial and sustained labour activism in Egypt’.32 Four years later, another strike called by the rollers was to end in defeat.33 However, aware of the need for stronger organization, workers at the Matossian factory3435resolved to set up a trade union, which gradually came to comprise the core of the Ligue Internationale des Ouvriers Cigarettiers et Papetiers du Caire. By 1910 it had 1,500 members and had also managed to set up a mutual aid fund supported by members’ contributions.33 Moreover, it was in touch with anarchist circles in Italy, which had made inroads into immigrant communities in Egypt as early as 1876.36 The Italian anarchists published a number of periodicals (II Domani, Lux, L'ldea), and in 1901 they began to run a ‘people’s free university’ for their compatriots in Alexandria.37 At the same time, a leading member of Kalleryis’ Socialist Association in the 1890s and founder of the Socialist Centre of Cairo, the shoemaker Nikolaos Doumas, began to publish in Cairo the newspaper Ergatis,38 Regular contributors included Z. Chatzopoulos, the brother of the demoticist novelist, the tobacco worker S. Koutsoglous, and Y. Telemitis. Inspired by the collectivism, atheism and materialism of the Italian anarchists, Telemitis published in Alexandria his work Κάτω τά είδωλα (Down with the Idols) in 1909. This polemic tract was followed a year later by Doumas’ 'Από την ζωή των βασανισμένων (From the Life of Those Who 32 Ibid.; Lockman 1994: 88. 33 Better organized this time around, employers rejected their workers’ demands for higher wages and the removal of despotic foremen, and instead announced a general cut in wages. Moreover, with the help of the police, who offered protection to Egyptian strikebreakers, they managed to keep production going. Eventually the Greek rollers were isolated and the strike ended in defeat. With the Greek consul’s approval, some of the ringleaders were arrested, tried and deported to Greece; Beinin and Lockman 1987: 52. 34 Matossian was also the owner of a cigarette factory in Volos. In 1909, he attempted to export 250,000 kilograms of unprocessed tobacco to Egypt, but the venture was blocked by a concerted reaction of both tobacco merchants and workers; YEO 1931: 247, and Ververopoulos 1935: 104. 35 It is interesting to note that in October 1909 the Labour Centre set up a mutual aid fund whose statutes were drawn up by A. Papanastasiou, K. Zachos and D. Saratsis; Koliou 1988: 160. In 1912 the Pagapnergattkos Syllogos Volou (All-Tobacco Workers’ Association of Volos) also set up a mutual aid fund which was supported by members’ contributions; see Court of the hirst Instance of Volos, file: Somatia of 1933: Statutes of the Pagapnergatikos Syllogos Volou (1914). 3ftPernieone 1993: 108; Kordatos 1972: 174-6; Noutsos 1991a: 448-9. 37 Beinin and Lockman 1987: 15; Noutsos 1991a: 449. 38Moskof 1979: 192; Noutsos 1991a: 449.

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Have Suffered). Both books were subsequently circulated among Voliote workers.39 On the other hand, Koutsoglous, a founding member of the Volos-based Omospondia Kapnergatikon kai Sigaropiitikon Somation (Federation of Tobacco Workers’ and Cigarette-Makers’ Trade Unions),40 was influenced by Elisee Reclus, a French anarchist who was strongly against traditional Christianity but did not reject Christian ideals. Reclus envisaged the creation of ‘a Christian society without a God, an earthly brotherhood of equals, without fathers, spiritual or otherwise!’.41 In 1914, one of the major charges brought against six workers affiliated to the Labour Centre of Volos was the propagation of atheism ‘by means of distributing printed material and delivering speeches in coffee-shops and public meetings’. It was alleged that the cigarette maker Kossyvas, who had moved to Volos from Egypt in the late 1900s, and those under his direct influence, had denied the existence of God, disputed the Gospels, sneered at church rituals, and argued against the practices of the clergy. Moreover, all defendants were accused of maintaining that religion is a negation of thought, that man originated from monkeys, that God is a cucumber (sic), that the motherland is a whore and a shrewish step-mother, and religion a procuress (mastropos).4243

In fact, many of the expressions which the prosecution used to describe the crimes which the defendants were alleged to have committed were taken verbatim from Telemitis’ Down with the Idols, extracts from which Kossyvas had published in Ergatisf3 Self-educated, intellectually alert, despite being a chronic tuberculosis sufferer, never hesitant to voice his opinion, and always eager to give impassioned recitations of ‘labour’ poems to an ever-ready audience,44 Kossyvas attacked not only established religious beliefs but also the very idea of the nation state and its right to conduct wars. He was tried in absentia and his plea was read by a counsel for the 39 Charitos 1989: I, 74-5. 40 Benaroyia 1986: 112. 41 Fleming 1979: 41. 42 Praktika 1976: 2, 5, 79-80, 83-4, 98-9, 389-90. 43Noutsos 1991a: 121; Koliou 1988: 231; Ergatis (10 September 1911). 44 In the course of ‘literary evenings’ held at the centre, Kossyvas frequently recited poems by K. Chatzopoulos, P. Magnis and T. Ekonomakis. The ‘labour drama’ Gytavros by the Voliote lawyer Rigas Golfis was particularly popular among the workers, and its recitation was often interrupted by enthusiastic applause. Foreign works were also read out, including those of Gerhart Hauptmann, whose Hanneles Himmelfahrt the German Chancellor had described as ‘a monstrous wretched piece of work, social-democratic realistic..., in general abominable’; Berghahm 1988: 92. It was probably the recitation of Hauptmann’s poem which contained the verse ‘curse on the ignoble country / curse on the King’ that prompted Zachos to explain to the workers that as it was written by a German poet ‘it does not pertain’ to the Greek situation; Praktika 1976: 126-7.

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defence. In it, Kossyvas analysed in a most detailed manner how, in the course of his studies, he had been converted to ‘philosophical anarchism’. The extent to which his beliefs influenced his fellow workers can not be assessed with any accuracy. Although he was recognized as an individual of ‘high culture and developed intellect’, a cigarette maker testified in the trial that workers were divided in their opinions of Kossyvas’ ideas.45 Whatever the case may have been, in the course of the first major strike that took place in Volos in 1909, tobacco workers rushed to occupy the Church of the Ascension and ‘vowed in front of the icons that they would fight to the last’.46 Indeed, although priests were not always held in high regard, anti-clericalism - or atheism for that matter - never developed to become a mass movement in Greece. The pronouncements of Kossyvas or those of Y. Alexandrakis, ‘an anarchist pseudo-intellectual’47 but apparently much respected among the strikers, might have impressed some workers but could not eradicate deeply imprinted Christian Orthodox traditions. Moreover, although during the 1909 strike Alexandrakis was reported to have addressed the workers with the phrase ‘Get organized and step over corpses to achieve your goal’,48 ‘revolution by the deed’ did not appear to have many followers among the Voliote workforce. However, Christian imagery was employed to express a new ‘language of class’: The red flag is the banner of brothers-in-arms, of the workers of the entire world. The red colour symbolizes freedom and resurrection of the oppressed peoples. That is why painters depict the resurrected Jesus holding a red flag,

an anonymous commentator wrote in Ergatis on 24 April 1910. Nonetheless, while socialism was ‘translated into the familiar biblical terminology’,49 red flags and rosettes were increasingly becoming a necessary accompaniment of workers’ rallies and parades. In the celebrations marking the eighty-eighth anniversary of the Greek War of Independence, the workers of the Labour Centre marched through the town centre bearing red rosettes, while later in the day there took place the unveiling ceremony of the Labour Centre’s red banner.50 The event was much discussed as a manifestation of the workers’ subversive ideas. This was not what those who had attended the C en tre’s 45Praktika 1976: 407-8, 76-8, 96. Unfortunately the plea of Kossyvas, together with the archive of the Labour Centre and other important documents from the trial, do not survive. 46 Koliou 1988: 138. 47 Kordatos 1972: 139. 48 Koliou 1988: 138. 49 Hobsbawm 1984: 33. S() Praktika 1976: 93, 146, 264.

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inauguration ceremony meant by socialism. The employment of novel labour emblems, such as the red flag, ‘whose rise as a symbol of labour appears to be overwhelmingly spontaneous’, indicated a certain internalization of the ‘rituals’ which came to express a new ‘language of class’.51 Such was the spectacle of the Labour Centre in the rally of 20 September 1909 that K. Triantafyllopoulos, a leading member of the Kinonioloyiki Etaireia (Sociological Society), spoke of ‘red Volos’.52 But perhaps the most ambitious ceremony organized by the Labour Centre took place in February 1910 in honour of Drakoulis. Around 2,000 workers paraded in the town centre preceded by the Centre’s choir which sang labour marches. Kossyvas held the ‘golden-red banner’ of the Centre ‘close to his heart’, while an ‘upstanding tobacco worker’ was brandishing the white and blue flag of his trade union, ‘reminding all that the regeneration of the Greek motherland is inextricably linked to the moral and financial elevation of the working class’.53 The means by which this ‘elevation’ could be achieved would soon be a matter of dispute both within and outside the ranks of the Labour Centre. In the meantime, the objectives of the workers were not dissimilar to those of middle-class professionals and intellectuals who found in the Centre a convenient ground to express their opposition to the political elite in power and to bring forward their demand for change. If the ‘religio-political versions of socialism and communism’ propagated in the Centre were an amalgam of diverse tenets, reform-minded bourgeois and workers shared a belief in progress and education.54 The propagation in Ergatis of notions such as ‘truth’, ‘justice’ and ‘moral progress’55 must have met, at least in the beginning, with the agreement not only of anarchosyndicalists like Kossyvas but also of reform-minded individuals such as Zachos and Dimitris Saratsis. It is worth noting that such notions were recurrent in anarchist literature of the 1880s, and Bakuninist circles 51 See Hobsbawm 1984: 66-82. 52 Ergatis (27 September 1909). 53 Ergatis (13 February 1910). 54 In retrospect, perhaps no other individual embodied more lucidly the amalgam of ideologies co-existing in the Labour Centre than Francisco Ferrer. A man of strong anti­ clerical views and revolutionary sympathies, Ferrer envisaged a school where instruction would be based on rational principles. In 1901, he established in Barcelona the Escuela Moderna , a small school with no more than Fifty pupils, which challenged accepted social and religious ideas and soon became notorious. When Barcelona rose in revolt during the Semana Tragica of July 1909, Ferrer was one of those held responsible for the troubles. Although there was no evidence against him, he was sentenced to death and executed on 13 October 1909. His last words were Viva la Escuela Moderna. The Labour Centre of Volos declared five days of mourning in honour of Ferrer and covered its banner with a black cloth. On Ferrer, see Joll 1964: 233-7. 55 For example, see Ergatis (23 December 1908, 4 January 1909, 13 September 1909).

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in Italy often stressed ‘the political and social emancipation of the people through the Press, the Lecture, the Association’.56 On the other hand, the Centre’s campaign against alcohol consumption was in line with the writings of Doumas and, for that matter, with the beliefs of ideologically pure revolutionaries suspicious of merrymaking as politically diversionary: ‘No, you won’t drink, you don’t need to poison yourself,’ says one of Doumas’s characters to his interlocutor; ‘we need to work together for the redemption of the working class... You have to keep in mind that the worker must, first of all, fight against his passions and defects.’57 Such admonitions could easily have allayed the fears of those who were apprehensive of labour rebelliousness. In as much as the educated elites shared with the workers a common adversary, the ‘corrupted politicians’, the ‘plutocrats’, the ‘reactionary’ elements of society who wanted to keep the working classes ‘in the dark’, their alliance was decisive in upsetting the status quo. Anarchosyndicalist, socialist, and bourgeois rationalist ideas converged. Tradition, as it was expressed by the defenders of katharevousa and those clergymen who believed that ‘poor people should suffer in misery because they will be rewarded after death’,58 stood in the way of both the workers and the reform-minded bourgeois. For the former, ‘tradition’ obstructed the struggle for a better life; for the latter it represented a serious hurdle in the road of anorthosis. Among the Voliote bourgeois who supported the workers’ attempt to ‘better themselves’ were Zachos and Saratsis. President of the Panergatikos Syndesmos and editor of Ergatis from 1907 to 1908, Zachos attacked the local old-party politicians (palaiokommatiki), castigated the plutocrats and supported the establishment of political labour organizations, firmly believing in the need for the people’s educational instruction. Together with the physician Saratsis, a member of the Municipal Council of Glavanis and founder of the Girls’ School, he was a Labour-Farmer Party candidate in the August 1910 election. On the other hand, Saratsis was influenced as much by Psycharis and Renan as by Marx and Proudhon. He believed that ‘true socialism derives from the Gospel’, and that Jesus was ‘the first socialist’. In his articles in Ergatis he lashed out against the poor material conditions of artisans and minor professionals and castigated the heavy taxation policies of the state.59 Leading demoticists, ‘the best, most sensible, most courageous, and most enthusiastic children of our bourgeoisie’, as Skliros put it,60 also •S6 Esenwein 1989: 103. 57 Quoted in Noutsos 1991a: 459. 58 Praktika 1976: 89-90. 59 For example, see Ergatis (8 March 1908). 60 Skliros 1907: 52.

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envisaged the Labour Centre as a forum where they could voice their beliefs and bring about the social and ideological renewal that Greece was craving for. ‘We struggle the same struggle. Demoticists and socialists we are brothers (in a sense)..., and we fight for the same thing’, argued the editor of Noumas in Ergatis in May 1908.61 Throughout 1909, Ergatis published articles by leading members of the Sociological Society (A. Papanastasiou, R Aravantinos, Th. Petimezas and K. Triantafyllopoulos) as well as by Skliros and K. Chatzopoulos. They all shared a belief in the need for reform, and regarded demotic either as the ‘language of the people and of political equality’ or as the ‘intellectual weapon of the working class’.62 They remained strongly opposed to the nationalistes who were against any attempt at structural social and political change. These ‘nationally-minded’ demoticists (I. Dragoumis, M. Tsirimokos, P. Vlastos) regarded the development of the labour movement as detrimental not only to the interests of the country and the workers but also to the promotion of the demoticist movement itself.63 For its part, the Sociological Society came to be in favour of a ‘humane katharevousa’, and supported the view that anorthosis would be achieved mainly by means of educational reforms. In September 1909, a month after the Goudi putsch, M. Triantafyllidis wrote to Delmouzos that demoticists should focus on the school because it is indeed education which is the pivot of anorthosis. More importantly, demoticists could hope for no significant improvements in regard to the language issue without the support of the state.64 On the other hand, the militant demoticist K. Chatzopoulos accused the Sociologists of ‘embracing a dead language to express a lively movement’. For him, there was an inherent contradiction both in the demoticist who fought for the language while adhering to the ideals of the ruling classes and in the socialist who fought for his ideas by using katharevousa,65 In the event, the ideas of both Chatzopoulos and the Sociologists would find their expression in the liberal programme of Venizelos, who rose to power in the aftermath of the Military League putsch of 15 August 1909. In the meantime, instead of reinforcing the ‘alliance’ of workers and middle-class reformers, the Goudi putsch appeared to have underlined their differences. Triantafyllopoulos wrote in 1945 that the Military League putsch was not wholeheartedly welcomed in Volos because of the activities and propaganda of socialist groups.66 Under the influence of the 61 Quoted in Stavridi-Patrikiou 1976: 287-89. 62 Stavridi-Patrikiou 1988b: 317. 63 Stavridi-Patrikiou 1976: xliv, xlv. 64 Ibid., xxiii. 65 ‘Socialismos kai glossa’, Noumas (12 April 1909), quoted in ibid., 209-16. 66 Kordatos 1975: 111. See also Praktika 1976: 343.

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Sociologists, who stressed the ‘social aspects of the putsch in the context of reformist socialism’ in the workers’ rally of 9 September 1909,67 the ‘popular classes’ were thought to have been convinced of the pro-labour objectives of the Military League. However, on 30 January 1910, Ergatis wrote: Let the town of Volos, which was the first to give the signal for the workers’ awakening, now give the signal for... the workers’ uprising... The hour of the National Assembly is near. It must find the workers united in a distinct camp!

Four years later, in his plea at the Trial of the Atheists, Zachos would argue that: The workers of the Labour Centre comprised the cream of the [Voliote] workers; they were educated and self-conscious. They acted on their own and had their own convictions... They trusted nobody. They were their own bosses. Even poor Zachos himself they threw out [of the Centre] ... forbidding him to set foot on the threshold of the Centre, alleging that he behaved like a tyrant.68

Evidently, the slogan ‘all for one and one for all’ was gradually rendered redundant. Indicative of the ideological struggle that was taking place within the ranks of the Centre, on 30 June 1910 its administrative council ruled that ‘every activity [of the Centre] should stem from and be based on the Gospel’, adding that members who deviated from its official line would be immediately expelled.69 Following this strongly worded threat, and for reasons not yet clear, the publication of Ergatis was discontinued for a year. When it reappeared, as a joint publication of the Labour Centres of Volos and Larissa, it bore the title Ergatis-Yeorgos, Organ of the Interests of the Working and Peasant Classes’. The following leader on the Goudi putsch would seem to indicate that it had come under the influence of men like Kossyvas and P. Katsirelos. The poor people and the workers will never get justice as long as they live in a capital-dominated society. Here came a so-called revolution which promised the moon and the stars and in the end it weighed the people down with taxes and provided the army officers with decorations.70

In the meantime, for the conservative circles of Volos demoticism had been identified with atheism and anti-nationalism. Indeed, since the 67 Charitos 1989: I, 70. 68Praktika 1976: 340-1. 69 Koliou 1988: 197-8. 70 Ergatis-Yeot'gos (22 June 1911).

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Gospel riots of 1901, the adoption of the vernacular represented not only a break with the ‘glorious ancient Greek past’ but was also regarded as ‘suicidal, at a time when Pan-Slavism was rearing its “ugly” head in Macedonia’.71 In the course of a parliamentary debate in February 1907, the leader of the opposition, Kyriakoulis Mavromichalis, had opined that ‘katharevousa comprises the foundation stone of our national unity’.72 Four years later, katharevousa would be established as the official language of the state by means of a special constitutional clause. Demoticists were seen as enemies of the nation, more so as in the case of Volos they appeared to support an ideologically-suspect labour centre. In this highly charged climate, it was not accidental that Ergatis switched to katharevousa from September 1909 onwards, QErgatis-Yeorgos was also written in katharevousa.) ‘Unscrupulous and malicious individuals, who want the people to remain in the dark, accuse us of having a programme inspired by anarchic, masonic and anti-Christian ideas’, Ergatis protested on 6 September 1909. Indeed, apart from reflecting the convictions of the Sociologists at the time, the adoption of katharevousa was an attempt to shake off these accusations. The Goudi putsch and the eventual rise of Venizelos to power in 1910 did not prevent the onslaught of bigotry in the town. The teaching of demotic and the pedagogic methods of Delmouzos enraged the religious authorities, and the Bishop of Volos declared that the Girls’ School had set out to ‘undermine the nation’s language and religion’.73 Coinciding with the discussion on the language issue in parliament, the visit of Bishop Germanos to the Girls’ School in February 1911 sparked off a ferocious campaign against what in November 1908 the editor of the newspaper Kyrix, D. Kourtovik, had referred to as ‘this weird monster..., this strange educational creation which aims to promote the vulgar language’.74 Such beliefs were shared by a large section of the town’s population, as became evident in the course of a rally held on 2 March 1911. In his address to the crowd, the president of the religious association Tris lerarches castigated the demoticists and expounded the virtues of katharevousa. As Zachos, Kossyvas and the journalist T. Ekonomakis interrupted the speaker with pronouncements in favour of demotic, great outrage was caused among the crowd. Shouting slogans such as ‘burn them, slay them’, the demonstrators moved towards the Girls’ School and the house of Delmouzos, threatening to set fire to them. Later in the afternoon, the municipal council decided to close down the Parthenagoyio, 71Carabott 1993: 120. 72 Quoted in Stavridi-Patrikiou 1976: xiv. 7ΛKoliou 1988: 212. 74 Charitos 1989: I, 119-21.

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whereupon Saratsis, who had initiated its foundation, tendered his resignation. It was perhaps inevitable that the fate of the Labour Centre, which was increasingly seen by the defenders of ‘national unity’ as a ‘nest of atheists and national renegades’, should have been similar to that of the innovative Girls’ School. The Centre’s siding with the tobacco workers in the first major strikes ever to be called in Volos, the militant atheism of some of its members and the increasing employment of novel symbols such as the red flag, raised strong doubts as to the desirability of any such organization. On 29 June 1911, Ergatis-Yeorgos attested the shift in the local authorities’ dispositions: the ‘crafty politicians and capitalists’, who used to surpass one another in calling themselves ‘workers’ and ‘socialists’, chanting the hymn of the Labour Centre and voting for allowances, ‘charged against us’, while ‘subsidies were discontinued, donations retracted, and the politicians’ lectures in favour of socialism were transformed into exorcisms’. Indeed, following the closure of the Girls’ School, the public prosecutor was called upon to inquire into the activities of both the Parthenagoyio and the Labour Centre. In January 1912, Kossyvas, Zachos, Delmouzos and Saratsis, together with eight leading members of the Labour Centres of Volos and Larissa, were committed for trial. By the time they appeared before the court in Nauplia, anarchists, socialists and demoticists had gone their different ways. Following their indictment, Saratsis strongly advised Delmouzos to dissociate himself completely from the Labour Centre.75 He need not have worried. Writing about his relations with the Labour Centre in 1911, Delmouzos asserted that he had excoriated anarchism and ‘fought against ill-meaning socialism, [while] seeking to restrain the labour struggle within the framework of our national traditions’.76 A similar stance was adopted by Zachos, who maintained that ‘he does not hold himself responsible for any unfortunate misconduct of the Labour Centre’.77 Eventually, Zachos moved to Thessaloniki where he pursued his career as a lawyer. On the other hand, four years after defending his anarchist beliefs in court, Kossyvas died of tuberculosis in the sanatorium of Makrinitsa. True to his principles, he willed that a trust be set up to administer his meagre belongings until the foundation in Volos of a socialist centre. Thereafter, the accumulated 75 Charitos 1989: II, 288-9. 76And he concluded: ‘My relation to the Centre was purely academic; I had never interfered either in administrative matters or in publications and workers’ strikes, and if members of this labour organization indeed committed the actions referred to in the indictment, I have no knowledge of them and can not be held responsible’; Delmouzos 1911: 100-2. 77Praktika 1976: 341.

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capital should be spent by the centre on the publication of socialist books written in a language ‘comprehensible to the workers’.78 Following the acquittal of all the defendants in the Trial of the Atheists, the Girls’ School resumed its operations under a new director, who did not endorse the radical teaching methods of Delmouzos. In the meantime, the Labour Centre had gradually ceased to operate, while Ergatis-Yeorgos had discontinued its publication by the end of 1911.79 Some of the leading figures of the demoticist movement, including the Sociologists, were contained in and expressed by Venizelism. The Liberal leader linked their demands for social rationalization and educational reform to the materialization of irredentist aspirations (i.e. the Megali Idea), thus appearing to resolve the national, social and language issue all at once. The workers rallied around the Panergatiki Enosis Volou (All-Labour Union of Volos) which was set up in 1912 and dissolved by court order ten years later, on the grounds that it had deviated from its aim by adhering to the Third International.80 What can be attested with regard to the first labour centre in Greece is its growing concern as much to ascertain its distinct identity in the local milieu as to attune its activities to public preoccupations. To the extent that these two concerns could be compromised without the status quo being challenged, the Labour Centre of Volos was tolerated - and even welcomed. However, in the event, neither Venizelos’ educational reforms nor his political paternalism were capable either of restraining the onslaught of bigotry or of facilitating the smooth integration of labour organizations into the status quo. Whether the Labour Centre would have enjoyed a non-problematic life-span if the Voliotes had continued to be favourably disposed towards this ‘omnibus’ organization, is doubtful. Anarchosyndicalist, socialist and bourgeois rationalist ideas co-existed and even converged only as long as reform-minded bourgeois shared with the workers a common adversary. In this respect, the rise of Venizelos to power was catalytic in underlining their differences and rendering the slogan ‘All for One and One for All’ void. On the other hand, ‘peace and quiet’ did not return to the town - as a witness for the prosecution had testified in the Trial of the Atheists.81 The outbreak of the First World War would embroil ‘conservative’ and ‘enlightened’ bourgeois in a confrontation much more fierce than the Atheika. For the workers a new era was dawning. When irredentism came to an abrupt end, the Megali Idea was replaced by anti-Communism. 78 Koliou 1988: 150. 79 Ibid., 242. 80 Thessalia (23 March 1922). 81 Koliou 1988: 241.

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Labour organizations were not to be regarded as ‘educational clubs’ any more but enclaves of resistance, if not open opposition, to the status quo.82 As far as state officials were concerned, Solomos and Marx were incompatible.

References Cited Apostolakou, L. 1997. “Greek” workers or Communist “others”. The contending identities of organized labour in Greece, c. 1914-1936’. Journal of Contemporary History, 32/3: 409-24. Beinin, J. and Lockman, Z. 1987. Workers on the Nile. Nationalism, Communism, Islam and the Egyptian Working Class, 1882-1954. Princeton, NJ. Bell, D. 1978. ‘Worker culture and worker politics: the experience of an Italian town, 1880-1915’. Social History, 3/1: 1-21. Benaroyia, A. 1986. Μπεναρόγια, Ά. Ή πρώτη σταδιοδρομία τοϋ έλληνικοϋ προλεταριάτου. Athens. Berghahm, V. 1988. Modem Germany. Cambridge. Carabott, P. 1993. ‘Politics, Orthodoxy and the language question in Greece: the Gospel riots of November 190Γ. Journal of Mediterranean Studies, 3/1: 11738. Charitos, C. 1984. Χαρίτος, X. Σημειώσεις γιά τό έργατικό κίνημα στην Ελλάδα. Ή περίπτωση τοϋ Βόλον. Volos. Charitos, C. 1989. Χαρίτος, X. Τό Παρθεναγωγείο τοϋ Βόλον. Athens, 2 vols. Clogg, R. 1979. A Short History of Modern Greece. Cambridge. Delmouzos, A. 1911. Δελμούζος, Ά. Σαν παραμύθι. Athens. Dimitriou, M. 1985. Δημητρίου, Μ. Τό έλληνικό σοσιαλιστικό κίνημα. Athens, vol. I. Esenwein, G. 1989. Anarchist Ideology and the Working-Class Movement in Spain, 1868-1898. Berkeley, CA. Fleming, M. 1979. The Anarchist Way to Socialism, Elisee Reclus and NineteenthCentury European Anarchism. London. Goutos, C. 1988. Γκοϋτος, X. Ό συνδικαλισμός στό έλληνικό κράτος, 1834-1914. Athens, vol. I. Hobsbawm, E. 1984. Worlds of Labour. London. Joll, J. 1964. The Anarchists. London. Kitroeff, A. 1989. The Greeks in Egypt, 1919-1937. Ethnicity and Class. London. Kocka, J. 1986. ‘Problems of working-class formation in Germany: the early years, 1800-1875’, in I. Katznelson and A. Zolberg (eds), Working-Class Formation. Nineteenth-Century Patterns in Western Europe and the United States. Princeton, NJ, 279-351. Koliou, N. 1988. Κολιού, N. Oi ρίζες τοϋ έργατικοϋ κινήματος καί ό ’Εργάτης τοϋ Βόλον. Athens.

82 Sec Apostolakou 1997.

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Kordatos, Y. 1972. Κορδάτος, Γ. Ιστορία τοϋ έλληνιχοϋ έργατικοϋ κινήματος. Athens, 7th ed. Koronis, S. 1944. Κορώνης, Σ. Ή έργατική πολιτική των έτών 1908-1918. Athens. Lockman, Ζ. 1994. “Worker” and “working class” in pre-1914 Egypt: a rereading’, in Z. Lockman (ed.), Workers and Working Classes in the Middle East. Struggles, Histones and Historiographies. New York. Moskof, K. 1979. Μοσκώψ, K. Εισαγωγικά στήν ιστορία τοϋ κινήματος τής έργατικής τάξης. Thessaloniki. Noutsos. R 1991a. Νοϋτσος, Π. Ή σοσιαλιστική σκέψη στήν Ελλάδα άπό τό 1875 ως τό 1974. Athens, vol. II/a. Pernicone, Ν. 1993. Italian Anarchism, 1864-1892. Princeton, NJ. Praktika 1976. Ή δίκη τοϋ Ναυπλίου (16-28 ’Απριλίου 1914): στενογραφημένα πρακτικά. Athens. Skliros, Υ. 1907. Σκληρός, Γ. Τό κοινωνικό μας ζήτημα. Athens. Stavridi-Patrikiou, R. 1976. Σταυρίδη-Πατρικίου, Ρ. Δημοτικισμός καί κοινωνικό πρόβλημα. Athens. Stavridi-Patrikiou, R. 1988b. Σταυρίδη-Πατρικίου, Ρ. Ή ένταξη των σοσιαλιστών διανοούμενων στό κίνημα τοϋ βενιζελισμοϋ, in G. Mavrogordatos and C. Hadziiossif (eds), Βενιζελισμός καί άστικός έκσυγχρονισμός. Iraklion, 315— 27. Tomiche, F. 1974. Syndicalisme et certains aspects du travail en Republique Arabe Unie (Egypte), 1900-1967. Paris. Ververopoulos, V. 1935. Βερβερόπουλος, B. Ό μονοπωλιακός χαρακτήρ τής οικονομικής τοϋ καπνοϋ όργανώσεως. Archeion Ikonomikon kai Kinonikon Episttmon (Athens), 15: 233-77. YEO 1931. Ύπουργεΐον Εθνικής Οικονομίας. Τό καπνικόν ζήτημα. Athens.

4 Ioannis A . Valaoritis: The Life of a Typical Greek Nineteenth-Century Bourgeois? Helen Gardikas Katsiadakis Introduction One of the most crucial periods in King George I’s long reign, where he demonstrated his political talents of patience and adaptability, was between the Goudi coup in August 1909, which upset the parliamentary system, and the return to normal parliamentary practices after the elections for the Second Revisionary Assembly in November 1910. It was during this short period that the fifty-five-year-old Ioannis Valaoritis suddenly became a public figure. As the confusing results of the August 1910 elections left the leaders of the old parties Yeoryios Theotokis and Dimitrios Rallis in a minority, they urged Valaoritis, the respected vice president of the National Bank of Greece, who had been elected for the first and last time in his career independent deputy for Lefkada, to accept the position of president of the House. This, they thought, would give them control over the Assembly and neutralize the influence of the newcomer Eleftherios Venizelos. The liberal daily Estia speculated about this candidacy: And immediately we began to wonder: Who is this Mr. Valaoritis? The representative of Capital, the paymaster of Capital, the manager of Capital? But how is it possible to accept this domination of Capital, especially on the morrow of a Revolution which, among other absurdities, had written an article against this ‘devious’ Capital, and demanded its destruction?

The article concludes in a more serious vein, condemning the old parties: How then could Mr. Valaoritis, who has no ties with these parties, manage to breathe life into these dead bodies, even if he did finally deign to accept the Presidency, we would very much like to know.11 1 Estia (13 September 1910).

From Greek Society in the Making, 1863-1913: Realities, Symbols and Visions, ed. Philip Carabott. Copyright © 1997 by Philip Carabott. Published by Variorum, Ashgate Publishing Ltd, Gower House, Croft Road, Aldershot, Hampshire, GIJ11 3HR.

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To conclude the story, I will add that Valaoritis stubbornly refused to be drawn into the tricks of the old party leaders, encouraged George I to offer the premiership to Venizelos, and vanished for several days on his yacht.2 Estia's remark and the mediating and detached role that Valaoritis played in the crisis prompted me to explore his life, in order to evaluate his role as a member of the social elite of his time. His life coincides with the reign of George I. He was born at the family estate on the islet of Madouri, near Lefkada, in June 1855, and died in a boat accident in the harbour of Piraeus in March 1914, a year after the king’s assassination. This essay is a sketch of a biography under preparation, though I must admit that research is still at a very early stage. The present paper is primarily based on the correspondence between Valaoritis and his mother Eloisia, so many remarks and conclusions are provisional. My aim here is not to define a typology of the Greek bourgeoisie. Granted the diversity of distinct national characteristics of each bourgeoisie, the absence of a typology in the case of Greece should be attributed to the fluid nature of Greek society. It deviates from the standard encyclopaedia definition of the middle class of modern European society functioning as entrepreneur in the new capitalist system and thereby provoking the opposition of the ruling class of the disappearing order as well as that of the labouring class of the coming industrial order.3

Greek society at the time was characterized by rapid economic and social mobility, and contained a number of bourgeois socio-cultural elements blended in a variety of mixtures. Moreover, apart from the social factor, a number of other elements determined the course of Valaoritis’ life: physical, psychological and economic. To this extent, I will attempt to examine these factors, and assess their role in his life. 2 Drosinis 1985: 198. 3 This definition from the 1930 edition of the Encyclopaedia o f Social Sciences refers to the socio-economic conditions that gave birth to the middle class in western Europe. It does not take into account the distinct class characteristics of each nation’s society. Since the 1970s a number of Greek scholars have attempted to analyse Greek society with particular emphasis on its class structure. Psyroukis (1974: 17-18) attributed the appearance of the first capitalists to the development of colonial trade and the creation of the first Greek trading diaspora communities. Moskof (1979: 134-47) identified the Greek bourgeoisie with the modern Greek town, attributed to it a parasitic function, and defined it as a social hierarchy dominated by diaspora capitalists and supported by a stratum of merchants and ship owners. Mouzelis (1978: 22) has argued that in Greek society class lines were ill-drawn and class antagonism was minimal because, before 1923, Greek production was in a pre-industrial state. Avoiding the hazards of a definition, Dertilis (1977: 13-14) resorted to an enumeration of what elements should be included in or excluded from it.

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Sources Hitherto, most information on Valaoritis has been derived from an entry in a standard Greek biographical dictionary, published in Athens in the late 1950s,4 which draws heavily on an obituary which the economist Andreas Andreadis wrote shortly after Valaoritis’ death.5 The main source of the planned biography is the correspondence of the Valaoritis family deposited at the Hellenic Literary and Historical Archive Society. In the case of Ioannis, we are fortunate to be in possession not only of a number of incoming letters but also of his outgoing correspondence, both of originals received and kept by other members of the family, and of ‘copies de lettres’, which Ioannis himself kept almost uninterruptedly from 1882 until his death in 1914. Valaoritis treasured his correspondence, and there is evidence that other members of the family shared this attitude: Each letter [of yours] is a page in the history of life, and each line is a point in my past. It is the map, so to speak, of the road that I have followed to this day, and it is not disagreeable to throw a glance at the past. Besides, it is useful because no guide for the future is safer than the past.6

Moreover, as family or professional obligations, matters of health, educational and economic needs combined to keep this large family apart - Venice, Corfu, Athens, Lefkada and Madouri, to name but their most frequent places of residence - important matters relating to family finances, education, professional careers and legal complications were decided by correspondence. To this extent, written evidence has replaced oral communication. Family Origins Ioannis’ paternal family once dominated the armatoliki of Epirus and Valtos. They first appear in history at the end of the seventeenth century during the war between Venice and the Ottoman Empire, when an armatolos named Christos Valaoritis participated in the insurrection of 1684 in western Roumeli and Epirus. Christos died during the war, while his son Moschos fled to Santa Maura (present day Lefkada). There, in gratitude for services rendered during the war, the Venetian Republic offered his family a seat on the seventy-member civil council of the island. 4 Μ έγα Ε λ λ η ν ικ ό ν Β ιο γρ α ψ ικ ό ν Α εξικόν, edited by K. and S. Vovolinis, vol. II (1959): 20-38. 5Messager d'Athenes (20 March 1914). 6 Hellenic Literary and Historical Archive Society, Athens, Ioannis Valaoritis Archive (IVA), file 13/1: Ioannis to Eloisia (Athens, 25 May 1875).

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Thus the family obtained a foothold in the limited representative system of the Venetian Republic, in addition to extensive plots of land. Ioannis, the father of the poet Aristotelis and grandfather of our Ioannis, who lived in the troubled times of the Napoleonic wars, was the first member of the family to become a tradesman and adventurer. He made his fortune by violating the continental blockade. To him we must attribute the sudden transition of the family into the bourgeoisie, prompted by the opportunities offered by history and geography. After accumulating a considerable fortune, he married into the noble Cephalonian family of Typaldos Forestis, and engaged in local politics. He established a trading firm and his own bank, and died a millionaire in 1856, a year after his grandson’s birth. In 1860 the family property was divided in two between his heirs, the brothers Aristotelis and Xenophon, on the one side, and their cousins, brothers Spyridon and Demosthenes, on the other.7 The poet Aristotelis Valaoritis was born in 1824 in a family which continued to enjoy an honourable social position in the island of Lefkada, and had economic means based on land tenure and on the more recent opportunities offered by the Napoleonic wars. In 1852 Aristotelis married Eloisia, the twenty-one-year-old only daughter of Aemilios Typaldos, of a noble Ionian family established in Venice. Aemilios, the liberal son of a conservative father, Konstantinos Typaldos Pretenderis, who had linked his fortunes with the Venetian and Austrian establishment, was an active participant in the anti-Austrian insurrection of 1848 in Venice, and had a dual national allegiance. By this marriage, Aristotelis reinforced his bonds with Italy and with the Greco-Venetian literary circle. Moreover, he was encouraged in his liberal and patriotic activity in favour of the union of the Ionian islands and Epirus to Greece and in his involvement in politics. The Venetian Typaldi and their strong-willed daughter Eloisia exerted a powerful influence on Aristotelis and their numerous children. Even in Aristotelis’ lifetime (he died in 1879), the influence of the Typaldi on Ioannis was greater than that of the Valaoriti. Is it my fault, dear mother, if I am a little obsessed with books? It is a legacy from my father, but even more from my mother. And, since you are mainly responsible for the fault, it is only fair that you pay some of its expenses.8

Ioannis maintained a regular weekly correspondence with his distant mother (distant both in the literal and the metaphorical sense of the word). He often complained or even mocked her for the brevity and lack of warmth of her letters. On other occasions he apologized, for instance, 7 Valaoritis 1980: 100-1. 8 IVA 13/4: Ioannis to Eloisia (Athens, 8 June 1885).

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for having incurred her displeasure by failing in his school exams or for opposing her views on the career of Aemilios, his beloved younger brother.9 Their correspondence became less frequent after 1885, when the diminished family was reunited. His last letter is dated 4 August 1900. Eloisia died the following year. As their correspondence reveals, Ioannis’ relationship with his despotic mother was as close spiritually as it was distant emotionally. In his letters, he discusses not only the family and social affairs of the day but also politics. One has the impression that Eloisia’s interest in local and national political developments was well above that of the average woman of her age and social standing. Their exchange of views on the political crisis in Athens in 1875, for instance, provides a penetrating analysis of the situation. Ioannis’ phrase ‘imagine what your head would do if you were a man!’ proves his admiration for his mother’s intellectual powers. Besides this, on several occasions he asks her to use her social influence in his favour.101 Thanks mainly to Eloisia’s influence, the family was bilingual. Even Aristotelis, a romantic poet and staunch patriot, wrote to his wife in Italian and French until 1867.11 Ioannis received a somewhat unsystematic primary and secondary education privately and in Greek schools in Lefkada and Corfu. Many years later, he recited sonnets by Metastasio which he and his brother Aemilios had learned as young children in Madouri from their teacher, an Italian priest.12 One has reason to believe that in his early childhood the intimate language of oral communication with his brother was Italian, for in later years he recognized the shortcomings of his bilingual past. As he wrote to his mother in 1883, I myself have often secretly blamed you for not letting me repeat the second or the third year of high school and because, instead, I was obliged to remain for another year after the end of high school to study Greek, with very little gain. It is difficult for you to see, but I am in a position to feel how imperfect the foundations of my knowledge of the Greek language are, and I manage ‘me tirer d’affaires’ only with considerable effort.13

9 Ibid., 13/1: Ioannis to Eloisia (Venice, n.d.; Athens, 30 November 1874 and 2 March 1875). 10 Ibid., 13/3: Ioannis to Eloisia (Athens, 12 June 1883); 13/4: Ioannis to Eloisia (Athens, 12 May 1885). For a discussion of the 1875 crisis, see ibid., 13/1. 11 Valaoritis 1980: 37. Like Ioannis, his brother Aemilios, who was born shortly after him, went to school in Lefkada and Corfu. His younger brother Andreas and his sisters Natalia and Olga, who spent their childhood with their mother in Venice, did not receive a Greek education. Hence, Ioannis frequently appealed to his mother to speak Greek to little Olga. 12 Drosinis 1985: 201. 13IVA 13/3: Ioannis to Eloisia (Athens, 8 September 1883).

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The dominant language of the correspondence was Greek. His mother wrote to him in Greek, Italian and French depending on her disposition. Ioannis answered in Greek with the occasional Italian phrase inserted in the most intimate sections of the letter. Personal Beliefs

Economic insecurity, fear of disease, and the need to provide for the junior and less healthy members of the family, a task that fell chiefly on the shoulders of Eloisia and Ioannis, rank high in the priorities of their correspondence. The entire family had been infected by tuberculosis. Ioannis suffered from scrofula, tuberculosis of the glands, which tormented him from childhood. His early letters to his mother abounded in reassurances that he took good care of his infected glands and visited his doctor frequently. As younger siblings entered the list of tuberculosis patients and died, insecurity increased.14 One of Ioannis’ constant worries was his preoccupation with disease and death. The protracted illnesses and deaths of his siblings and the incessant concern with his own health since his adolescence filled him with a sense of fatalism at the realisation that man was powerless before disease. His letters do not indicate that he was a practising, churchgoing believer. His references to God are cursory and always negative. In this negative sense, references to fate are more frequent. Many of his letters are deeply pessimistic and reveal a belief that there is a curse on him. Religion, however, is dissociated from ethics. The moral code that forms the guideline of his conduct includes such values as righteousness, personal integrity and distinction by merit, loyalty and gratitude to family and friends, and above all service to next of kin and to society, and social efficiency for the benefit of the whole nation.15 With regard to nationalism, his thoughts and ideas evolved throughout his life. His first ideas took shape in the atmosphere of the romantic nationalism of the nineteenth century which had inspired the work of his father. The ideological heritage of his homeland and his family, and the climate prevailing in the academic circles of Athens in the 1870s account for his early belief in the primacy of the nation and in the mission to complete the process of national unification. In this respect, although he remained committed to the national ideology, the initial emphasis on territorial expansion at all costs gradually gave way to the acknowledgment 14 His first sister, Maria, died in 1855; another Maria in 1866; Natalia in 1876; Aemilios in 1882; Andreas in 1887; and Olga in 1898. 15IVA 13/3: Ioannis to Eloisia (Madeira, 21 July 1880); 13/4: Ioannis to Eloisia (Athens, 26 February 1884). On social efficiency, see ibid., 13/1: Ioannis to Eloisia (Athens, 11 May 1875); 13/3: Ioannis to Eloisia (Athens, 29 December 1882).

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of the interdependence of territorial expansion, financial well-being and economic development.16 Economic Status The economic basis of the family was their dispersed landed property, mainly the lands in Lefkada and Madouri, which they rented out. They lived off the rent and the extremely unpredictable proceeds of the sale of olives and currants. It is practically impossible to assess the size of the real property and other assets of Aristotelis’s branch of the family. Finances constituted a constant worry for the senior members of a family (Aristotelis, Eloisia and Ioannis) whose social and other commitments obliged them to live above their means. As a law student at the University of Athens, Ioannis had a limited allowance of 250 drachmas per month, which was adequate as long as he shared residence and German lessons with his friend Spyros Tzarlambas, but not during the last year of his studies when he lived alone. Upon graduating from the university, he was denied a further two years of studies in Germany for lack of funds. He had to return to Lefkada to begin practising law. By that time, family resources were reduced owing to the political activity of his father, who, even after his retirement from politics in 1869, continued to support the political careers of his brother Xenophon and his cousin Spyridon. To this was added the economic burden of clandestine activities in Epirus during the insurrection of 1877— 78. The Valaoritis residence at Lefkada and the house at Madouri became the gathering point of Greek officers, Epirot partisans and Italian adventurers who lived off the diminished resources of the old and ailing poet. Moreover, the illness of Aemilios, who was sent to Madeira to convalesce, posed an unbearable strain on family finances. Cash was wanting, real property could not be liquidated because it was burdened with prolonged legal complications, and credit had become unavailable.17 Professional Career Economic insecurity and a personal urge toward distinction, strong enough to overcome the obstacles of an impaired health, determined Ioannis’ 16 On territorial expansion as a prerequisite to economic development, see ibid., 13/4: Ioannis to Eloisia (Athens, 28 October and 3 November 1885); on financial well-being as a condition of territorial expansion, see ibid., Copies de lettres no. 13: Ioannis Valaoritis to Stefanos Dragoumis (Paris, 4 July 1910). 17 On his monthly allowance, see Ioannis to Eloisia (Athens, 23 January 1877); on the family’s involvement in the Epirus insurrection (Lefkada, 26 March 1878); on support of his uncle’s career (Lefkada, 19 March 1879); on Amelios’s illness (Corfu, 19 June 1879); and on the family’s economic plight (Lefkada, 30 May 1881), all in IVA 13/2.

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professional career. When asked to choose a career, at the age of fifteen, he wrote to his parents: You ask me to reply on a matter which is for you to judge, because I lack the experience and may make a mistake, which I might later regret. Consider the career I am bound to follow and reach a decision on a profession that has a broad scope of knowledge and will make me independent.18

In 1872 Ioannis arrived in Athens to study law, and spent the next five years dividing his time between his studies and a very active social life. At that time, the country was witnessing the beginning of a period of optimism and belief in the progressive nature of capital. In 1871 the discovery of the mines of Lavrion had led to unprecedented speculation.19 Moreover, the destruction of the French vineyards by a phyloxera epidemic in the late 1860s had driven the price of the Greek currant to exceptional heights, filling the pockets of currant growers and tradesmen. Domestic capital began to accumulate and to seek opportunities for investment in real or imaginary enterprises. In 1872 the omoyenis (diaspora capitalists) attempted their first large-scale investment in the banking sector of the kingdom. Not surprisingly, the National Bank of Greece had the prudence to alter its founding charter in order to be able to participate in these new kinds of enterprise.20 In his student days, Valaoritis moved in the same social circles as the omoyenis, but could not yet sense the great commotion and the opportunities which their activities had created. He subscribed to the respectable economic journal Ekonomiki Epttheorisis but never considered a career in business. He simply observed and deplored the change that the omoyenis and their money had brought to the social habits and morals of the narrow bourgeoisie of Athens, which could not compete with their wealth and pretension.21 In 1877 he left the carefree student and social life of Athens to embark on an unpretentious professional career in the criminal court of Lefkada. His career had just begun to pay, when in June 1880 he was obliged to interrupt his practice and visit his ailing brother Aemilios on the island of Madeira. A year later, and in light of the family’s dire finances, Ioannis decided to seek his fortune in Athens. 18 Ibid., 13/1: Ioannis to Aristotelis and Eloisia (10 Octobet 1870). 19 In 1871 a Franco-Italian company reopened the mines of Lavrion, which had fallen into disuse since antiquity, causing an outburst of national euphoria and a rush for the Lavrion company shares. After an international dispute over the limitations of the government’s concession, the wealthy omoyenis Andreas Syngros bought the company in February 1873. However, optimism about the mines’ prospects lasted only until the end of 1873, when the company collapsed and the value of its shares dropped vertically. 20 Dertilis 1980: 9-10, 50. 21IVA 13/1: Ioannis to Eloisia (Athens, 2 March 1875).

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By that time his emotional condition was one of despair. In June 1882 his beloved Aemilios died of tuberculosis in Madeira, after a prolonged period of suffering which deeply affected both brothers. In the meantime, Ioannis had taken the first job he had found, as an unpaid assistant to the well-known Athenian lawyer and university professor Xenophon Psaras. His personal grief aside, 1882 was in many ways a year of opportunities. It marked the beginning of Charilaos Trikoupis’ extensive railway construction programme and of what is generally known as the ‘Trikoupis decade’. During the 1870s, especially after 1873, diaspora Greeks had invested their capital in banking and other short-term lucrative exchange operations. Trikoupis’ plan was to divert this capital toward the realisation of the myth of the age: economic development by means of railway construction and industrialization. An extensive programme of public works (railways, road building and the Corinth canal works), the development of postal and telegraphic services, and a spectacular increase in foreign loans were the main features of the decade. In 1882 Trikoupis signed contracts for the construction of three new railway lines, in Thessaly, the Peloponnese and Attica. The Bank of Epirus and Thessaly was also founded at that time. The acquisition of Thessaly in 1881 had had a catalytic psychological effect. After a decade of experimentation, ruthless speculation and failure, and of much hesitation, there dawned a period of sounder opportunities for investments by adventurous capitalists and new job opportunities for young and ambitious professionals.22 In practical terms, this new feeling of general optimism contributed to a change in Valaoritis’ professional interests. Upon his arrival in Athens, he had gone to see his patron Markos Renieris to discuss his future.23 Renieris urged him to begin practising as a lawyer in the hope that, as his clientele increased and he became known, he would be able to secure his appointment as councillor of one of the numerous banks which were currently being established.2425It was not, however, the busy president of the National Bank who secured him his new appointment, but his employer Psaras who introduced him, and Syngros who recommended him, to the board of the Banque de ConstantinopleP As a result, in October 1882, at the age of twenty-seven, Ioannis became secretary general of the 22 Papayiannakis 1982: 75. 23 Markos Renieris was the descendant of a large Cretan family, the son of the merchant Ioannis, and the nephew of Nikolaos, the Greek governor of Crete (1828-30) and member of the Greek Council of State during the reign of King Otto. Between 1828 and 1835 he lived in Venice, where he became the spiritual son of Aemilios Typaldos, Ioannis Valaoritis’ maternal grandfather. In 1869, following the death of Yeoryios Stavrou, Markos was appointed president of the National Bank of Greece. He resigned in 1890. 24IVA 13/3: Ioannis to Eloisia (Athens, 25 January 1883). 25 Ibid. (Athens, 24 March 1883). Psaras was the bank’s legal councillor.

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newly founded Thessalian Railway Company (TRC) in which the Banque de Constantinople had a major interest. This appointment marked a turning point in Valaoritis’ life. Firstly, it had an immediate salutary practical effect; he now had a small but steady income, an initial salary of 200 drachmas per month, which he supplemented with other paid jobs - providing regular reports to the Central News Agency, and publishing anonymous articles in newspapers.26 His initial reaction was enthusiastic. He wanted to succeed, to become efficient, to increase the importance of his position, and to make himself indispensable. For a long time, he regarded his new job as a temporary one and had his mind fixed on a career in the law courts. In the meantime, he continued his unpaid employment for Psaras, and managed to build up a limited private clientele. But his interest was drawn from criminal law to the more lucrative speciality of commercial law. He had an innate desire for thorough learning and distinction. With the encouragement of Professors Psaras and Stefanos Streit to follow their example, Valaoritis targeted an academic career, a career more in harmony with his social milieu than the circle of businessmen at the TRC.27 To this effect, he decided to prepare a thesis on commercial law with the ultimate aim of becoming a university professor. The choice of his subject was guided by the needs of the times rather than by his personal interests. It related to his position at the TRC; it was a specific subject which could be handled, he thought, within the limited time left to him by his obligations at the company and his practice; there were very few qualified persons in this field, which was daily becoming increasingly important; the holder of the university chair was old and inadequate; and his studies in this field could be put to practical use because commercial lawsuits were increasing in number and importance.28 However, owing to professional obligations, he never obtained his university qualification, and a career in academia remained an unfulfilled dream. But his desire for learning and a mind trained for inductive reasoning, coupled with his solid common sense and his thoroughness, made him excel in the field of financial expertise, for which, as he was not slow to realize, there was no tradition of academic training in Greece. Upon his appointment to the TRC, he wrote to his mother: ‘The Board does not even suspect the specialized knowledge that is required to run a railway company.’29 He set himself to work, and within a few years became one of the few experts on railway affairs. 26 Ibid. 27 Ibid. 28 Ibid. 29 Ibid.

(Athens, (Athens, (Athens, (Athens,

1 December 1882 and 13 January 1883). 10 February 1883). 24 February 1883). 22 May 1883).

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W ithout abandoning his dream, he began to search for better employment. The prospect first appeared in 1885 when, before retiring from his position as secretary general of the National Bank, Pavlos Diomidis advised him to apply for the job.30 The appointment did not depend on Diomidis, but Valaoritis took the hint and prepared the ground with his connections. When the opportunity finally presented itself in 1890, he was chosen by the board of governors, at the age of thirty-five. This new opportunity removed him even further from the pursuit of an academic career, which remained a privilege reserved for those who enjoyed a certain degree of economic security. Moreover, although it had not entailed a substantial increase in his income, the social implication of his new job was significant. It secured him a position in the most prestigious institution of the country. In 1894 he became one of the bank’s two vice presidents, one of the most powerful members of the financial and political establishment of Greece.31 Political Affiliations Unlike his father, Ioannis Valaoritis kept a safe distance from politics. In a letter to his mother, the fourteen-year-old Ioannis wrote: I was invited privately by my respected father, who asked me to write to you my opinion as to whether father should enter the electoral campaign or not... You wrote to father that, owing to our interests and the maintenance of our family influence, you do not consider it expedient to abandon to someone else the parliamentary seat we have held for so long. This thought is partly true, but I believe that we can accommodate this need by entrusting the custody of our interests to uncle Spyridon... But beyond family interests, above all other thoughts, in my humble opinion, is the honour of father, which I see exposed to an apparent danger... Unfortunately, the public affairs of our nation are in such a state that it is impossible for someone who becomes involved not to contaminate his character... I leave aside the dangers he faced because of his impetuous and volatile character, but what I cannot ignore is the serious damage to our interests caused by the exorbitant claims of those who appreciate neither ability nor services, but cast their vote for the candidate who is willing to pay for it. And since, as seems likely, parliamentary elections will be repeated every year, and because of this the greatest part of our income will be absorbed by the insatiable electors, I considered it reasonable to express these thoughts of mine to you.32

30 Ibid., 13/4: Ioannis to Eloisia (Athens, 3 May 1885). 31 Dertilis 1980: 7. 32IVA 13/1: Ioannis to Eloisia (Lefkada, 22 February 1869).

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However, despite his aversion to politics, he could not wholly avoid involvement because of his family’s interests. ‘As things are in Greece at the moment,’ he wrote in 1876, ‘involvement in politics is a condition of one’s existence. Nowhere can a man find either justice or protection.’33 In his early years, family loyalties determined his political affiliations. After the retirement of his father, his uncle Spyros became the head of the family party. Electoral campaigns were bitterly fought, because, following the collapse of the local political system and the transfer of authority to Athens in the wake of the Ionian islands’ cession to Greece in 1864, local politicians entered the patronage system of the party formations of Old Greece in the quest for government or local appointments and favours.34 Though he did not agree either with his uncle’s attachment to the throne or with his haughty manners, Ioannis supported his campaigns. Geography too determined his early political affiliations. One of the reasons for his enmity toward Epaminondas Deliyeoryis was the fact that his constituency was at Missolonghi, the powerful regional rival of Lefkada in western Greece in the struggle for government protection and assistance. This enmity initially extended to another politician from Missolonghi, Charilaos Trikoupis, whose rise to power Ioannis viewed with misgivings. A visit to Trikoupis’s sister, Sofia, in early 1883, forced upon him by his young employer and friend Psaras, confirmed him in this feeling.35 But the bleak reality of his economic and professional stagnation, and his unsatisfied ambition forced him to switch his allegiance. I intend, gradually and slowly, to begin approaching nearer to this man [Trikoupis], not out of fondness, but out of calcolo [calculation]. The circle of activity revolves around this man, and, since I feel both the power and the will in that direction, I want, gradually and slowly, to enter into this whirlwind, ambushing the opportunities for action which arise in his circle. I will gradually and slowly begin to visit Mrs Sofia on Sundays, and, if she repeats last year’s invitation I will also go occasionally in the evenings.36

His move was crowned with success. He became one of Trikoupis’ most trusted advisers in matters of railroad construction and public works. How did Valaoritis cash in on this friendship? Not directly, by obtaining an immediate appointment, as he owed his professional rise to other circles, those of the National Bank. Rather indirectly, owing to the respect

33 Ibid., 13/2: Ioannis to Eloisia (Athens, 9 January 1876). 34 Katifori 1984: 107. 351VA 13/3: Ioannis to Eloisia (Athens, 6 January 1883). 36 Ibid. (Athens, 10 November 1883).

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and influence he enjoyed in financial and business circles as a trusted friend and confidential adviser of Trikoupis.37 Social Milieu Valaoritis’ gradual rise to professional and social prominence began in 1872 when he arrived in Athens, with the names of thirty-seven families supplied by his father, and instructions to visit them regularly.38 These included their close family friend Markos Renieris, president of the National Bank of Greece; the family friend, nomarch of Athens and confidant of George I, Yeoryios Drakopoulos; the family doctor and relative Charalambos Typaldos Pretenderis; the Ionian businessman Ioannis Skaltsounis, and the newcomer Andreas Syngros - in other words some of the most eminent members of the narrow Athenian bourgeoisie. As a student, he frequented these circles to keep in contact with influential people who might prove useful in the future, and for the opportunity of a free meal. As a young lawyer, he had three options as to the choice of a career: an independent career as a lawyer, an academic career, a career as an employee, or a combination of any two or of all three. His character and social origins inclined him toward the first two options; economic necessity, toward the third. In fact, he tried to combine all three. Eventually, the third option prevailed. The turning point was his appointment at the TRC. Although Valaoritis welcomed the professional opportunities opened up to him by the availability of capital, he felt uncomfortable among his employers, especially such newcomers as Theodoros Mavrokordatos, and despised them for their greed and their ruthless pursuit of material interest. The board watches, planning banking combinations and calculating. For them the railway signifies money, and they occupy themselves in counting it, worrying when they find it little, smiling in golden dreams when they find it a lot.39 Mavrokordatos never fails, when he passes through Athens, to undermine this post and the existence of the office here, because he considers them an obstacle to his plans and his interests. Quelle engeance. Yet I am wasting my time, away from the cultivation of the discipline which I love and in the service of which I could achieve so much.40

37 Ibid., 38 Ibid., 39 Ibid., 40 Ibid.,

13/4: 13/1 13/3: 13/4:

Ioannis to Eloisia (Athens, 27 October 1888). Ioannis to Eloisia (Lefkada, 21 September 1872). Ioannis to Eloisia (Athens, 28 September 1883). Ioannis to Eloisia (Athens, 21 November 1884).

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He discerned in his employers, who were unaware of his economic plight, some surprise that a member of the Valaoritis family had become an employee.41 Fearing that his involvement with the practical affairs of the TRC would distract him from his academic interests, he wrote to his mother in 1884: ‘I do not want to miss the opportunity of being among the most important men of science here. A tout prix, I do not want to become an utter frequenter of the caviar market.’42 In 1891 Valaoritis married Zoe, the twenty-one-year-old daughter of Konstantinos Mourouzis, of the illustrious Phanariot family. This marriage produced a remarkable change in Ioannis’ life. Coinciding as it did with the rapid rise in his professional and economic status, it brought years of domestic happiness and enjoyment of life, which are reflected in the impression his friends had of him.43 He also enjoyed a prolonged period of economic and professional security, and the family increased with the birth of his four children - their first son, Aristotelis, was born in 1892. Between 1892 and 1894 he had a summer residence built in the fashionable suburb of Kifissia, his winter residence being an apartment at the bank. His large family was soon reduced by the death of his only remaining sister, Olga, while his mother died at the age of seventy in 1901. Conclusion Ioannis now belonged to the circle of higher bank officials, a fairly limited socio-economic category that was generally stable in its professional and financial enterprises. In this respect, it bore a closer resemblance to the class of professionals (lawyers, doctors, engineers) to which Valaoritis always felt he belonged, than to the class of capitalists with which he was professionally associated. In the light of this biographical sketch, an answer to the question implied by Estia would classify Ioannis Valaoritis as a bourgeois in the classical European sense, a sense associated with the concept of class in its socio-economic context and the existence of a capitalist society. However, Greek society at the time was by no means a capitalist class society, despite Estia's attempts to evangelize it, and the Greek bourgeoisie in particular was a hybrid one. A large section of this illdefined class was born out of the obligation of the recently established state to organize its administration and to provide the basic necessities

41 Ibid., 42 Ibid., derogatory 43 Delta

13/3: Ioannis to Eloisia (Athens, 18 November 1882). 13/4: Ioannis to Eloisia (Athens, 15 January 1884). Chaviarochanitis was the word used to describe the wealthy Greek merchants of Constantinople. 1979: 7; Drosinis 1985: 182-3.

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of security, justice, health and education for its subjects. These needs were serviced by a new and rising class of professionals. The other section of the Greek bourgeoisie, a class that antedated the foundation of the Greek state, was the far less coherent commercial class. Moreover, classes in Greece were neither vertically nor horizontally watertight. Through the channels of patronage and education, scions of peasants, merchants and landowners alike migrated to the various echelons of the expanding public and private services. In this particular context, the case of Ioannis Valaoritis is an excellent example of social mobility. It is, if not a typical, at any rate a clear illustration of the manner in which both the social assimilation of the insular society of the Ionian islands into that of mainland Greece in the post-1864 period and the migration from the waning landowning class to the Greek bourgeoisie were achieved.

References Cited Delta, P. 1979. Δέλτα, Π. ’Αρχείο τής Π. Σ. Δέλτα. Athens, vol. I. Dertilis, Υ. 1977. Δερτιλής, Γ. Κοινωνικός μετασχηματισμός καί στρατιωτική έπέμβαση 1880-1909. Athens. Dertilis, Υ. 1980. Δερτιλής, Γ. Τό ζήτημα των τραπεζών. Athens. Drosinis, Υ. 1985. Δροσίνης, Γ. Σκόρπια φύλλα της ζωής μου. Athens, vol. I. Katifori, D. 1984. Κατηψόρη, Δ. 01 έπτανήσιοι βουλευτές στην πρώτη δεκαετία από την ένωση, in Τό Ίόνιο; περιβάλλον, κοινωνία, πολιτισμός. Athens, 95-141. Moskof, Κ. 1979. Μοσκώψ, Κ. Εισαγωγικά στήν ιστορία τοϋ κινήματος τής έργατικής τάξης. Thessaloniki. Mouzelis, Ν. 1978. Modern Greece. Facets of Underdevelopment. London. Papayiannakis, L. 1982. Παπαγιαννάκης, Λ. Οί έλληνικοΐ σιδηρόδρομοι (18821910). Athens. Psyroukis, Ν. 1974. Ψυρούκης, Ν. Το νεοελληνικό παροικιακό φαινόμενο. Athens. Valaoritis, Ι.-Α. 1980. Βαλαωρίτης, Ί. Ά. Βιογραψικαί σημειώσεις καί έπιστολαί, in G.-P. Savidis and Ν. Lykourgou (eds), ’Αριστοτέλης Βαλαωρίτης. Athens, vol. I: 9-248.

Part II Images and Symbols

5 The Excavations at Olympia, 1868-1881: A n Episode in Greco-German Cultural Relations1 Suzanne Marchand Between 1875 and 1881, German archaeologists executed a highly successful, but now little discussed, dig at Olympia. The state-supported team of excavators uncovered a vast quantity of historical evidence, brought to light a wealth of unknown works of ancient art, and set a widely-imitated example for ‘scientific’ digs. If the archaeologists were somewhat disappointed in their failure to find much in the way of Periclean monumental sculpture, they could not have been depressed by the sheer quantity of finds; an 1879 report listed, among other things, 1,328 stone sculptures and 7,464 bronzes found since 1875.12 Unlike most previous excavators, the German team was determined to record and analyse all of these finds, thereby banishing ‘accidents’ of discovery to archaeology’s ‘unscientific’ past.3 Without doubt, these positivistic practices afforded the Olympia excavators deeper insight into the architectural and social history of the sacred site than armchair scholars or treasure-seekers had gained, and the Olympia dig rightly belongs on the list of pivotal moments in the history of archaeology. Regrettably, it has often been omitted from mention in popular histories, probably because the state-supported, team project defies the conventions of romantic hagiography; it is easier, and perhaps more appealing, to treat the history of scholarship by stringing together breathless biographies, rather than by analysing the administrative and institutional structures 1 I would like to thank Philip Carabott and Mark Mazower for assisting me with bibliography for this paper. 2Merseberg, Zentrales Staatsarchiv (MZStA), 2.2.1-20772: Georg Treu, ‘Die Ausgrabungen zu Olympia’, report no. 37 (1879), 58-61. 3 Boetticher 1886: 3.

From Greek Society in the Making, 1863-1913: Realities, Symbols and Visions, ed. Philip Carabott. Copyright © 1997 by Philip Carabott. Published by Variorum, Ashgate Publishing Ltd, Gower House, Croft Road, Aldershot, Hampshire, GIJ11 3HR.

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which made possible many of the advances in knowledge made over the past century.4 Most certainly, in any event, the dig at Olympia deserves to be given greater importance in the history of classical scholarship than it is now accorded. But these excavations also established a precedent of a different kind, which has been even less appreciated than the dig’s scholarly results. The Olympia dig was paid for by the German state, which explicitly renounced its claims to any part of the booty; the Greeks, for their part, permitted employees of a foreign, and not particularly friendly, state to dig on their soil without realistic expectations of political or economic profit. The Olympia excavations, I would like to suggest, added a new dimension to modern diplomacy by proposing the principle than the advancement of knowledge could form the basis for co-operation not just between individuals, but between nation states as well. Although this principle has been, until recently, probably more abused than respected, we now accept unthinkingly the idea that international friendships can be built by means of the neutral mediation provided by science and the arts. This idea was not, however, so readily accepted in 1875; nor was it the simple product of German disinterested generosity and Greek confidence in the nobility of science. But it was one of the few triumphs liberal Germans were able to snatch from the teeth of Realpolitik, and it remains one of the least appreciated achievements of European philhellenism. The Olympia treaty was the result of political circumstances, both international and internal, of patronage conditions, of the advocacy of particular individuals, and of the entrenchment of romantic philhellenism in German cultural institutions. Of course, diplomacy, patronage relationships, individual ambitions, and romantic nostalgia have always played leading roles in the arrangements of archaeological digs. The excavation, investigation, and transportation of monuments requires a large workforce, money, emotional commitment, and either ownership of the property in question or some sort of permission granted by those who govern the area. Given these requirements, before about 1870, most archaeologists were wealthy amateurs with strong diplomatic connections. More than a few early archaeologists - including Lord Elgin - were diplomats themselves, and it was no accident that when the new German Empire absorbed the Prussian-financed archaeological institute in Rome in 1873, that scholarly organization was placed under the administration of the Foreign Ministry. But, after about 1870, rising nationalism in the Balkans and rising colonial aspirations elsewhere made diplomatic finesse

4Cf. Marchand 19%.

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even more necessary to both host country and excavators; as both Crown Prince Friedrich of Prussia and King George I learned in 1873-74, the conclusion of something so humble as an excavation treaty could provoke the ire of committed nationalists. In the early 1870s, both leaders were able to resist pressure to abandon the project; had not this precedent been set during the heyday of German liberalism and a period of Greek economic stability, it is more than conceivable that German ultranationalism and rising Greek debts might have made for a different sort of treaty altogether. The key to understanding the signing of the Olympia treaty lies in the political contingencies of the early 1870s, but in fact, the plans for the project were much older. Predictably, German intellectuals seem to have borrowed the idea for an excavation at Olympia from a Frenchman of the Baroque era, the great antiquarian Bernard de Montfaucon.5 Just as predictably, nineteenth- and twentieth-century Germans, relating the heroic history of the Olympia dig, generally substituted J.-J. Winckelmann, the ur-philhellene, for Montfaucon, as the project’s instigator. Indeed, Winckelmann, particularly in his later years, had dreamed of excavating ancient Elis, where, as he wrote in his Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums (1764), the excavator was bound to garner ‘profits (ausbeute) beyond all imagination’;6 but Winckelmann, long preoccupied with antiquarian studies in Rome, never set foot in Athens, much less the distant wilds of the Morea. In 1812, Lord Elgin’s proxy Giovanni Lusieri arranged a dig with the Pasha of the Morea, but Elgin, by this time, was more than 90,000 Turkish lire in debt, largely as a result of his archaeological exploits, and could not afford the bribe, much less the cost of an excavation.7 In early 1821, a Gymnasium director named Sickler published an account of his visit to Olympia together with a plea for private support for a dig; Sickler planned to bring all the archaeological ‘profits’ back to the Germanies to form the basis for a museum dedicated to Winckelmann’s memory.8 But Sickler’s plan foundered on the rocks of Metternichian balance-of-power politics, and the first excavations at Olympia were undertaken by the French Expedition scientifique de More'e in 1829; by all accounts, though the Expedition only lasted six weeks, Winckelmann had been right: Olympia yielded considerable ‘profits’, all of which were sent back to enhance the holdings of the Louvre.9

5 Weil 1897: 102. 6 Quoted in ibid. 7 St Clair 1967: 208. KWeil 1897: 103. l) Ibid.: 104.

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If Sickler and the French wished to enhance northern European collections, others longed to redeem the ancient site from its present-day dereliction. In 1836, the eccentric Prince Puckler-Muskau proposed excavations which would not remove finds from Greece; on the contrary, ancient Olympia was to be restored, as far as possible, and surrounded by ‘an Edenic garden’.101The romantic historian Ernst Curtius visited the site in 1838 and 1840, and later recalled it as anything but idyllic; in a volume dedicated to Greek topography, Curtius lamented the degradations of the forsaken spot, populated by tormenting insects and surrounded by a ‘sultry, unhealthy atmosphere’.11 But Curtius, too, eventually conceived a grand passion to rescue Olympia from time’s depredations, chiefly by archaeological means. Like previous schemers, Curtius saw his project as a contribution to German arts and letters and a personal tribute to the divine Winckelmann. Unlike the others, however, Curtius did not plan to solicit private donations for his dig, but to extract all needed funds from one source: the Prussian state.12 Curtius possessed rather unusual credentials for a German archaeologist in the Biedermeier age; for one thing, he had actually been to Greece, which remained exceptional until very late in the century. More importantly, as the result of a moving public lecture Curtius had delivered on the cultural geography of Athens, in 1844 he had been hired as ‘civilian tutor’ to the Prussian Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm, later (briefly) Emperor Friedrich III. In lessons both inside and outside the schoolroom, Curtius sought to convey the beauties and brilliance of the ancients to his charge, without, however, subjecting him to the rigours of ancient Greek or the finer points of Latin.13 Curtius, who once described the prince ‘as lovable and as malleable as wax’,14 succeeded in conveying his Hegelian blend of philhellenism and Christian piety to his pupil, sentiments that came untainted with democratic sympathies, for Curtius was a staunch monarchist. To be fair, Curtius did represent a set of liberalish positions, derived from the small-scale, patrician politics of his native Lubeck and, probably, from his avid participation in gymnastic organizations, notorious for their national-liberal sentiments.15 But there was only one matter of state policy over which Curtius sought to use his influence: the obligation of the state to fund the arts and, especially, the humanistic ‘sciences’.

10 Puckler-Muskau quoted in Boetticher 1886: 62. 11 Curtius quoted in Weil 1897: 106. 12 See Gerstenberg 1949: 89-92. 13Herre 1987: 30. 14 Ibid.: 32. 15 Gerstenberg 1949: 81.

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During his tenure as court tutor, Curtius had seen another young historian-philologist, Richard Lepsius, successfully obtain state funding for an archaeological tour of Egypt and Ethiopia. In 1845, the Egyptologist made a triumphal return to Berlin, where he received both official sanction and popular acclaim.16 Undoubtedly, this example was not lost on Curtius; in an essay on the Egyptologist, Curtius would later suggest that it was Lepsius who had showed the museum curators how to free themselves from their dependence on chance acquisitions by means of archaeological reconnaissance and state backing for ‘science’.17 In 1852, the young scholar invoked Winckelmann’s fervent desire to dig at Olympia in a grand public lecture, and in an official petition for permission and funds to perform such a worthy scientific - and aesthetic - exploration. In this petition, Curtius underlined German culture’s debt to Greek antiquity as well as the very encouraging prospects for rich finds.18 He estimated the cost of the excavation at 1,200 taler per month, for a trial period of three months.19 Charmed by the idea, the king permitted Curtius and the Athens embassy to begin negotiations, but the complexities of the Greek antiquities law and, apparently, French interference slowed down approval of a compact.20 When at last King Otto was ready to accept a proposal ceding Germany one half of the finds, politics rudely interrupted again.21 The Crimean War, Greece’s designs on Thessaly and Epirus, and the revolution (albeit peaceful) of 1862 convinced the diplomatic corps that the project should be further postponed. Curtius’ proposal was still languishing in forgotten Foreign Ministry files in 1868, when he returned to Berlin and broached the subject anew. Curtius quickly rallied his old pupil to his cause; Prince Friedrich was anxious to express his gratitude to his beloved tutor by doing his utmost to help Curtius realize his dreams.22 But the scholar ran up against a formidable foe in Bismarck, whose carefully-crafted Oriental policy’ depended upon the maintenance of German neutrality in the Balkans. Furthermore, the chancellor could see no benefit in a dig that promised no material benefit for Prussia, as the exportation laws seemed to insure. Undoubtedly following his instructions, in February 1868 the Athens embassy reported that this was not an auspicious moment to negotiate a 16 See Ebers 1887; Freier and Reineke 1988. 17 Curtius 1889: 156. 18 Potsdam, Zentrales Staatsarchiv (PZStA), AA/R 70191: Untitled memorandum by Curtius (8 August 1853), 5-9. 19This was not an extravagant sum; 1,200 taler, in 1852, amounted to about six times the yearly stipend of a student at one of Prussia’s art academies. See Grossmann 1994: 26-7. 20 For details, see Marchand 1996: chapter 3. 21 Weil 1897: 108. 22 Prince Friedrich to Curtius (16 March 1875), in Schuster 1907: 312-3.

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profitable agreement.23 In March, Bismarck passed this judgement on to the king, adding that George I should also not be approached on the matter. Should he intervene on Prussia’s behalf, the chancellor warned, this too would undermine the already unstable Greek cabinet: ‘... without a doubt the opposition would use the [Olympia] project as a welcome nationalist issue to turn against the leader of the present government’.24 As usual, Bismarck’s political foresight was astute, but for once he was fighting a losing battle. By July 1869, not only Curtius’ friend the crown prince, but also the Ministry of Culture, the War Ministry, and the Foreign Ministry had all begun to press the king to reopen Olympia negotiations.25 In October 1869, on his way to attend the opening of the Suez Canal, the crown prince visited George I in Athens, and expressed ‘his wish that the governments of both sides could join together in a common endeavour for the sake of enlivening Greek antiquity, namely by means of excavations’.26 As his travel diary testifies, Friedrich’s first encounter with modern Greece was almost entirely mediated by the melancholic Grecophilia he had learned from Curtius as a boy. The very sight of the Acropolis reminded the prince of his beloved mentor, and inspired some elegaical passages that might have been written by the romantic scholar himself. Impressed by his first encounter with authentic Greek art, Friedrich enthused over the promise of a dig on the Acropolis itself: The sea of ruins, which cover the ground, offer an unbelievable multitude of beautiful pieces of artistry, many covered with inscriptions. Every thrust of the spade will bring new remains to light, though the inhabitants show very little interest in excavation, and when foreigners wish to undertake the job, the ban on exportation, which applied to newly-discovered art objects, scares them away.27

But, deeply steeped in Byronic philhellenism, the prince could not but endorse the exportation ban and condemn the depredations of Elgin and his like. The accord he discussed with George I gave the German excavators the right to excavate, publish, and photograph the finds, but only to export casts and doubles (upon inspection of the Greeks) of such artefacts as the excavators desired.28 As the negotiations dragged on, Friedrich steadfastly resisted new pressure to arrange acquisitions for 23PZStA, AA/R 70191: Wagner (Athens embassy) to Foreign Ministry (15 February 1868), 52-4. 24MZStA, 2.2.1-20771: Bismarck to Wilhelm I (3 March 1868), 124-5. 25 Ibid.: Ministry of Culture, Foreign Ministry and War Ministry to Wilhelm I (17 July 1869), 131. 26 Friedrich to Wagner (18 October 1872), quoted in Weil 1897: 109. 27 Quoted in Rothfels 1971: 15. 28PZStA, 70191: Friedrich to Bismarck (24 April 1873) and the untitled, eight-article agreement, in French, 104-5 and 196-7.

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Germany. Sounding very much like his mentor, in 1873 he informed the Prussian Minister of Culture that the civilized world’s admiration would be a sufficient reward for his investment: ... when through such an international co-operative venture, a treasure-trove of pure Greek art works ... is gradually acquired, both states will receive the profits, but Prussia alone will receive the glory.29

Arranging an agreement which suited the scholars and his own liberal idealist aspirations, the crown prince had opened a new diplomatic avenue beyond Bismarck’s control. Curtius, for his part, was also hard at work garnering support for his grand-scale excavation, which had still to be endorsed by the Greek parliament and funded by the Reichstag. In 1872, he presented a masterful public appeal, combing the rhetoric of neo-humanist dis­ interestedness with a flattering forecast of Germany’s standing among the great civilizations of the past. His lecture began with an obligatory tribute to Athens, the first city state to recognize education as the best preparation for citizenship. Curtius acknowledged that Greek science and art had been free products of the Volksgeist, in no way dependent on the state; but times had changed, and today scholars depended on state help to secure their source materials. Ts it right that we allow noble works of the human spirit to lie in the earth and moulder?’ he queried. Of course not; it was the state’s duty to help historians and archaeologists rescue the past from the depredations of time. Investment in culture, Curtius also maintained, provided ‘an inexhaustible source of vitality and an indispensable counterweight to the ceaseless quest for possessions and profit’.30 Only by investing, selflessly, in grand cultural projects, Curtius implied, would Germany avoid the twin evils of moral decadence and utilitarian superficiality. Such rhetoric won over the Reichstag, now dominated by national liberals; in 1873, the body approved funding for a trial dig amounting to 171,000 marks, and the opening of a branch office of the German archaeological institute in Athens. In Greece, negotiations moved slowly, but were enhanced by developments in international politics. Germany’s swift victories in the Wars of Unification impressed many Greeks, although George I himself, a loyal Dane, had no special love for the Prussians. In fact, his son Prince Christopher remembered that ‘the older generation hated each other heartily and at the same time were frightfully polite!’.31 But the Greek king, in this era in which the partition of the Hapsburg Empire (1867), the enthusiastic 29 Friedrich to Falk (29 January 1873), quoted in Weil 1897: 109. 30 Curtius 1877: 128. 31 Christopher 1938: 47.

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expression of the Megali Idea (Great Idea), and the rise of Panslavism began to threaten seriously the balance of power in the Balkans, needed all the friends he could cultivate, particularly as the philhellenism of the French and the British now seemed dangerously frail. In addition, the Germans had, for opportunist reasons, supported the union of Crete with Greece in 1866-68, and in late 1868, when war between the Ottomans and the Greeks seemed imminent, Bismarck had called an international conference in Paris; if the conference basically ratified the Turkish ultimatum, calling for the disarming and punishment of Greek irredentists, the meeting at least prevented a disastrous war - and the humiliation of Prime Minister Dimitrios Voulgaris.32 It seems that George I, despite his lack of interest in Greece’s classical past, did intercede on behalf of the German excavators, as he failed to do for the French wishing to excavate Delphi.33 But without the support of the prime minister, it is doubtful that the Prussians’ petition would have been granted; Voulgaris, I believe, must have endorsed Curtius’ plans for the Olympia excavation. It was fortunate for the Germans that their application for permission to dig at Olympia was presented at a transitional moment in foreign relations and in Greek cultural development. Count Joseph Maria von Radowitz, appointed ambassador to Athens in June 1874, credited Greece’s approval of the project to German neutrality in a period of gradual Greek alienation from the Russians: ‘For us,’ Radowitz wrote in his memoirs, ‘this [alienation] had a not inconsiderable value; we were pleased to have concluded the Olympia treaty, which we would certainly not have been able to do before 1870.’34 Radowitz, a Wagnerite and habitue of artistic circles, became an influential proponent of the cause, and shared the administration of the excavation with Curtius and the excavation’s architect, Friedrich Adler. Radowitz’s importance and the favourable political conditions for Greece notwithstanding, as the diplomat’s memoirs suggest, getting the project under way still required continuous political intervention. For the Greeks were quickly leaving behind an era in which Greekness was defined from the outside, by the Eurocentric classical tradition, and beginning to tire of admirers with no interest in the Greek nation’s future, but only in its past.35 32Tatsios 1984: 30. 33 Ecole Franyaise d’Athenes 1992: 95. 34 von Radowitz 1967: 288. 35 Christina Koulouri (1991) has shown that there is a break around 1880 in the modes in which history was taught to Greek students. Until this decade, history teaching was dominated by universal and general history; afterwards, national history could be said to have become paradigmatic, as the Greeks, inspired by annexationist ambitions - and perhaps disillusioned by the broken promises of the Great Powers - sought to complete the process of nation­ building by creating cultural unity. This process of cultural consolidation parallels closely the German Liberals’ contemporary pursuit of ‘innere Reichsgriindung’ (cultural and spiritual unification), and deserves much more attention from Greek historians.

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As it happens, the final complications in arranging the dig arose as a result of the interference of one of the excavators’ own colleagues and countrymen: Heinrich Schliemann. In 1873, Schliemann, having enraged the Turks by shipping all of ‘Priam’s Treasure’ to his villa in Athens, found himself temporarily unable to dig at Hissarlik; a restless and ambitious man, Schliemann thus set his sights on Olympia and Mycenae. He offered the Greek government terms identical to those proposed by the crown prince, but promised too a museum building worth 200,000 francs, which would hold his Trojan and Greek finds after his death. The Greek parliament took Schliemann’s side, partly, as Bismarck had predicted, as a means to express opposition to Prime Minister Voulgaris. By March 1874, it appeared that Schliemann would triumph, and Gurtius and Adler were dispatched to Athens with a note from the crown prince to George I. This personal visit evidently persuaded the Greek king of the good intentions of the Prussian scholars, and he signed the excavation treaty in April 1874. This was not quite the end of the story, however, for soon thereafter, Voulgaris, struggling to retain his position, caused a major internal crisis by conducting fraudulent elections; the king was accused of assisting in his prime minister’s misdeeds, and considered abdicating. Instead, however, he grudgingly replaced Voulgaris with the nationalist modernizer Charilaos Trikoupis, and called new elections.36 In May 1875, Voulgaris’ government came under parliamentary scrutiny. All acts passed during his term in office were declared invalid, including the Olympia treaty, and once again diplomatic pressure had to be applied to allow the project, already under way, to proceed.37 The commencement of the dig in October 1875 did not mark the conclusion of controversies over the project either in Greece or in Germany. In Greece, the German team was accused of smuggling antiquities home to the Reich; another group opposing the dig played the patriotic card, insisting that the Greek nation had been dishonoured by allowing others to pay for and execute the uncovering of Greek treasures.38 A parliamentary committee was appointed to investigate charges against the Germans; its report, presented by Dimitriadis, the dig’s Greek overseer, underlined Greece’s inability to pay for large projects and Germany’s purely scholarly ends, and apparently calmed the opposition at least for a time.39 Another debate split the chamber in 1882; this time

36 For the political situation in Greece at the time, see Hering 1992: 434-69; Dontas 1966: 289-90; Dakin 1972: 142-3; Kofos 1975: 28-9. 37See Schliemann to Friedrich Schlie (19 July 1873), and Schliemann to Curtius (30 January 1875), in Meyer 1953: 234-5, 276-7; Weil 1898: 110-11; Boetticher 1886: 69. 38 Boetticher 1886: 69-70. 39 Ibid.: 70-1.

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the subject was the dispensation of the ‘doubles’ promised to Germany in the treaty. Eventually, those who argued that the presence of great Greek art in European museums was good for the national image won out.40 But the era of ambassadorial disinterestedness was clearly ending; although they promised to follow the German-Greek Olympia accord, and even to renounce the right to doubles, the French were long prevented from digging at Delphi. In return for permission to excavate, Trikoupis, anxious to enhance Greece’s economic standing, demanded reduction of tariffs on grapes from Corinth - Greece’s principal export; when the French refused, negotiations stalled. The Greeks flirted briefly with an American offer to dig at Delphi; but when the francophile Theodoros Diliyiannis succeeded Trikoupis in 1890, the French archaeologists’ prior claims were at last recognized. In fall 1892, ten years after the negotiations had commenced, the excavation of Delphi began.41 In Germany, grumbling continued over the all too generous provisions of the treaty; this mood endangered the continuance of the dig, as new funds to complete the project had to be approved by the Reichstag following the conclusion of the three-month trial period. Fortunately for the excavators, after more than two months of careful digging, just before Christmas 1875, they discovered a large number of marble pediment sculptures and the remains of a winged Nike, attributed to the sculptor Pananios. In his memoirs, Count Radowitz recalled the sighs of relief this timely discovery occasioned for the dig’s backers: The reports of the finds in Olympia occasioned even greater satisfaction among those interested in beautiful works, since the previous ten weeks of work had passed without yielding any obviously significant results. To the crown prince in particular, [these finds] were personally gratifying. Now the necessary measure approving additional subsidies [for the dig] could be brought before the Reichstag with the prospect of a successful conclusion.42

Impressed by these finds, lovingly described in official memoranda addressed to the chamber,43 the deputies approved 150,000 marks for the continuation of the dig. Like his son the crown prince, Kaiser Wilhelm I followed the progress of the dig with great interest. Bismarck, on the other hand, failed to appreciate the costly excavation’s great service to science, and probably resented the liberal Friedrich’s success. When, in January 1880, with 661,000 marks already spent, the excavators requested an additional 90,000 marks to finish the dig, the chancellor refused to sign the new 40 Ecole Franyaisc d’Athenes 1992: 90-1. 41 Ibid.: 79-122. 42 von Radowitz 1967: 348. 43See ‘Denkschrift’ 1876: 431-9.

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appropriation. Although Wilhelm I protested that stopping the excavations at the halfway point ‘would be a sin against art and science’,44 Bismarck would not relent. ‘The German Reich,’ he argued, has performed an important and a very selfless service to international science, as the bearing of all costs of these fertile investigations proves. If others should take over the continuation of this service, Germany’s share in [bringing forth] the results for science as a whole will be no less than it is today, and we will also still be able to acquire casts of finds.45

Bismarck also advised against the use of the Kaiser’s disposition fund to pay for such an unprofitable enterprise, particularly since the Reich needed to maintain the fund to compensate invalids and war veterans. Even Wilhelm I, however, saw through his chancellor’s pathetic appeal and demanded that 80,000 marks at least go to the excavators.46 A month later, a short but telling exchange occurred in the Reichstag on the issue of the state-supported dig. Although further funding had already been doomed, in part by the opening of the new, much more lucrative dig at Pergamon, a liberal deputy stood to deliver a last paean to the heroic exploits of the German scholars. He was greeted with a scathing response from the Catholic Centre party delegate August Reichensperger, who bitterly regretted the ‘bad bargain’ the big-hearted Reich had made with the ‘tiny kingdom of Greece’. Reichensperger followed this tirade with a denunciation of ‘pseudoantike’ sentimentalism which led to slavish imitation of pagan, classical models rather than the pursuit of an authentic German-Christian culture which was the proper way to realize the Greek legacy.47 Space does not allow for a full discussion of this attack on liberal, scholarly philhellenism in the context of emerging debates over secondary school reform and the secular, internationalist orientation of state-supported cultural institutions. Suffice it to say that by the late 1880s, the scholarly philhellenism of the Olympia excavators was under siege by a more belligerent group of Germanophile nationalists, and that ‘disinterested’ cultural feats were increasingly promoted not as proofs of Germany’s pacific intentions, but as claims to a place among the colonizers.48 But the dig did establish a precedent, both in specific and in more general terms. Model German behaviour during this dig permitted the 44 Wilhelm I to Bismarck (11 February 1880), reprinted in Wiegand 1926: 15. 45 MZStA 2.2.1-20772: Bismarck to Wilhelm 1 (24 February 1880), 88-96. 46 Ibid.: Wilhelm’s marginalia to Bismarck’s letter of 24 February 1880, 88-96. Also see MZStA 2.2.1-20882: Wilhelm I to Foreign Ministry (28 February 1880), 98, wherein he agrees that the sum is to be paid from his personal fund. 47‘Stenographische Berichte’ 1880: 346; on Reichensperger, see Lewis 1993. 48 See vom Bruch 1982; Marchand 1996: chapters 5 and 6.

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German Archaeological Institute to continue to play a major role in excavations in Greece even after the decline in diplomatic relations as the Reich befriended the Ottoman Empire. The Greco-German treaty was imitated immediately by the French in negotiating the rights to dig at Delphi, and it helped to inspire the passage of a strict antiquities law, based on the Greek model, in the Ottoman Empire in 1884.49 More generally, the Olympia dig added a new dimension to Greco-German relations, and perhaps to international relations as a whole, by establishing science as a semi-autonomous, separate sphere of diplomatic activity. We may well reflect cynically on the political interests and romantic eccentricities that lay behind the negotiation of this treaty, and may certainly despair at the repeated violations of this high-minded ideal in the years since 1881. But to condemn the principle on such grounds, I think, would not only fail to give these philhellenic German liberals their due, but also would shatter the hopes for international cultural comity that we all still - I hope - hold dear.

References Cited Boetticher, A. 1886. Olympia: Das Fest und seine Statte. Berlin, 2nd ed. Christopher, Prince of Greece 1938. Memoirs of H.R.H. Prince Christopher of Greece. Plymouth. Curtius, E. 1877. ‘Die offentliche Pflege von Wissenschaft und Kunst’, in E. Curtius, Alterthum und Gegenwart. Berlin. Curtius, E. 1889. ‘Richard Lepsius’ in E. Curtius, Unter drei Kaisem. Berlin. Dakin, D. 1972. The Unification of Greece, 1770-1923. London. ‘Denkschrift’ 1876. ‘Denkschrift betreffend die Ausgrabungen zu Olympia’, in Stenographische Berichte iiber die Verhandlungen des Deutschen Reichtstages (Anlagen). Berlin, vol. Ill: 431-9. Dontas, D. 1966. Greece and the Great Powers, 1863-1875. Thessaloniki. Ebers, G. 1887. Richard Lepsius: A Biography, trans. Z.-D. Underhill. New York. Ecole Fran£aise d’Athenes 1992. La redecouverte de Delphes. Paris. Freier, E. and Reineke, W.-F. 1988 (eds). Karl Richard Lepsius (1810-1884). Schrtften zur Geschichte und Kultur des alien Orients. Berlin, vol. XX. Gerstenberg, J. 1949. Die Wiedergewinnung Olympias als Statte und Idee. BadenBaden. Grossmann, J. 1994. Kiinstler, Hof und Biirgertum: Leben und Arbeit von Malern in Preufien, 1786-1850. Berlin. Hering, G. 1992. Die politischen Parteien in Griechenland, 1821-1936. Munich, vol. I.

Herre, F. 1987. Kaiser Friedrich III; Deutschlands liberale Hoffnung. Eine Biographie. Stuttgart. 49 Sec Marchand 1996: chapter 6.

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Kofos, E. 1975. Greece and the Eastern Crisis, 1875-1878. Thessaloniki. Koulouri, C. 1991. Dimensions ideologiques de ThistoricitS en Grece (1834-1914). Frankfurt a.M. Leifer, W. 1963. Hellas im deutschen Geistesleben. Herrenalb. Lewis, M.-J. 1993. The Politics of the German Gothic Revival: August Retchensperger. Cambridge, Mass. Marchand, S.-L. 1996. Down from Olympus: Archaeology and Philhellenism in Germany, 1750-1970. Princeton, NJ. Meyer, E. 1953 (ed.). Heinrich Schliemann: Briefwechsel. Berlin, vol. I. Rothfels, H. 1971 (ed.). Tagebuch meiner Reise nach dem Morgenlande, 1869: Bericht des preufiischen Kronprinzen Friedrich Wilhelm Uber seine Reise zur Einweilhung des Suez-Kanals. Frankfurt, a.M. St Clair, W. 1967. Lord Elgin and the Marbles. London. Schuster, G. 1907 (ed.). Briefe, Reden, und Erlasse des Kaisers und Konigs Friedrich III. Berlin, 2nd ed. ‘Stenographische Berichte’ 1880. Stenographische Berichte Uber die Verhandlungen des Deutschen Reichtstages. Berlin, vol. I. Tatsios, T. 1984. The Megali Idea and the Greek-Turkish War of 1897. The Impact of the Cretan Problem on Greek Irredentism, 1866-1897. New York. vom Bruch, R. 1982. Weltpolitik als Kulturmission: Auswartige Kulturpolitik und Bildungsburgertum in Deutschland am Vorabend des Ersten Weltkrieges. Paderborn. von Radowitz, J.-M. 1967. Aufzetchnungen und Erinnerungen aus dem Leben des Botschafters Joseph Maria von Radowitz, ed. Hajo Holborn. Osnabruck, vol. I. Weil, R. 1897. ‘Geschichte der Ausgrabung von Olympia’, in E. Curtius and F. Adler (eds), Olympia: Die Ergebnisse der von dem deutschen Reich veranstalteten Ausgrabung. Berlin, vol. I. Wiegand, T. 1926. ‘Zur Geschichte der Ausgrabungen von Olympia’, Sitzungsberichte der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 14—22.

6 The Nation and the Individual: Social Aspects of Life and Death in Greece (1896-1911)1 George Margantis 1896 was an Olympic year for the city of Athens. At that time, an event like this was an experimental one for what Europeans defined as the civilized world. The Olympic Games constituted part of an attempt to formulate new kinds of social festivities in accordance with the new era, with ‘modern times’. New techniques and new ideas - nationalism above all - demanded and dictated such social innovations. However, for the kingdom of Greece and its picturesque capital the significance of this particular event was far more complex. It occurred at the end of a period of great activity, the so-called Trikoupian era, when the main concern of this small southern Balkan state was to catch up with its more ‘advanced’ European counterparts. Although the realization of this aim carried considerable costs, it was deemed necessary in the context of the ongoing dismemberment of the ‘sick man of Europe’. Whole regions of this decaying multi-ethnic empire, which despite considerable efforts it had proved impossible to transform into a modern state, would probably be acquired by the most efficient, the most modern, the most European of the heirs apparent. Bulgaria and the Pan-Slavists had already shown what they were capable of. The Treaty of San Stefano in 1878, and the creation of a ‘Greater Bulgaria’, albeit only on paper and for a brief period of time, had dramatically altered the context of Greek irredentist policy. Slavic neighbours to the north gradually emerged as the potential heirs of the Ottoman Empire, endangering Greece’s prospects in the process. Greece had to overcome present conditions and realities, had to progress in the most determined way, if she could realistically hope1 1 I would like to thank Mrs Ilya Kallitsounaki-Forster and Professor Anna Missiou for their linguistic advice.

From Greek Society in the Making, 1863-1913: Realities, Symbols and Visions, ed. Philip Carabott. Copyright © 1997 by Philip Carabott. Published by Variorum, Ashgate Publishing Ltd, Gower House, Croft Road, Aldershot, Hampshire, GU11 3HR.

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to fulfil the nationalistic dreams encapsulated in the Megali Idea (Great Idea). The Olympic Games were to prove to the modern world - that is, to her fellow Europeans - that Greece was an efficient, civilized country which shared with them the same values, the same mechanisms, the same civilization; in other words a partner confident enough to lay claim to being a stabilizing force in the Balkans. The desire to make a good impression and prove the merits of the modern Greek nation to the civilized world was not confined only to the government and its policies. In fact the government, together with the municipality of Athens, proved too incompetent to undertake such a project. The upper classes, those which had spearheaded the modernization attempts of the Trikoupian era, were also fervent about this athleticpolitical event, about this demonstration of the new achievements of the nation. The cost of the games was by and large covered by the private sector, with Yeoryios Averoff, a wealthy merchant from Alexandria, donating a little over two million drachmas.2 This fact drew the attention of the contemporary press which, using the epigrammatic comment κ υ β ε ρ ν η τ ικ ώ ς έ π τ ω χ ε ύ σ α μ ε ν (we have reached governmental bankruptcy), deplored the inability of the public sector to actively promote the successful organization of the games and praised the effectiveness of private initiatives. Greece, then, had to prove herself in the 1896 Olympic Games. In such a context, nationalism had the upper hand in all the public manifestations of the event. Times were favourable for such a choice. The political crisis on the island of Crete had been smouldering for some months, reaching a climax in the spring of the Olympic year.3 In Macedonia the revolutionary organizations which supported Bulgarian claims had stepped up their guerrilla operations. To the Greek public it became obvious that it was time for action. Other news from abroad worked to the same effect. The great victory of the troops of King Menelik of Ethiopia against the invading Italian army at Adowa was widely discussed and commended in Athens. For many people it proved that men, ideals and personal courage were the determining factors in a conflict. Technical considerations were not to be seriously thought of when it came down to fighting. Numbers 2 A contemporary French observer wrote that in the space of a few months Averoff’s popularity came to equal that of King George I; see Tolias 1993: 68. 3 The failure to observe the provisions of the Halepa Pact (1878) had contributed to a feeling of unrest among the Christian inhabitants of the island. The Porte tried to placate them by sending, in May 1895, the Christian Alexandros Karatheodori as governor. The latter, however, aroused the opposition of the local Muslim population and was replaced by Tourchan Pasha. In May 1896, Christians under the leadership of Manoussos Koundouros besieged the town of Kandanos and by the summer the revolt had spread throughout the island; see Detorakis 1986: 391-4.

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and weapons were not considered to be decisive. The problems which the British faced in their campaign against the Mahdidists of Sudan constituted further proof of what faith alone could accomplish. This kind of reasoning was obviously significant for a small nation that had to triumph over an empire in order to fulfil its national goals. The ‘timing’, the mise en scene of the opening of the games was full of symbolism and meaning. The previous day was Easter Sunday in the Greek Orthodox calendar. In the saga of the irredentist idea, the resurrection of Christ had always been associated with the resurrection of the nation, that is with its glorious reappearance in history. This ‘special’ Easter of 1896 was marked by a manifest decline in the religious meaning of the festival. The ovations, almost everywhere, were for national regeneration. 25 March was Independence Day, the anniversary of the 1821 struggle, as well as the opening day of the games. Journalists were right in proclaiming that there had never been a celebration like this. For seventyfive years, wrote the Akropolis, the occasion had been a passive festivity marked more by lamentations than by celebration. There was no active, masculine idea marking the event. There was no action, no calls for heroic initiatives. Greece had been dominated by a feeling of impotence, searching for the solution to her problems in the good will of Europe. The anniversary of the War of Independence should not be considered an occasion for admiring the elders and venerating their acts, but one for celebrating the political and moral power of the people, the power of self-government. Everything depends on us citizens, on our will, for we are the power of the Nation... Was there a government in 1821?... Who took care of the Army? Who directed the state?... Nevertheless, we all admire the politics and the achievements of those days, [when] a people without a King victoriously opposed the [Muslim] subjects of a Sultan.4

It was an open call to transcend governments and rules and to place all hopes on the struggle, on action, on the personal initiatives of the people who were so much worthier than their government. Two additional events underlined the new orientations of the nationalist spirit. The inaugural festivities of the games focused on the unveiling of the statue of Yeoryios Averoff in the Olympic stadium, the Panathinaikon. He was the symbolic leader of all the efforts that had made possible the holding of the games, despite the weakness of the Greek state; in other words, the symbol of private initiative. On the other hand, the first news of Charilaos Trikoupis’ illness reached Athens from Cannes on that very * Akropolis (25 March 1896).

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day. (His death was announced during the closing festivities.) The agony of this apostle of the modernization of Greece contrasted sharply with the exaltation of the value of individuals and the worship of personal initiative that prevailed in those fervent days. The rediscovery of physical prowess was a direct consequence of this new belief in individual values. The saga of 1821 portrayed the heroes of the War of Independence not only as good fighters but also as competent athletes. In 1896 Versis, a member of the Greek rowing team, was presented as the perfect image of the Greek athlete. He was the god of the day. The offspring of a respectable Athenian family, he was admired as the Milon of contemporary times, as a living Colossus, almost as a national symbol: What kind of miracle in the field of heredity was accomplished, what perfect lines of Praxiteles were preserved in this living body, in this harmonious combination that fuses beauty and strength?... Everything in Versis is Greek... Foreigners were full of admiration for him.5

The exaltation of the human body often touched on paganism. It was on Easter Sunday that the editorial of Akropolis called for a new religion, or at least a renewal of the traditional one. It was argued that Christianity was not as attentive to the human body as it should have been. A wind of barbarism had led it away from the ancient spirit. Christians had forgotten that Christ was a handsome man and that his body had as much beauty as his soul had. Instead, they venerated the pale, ascetic figures of Byzantine saints. No wonder, therefore, that the Muslim Turks had conquered Greece. Fortunately, however, there were also those who preserved liberty. Up on the mountains, they lived as athletes, while venerating athletic saints, such as Saint George.6 The spirit of the games was associated with the spirit of the nation. The main ideas were those of initiative, action, strength and struggle, of personal perfection in the heroic mould: capable, that is, of changing the fate of the country and of the people. Athletic merit, the beauty of human bodies in competition, should lead to the country’s national resurrection. Where we observe strength, we can also find will, courage of decision, action. Those who will not dare are condemned always to flee. They cannot decide, they do not believe in their own power. What happens to individuals, happens to nations... Oh, if only Greece had ten times ten thousand iron-muscled bodies like these, armed with Mannlichers and Lebels... But from living in decay, we have killed the bodies and through 5 Ibid. (18 March 18%). 6 Ibid. (24 March 18%).

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them we have killed the spirit. We have killed the Greeks with passive and inadequate education.7

In the event, Versis did not win an Olympic medal. Nevertheless, the fever of the games won the public over little by little. In reality, the spectators sitting on the wooden benches of the Panathinaikon were largely composed of non-Athenians. Greeks from Crete, Macedonia, Constantinople and Asia Minor came in their hundreds and thousands to participate in the festivities. It was as though the whole nation was holding a meeting. Irredentism was everywhere and the enthusiasm for athletic competition was coupled with national exaltation. In this context, the victories of Greek athletes were invested with an almost mystical significance. To begin with, Greek athletes won medals only in secondary competitions. Nevertheless, on the last day, the victory of Spyros Louis in the marathon gave the closing festivities a special meaning. The marathon was considered the most hellenic race of the games and its ancient Greek symbolism was unmistakable. In 1896 the Greek nation was craving for such a potent victory. The relation of the Olympic Games to the wave of voluntarism, or belief in the power of will, that overwhelmed the country is, in my opinion, obvious. Of course, there had been in the past irredentist societies and committees which supported every nationalist movement in Crete and Macedonia. But voluntarism was confined to a small elite, or, to be more precise, it was found mostly in the spirit and the usual political rhetoric, not in actual practice. The idea of surpassing and replacing the state was not yet ‘legal’ or self evident. However, voluntarism was legitimized and secularized in the ideological context of the games. The spirit of the games provided Greek nationalism with a new banner, a new sacred symbol: the masculine body and its potency in the field of athletic and/or national struggle; a means to bypass reality, to put aside logistical and diplomatic considerations. In a way it constituted a call for a return to the purity of ancient times when history was created by man, not by machines and systems.8 Before the games, wrote the Akropolis, Athens and its way of life were reminiscent of the old Sybaris. But now athleticism had brought back the spirit of ancient Sparta. The time had come to throw certificates, diplomas and qualifications into the fire. For seventy-five years Greece had been wasting her time and her historic destiny, trying out theories and systems. This illness, it was argued, this epidemic could be confronted by 7 Ibid. (27 March 1896). 8 In reality, through this kind of reasoning history itself was annihilated. Thus it became possible for everyone to recreate it in his own way, provided that he was brave enough; cf. Mosse 1985: 31-3.

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voluntarism and action.9 The games made possible the triumph of private initiative in the context of the national struggle. The new values, now fully legitimated, were those of will, strength, participation and personal involvement. And, of course, such a new setting promised an impressive display. The weeks that followed the games were a time of athletic fever. In every district of the small country, in every city or village, athletic competitions were organized. Through these the ideas that had just been elaborated in Athens were dissem inated. In a short period the endorsement of voluntarism had become a mass belief, a tradition. Meanwhile, external events continued to pose a threat to Greek interests. The visit of Prince Ferdinand of Bulgaria to Constantinople and rumours about an imminent agreement regarding Ottoman Macedonia increased Greek fears. But the real bombshell came from Crete. In April there were riots in the main Cretan cities and ‘massacres’ of some local Christians. In reality, these massacres had nothing in common with what constituted Cretan practice during the nineteenth century, or, of course, with the Armenian massacres. Yet they could not pass unnoticed. Committees to support the struggle in Crete were set up all over Greece as well as everywhere else that Greeks were to be found. As the revolt on the island unfolded, calls for solidarity and aid increased. Supporting the Cretan rebels, not only materially but also by dispatching volunteers, was seen as a natural and logical course of action, even if the government declared that there would not be a war with the Ottoman Empire. The public could no longer take comfort in official positions and declarations. On 17 May 1896 a large gathering was organized in Athens by the Cretan Committee. Among the three thousand demonstrators there was a number of active officers of the Greek army. Addressing the crowd in his capacity as chief of the Athens police charged with maintaining law and order, Dimitrios Bairaktaris argued that there was no time for words and rhetoric, no time for demonstrations: ‘Everyone shall take his gun and go to Crete to fight.’ The government, he concluded, did not have the means to procure arms; this was a job for the volunteers themselves. The affair was not a matter to be left in the hands of the government; it was one which concerned the citizens and their own individual course of action.10 Voluntarism had made its way into the political thought of the Greeks. In the following months numerous bands of volunteers crossed the GrecoTurkish frontier into Macedonia or found their way to Crete. The Greek 9 Akropolis (28 March 1896). 10 Ibid. (18 and 19 May 1896); Oi Kairoi (18 May 1896). Characteristically, a suggestion put forward in the form of a petition that the Greek government should be asked to take the necessary measures to solve the crisis was rejected by the demonstrators.

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government was overwhelmed by a movement never experienced before. To a certain extent the cohesion of the army itself was endangered. Officers and soldiers simply deserted their units to go and fight. If caught by the authorities, they knew that they could count on the support of the public for resuming their irredentist activities. It was obvious from the beginning that this would not be an easy enterprise. The fighting in Crete was fierce, almost savage, totally inappropriate for the Greek youngsters who responded to the call to arms of the Ethniki Etaireia (National Society) and other similar committees.11 In Macedonia nationalist crusaders had to face an effective Ottoman gendarmerie as well as the Bulgarian irregulars and the activists of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization who operated in the region. Under such harsh conditions many volunteers suffered martyrdom for what was considered a just cause - the national cause. Heavy casualties did not change public opinion; on the contrary, they contributed to the movement’s consolidation. Voluntarism, associated with death, was producing dead heroes, martyrs of the new ideology. The practices of remembrance and devotion to the lost heroes produced a new kind of mysticism. Through such manifestations a new civic religion came into being. Services for commemorating the fallen in Crete and Macedonia were held in increasing numbers from October 1896 onwards.112 They took place in every city and village of the country and participation in them was almost pandemic. The climate they created, the nationalistic passion they provoked, made the adventurous war of 1897 the following spring inevitable. In fact, in the course of military operations it was quite difficult to discern who was an official soldier and who a volunteer, an irregular. Defeat, however, did not mark the end of the era of volunteers. In the aftermath of the war, the Greek state appeared more ineffective and humiliated than it had ever been before. Private initiative remained necessary; it just had to improve its organization. Thus the movement attained official and legal status. National societies and irredentist committees gave way to properly formulated structures, in which state officials had a dominant place.13 11 See Akropolis (8 March 1897) and Oi Kairoi (29 April 1897) for a graphic description of the hardships borne during the siege of Kandanos by the young members of the Student Phalanx. In spite of the casualties they suffered, these ‘noble’ intellectual volunteers did all they could to achieve the goal they had set themselves. 12 These were initiated by the Ethniki Etaireia and in the aftermath of the disastrous Greco-Turkish war in the spring of 1897 by the students themselves. Moreover, the festivities marking Independence Day on 25 March 1901 were in effect similar to those held during the 1896 Olympic Games, thus demonstrating the ideological affinity of such practices; see Margaritis 1989: 277-86. 13 In the aftermath of the Ilinden uprising (August 1903), the state took over the organization of the so-called ‘Macedonian Struggle’. For example, the effective Organosis Thessa/onikis was manned by army officers and state officials, although it was an ‘illegal’ organization.

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Voluntarism survived but not without major modifications in its external aspects. The movement ceased to be rhetorical, superficial, almost picturesque. It turned towards idealistic schemes of perfection. It became a noble affair through its association with death. The volunteer was someone who sacrificed his life, his youth, his body in the name of his patriotic faith and devotion. After the defeat, voluntarism departed from the world of reality, to enter that of perfection, of idealism. People spoke about it in secret but publicly venerated the martyrs it produced, such as Pavlos Melas. The apotheosis of this new style of voluntarism came seven years after the 1897 debacle. In October 1904 Athens experienced once again the fervour of its Olympic days. As soon as the news of Melas’ death, in a skirmish with the Ottoman army in Statista, reached Athens, an overwhelming mood of poignancy enveloped all strata of Greek society. Everybody seemed to be directly concerned with the fate of a man who was destined to become a national and social symbol. Many social values were at risk: Melas was an officer of the army, a member of the Athenian ‘nobility’, an individual of honour, eager to defend his personal pride and to serve the common cause, even at the price of his life; a man of action who knew how to transform rhetorical ideas into deeds without any hesitation or misgivings; a person held in high esteem who had proved his right to social respectability in the best possible manner. A hundred thousand people participated in a hero’s requiem, the like of which had never been seen before in modern Greece.14 This event constituted not only the triumph of the individual; it also witnessed the magnificent formal entry of the new ideas into the social being. Melas simply showed the way. He demonstrated that ideas and values need to be tested through action. As long as such action surpasses the ultimate limits of human existence - the limits between life and death - the reasons, the ideas, the foundations and the causes of the human condition, together with their social manifestations, become stronger and more valuable. In those new times, to act meant to legitimize, to imbue with worth. Social acceptance, social participation had to be proven, to be martyred through action. Passivity was regarded as beyond the social pale, as leading towards exclusion. In the context of these commemorative festivities for the lost hero there emerged a social idea that George Mosse characterizes as respectability, 14 The commemorative masse for the lost hero was organized by the Association of Athenian Journalists and was supported by all the societies and associations of the capital, an indication of the fact that it was too important an affair to be left in the hands of the government. In this respect, therefore, it was perceived as a citizens’ affair; see Margaritis 1989: 281-3. For accounts of the mass, see the issues of Akropolis, Estia and ()i Kairoi for the period 20-24 October 1904.

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civic respectability: the acceptance of the right to share in the social being. Respectability was no longer a question of faith; it was a matter of active participation.15 Voluntarism had developed its full social function. Individuals must pursue their common personal or social fate, they must validate history. They had to prove what they believed in, while trusting passivity was condemned as incompatible with and alien to social beliefs and perspectives. The self motivated citizen, the self-created man became the acceptable and respected symbol of modern nationalism. A few years later, in April 1910, Periklis Yiannopoulos, a critic and theoretical exponent of Greek irredentism, the Megali Idea, went down to the coast of Skaramangas, on the outskirts of Athens. Legend has it that he mounted a horse and galloped into the sea. When the horse finally stopped careering, Yiannopoulos shot himself in the head with his revolver and disappeared into the angry waves. Some days later, his body was washed up and the discussion about what had really happened began.16 Real or not, the mise en scene was full of symbolic meanings. It was a death in action; it aspired to be a heroic death, not a passive one, brought about by ideological desperation. Yiannopoulos had in mind a glorious Greece, but the dismal reality of the times drove him only to despair. He had to act, he had to do something to change the passivity of the situation. He decided to take his own life, not wanting to choose anything from what Greek society in the first decade of the twentieth century had to offer. In this respect, his choice conveyed a message of respectability, the legitimation of ideas and theories through deeds. Yiannopoulos’ death was viewed by his contemporaries with indifference. Greek society had already accepted such considerations in the context of the triumphant national ideology. Time had moved on to other, more specific fields. Respectability had to conquer every manifestation, belief and passion in society. It was in this context that the case of two young lovers shocked social sensitivity. On 21 April 1911 Dimitrios Panopoulos, a twenty-two-year-old sailor in the navy, and Eleni Tsintsou, a seventeenyear-old embroideress, committed suicide side by side. The apparent cause of their joint action was the pressure that Eleni’s mother exercised on her because of her relation with Dimitrios. Athens in 1911 was becoming more and more accustomed to this phenomenon. The number of suicides had been steadily increasing since the end of the nineteenth century and the causes that provoked them already covered a large spectrum. Although the press treated news about suicides in foreign countries as signs of the 15 Cf. Mosse 1985 and 1990 (chapter 3). The powerful relationship that associates the modern hero with participation and action is well examined in Erksteins 1989. 16 For example, the coachman who took him to Skaramangas maintained that Yiannopoulos did not have a horse; see Akropolis (11 and 13 April 1910).

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modern times to come or as a major social threat, the responses of Athenian society to domestic incidents of suicide varied. Taking one’s own life voluntarily and intentionally did not cause horror or repugnance, as it had at the turn of the century. However, at the same time, it was also difficult to praise people for killing themselves, to find any nobility or value in such acts. Dimitrios and Eleni marked the crossing of the Rubicon in social thinking and behaviour. Firstly, their act was not private, it was not hidden or shameful. Rather it constituted a public declaration, an act of revolt, an attempt to change reality, an initiative to challenge the social status quo. The two lovers carefully organized and embellished their own deaths. It happened in the context of a romantic rendezvous. They met at the centre of the city, they walked together arm in arm to the military section, the most noble one, of the First Cemetery. They sat under a rosebush, and conversed in low voices amidst roses and flowers in the morning breeze. Then they kissed, and shot themselves through the heart with Dimitrios’ small revolver. In Eleni’s handbag they had left numerous letters and poems which spoke of their love and their decision to end their lives. From the beginning it was obvious that this suicide was unlike any other. It corresponded to the social spirit of the moment, and fulfilled a symbolic function. Rumours about what had happened circulated all over the city with incredible speed, and, just as quickly a legend was born. The couple were a very handsome pair, and their bodies were described in terms of the princes and princesses found in children’s tales. Everybody in the city wanted to see them, to kiss their sepulchre, to participate and share in the common emotion. Women and girls ran to the rosebush in the cemetery to take leaves and flowers and even some of the soil that the couple’s blood had dyed.17 Journalists were quick to respond to the public’s mood and passion. The letters and poems found in Eleni’s handbag were immediately reproduced, and long, mostly fictitious, articles on the tragic couple filled newspaper columns. The funeral of the young lovers was not yet over when the first part of their story was published in pamphlet form. The first edition of ten thousand copies disappeared within a few hours. Those not lucky enough to obtain a copy, as well as readers in the provinces who were equally eager to find out what had happened, had to wait for the second and third editions. As the Akropolis wrote on 23 April 1911, ‘we are born for the press and we die for the press’. 17 In an attempt to control the suicide mode, in July 1911 the Church began a campaign against ‘the spirit of the rosebush’. But in general its response was moderate, in as much as it offered a Christian burial to those who had committed suicide.

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The suicide of Dimitrios and Eleni resulted in manifestations which were of course in many respects different from those that had taken place in the course of the 1896 Olympic Games or on Independence Day on 25 March 1901. The public did not respond with a ‘commemorative mass’ like that staged for Melas in 1904. The lovers’ act was not similar to that of Yiannopoulos, which had an ideological message to offer. And yet the public was mobilized, responding with passion to this tragic event. Although Dimitrios and Eleni were not heroes in the sense that Olympic medallists or irredentist volunteers had been, their act was honoured with equal affection. Never before had the cemetery of Athens seen so many people. Students deserted their classrooms and rushed to join the crowd, which consisted mainly of women and girls. They wanted to see the dead heroes of the day, they were crying, shouting, many of them swooning with emotion. But their talk went beyond this particular event; they posed questions about the times they were living in, the new type of honour and the new kind of social rights that the young lovers had claimed through their deaths. For the first time, the heroes of the day were not aiming at the glorification of the nation; rather they were aspiring to stress the importance of the individual and his or her proper self-respect.18 In a way, Athenian sensitivity returned to the days of 1896. The human body, more precisely its beauty, was praised once more, as was its destruction, its death. But this time the hands of the heroes had not held weapons in the service of the nation and irredentism. What prompted Dimitrios and Eleni to take their own lives was the right to individual self-determination, love, and social respectability in everyday life. They had to act in order to validate their feelings and aspiration: to act to the end, beyond the line that separates life from death, as had been the case with the volunteers of 1896 and Melas in 1904. In all three instances, the paths which the heroes traversed and their practical responses were similar, even if they were guided by diverse principles and aspired to the realization of different ideas. In any case, national exaltation and the will to change social values converged to announce social changes in a way few other practices had done in the past.

18

For contemporary accounts of the couple’s act and the responses it elicited, see

Akropolis (21-24 April 1911). Heralding the beginning of an epidemic of suicides in Greece,

the case of Dimitrios and Eleni replaced in the public mind the old-fashioned suicide of Mimikos and Mary, which was too ‘romantic’ to retain its place in the social turmoil of the beginning of the twentieth century.

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References Cited Detorakis, T. 1986. Δετοράκης, Θ. Ιστορία της Κρήτης. Athens. Erksteins, Μ. 1989. Rites of Spring. The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age. Boston, Mass. Margaritis, G. 1989. Μαργαρίτης, Γ. Πανεπιστήμιο και ήρωϊκός θάνατος (1897— 1922): ιδεολογία, συμβολισμοί, τελετουργίες, in Πρακτικά τοϋ διεθνοϋς

συμποσίου: Πανεπιστήμιο, ιδεολογία καί παιδεία. Ιστορική διάσταση καί προοπτικές. Athens, vol. I: 277-88. Mosse, G.-L. 1985. Nationalism and Sexuality. Respectability and Abnormal Sexuality in Modem Europe. New York. Mosse, G.-L. 1990. Fallen Soldiers. Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars. Oxford. Tolias, Y. 1993 (ed.). Τόλιας, Γ. ’Ανταποκρίσεις άπό τήν Ελλάδα, 1879-1897:

έθνικές διεκδικήσεις - ’Ολυμπιακοί ’Αγώνες - καταστροφή τοϋ ’97. Κείμενα: Joseph Reinach, Charles Maurras, Jean Moreas. Athens.

7 Social Gatherings and Macedonian Lobbying: Symbols of Irredentism and Living Legends in Early TwentiethCentury Athens Basil C. Gounaris Less than a month after I had entered the first grade of elementary school, I was pleasantly surprised to discover the merits of national holidays. It was Friday, 13 October 1967. A speech on the Struggle for Macedonia (i.e. the irregular and undeclared irredentist war fought between Greek and Bulgarian bands in early twentieth-century Ottoman Macedonia) was delivered by a senior teacher in the school yard, after which we were dismissed and allowed the day off. The next morning a five-word sentence, rather lengthy for our standards, was written on the blackboard which everyone in the class had to copy and memorize: Ό Παϋλος Μελάς ήταν ήρωας (Pavlos Melas was a hero). I still treasure my very first copy book, and I have vividly recalled that day ever since; unfortunately I do not recollect even a single word of my teacher’s speech. It took me almost thirty years to appreciate that the content of that speech was the least important element of the occasion. Elsewhere, I have argued that the Struggle for Macedonia has been more of a ‘powerful symbol of national devotion’ rather than a field of historical research.1 Here, I will present the particular circumstances under which this ‘new national tradition’ was founded during the final years of the reign of King George I, and examine the related symbol making mechanisms which facilitated this process. Numerous studies have underlined the significance of national consciousness and national pride among the many ideals conveyed by romantic literature. Among the romantic ideas which influenced nationalism directly or indirectly special reference should be made to*

'Gounaris 1997.

From Greek Society in the Making, 1863-1913: Realities, Symbols and Visions, ed. Philip Garabott. Copyright © 1997 by Philip Garabott. Published by Variorum, Ashgate Publishing Ltd, Gower House, Groft Road, Aldershot, Hampshire, GIJ11 3HR.

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nostalgia for the past and to naturalism (or organicism), i.e. a holistic conception of the nation as an organism subject to natural laws like birth, m aturation, decay, death, revival, etc. Anthony Smith has most perceptively explained the particular importance of the past to romantic nationalism: The return to the past is necessary because of our need for immortality through the memory of posterity which the seeming finality of death threatens. In our descendants’ memory lies our hope. That requires our story to be set down, to become ‘history’, like the stories of our fathers before us. In this sense, history is the precondition of destiny, the guarantee of our immortality, the lesson for posterity. Since we must live through our posterity, the offspring of our families, that history and its lesson must belong to us and tell our collective tale. Hence our myths, memories and symbols must be constantly renewed and continually re-told, to ensure our survival. The nation becomes the constant renewal and re-telling of our tale by each generation of our descendants.2

Despite its sizeable bibliography and literature, the Struggle for Macedonia does not exactly represent a ‘golden age’ for Greek romantic nationalism - at least it did not until recently. It does stand, however, as a perfect example of how nostalgia for a heroic past and the perception of history as a linear development generated another act of the nation’s historical drama and established brand-new national symbols. It was in fact the specific political and social environment in the Athens of George I as well as the imperative requirements of the anti-Bulgarian struggle which determined, accelerated and fed back to the politicization of history. In his classic work on the Greek struggle in Macedonia, Douglas Dakin underlined the important role that local chieftains, known as klephts or haiduks, played in both camps, especially in the early stages of the conflict.3 John Koliopoulos suggested that the reproduction and the prevalence of this notorious military class should be attributed to two factors: the growth of national ideology which considered traditional chieftains as legitimate liberators; and the disintegration of the mountaineer society and economy. He also emphasized the significance of brigand experience and ideals in the struggle in Macedonia, both in terms of symbolism and for the actual survival of the bands in the field.4 However, a better understanding of this fruitful interaction between nationalism and brigand tradition requires a closer look into early twentieth-century Athens.

2 Smith 1994: 208. 3 Dakin 1966: 55, 62-70, 120-32. 4 Koliopoulos 1987: 224-7, 306.

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It was in the Greek capital that nostalgic low ranking officers of the army and restless migrant labourers from the highlands of Macedonia and Crete met shortly after the turn of the century. It was not for the first time; only this time it was different. The humiliating defeat of 1897 which Greece had suffered at the hands of the Turks had reduced the bellicose spirits to a minimum. Moreover, the dissolution of the once powerful Ethniki Etaireia (National Society) in 1900 had marked the official death of irredentism. For the time being indifference for the unredeemed prevailed; ‘in Greece everybody was asleep’, remembered a junior army officer at the time in his memoirs. He believed that this national lethargy was the result of ignorance: [People] thought that the land of Alexander the Great was not in any danger. Since it was his homeland, it was impossible that one day our [rights] could be disputed. The fact that Bulgarian was spoken in the northern parts [of the region] was ignored.5

Others explained the prevailing apathy in terms of fear. Some thought that Macedonia and Thrace were destined to become Bulgarian.6 Any news from Macedonia was bad news; it seemed obvious that yet another war with an unpredictable outcome was inevitable. This is why people were armed with a sort of indifference. What should we do? The third generation after 1821 had been raised this way; they thought of a Macedonian as all gold, like Alexander the Great with a heavy helmet, a vague figure in the darkness, a memory, a dream, an image; something ancient and very distant.7

Some officers, however, did not share these feelings. At the turn of the century barracks seemed to have been a perfect dormitory; possibly even a tomb both for men and their dreams of glorious careers. A romantic night inspection on horseback of the guards on Athens’ public buildings was probably one of the few duties that a young second-lieutenant of the cavalry would really enjoy during the long thirteen years he would have to wait before being promoted to lieutenant. ‘I was twenty-three years old and I did not know what to do with myself’, one wrote in despair.8 Despair was a feeling also shared by many Slavophone migrant labourers from Macedonia, who traditionally searched for seasonal employment in Athens. As the Bulgarian offensive escalated, haunted by poverty no less than by bands of irregulars, masons, tanners, woodcutters and some retailers from the districts of Kozani, Kastoria and Fiorina crowded Athens, 5 Mazarakis-Ainian 1984: 176. 6 Souliotis-Nikolaidis 1984: 283. 7 Mela 1991: 171. 8 Souliotis-Nikolaidis 1984: 271-3.

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eagerly looking for the opportunity to return home and extract revenge. It is not possible to estimate the exact size of this community. According to one source, some 150 Patriarchists (pro-Greek followers of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Constantinople) from ten villages around Kastoria spent three years in Athens from 1904 to 1907 anxiously waiting to return to their villages.9 Apparently there were many more from other districts as well. Scanty evidence suggests that all these labourers, very much like the refugees from Crete, frequented particular coffee-houses, petty taverns and grocers’ shops, mostly in the suburbs, according to their village of origin.101At first sight it was hard to recognize Patriarchists from Exarchists (followers of the Bulgarian Exarchate). Naoum Spanos, a tailor from the Kastoria region and a veteran klepht, made a name for himself by tracking down Bulgarian comitadjis plotting in Athens. In one instance, the suspect had fought with a Greek band in 1897 and was a personal acquaintance of Pavlos Melas, but in 1903 he had recruited men for a Bulgarian cheta (band). The same was true for a certain Stefos from Monastir (Bitola), who became a voivoda (headman), but could not be deported as he had been a Greek subject since 1886. Spanos himself rejected the proposal of Bulgarian agents to smuggle guns into Ottoman Macedonia on behalf of the Bulgarian ‘Supreme Committee’. ‘Damn you; you want to buy out my patriotism,’ he thundered.11 In any case, unlike the respective Macedonian lobby in Sofia which consisted of numerous officers, priests and other influential officials, and was already organized around the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization and the Supreme Committee, Patriarchist Macedonians in Athens lacked easy and effective access to the Greek government.12 Although there were numerous emigrant workers, there were no officers and only a few high school teachers, like Ioannis Dellios from Serres and Othon Roussopoulos from Vogatsiko, who could trace their origin in Macedonia.13 In fact, Macedonian lobbying in the Greek capital was the exclusive work of only a handful of men: Stefanos Dragoumis, a third generation Macedonian, former minister of foreign affairs and veteran

9Archives of the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Athens (AGMFA), Central Department (CD), 1907/AAK/G: Copy of a petition submitted to the Ottoman Embassy in Athens (14 January 1907). 10 Spanos 1984: 357. 11 Ibid., 365-9. Greek authors of memoirs on the Struggle do not distinguish between the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization, founded in Thessaloniki in 1893, and the Bulgarian ‘Supreme Committee’, founded in Sofia two years later. 12 According to Dakin (1966: 48-9), some 20,000 emigrants from Macedonia had settled in Sofia alone. 13 Mazarakis-Ainian 1984: 176.

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sponsor of Greek irredentism; the Yeroyiannis brothers from Chalkidiki, who in 1902 had founded the Central Macedonian Association; and Dimitrios Kalapothakis from Mani, the editor of the newspaper Embros.14 Dragoumis’ house was widely recognized as the indisputable head­ quarters for everybody concerned with the future of Macedonia.15 It could be argued, however, that it was due to the impassioned headlines and editorials of Embros and those of other newspapers that the Macedonian lobby expanded and the former fellows of the Ethniki Etaireia mustered anew. Efthymios Kaoudis, a Cretan highlander, who with a number of his compatriots had spent some time working as a navvy in the suburbs of Athens, wrote in his memoirs that Prime Minister Yeoryios Theotokis ‘eventually gave in to the pressure of newspapers, especially of Embros,’ and formed the Macedonian Committee in May 1904.16 Kalapothakis, who at least officially lacked any connections with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was elected chairman. However, the government’s full approval and support of the whole initiative was clearly reflected in the breakdown of the Committee’s first council. Among its members were Yeoryios Baltatzis, a recently elected but most promising deputy of the ruling party; Ioannis Rallis, the son of the former prime minister and at the time leader of the opposition Dimitrios Rallis and friend of the former minister of defence Konstantinos Koumoundouros; deputy Alexandros Romas, brotherin-law of the politician Kyriakoulis Mavromichalis, former minister and ex-president of the House; and deputy Andonios Kartalis from Volos. Around this inner core a wider circle was soon to emerge, consisting of almost anybody who was somebody: former ministers, university professors, members of parliament, descendants of the heroes of the Greek War of Independence, the director of the Athens police, Athenian merchants, and numerous officers, journalists and minor politicians.17 Women also constituted an indispensable part of the Macedonian lobby, especially when the flow of orphans from Macedonia became steady and the need for charities of every kind multiplied. The most prominent female activists, the majority of whom were close relatives of Committee members, were the French Countess Louise de Riencour, who generously gave money to the Committee; Natalia Dragoumi, the widow of Pavlos Melas, together with all the female members of the Melas and Dragoumis families; Madam de Wandel, the sister of the influential journalist and Committee member Periklis Argyropoulos; Kalapothakis’s three sisters; Ioulia Tessamenou, a descendant of an illustrious family; the wife of 14 DIS 1978: 125-8. 15 Argyropoulos 1984: 7. ,6Chotzidis 1996: 67. 17 Mazarakis-Ainian 1984: 208-9; Argyropoulos 1984: 39; Petsivas 1994: 1, 201.

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professor Alexandros Diomidis; and Kallirroe Parren, a leading feminist and founder of the Enosis ton Ellinidon (Union of Greek Women).18 How did the elegant Athenian bourgeoisie manage to coexist and co­ operate effectively with tough and rough Macedonian masons and brigands? For a start, it is known that the houses of Melas and Dragoumis were frequented by all Macedonian emigrants and refugees in Athens long before the outbreak of the Struggle.19 Moreover, as one would reasonably expect, the houses of various officers who had served or were expected to serve as bandleaders in Macedonia are frequently mentioned in sources as places of meeting and conscription. A Cretan chieftain remembered his surprise when he first made the acquaintance of the mayor of Athens, Spyros Merkouris.20 A non-commissioned officer from Mani was called to the house of Lambros Koromilas, who had served as consul general in Thessaloniki, and had played an instrumental role in the organization and development of the Greek struggle in Macedonia.21 By all accounts, he was not the only one to meet diplomats in private. Apparently, the needs of the Struggle had elevated the importance of social contacts between patrons and clients. However, no meeting place could match in glamour the eventful evenings at the villa of Kalapothakis, close to the church of St Luke in the Athenian suburb of Patissia. Two veterans of the Struggle have given detailed descriptions of the banquets organized by the chairman of the Committee. These were attended by the most prominent Committee members, officers and journalists, usually escorted by their wives or sisters. Authors and novelists like Emmanouel Gouvelis and Ioannis Kondylakis were invited to entertain the guests. Famous musicians performed dance tunes with mandolins and guitars. But the real guest of honour and the main attraction of the evening was always a figher from Macedonia, who was expected to narrate his adventures over a rich dinner table. For a young, handsome mountaineer from Sfakia and graduate of the fourth grade of elementary school, Ioannis Karavitis, the experience of such a social evening was formidable. After a lengthy and most embarrassing introduction to the distinguished guests, Karavitis was presented with a detailed Austrian map of Macedonia. I summoned all my poor mental abilities together, because I realized that Kalapothakis had gathered all these people, representing the government, the parties and society, [so that they could] get an idea about the Struggle, and I should not disappoint him.22 18Argyropoulos 1984: 45. 19 Ibid., 7. 20Chotzidis 1996: 101, note 187. 21 Paparzaneteas 1984: 189. 22 Petsivas 1994: I, 201.

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Evidently, he did not dash his host’s expectations. Officers presented him with a barrage of ‘difficult questions’ which Karavitis answered in an impressive manner. Even young ladies, who had been horrified by his story of the comitadjis ‘lying dead in a shapeless mass, which was crawling in its blood like a monster with a hundred hands’, kept on asking ‘what do they look like; and they lean over my chair, they almost touch my shoulder, to show them the comitadjis on the map’.23 Growing in confidence from the realization that his audience was appreciative of the importance of the Struggle, Karavitis went on to demonstrate his dancing abilities. The following afternoon, he repeated his performance at a gathering of the Union of Greek Women with similar success. But the handsome Cretan was quick to point out that ‘no sinful thoughts crossed my mind. At that moment, the girls of the Union were the girls of Madame Parren; and they conducted national work similar to ours in Macedonia’.24 His cause and that of his fellow-fighters was beginning to strike a positive chord with most members of the Athenian bourgeoisie. The evidence at hand strongly suggests that narratives of specific exploits, for example those of victorious battles, were particularly popular at these social gatherings. The same was probably true for the narrators; some were more popular than others under different circumstances. Yeoryios-Dikonymos Makris, a Cretan chieftain from Sfakia, recalled that, after being wounded in action, he returned to Athens, bringing with him a former member of the Bulgarian Committee who had moved over to the Greek side. Initially, this new recruit to the Struggle was taken around to several houses and was admired by the ladies ‘as if he was a bear’. Gradually, however, his past got the better of him as he was left alone to fend for himself in an alien environment. In the event, immediately upon his return to Macedonia, he rejoined the Bulgarians and was made a voivoda,25 As a rule business meetings between fighters, chieftains, recruits and Committee members were held at coffee-houses and were not attended by women. In these hardly glamorous places, a number of waiters were recruited to the Struggle but once sent to Macedonia they proved unsuitable for life in the mountains.26 The most frequented kafeneio was that of Maravelakis. Situated opposite the Old Parliament, it was a small

23 The same horror was experienced by some French ladies who attended a moving lecture on the Macedonian question by Argyropoulos at the Salle de Geographie in 1907. See Argyropoulos 1984: 52. 24Petsivas 1994: I, 202, 203-4, 206-7. For the experience of another Makedonomachos (Fighter for Macedonia) at Kalapothakis’ villa, see Ghotzidis 1996: 101. 25 Makris 1984: 167. 26Chotzidis 1996: 83.

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and plain place with a back yard ideal for secret meetings. Gradually it became the official meeting place of the Committee, with Maravelakis often acting as intermediary between Committee members and would-be recruits.27 Other gathering places included the beer house Ivi in Omonoia Square, where Argyropoulos held confidential talks with two Serbian chieftains, and a tiny kafeneio near Zappeion, where Kaoudis discreetly discussed the Struggle with the bursar of the Palace while the latter was enjoying his hookah.28 Elsewhere, discretion was hardly necessary. In Chania, on the semi-autonomous island of Crete (as of 1898), friends and relatives gathered at Vassilis’ coffee-house to meet Karavitis but also to dance to the tunes of the lyre, and drink toasts to the speedy liberation of Macedonia. Among those who attended the feast were some high school students eager to enlist in the Struggle. In a manner which suggests not only popular awareness of the importance of education in moulding the youths’ consciousness but also the extent of Greece’s irredentist aspirations, Karavitis counselled caution: Boys, I did not come here to shut down your school. You are still very young. Wait for two more years and you will still find unredeemed places, and you will have your chance to fight. Do not be afraid that you will not catch up. We are not going to liberate the whole world.29

A careful examination of the recruiting ceremony, especially in the early stages of the Struggle, will facilitate our understanding of the ideological interaction between high-ranking patrons and younger volunteers.30 Naturally, initiation varied according to motive, rank and place of origin, but in any case it was neither an impressive nor a secret ritual. Newspapers had already made it perfectly clear that Greece had to interfere more actively in Macedonia in order to secure the region. Restless men like Karavitis haunted Melas around Athens to get permission to join his band.31 Others had to be tested before enlisting for the Struggle, as the following brief conversation held in the summer of 1904 between Melas and a young army cadet from Roumeli, Vassilis Stavropoulos, indicates: - Where do you come from, Stavropoulos? - I am a Dorian, Sir. - A Dorian from where?

27Petsivas 1994: I, 27; Raptis n.d.: 138-9. 28Argyropoulos 1984: 51; Petsivas 1994: II, 675-6; Chotzidis 1996: 102. 29 Petsivas 1994: I, 211-2. 30 See Koliopoulos 1987: 222-4, for a breakdown of the occupations or professions of those who were considered suitable for action in Macedonia and of their places of origin. 31 Petsivas 1994: I, 27-31.

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- From the village of Athanasios Diakos.32 - Do you read newspapers, Stavropoulos? Do you see what is happening up there? - I read and I am burning, Sir. - Many people do, my boy, but unfortunately few understand. Macedonia must be liberated as soon as possible and we must all fight for this [cause].33

The implication was clear: Stavropoulos had to consider more seriously his village tradition. When he eventually joined the struggle in Macedonia he employed the password ‘Diakos-Alamana’.34 On another occasion a Cretan recruit, Leonidas Papamalekos, was taken to Dragoumis’ mansion. In front of an impressive painting of Nikotsaras, a famous eighteenth-century chieftain, and other national heroes decorating the library, he was given a brief lecture on history, duty and determination.35 Under the heavy shadow of the old-age brigand tradition it is not in the least surprising that contemporaries drew attention to the similarity of the Struggle with the 1821 War of Independence, and even to the physical resemblance of heroes of the later with the Makedonomachoi of the former.36 It is reasonable to assume that evoking a heroic past, particularly the glory of klephts and armatoloi, was a standard, but by no means a meaningless, procedure. The Makedonomachoi were inspired by, and also enjoyed, the klephtic tradition more vividly than we imagine. The choice of their noms de guerre, the passwords employed, the ornaments of their weaponry, the style of life and fighting in the mountains, and particularly their dress reflected not only the acceptance of long-tested patterns of irregular war but also their inner need to revive brigand tradition.37 Dress symbolism was so powerful for Melas that he had even ordered small size doulamas and tsarouchia (klephtic dresses and shoes) for his little daughter.38 Despite the hardships he suffered, Melas, like many of his fellow fighters, felt more natural in traditional garments. Konstantinos Mazarakis-Ainian, a well-known officer and veteran of the Struggle, explained in his memoirs that the foustanella (klephtic kilt) and the doulamas, though impractical during winter, strengthened the spirit of his fighters.39 32 A hero of the Greek War of Independence who found a martyr’s death at the hand of the Ottomans at the bridge of Alamana in central Greece. 33 Stavropoulos 1984: 386. 34 Ibid., 411. 35 Raptis n.d.: 142-3. 36Zannas 1984: 89; Demestichas 1964: 68. 37 Cf. Koliopoulos 1987: 227. 38 Mela’s unpublished diary, entry for 12 February 1904 (copy deposited in the Museum of the Macedonian Struggle, Thessaloniki). 39 Ibid., 328; Mazarakis-Ainian 1984: 215, 217.

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But this was only part of the story. Locals in Macedonia, as well as in other regions under Ottoman rule, were greatly impressed by Greek military outfits, especially the kilt. As Koromilas maintained, the effect of these garments was almost ‘magic’.40 His observation goes a long way in explaining why Slav-speaking chieftains and other warriors from Macedonia were photographed in white kilts and Greek military costumes, even with officers’ insignia, once they had visited Athens and had been recruited by the Committee. Such testimonies were expected to raise their prestige, and attest to their close links with the Greek government. Indeed photographs must have been important for the standardization of the symbols of the Struggle. It is known that Melas used to give photographs of himself not only to his relatives but also to all those who visited him from Macedonia. When he arrived at the region of Lake Prespa in early 1904, he was recognized by a local priest who had seen his photograph at the house of Rev. Stavros Tsiamis in the nearby village of Pisoderi. Tsiamis had treasured Melas’ photograph since his last visit to Athens, and kept saying to the locals that when Melas came ‘things would happen’. Melas was also surprised to find at the house of a local armatolos four postcards pinned on the wall: those of Princess Sofia, the German wife of Crown Prince Constantine; a half-naked woman; Stefanos Dragoumis, and Vangelis Strebeniotis, a pioneer of the Struggle who had just been ambushed and shot dead by the Bulgarians. Wearing his doulamas, Melas had his photograph taken for the last time in Larissa, a few weeks before his eventful death in the village of Statista, near Kastoria, in October 1904. Enclosing a copy to his wife, he wrote that it should not be seen by anyone. If I am killed over there, let this be a recollection for you and my children. But just think how ridiculous it would be and what a torture for me to return without achieving anything, and then to have to watch myself masqueraded in this way.4142

Reproduced on canvas by the impressionist painter Yeoryios Iakovidis, Melas’ last photograph became the most powerful and popular symbol of the Greek struggle in Macedonia, together with the photographs of other Makedonomachoi which adorned contemporary publications and newspaper obituaries. Dramatic headlines, new heroic sacrifices, pictures of strong, masculine figures from Crete, Mani and Macedonia, and of course the legend of Melas all urged volunteers to join the Struggle; and they did so en masse*1 40 AGMFA/CD/1904/AAK/Z: Koromilas to Athens (Thessaloniki, 5 July 1904). 41 Mela 1992: 192, 249, 260, 319, 381. 42 Souliotis-Nikolaidis 1984: 282; Stavropoulos 1984: 387.

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In a short article, albeit replete with powerful messages, Parren drew upon Melas’ legend on the morrow of his death to exclaim: Who said that Greece lacks noble children! Who dared to question that the present generation lacks the virtues and charisma of past generations! Who dared to maintain that we no longer have heroic Greek mothers and wives!43

Indeed, national awareness of the Struggle had been raised through formal and informal gatherings, newspaper articles and photographic and artistic representations of the Makedonomachoi. Moreover, in terms of symbols and ideology, the joining of past and present had been accomplished; the new ‘lesson for posterity’ had been written. But what exactly was the message of that lesson, what further use and function did its symbols serve, and who stood to gain from it? Kalapothakis soon evolved into a most powerful political patron and, at least semi-officially, the chief of staff of a small army of bands operating in Macedonia. In fact, during the early years of the Struggle, the Committee’s headquarters were housed in the very offices of Embros.44 This was hardly surprising. As Mazarakis-Ainian accurately remarked, the majority of politicians did not actively participate in the Struggle’s affairs; rather they supported the Committee with their political authority, and in doing so furthered their own political careers.45 Considering the wide support Kalapothakis enjoyed from all parties, and the nature of his relations with a powerful political and military elite, it is not surprising that officers crowded his office asking for rousfeti (the lavish dispensation of favours).46 The C om m ittee’s actual jurisdiction spread only over western Macedonia. In the central and eastern districts Consul General Koromilas had set up another organization based in Thessaloniki. Although both enjoyed the government’s financial and diplomatic support, the two different branches of Greek irredentism never reached an acceptable level of co-operation. More often than not, complaints and quarrels prevailed. In spite of Koromilas’ determination to unify the Struggle and bring it under a single command, and the increasing efforts of his superiors in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to put the Committee under tight control, Kalapothakis managed to retain considerable influence both in Macedonia and in Athens for a number of years. Eventually, in 1908, Prime Minister Theotokis appointed Colonel Panayiotis Danglis to the presidency of the 43 Efimeris ton Kyrion (24 October 1904). 44 Petsivas 1994: I, 98. 45 Mazarakis-Ainian 1984: 208-9. 46 General State Archives, Athens, Papers of Yeoryios Vardas, file 16/7: Diary entry for 22 October 1906.

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Committee in an attempt to neutralize the resentment of officers over the influence which journalists and non-military figures had hitherto enjoyed.47 Although in February 1907 Kalapothakis had resigned as chairman of the Committee, following his blunder in writing the obituary of the Bishop of Kastoria Yermanos Karavangelis, who was still alive, and thus exposing to the Turkish authorities the bishop’s espionage activities, in early 1909 he felt strong enough to clash in public with Theotokis and his foreign minister, Baltatzis. In the columns of Embros, Kalapothakis openly held the two politicians responsible for the reduction of Greek activities in Macedonia, a not wholly unfounded charge since the Panellinios Organosis (Pan-Hellenic Organization), which had taken the place of the Committee, was a rather defensive organization, concentrating on propaganda and espionage throughout the Ottoman Empire.48 Together with the officers who had worked under his command, Kalapothakis fervently supported the Military League on the eve of the Goudi coup. In fact, it was he who suggested the appointment of Kyriakoulis Mavromichalis, an old friend of the Committee, as prime minister in August 1909. Moreover, Committee veterans assumed additional power a year later, during the short-lived government of Stefanos Dragoumis, when a number of them were appointed to prefectures and other official posts.49 However, Kalapothakis and his old guard were not the only individuals who supported political reform in Greece. All men who had contributed to the Struggle, from whatever position, were anxious to see the emergence of a strong government poised to safeguard the spoils of their victories and also to reward them for their sacrifices. Needless to say, the presence of such men, generally acknowledged for their determination and patriotic feelings, facilitated the success of the Goudi coup.50 After all, their heroic achievements and unmatched virtues had been so widely publicized among different social strata that their motives could hardly be disputed. Had Melas survived his third expedition to Macedonia, he would probably have sided with his fellow servicemen in 1909; bravely fought in the Balkan Wars of 1912-13; actively participated in politics thereafter; suffered all the unpleasant repercussions of the Ethnikos Dichasmos (national schism), most likely on the royalists’ side; and assumed high military office in the late 1930s. As a romantic symbol identified with the Struggle, he escaped all the grievances of his generation and has certainly 47AGMFA/CD/1905/AAK/B: Koromilas to Athens (5 September 1905), tendering his resignation, which was not accepted; Mazarakis-Ainian 1984: 209; Gounaris 1986: 183. 48 Gounaris 1986: 209-11. 49 Argyropoulos 1984: 56-60. 50 Gounaris 1986: 221-7.

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outlived and overshadowed all its glory. The factors accounting for his legendary status far exceed the chronological limits of the Goudi coup. In the inter-war period participation in the Struggle became an essential factor for a career in politics, and an indispensable element for the deployment of all-party mechanisms in Greek Macedonia, especially for the conservative People’s Party.51 Bonds between a second generation of Makedonomachoi were reinforced by the Bulgarian occupation of Greek Macedonia during the Second World War and the Greek civil war in the second half of the 1940s. Once more, the same rough game of loyalties was played out on the same ground, and no less violently. Inevitably, in the post-war period, the first Struggle for Macedonia and Melas’ personal contribution acquired additional importance in the moulding of a strong national identity in northern Greece. Only this time, in spite of the apparent progressiveness of the first generation of fighters, it was a conservative identity, more appropriate for the demands of the Cold War. In 1994 the Museum of the Macedonian Struggle in Thessaloniki launched a painting competition on the Struggle for children under twelve years of age. Almost ninety per cent of those who participated presented a painting of Melas. Although the anniversary of his death is no longer a public holiday, schoolchildren are still moved and inspired by his serious, uneasy expression, so anxious to impress his men that August morning as he prepared to cross the border into Macedonia. Had he known the enormous influence he was going to exercise on so many generations of Greek children, he would probably have been much more relaxed and self-confident.

References Cited Argyropoulos, P. 1984. Άργυρόπουλος, Π. Ό Μακεδονικός ’Αγών: απομνημονεύματα, in Ό Μακεδονικός Αγώνας: άπομνημονενματα. Thessaloniki, 1-60. Chotzidis, A. 1996. Χοτζίδης, Ά. Ευθύμιος Καονδης. "Ενας Κρητικός άγωνίζεται γιά τύ Μακεδονία: άπομνημονεύματα (1903-1907). Thessaloniki. Dakin, D. 1966. The Greek Struggle in Macedonia, 1897-1913. Thessaloniki. Demestichas, I. 1964. Δεμέστιχας, Ί. Ό Ναύαρχος ’Ιωάννης Αεμέστιχας (18821960). Athens. DIS 1978. Διεύθυνσις ‘Ιστορίας Στρατού. Ό Μακεδονικός ’Αγών καί τα εις Θράκην γεγονότα. Athens. Gounaris, Β. 1986. Γούναρης, Β. Άπό τή Μακεδονία στό Γουδί: δραστηριότητες των μακεδονομάχων στρατιωτικών (1908-1909). Deltion tis Istorikis kai Ethnologikis Etaireias (Athens), 29: 175-256.

51 Gounaris 1990: 313-35.

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Gounaris, B. 1990. Γούναρης, B. Βουλευτές και Καπετάνιοι: πελατειακές σχέσεις στη μεσοπολεμική Μακεδονία. Ellinika (Thessaloniki), 41: 313-35. Gounaris, Β. 1997. ‘Reassessing ninety years of Greek historiography on the “Struggle for Macedonia” 1904-1908’, in R Mackridge and E. Yannakakis (eds), Ourselves and Others: The Development of a Greek Macedonian Cultural Identity Since 1912. Oxford, 25-38. Koliopoulos, J. 1987. Brigands with a Cause: Brigandage and lrredentism in Modern Greece 1821-1912. Oxford. Makris, Y.-D. 1984. Μακρής, Γ. Δ. Ό Μακεδονικός ’Αγώνας: απομνημονεύματα, in ’Αρχείο Μακεδονικού ’Αγώνα Πηνελόπης Δέλτα: άπομνημονεύματα. Thessaloniki, 81-183. Mazarakis-Ainian, Κ. 1984. Μαζαράκης-Αίνιάν, Κ. Ό Μακεδονικός ’Αγώνας: αναμνήσεις, in Ό Μακεδονικός ’Αγώνας: άπομνημονεύματα. Thessaloniki, 165-265. Mela, Ν. 1992. Μελά, Ν. Παύλος ΜεΜς. Athens. Papatzaneteas, Ρ. 1984. Π απατζανετέας, Π. Ό Μ ακεδονικός ’Αγώνας: άπομνημονεύματα, in ’Αρχείο Μακεδονικού ’Αγώνα Πηνελόπης Δέλτα: άπομνημονεύματα. Thessaloniki, 185-254. Petsivas, Υ. 1994 (ed.). Πετσίβας, Γ. ’ Ιωάννη Καραβίτη ό Μακεδονικός ’Αγών: άπομνημονεύματα. Athens, 2 vols. Raptis, S. n.d. Ράπτης, Σ. ‘Ολόκληρος ή ιστορία τού Μακεδονικού Άγώνος. Athens, 2 vols. Smith, A. 1994. The Ethnic Origins of Nations. Oxford. Souliotis-Nikolaidis, A. 1984. Σουλιώτης-Νικολαιδης, Ά. Ό Μακεδονικός ’Αγών: ή Όργάνωσις Θεσσαλονίκης 1906-1908, in Ό Μακεδονικός ’Αγώνας: άπομνημονεύματα. Thessaloniki, 267-337. Spanos, Ν. 1984. Σπανός, Ν. ’Αναμνήσεις εκ τού Μακεδονικού Άγώνος, in Ό Μακεδονικός ’Αγώνας: άπομνημονεύματα. Thessaloniki, 339-81. Stavropoulos, V. 1984. Σταυρόπουλος, Β. Ό Μακεδονικός Αγών: άπομνημονεύματα, in Ό Μακεδονικός ’Αγώνας: άπομνημονεύματα. Thessaloniki, 383-465. Zannas, A. 1984. Ζάννας, Ά. Ό Μακεδονικός ’Αγών: άναμνήσεις, in Ό Μακεδονικός ’Αγώνας: άπομνημονεύματα. Thessaloniki, 61-163.

Part III Facets of Modernization

8 Literacy and Unredeemed Peasants: Late Nineteenth-Century Rural Crete Faces Education Kalita Kalliataki Merticopoulou ‘There is a large school in my district but it has no more than forty-five pupils,’ reported the teacher of a Cretan village in 1876.1 ‘Another fifty children of school age live in the village,’ he continued, but they were not registered, as their parents ‘are far from understanding the many good and useful things deriving from education alone.’ This picture of villagers sending some of their children to school while retaining an almost equal number to wander aimlessly in the streets appears to be common in the Cretan countryside of the 1870s; common enough, indeed, in the countryside not only of the whole Ottoman Empire but of Greece as well, and even of England.12 How ‘far from understanding the many good and useful things deriving from education alone’ were the Christian peasants of the island on the morrow of a three-year revolution against Turkish rule? What did literacy mean to a society of oral culture, with models unrelated to the world of learning, at the precise moment when the school system was introduced?

1Vikelea Municipal Library (Iraklion), Archive of the Christian Council of Elders of the District of Iraklion (ACCEI)/ka 2.4-3/5: P. Tyllianakis to CCEI (Embaros, 5 April 1876). The educational affairs of the district’s Christian population were administered by the Christian Council of Elders of the District of Iraklion (CCEI) until 1881, and from then onwards by the Regional School Administration of the District of Iraklion. The archives of these two institutions have constituted the main source for this essay. I am grateful to Nikos Yiannadakis, the director of the Vikelea Library, and to Andreas Savakis, the curator of the archives, for their valuable help. 2 0 en Konstantinoupoli Ellinikos Filoloyikos Syllogos {KEFS), 6 (1873): 198, 203, 207; 7 (1874): 208; 11 (1878): 166; Lefas 1942: 49-52; Koulouri 1991: 74-6; Stone 1969: 115-8.

From Greek Society in the Making, 1863-1913: Realities, Symbols and Visions, ed. Philip Carabott. Copyright © 1997 by Philip Carabott. Published by Variorum, Ashgate Publishing Ltd, Gower House, Croft Road, Aldershot, Hampshire, GU11 3HR.

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Until the late nineteenth century the Christians of rural Crete entertained a somewhat tenuous connection with letters. There were many, men and women alike, who could still recite or sing extensive parts from Erotokritos, the poetic romance by Vitsentzos Kornaros, a poem also dear to the Muslim population of the island, who were largely of Christian descent.3 Poetry was ever-present in their lives. The popular couplets of mantinades, an expression of their feelings and philosophical outlook, were not only their hereditary possession but also their contemporary cultural product. The peasants’ remarkable ability to express themselves in verse emerged in the frequent opportunities for social gatherings offered by the formal occasions and everyday life of the village. Stories and fairy tales, including the Thousand and One Nights, heroic songs, jokes and riddles completed their spiritual nourishment.4 A distant recollection of past glory was present in their collective memory. On the other hand, very few were those who had learned to read, write and calculate in the small number of schools that existed. Hitherto, basic literacy was considered the equivalent of education.5 Side by side with the semi-literate school graduates, there still survived a substantial number of individuals who had received some kind of elementary education from village priests of dubious qualifications. From the documents which the village elders sent to the CCEI one can gauge the literacy level of the countryside in the 1870s. Compiled by precisely those individuals who were expected to be literate, they are replete with misspellings, and crosses in place of signatures are not infrequent. Very few documents suggest that their authors were well educated. As a rule, the more isolated the village from urban and commercial centres, the more hermetically shut to letters and to the circulation of ideas it was. During the revolution of 1866-68, which disrupted school life both in the towns and the countryside, literacy was hardly promoted. The pacification of 1869, however, brought back to the island a number of literate individuals belonging to the migratory wave of the 30,000 to 35,000 Cretans who had sought refuge in Greece, thus gaining access to the schools of the kingdom. Returning refugees settled mainly in the urban areas of the island, and so did not add to the number of literate people in the countryside. Nevertheless, their influence was felt in as

■ 'Alexiou 1980: xciii. 4 See Jeannaraki 1876; Kriaris 1969. 5 Kalliataki Merticopoulou 1986: 77-8. Mastering how to read, write and calculate was considered the school’s ultimate objective. See the barely legible letter which the elders of the village of Kanli Kasteli sent to the CCEI on 21 December 1869, in ACCEI/ka 230/134.

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much as they familiarized the rural population with a new model: that of the educated man. This well-established state of affairs was challenged in 1870, when the long-standing problem of financing education by using surplus monastery funds was solved.6 The Christian Central Councils of Elders, seated in the capitals of the five administrative districts into which Crete was divided, undertook the founding of schools in the provinces and invited the children of the Christian population to enrol in them. The first schools opened as the revolution was ending. The island’s inhabitants, natural environment and economy still bore vivid marks of the war’s passage. Crete was being reorganized according to the Organic Law of 1868, a charter of privileges granted by the Porte, which fell short of the Christians’ expectations for either union with Greece or a large degree of self-government. Moreover, the charter did not provide for any structural innovation in the field of education. As in the past, the religious communities of the island were to continue to manage their own educational affairs. However, the implementation of the Organic Law was to have an indirect impact on education, as it led to an expanded administrative bureaucracy and new institutions, which in turn created a certain demand for literate personnel.7 The appeal of the Councils of Elders was addressed to the majority of the Christian population who lived in the thinly populated countryside. Of the 205,000 Christians, only 12,000 resided in the three chief seaport towns of the island. The Muslim population was mainly urban; 30,000 of the 73,000 Muslims of Crete were concentrated in the towns where, of course, education was more easily provided.8 The rural population was now called upon to realize a cause for which it had actively struggled. The feeling that the absence of schools was a privation of some sort had developed among Christians since 1859-60 on account of the success of Catholic proselytism among the illiterate peasants of the island.9 Unassisted by the Ottoman authorities,10 Christians had to draw upon their own meagre resources in order to establish and run schools. In their attempt to overcome this deficiency, they approached the board members of the island’s monasteries. Their demands for subvention gave rise to the so-called monastic question, 6 See Organic Settlement 1871. 7 See Kalliataki Merticopoulou 1989: 109-248. 8 These figures derive from the 1881 census; see Stavrakis 1890: part II, 78-9. For data on the 1870s, see Kalliataki Merticopoulou 1989: 43-52. 9 See Zambetakis 1956. 10Tsirintanis (1950-51: I, 68) mentions that until 1866 the Porte allocated 7,000 Turkish silver coins per month for the needs of the island’s schools, an ‘insufficient sum or virtually alms’. It seems that this was to cover the needs of town schools only, both Christian and Muslim. Cf. below, note 14.

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which marked the years up to 1865. This constituted an intense dispute between the lay element and the higher clergy which revolved mainly around the administration of funds.11 One of the main protagonists of the monastic question, L. Yeoryiadis Loyios, a student of law at the University of Athens, brought to this secular movement the spirit of the Athenian university radicalism of 1862 and the idea of people as claimants, whose demands were now taking the shape not only of political but also of social protest.112 ‘During my stay in Crete,’ Yeoryiadis Loyios remarked, ‘I could not bear to see my ignorant and docile fellow-countrymen being oppressed, double-crossed and deceived by their rulers, but mainly by their primates’.13 Although the monastic question was initially raised by a group of young intellectuals, the extent to which the public became involved should not be ignored. Shortly afterwards, the establishment of schools appeared among the demands addressed to the Sultan by the people of Crete before they resorted to the revolution of 1866.14 There was, therefore, a prehistory to this matter as well as an expressed desire for elementary education. However, the moment their wishes seemed about to be realized, the parents of the future pupils appeared sceptical. They were asked to overcome the difficulties posed by living in a mainly mountainous environment and the scarcity of schools. They were also called upon to overcome the obstacles caused by poverty, the usual companion of peasant families. Nobody forced them to send their children to school. In Greece and in the Ottoman Empire, as in many European states, attendance was not compulsory, except in theory.15 The main question which the Christian peasants had to silently consider related to the value invested in education. Was it worth being deprived for the better part of the year of their children who provided free manual labour? Why should their children become literate since they were most probably destined to remain farmers? Opportunities in the literate professions had not as yet appeared in their 11 On the monastic question, see Tsirintanis 1950-51: I, 68-100. ,2Dimaras 1977a: 482. 13ACCEI/ka 2.4-1/8-9: Yeoryiadis Loyios to A. Papadakis (4 July 1862). 14 The text of the Christians’ address to the Sultan of 26 May 1866 is reproduced in Tsirintanis 1950-51: I, 160-5. After 1869 the Porte earmarked an annual sum of 100,000 Turkish silver coins to be distributed equally among the Christian and Muslim communities for the needs of town schools. Cf. Kalliataki Merticopoulou 1989: 273, 288. 15 In 1870, the CCEI stipulated that attendance was to be compulsory. See Historical Museum of Crete, Iraklion, Archive of D. M., A/D 395, file 10/1: Regulations for primary schools in the district of Iraklion (17 December 1870), 4. The same provision applied in Greece, as of 1834, and the Ottoman Empire, as of 1869. However, no measures were taken in either case to enforce it; see Lefas 1942: 48-53; Nikolaidis 1869: 1299. In England and France primary education became compulsory in 1881.

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society, apart from the traditional ones of priest and cantor. The teaching profession, virtually unknown to them, could not constitute a pole of attraction. On the other hand, conditions were harsh and their needs great. In the final analysis, was the position of the child in the rural family important enough for the parents to upset their established way of life, or even make sacrifices, in exchange for a few qualifications of uncertain value? - all the more so considering that the child in question might very well never reach adulthood. Well aware of the peasants’ sentiments, the CCEI endeavoured to prepare the ground for the reception of the teacher and of literacy. It was Tor God and the fatherland’ that the inhabitants’ love of learning (‘love for the muses’ being the term most often used) had to be rekindled.16 Letters had a godly purpose. The CCEI, therefore, advised the various community elders that teachers were being sent with the paramount and sacred duty of morally educating and intellectually developing their children - of ‘enlightening’ them. In turn, villagers were expected to stand by the teachers and send their children to school regularly, in the belief that in this way they rendered a great service to the fatherland.17 By referring to the established values of religion and the fatherland, the concepts of the individual’s moral and mental evolution acquired a new meaning for the local peasant communities. Moreover, it is worth pointing out that although these notions were widely propagated in Greek society at the time, their interweaving with official nationalist rhetoric occurred only after the humiliating defeat of 1897.18 Throughout the Tourkokratia the clergy had materially and spiritually fostered education, with many priests serving as teachers. Although this relationship had proved unsatisfactory and was increasingly being questioned by secular, as opposed to ecclesiastical, leaders, it had nevertheless facilitated the convergence of religion and education at a basic level. To this extent, the recommendations of the CCEI served to strengthen the belief that letters are heaven-sent and ‘sacred’. 19 At the same time, they introduced a new element in that the villagers came to realize that education moulds the mind and forms the character of children who would thus be able to help their patrida (fatherland) in ways other than fighting. In this manner, the interdependence of school, religion, and fatherland was gradually imprinted in the collective mentality of the inhabitants of rural Crete. 16ACCEI/ka 2-99/36: CCEI to elders and school administrators of Ayios Myron (18 September 1875). 17 Ibid. 2-20/605 (8 December 1869); 2.4-1/483-484 (27 September 1872); 2-111/108 (15 September 1876). 18 See Koulouri 1991: 461-2, 468-9. 19ACCEI/ka 2-30/335 (31 December 1869).

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Furthering the Council’s directions, the teachers themselves took every possible opportunity to expand on the value of letters. The following reasoning of a teacher in 1876 is characteristic: There is nothing more precious than letters and the virtue acquired through them; because letters ennoble the humble, the noble become nobler, the rich more honest and the poor respectable, and the actions of everybody, be they young or old, are led in a more ethical direction.20

For their part, village elders and school administrators expressed whole­ heartedly their gratitude ‘for the major benefaction’ of having their village chosen as the seat of the school in the area,21 and quite often took the initiative of requesting a teacher, as their village ‘thirsts for one’.22 It is interesting to follow, whenever possible, the arguments which the locals themselves put forward in their quest to establish schools. According to the elaborate reasoning of the inhabitants of Ayios Myron in 1869, a reasoning probably influenced by the previous existence of a school in their village, without proper education people cannot advance either politically or religiously. The ignorance which they inherited from their forefathers had made them heavy and languid as far as their mental development was concerned. To avoid bequeathing this legacy to their children, therefore, they requested that the village school be reopened.23 To assist the establishment of schools in the countryside and influence the decisions of the CCEI, villagers constructed appropriate buildings or restored existing ones.24 Moreover, they did not hide their anger if their village was not chosen as the location for a school seat,25 threatening in some instances to start a Fight with the neighbouring village which had been chosen instead.26 At the same time, and in order to create and strengthen bonds of friendship and solidarity between teachers and the local community, they unhesitatingly undertook to contribute towards their teacher’s salary,27 refused to countenance his being transferred to another school,28 and rushed to his defence if he was unjustly accused.29 20 Ibid. 2.4-3/5: P. Tyllianakis (Embaros) to CCEI (5 April 1876). 21 Ibid. 2-93/86-87: School administrators and primates of Embaros to CCEI (11 April 1875). 22 Ibid. 2-29/70: Priests and elders of Tymbaki and Vorri to CCEI (15 November 1869). 23 Ibid. 2-28/425 (9 November 1869). 24 See various reports and letters in ibid. 2-28/425, 2-30/355, 2-31/336, 2-102/234. 25 Ibid. 2-99/1152 (12 October 1875); 2-29/70 (15 November 1869). 26 Ibid. 2-100/104 (29 October 1875). 27 Ibid. 2-92/594 (1 April 1875); 2-93/354 (13 April 1875). 28‘If you send us another [teacher] we will not accept him and we make this clear to you’, in ibid., unclassified: Elders and school administrators of Krousonas to CCEI (19 September 1876). 29 Ibid. 2.4-2/197 (10 June 1874).

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The disposition of the local community towards letters was manifested in various other ways, both direct and indirect. The anxiety displayed by villagers that the post of a transferred teacher might remain vacant for a long period,30 ‘their immense desolation’ when poverty hindered them from buying the necessary textbooks,31 the expectations they entertained of their children and the school,32 their massive presence at school examinations,33 all these instances of collective attitudes betray a particular interest on their part. Perhaps the clearest indication of the rural inhabitants’ desire for education was the interest they showed in providing higher schooling for their children. Thus, not only did the number of pupils sent to town secondary schools increase spectacularly during the first half of the 1870s, but rural communities often succeeded in convincing their teachers to teach the syllabus of the secondary level, contrary to the CCEI’s directives.34 This warm response of the population to the challenge of education impressed the French consul at Chania, the capital of the island, who in 1873 remarked that: There exists among the Greeks, one must admit it to their credit, in the countryside as well as in the towns, such a desire to be educated that one can even now predict the moment when to the advantage of numerical superiority over the Muslims will be added the advantage of intellectual superiority.35

However, this same society, which so desired to be educated, at times behaved in a manner that not only did not favour the spread of education but actually hindered its very existence. The great number of parents who did not send their children to school constitutes the foremost manifestation of this negative attitude.36 Additionally, of those

30 Inter alia, see ibid. 2-98/773 (6 September 1875); 2-66/31 (10 January 1873). 31 Ibid. 2-29/609: Priests and elders of Pombia to CCEI (9 December 1869). 32 Ibid. 2.4-1/453 (21 April 1872). 33 Ibid. 2-109/185-186 (30 August 1876); 2.4-2/211 (20 August 1874). 34 See various reports and letters in ibid. 2-92/39-49, 2-75/639-640, 2-95/140. 35 Archives du Ministere des Affaires Etrang&res, Quai d’Orsay, Paris, Correspondance Politique des Consuls, Turquie, vol. 8 (Chania, 13 October 1873). Ten years later, his British colleague, commenting on the difficulties in enforcing the principle of compulsory education, noted that ‘ fortunately, the desire for instruction [among the Christian inhabitants] is sufficiently strong to command good attendance at classes’; Public Record Office, London, Foreign Office (FO) 78/353: Report by Consul Sanwith on education in Crete (27 January 1883). 36 For example, in the school year 1874-75, of the children of the sixty families living in the village of Stavrakia not even one was sent to school, whereas only nineteen pupils attended school from the village of Ayios Myron, which was home to as many as 300 families; see ACCEI/ka 2.4-2/377-378.

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who did register them, about half withdrew them for long periods in order to use them, occasionally against their will, in real or fictitious employment.37 As the despondent teacher of Anoyia Kainouriou noted in June 1875, villagers sent their children to school only when they could not employ them either in the fields or at home.38 Only very young children were allowed to attend regularly, since they could not work and, indeed, usually hindered their parents’ movements. The rest, including girls, whose education - as a ride - was of no concern to their parents,39 had to provide for their families, for, as the inhabitants of the village of Pitsidia put it in June 1875, ‘we cannot forfeit our labour force for the sake of letters’.40 Not surprisingly, absenteeism constituted a real problem which was identified from the very start. As Andonios Michelidakis, a professor at the Gymnasium in Iraklion, opined in August 1872, ‘the inhabitants’ love for the Muses should be evaluated according to the number of pupils attending classes’.41 Three years later he returned to the issue, noting that the large number of absences constituted the ‘rock on which every pain and effort of even the most indefatigable of teachers runs aground’.42 The evidence at hand strongly suggests that he was not exaggerating. For example, the school teacher at Anoyia Kainouriou and Zaro reported twice, in June 1875 and again in April of the following year, that most of his pupils absented themselves for whole weeks and even months.43 His colleague at the village of Avthou was similarly despondent: of the one hundred registered pupils, forty-five had missed from fifty to a hundred days of classes, thirty from one to two hundred, and three more than two hundred during the two first semesters of the 1874-75 school year.44 In as much as agricultural labour had absolute priority in the eyes of the peasantry,45 during the olive picking and grain harvest periods schools 37 Ibid. 2.4-2/162-163 (30 March 1874); 2.4-3/389 (30 August 1880). 38 Ibid, unclassified (6 June 1875). 39 However, the inhabitants of a few large villages did on occasion endeavour to establish girls’ schools. For example, see ibid. 2-71/108: G. Peristerakis (Krousonas) to CCEI (12 May 1873); 2-95/140: Priests, school administrators and elders of Epano Archanes to CCEI (2 June 1875). 40 Ibid, unclassified: List of pupils and syllabus of the Spinthakion school compiled by E. Limbritis (11 June 1875). 41 Ibid. 2.4-1/451-452 (23 August 1872). 42 Ibid. 2.4-2/377-378 (1 September 1875). 43 Ibid, unclassified (6 June 1875); 2-105/1099 (11 April 1876). 44 Ibid. 2.4-2/204-209 (no date): Report for the first semester of 1874. However, it should be noted that the winter of 1874 was one of the hardest of the century. 45 Ibid. 2-66/179 (13 January 1873). On the employment of children in the agricultural sector, see Kalliataki Merticopoulou 1989: 81-2.

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were practically deserted.46 ‘Parents have withdrawn their children for the supposed labours of the harvest’, reported the school teacher at Voriza in early June 1874. And I sit here like a lonely cuckoo bird, doing nothing. And shamefully, with a trembling hand and sorrowful heart, I write these words to the Honourable Council of Elders... requesting your advice whether I should remain here, lacking everything, even my daily bread, or go wherever you see fit to send me.47

The inclination of parents to keep their offspring away from school was undoubtedly connected to real difficulties which arose primarily from external causes. The needs of the peasant family and the children’s importance as labourers in the fields were the most common arguments put forward, and not without good reason. At the same time, the distance which pupils had to cover from their native village to the school, the bad weather which often cut off villages from one another for weeks, the lack of appropriate clothing, and, to a lesser extent, diseases and the endemic morbidity of certain areas constituted additional obstacles.48 Finally, extreme poverty was also named as a cause for absenteeism; for example, a pupil at the school in the village of Pompia was reported to be absent for thirty days because of ‘lack of bread’.49 Another inhibiting factor was the peasants’ disappointment when their utopian belief that education was a short-term affair - a matter of six months to master the art of writing, as one of them put it - proved to be unfounded.50 Not only did education per se prove to be time-consuming and require systematic effort, but the peasants themselves further undermined it by constantly interrupting their children’s attendance. The resulting differences in their progress created a two-speed education, posing an additional difficulty.51 Naturally, the personality of the teacher played an important role in attracting children to school or driving them away from it. The appointment of a teacher whom the locals disliked, or the transfer of one they liked, influenced attendance directly. His negligence, the physical

46According to the regulations on public education, which were issued by the Porte in 1869 but did not apply to Crete, during the periods of sowing and harvesting pupils were exempt from attending classes. For the text of the regulations, see Nikolaidis 1869: 1298-1347. 47 ACCEI/ka 2-84/114: C. Metaxakis to CCEI (10 June 1874). 48 Selectively see ibid. 2-86/841 (5 October 1874); 2-360/368 (n.d.); 2.4.-2/213 (24 July 1874); 2.4-2/263-266 (9 September 1874). 49 Ibid. 2.4-2/166-171: Report on the school of Pombia Kainouriou compiled by N. Nikoletakis (21 March 1874). 50 Ibid. 2-71/108: Peristerakis to CCEI (12 May 1873). 51 Ibid. 2.4-2/162-163 (30 March 1874).

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punishments he imposed, the ‘excessive floggings’, all alienated parents.52 However, from excessive strictness, or any situation tending to the extreme, comes exaggeration to imaginary proportions: the myth. An ignorant and superstitious society, unaccustomed to logical analysis, eagerly accepted unfounded rumours, such as that of the children of Tymbaki who, in order to avoid school, claimed that their teacher had fed them mustard seeds and beaten them mercilessly.53 Aware of the local communities’ misgivings, the CCEI was sensitive to any allegations with regard to the teachers’ conduct and was willing to intervene if and when such problems occurred:54 Because we are not prepared to tolerate, whatever the reason may be, such conduct from any teacher..., who is called to develop both morally and mentally the youth of the fatherland, and not to convey hatred and coldness to the pupils’ innocent souls and so render their parents even less peace loving and more ready to shun learning.55

Nevertheless, relations between teachers and local communities did occasionally become very strained, leading to accusations and counter­ accusations. Thus, the teacher of Krousonas complained that villagers stole his clothes, which were hanging out to dry in front of his house, and often refused to provide him with basic provisions, such as cheese, milk and bread. As a result, he was forced to procure food from neighbouring villages.56 For their part, the Krousaniotes charged him with totally neglecting his obligations and duties..., abusing and looking down on us every day, calling us barbarians and thick-headed and many other insults... He cannot continue to exercise the profession of teacher because there is no doubt that due to his prejudices something disastrous will happen in our village.57

These tensions, which are congenital in small closed societies, were often compounded when young and inexperienced teachers involved themselves in village politics or were drawn into them by the divided local community. Thus, to a large extent, the ratio of attendance came to reflect the fluctuations of local discord.58 Indeed, contemporary

52 Ibid. 2.4-3/182 (28 August 1880); 2-86/52-53 (n.d.). 53 Ibid. 2-109/185-186 (30 August 1876). 54 For example, see CCEI to elders of Ayios Vassilios, no. 129 (23 February 1872) in ibid, unclassified. 55 Ibid. 2-104/517: CCEI to Limbritis, no. 323 (8 March 1876). 56 Ibid. 2-73/590: (28 July 1873). 57 Ibid. 2-73/589: School administrators and elders of Krousonas to CCEI (12 September 1873). ,8Cf. Kalliataki Merticopoulou 1995: 126.

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observers came to the conclusion that the factional spirit prevalent among parents, pupils and teachers - among groups, that is, which were still in the process of being formed - and the intense rivalry that characterized this level of social life (i.e. the village) accounted for the malfunction of schools. Whatever the case may have been, an increasing number of villagers, who had initially insisted that a school was established in their village and had agreed to contribute towards the teacher’s salary, began to withdraw their children from classes and leave teachers unpaid, thus forcing them to quit their posts. ‘We shall not pay you, and you may stay or leave, as you wish,’ the school administrators of the village of Yeryeri informed their teacher in November 1875.59 Elsewhere, school buildings were either left unfinished or in a state of dilapidation, with caved-in roofs and broken windows and benches.60 In an attempt to reduce the rate of absenteeism, some teachers proposed that the government of the island should be called upon to enforce compulsory attendance.61 However, the CCEI was reluctant to sanction the intervention of an executive authority where the Christian element was poorly represented. Instead, it sought to touch upon the villagers’ sensitivities by maintaining that those parents who withdrew their offspring from school were violating one of their most sacred duties, an imperative duty, imposed by moral and social law: to help their children escape from the darkness of ignorance and become good citizens and patriots.62 Parents should realize that in the long run it was to their benefit that their offspring should be educated, and that they should assist teachers so that the precious time of childhood did not pass away unprofitably. In other words, as the Krousonas teacher put it, the education of young Cretans depended upon the gradual moral and intellectual reformation of their parents.63 In this context, the peasants’ notion of time and its value began to change. Hitherto, time in the Cretan countryside was connected with the beginning and the passing of life, with birth and death. It was related to hope and sorrow. The cycles of nature, the seasons of the year, of human 59ACCEI/ka 2-100/856: A. Apostolidis (Yeryeri) to CCEI (3 November 1875). 60 Selectively see ibid. 2.4-2/245-246 (12 August 1874); 2.4-3/57: (13 April 1876); 2.4-3/ 87 (31 August 1876). 61 Ibid. 2-100/876 (8 November 1875); 2.4-3/389 (30 August 1880). 62 Selectively see ibid. 2-106 (21 March 1876). A year earlier, the Greek Philological Society of Constantinople had accused Cretan villagers of depriving their children of the ‘intellectual bread’ of education, and held them responsible before God and society; see K E F S , 8 (1875), 197. 63 Ibid. 2-71/109: CCEI to Peristerakis, no. 695 (17 June 1873); 2-73/590: Peristerakis to CCEI (28 July 1873).

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age and work in the fields alternated in slow rhythms, in a repetitive, almost static manner. Gradually, however, with the spreading of education, time came to be associated with a new attribute: that of irreversible loss. The beginning and the end of the school year, the beginning and the end of school life, a life drastically different from the one that peasants had hitherto known, a new life with clearer time settings, necessitated the ‘prioritization’ of time as a value and as a measure.64 The quasi­ immobility of time began to be questioned, as now time could either be exploited or wasted. Both the CCEI65 and the teachers66 emphasized its loss, in order to create a feeling of urgency and so fight the tendency towards repeated absenteeism. In the long run, absenteeism, a basic index of the local communities’ receptivity, became the touchstone for the success or failure of the whole educational effort. Angry feelings surfaced in the reports of teachers trying to analyse the matter; an anger directed not against those parents whose real needs forced them to keep their children from school, but against those (the majority, according to the teachers) who were unwilling to accept an innovation the value of which they had not yet realized. This unwillingness emanated from their inertia, from their languor, which proved to be as important an obstacle to schooling as poverty.67 Only ironically did the teachers refer to the peasants’ ‘love of the Muses’. ‘Absenteeism hides ignorance,’ a town teacher remarked,68 while a colleague of his, following events in a very backward area, noted the majority’s disinclination towards learning, the egotism of illiteracy, and the discordance among Greeks.69 In examining the response of the Christian society of rural Crete to the introduction of letters, one observes an automatic reaction: a reaction of the short term, the courte duree, originating, however, from concepts moulded in the long term, the longue durSe. This reaction exhibits the roughness of the first encounter. It lacks the polish attained with the

64 For references to the ‘prioritization’ of time, especially of ‘school time’, in mainland Greece as well as the island of Crete from the 1820s to the 1860s, see Dimaras 1973: I, 12-13; Papadaki 1992: 133; Tsirintanis 1950-51: I, 81. 65 For example, see ACCEI/ka 2-99/959: (6 November 1875). 66 Selectively see ibid, unclassified (16 October 1872); 2.4-3/389 (30 August 1880). By the mid 1870s the local communities themselves had come to realize the importance of the ‘prioritization’ of time; for example, see ibid. 2-86/749: Stefanakis to Aryirakis (5 October 1874), where it is requested that the local teacher is replaced so that ‘our children do not waste their precious time’. 67 Ibid. 2.4-3/30 (8 April 1876). 68 Ibid, unclassified: A. Rafailidis (Iraklion) to CCEI (3 September 1876). 69 Ibid. 2.4-2/211 (20 August 1874).

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passing of time. The peasants welcomed the schools but were not inclined to modify their habits in order to ensure the regular attendance of their children. To a certain extent their response was related to their need to safeguard their livelihood, but it was also a matter of mentality. With their overall attitude, marked as it was by inertia, languor and sometimes indifference, they were expressing a refusal to forsake what was convenient; to alter their way of life and to admit a shortcoming in their ‘egotism of illiteracy’. Inevitably, the changes that they were called upon to make clashed with age-old forces of resistance. To overcome this resistance, not only was a new way of seeing things needed, not only did schooling have to prove its worth, but a timeconsuming procedure had to take place; namely, the transition to another mentality. There was no ideological resistance to education though. The population erected no wall to protect the staggering old values. Obscurantism is totally absent from the scene. Time would show whether literacy constituted a merit or a demerit; it would help people adapt to new ideas and conditions; it would make the signs of the times more legible. The Cretan peasants would watch their children graduate having acquired a theoretical allegiance to the Great Idea, which until then they had served as if by instinct. The projected image of the nation would reach the provinces for the first time through the school network, under the guidance of the CCEIVwhich acted as one of the main bearers of the national idea. Teachers would do their utmost to awaken the love of education, undertaking ‘a spiritual struggle, for which we all fight out of duty, not wanting to be numbered among the traitors of our fatherland’.70 We mentioned above the signs of the times. These signs increased considerably between 1870 and 1880. The generation which had massively emigrated to Greece with the Cretan revolution of 1866 returned to the island educated and brought along the first Christian doctors, lawyers and professors. The graduates of the University of Athens, as representatives in the newly constituted General Assembly, easily prevailed over their uneducated Muslim colleagues; while in the revolution of 1877-78 they superseded the older traditional chiefs. The model of the educated individual established itself. At the same time, the Christians witnessed the efforts of the Porte to promote Turkish letters as a counterbalance to the strengthened Christian political position resulting from the Halepa Pact of 1878. They also witnessed the unwillingness of the island’s Muslims to respond positively to the educational efforts of their leaders and their turning to the mystical movements of the period. The Cretan Christians clearly realized that

70 Ibid. 2.109/188-193: N. Parasyrakis (Iraklion) to CCEI (8 September 1876).

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education could detach them from the Orient and the Ottomans and bring them closer to Greece and the civilized West. Education, therefore, became a ‘tool’ for their emancipation as well as an element that differentiated them from their rulers.71 Although some villagers continued to hinder the registration of their offspring or harbour absenteeism, by the early 1880s the Christian population of rural Crete was on course of ‘understanding the many good and useful things deriving from education alone.’ Requests for new schools multiplied and were pursued with persistence, especially since a substantial increase in the funds allocated to primary education gave the Christians greater freedom to press for the realization of their wishes.72 In 1881, the Christians decreed that a new school could be established wherever there were thirty pupils. Eight years later, and despite the fact that the number of schools was said to be disproportionate to the actual needs of the rural population, the number of pupils was reduced to twenty. Greece itself was to follow some years later.73 The claims of rural Crete, from the more or less inarticulate cries of the 1870s, gradually developed into the organized speech of a public opinion that believed in the right to express its views on an issue which, as time elapsed, became more and more important. In a short period of time school life had created its own past. This period, the interval between the sudden advent of an institution alien to local tradition and its final acceptance, can be seen as an index of the population’s flexibility and adaptability to a new way of life and the ideas associated with it.

References Cited Alexiou, S. 1980 (ed.). ’Αλεξίου, Σ. Βιτσέντσος Κορνάρος: Έρωτόχριτος. Athens. Cretan Gazette 1903. ’Επίσημος ' Εφημερίς τής Κρητικής Πολιτείας. Έστενογραφημένα πρακτικά τής Βουλής. Chania, vol. IV. Dimaras, A. 1973 (ed.). Δημαράς, Ά. Ή μεταρρύθμιση που δέν έγινε. Athens, 2 vols. Dimaras, Κ. 1977a. Δημαράς, Κ. Ή Ιδεολογική ύποδομή του νέου ελληνικού κράτους. Ή κληρονομιά των περασμένων, οΐ νέες πραγματικότητες, oi νέες άνάγκες, in Ιστορία τοϋ έλληνικοϋ έθνους. Athens, vol. XIII: 455-84. Jeannaraki, A. 1876. ’Άσματα κρητικά μετά δίστιχων καί παροιμιών. Kretas volkslieder. Leipzig. 71 Kalliataki Merticopoulou 1986: 84-6. 72 ACCEI/ka 2.4-3/389 (30 August 1880); 2.4-3/349 (13 August 1880); 2.4-3/476 (18 December 1880); 2.4-3/477 (19 September 1880). 73Ploumidis and Fournarakis 1895: 96, 120; Stavrakis 1890: part II, 200; Cretan Gazette 1903: 96, 99-100, 128-9; Lefas 1942: 34-5.

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Kalliataki Merticopoulou, K. 1986. Καλλιατάκη Μερτικοπούλου, K. Ή παιδεία στην Κρήτη, 1868-1878. Μία επισκόπηση, in Πεπραγμένα τοϋ Ε διεθνούς κρητολογικοϋ συνεδρίου. Iraklion, vol. III: 77-86. Kalliataki Merticopoulou, Κ. 1989. Καλλιατάκη Μερτικοπούλου, Κ. Ελληνικός άλυτρωτισμός καί όθωμανικές μεταρρυθμίσεις. Ή περίπτωση της Κρήτης , 1868-1871. Athens. Kalliataki Merticopoulou, Κ. 1995. Καλλιατάκη Μερτικοπούλου, Κ. Επαρχιακοί δάσκαλοι στην Κρήτη τοϋ 1870, in Π επ ρ α γμ ένα τοϋ Ζ' δ ιεθ νο ύ ς κρητολογικοϋ συνεδρίου. Rethymnon, vol. III/l: 121-28. Koulouri, C. 1991. Dimensions ideologiques de Phistoricite en Grece (1834-1914). Les manuels scolaires de Vhistoire et de geographie. Frankfurt a.M. Kriaris, A. 1969. Κριάρης, Ά. Πλήρης συλλογή κρητικών δημωδών άσμάτων ήρωϊκών, Ιστορικών, πολεμικών, τοϋ γάμου, της τάβλας, τοϋ χορού κλπ. κλπ., καί άπασών τών κρητικών παροιμιών, δίστιχων καί αινιγμάτων.

Athens [Chania 1909]. Lefas, C. 1942. Λέψας, X. Ιστορία της έκπαιδεύσεως. Athens. Nikolaidis, D. 1869. Νικολαίδης, Δ. ’Οθωμανικοί κώδηκες, ήτοι συλλογή τών έν ένεργεία νόμων, κανονισμών, διαταγμάτων καί όδηγιών της ’Οθωμανικής Αυτοκρατορίας. Constantinople. Organic Settlement 1871. Διοργανισμός τών έν Κρήτη ιερών μονών σταυροτνηγιακών τε καί ένοριακών. ’Επί τή βάσει όδηγιών τής τοϋ Χριστού Μ εγάλης Εκκλησίας. Constantinople. Papadaki, L. 1992. Παπαδάκη, Λ. Ή άλληλοδνδακτική μέθοδος διδασκαλίας στήν Ελλάδα τοϋ 19ου αίώνα. Athens.

Ploumidis, Υ. and Fournarakis, Κ. 1895. Πλουμίδης, Γ. and Φουρναράκης, Κ. Ειδικοί νόμοι παρά τοϊς Χριστιανοίς καί Όθωμανοϊς της Κρήτης. Chania. Stavrakis, Ν. 1890. Σταυράκης, Ν. Στατιστική τοϋ πληθυσμού τής Κρήτης. Athens. Stone, L. 1969. ‘Literacy and education in England, 1640-1900’. Past and Present, 42: 66-139. Tsirintanis, N. 1950-51. Τσιριντάνης, Ν. Ή πολιτική καί διπλωματική ιστορία τής έν Κρήτη έθν. έπαναστάσεως 1866-1869. Athens, 3 vols. Zambetakis, Ε. 1956. Ζαμπετάκης, Έ. Προσπάθεια προσηλυτισμού τών Κρητών εις τόν καθολικισμόν κατά τον ΙΘ' αίώνα. Krittka Chronika (Athens), 11: 24458.

9 Illusions and Realities at the end of the Nineteenth Century: An Attempt to Construct a Railway Line on the Island of Syros Christos Loukos In 1884, when the first attempts to construct a railway line on Syros took place, the economy and society of this small island in the Cyclades, and particularly of its capital Hermoupolis, were experiencing a severe crisis. I will not refer in detail to the factors that had contributed to the city becoming the major economic centre of the newly-established Greek state, at least until the 1860s; I will only point out that by that time, Hermoupolis, with a population of 20-25,000 inhabitants, was the second largest city in the kingdom after Athens, and that it was there that we can discern for the first time a clearer division of labour and a distinct social categorization.1 However, signs of decay were already visible in the 1870s, and were distinctly more marked by the early 1880s. Obviously there was no single reason for this dramatic change in the fortunes of the city. The expansion of steam navigation, which led to the reorientation of trade routes at the expense of Hermoupolis; the rapid development of Piraeus as the country’s main port; the extension of Greece’s borders in the north; the continuous crises of the Eastern Question; and the establishment of other nation states in the Balkans are just some of the factors which combined to upset and eventually alter the island’s geopolitical and economic importance.12 As a result, Syros experienced a severe crisis in its shipping, its trade and its manufacturing industries, together with demographic stagnation and the migration of its labour force. In order to overcome this crisis, several solutions were proposed and several initiatives taken. (I will refer to these at a later stage.) At the centre of these attempts were the island’s municipal authorities. Exercising 1Agriantoni 1983: 194. 2 Agriantoni 1985: 605-6; Loukos 1985: 591.

From Greek Society in the Making, 1863-1913: Realities, Symbols and Visions, ed. Philip Carabott. Copyright © 1997 by Philip Carabott. Published by Variorum, Ashgate Publishing Ltd, Gower House, Croft Road, Aldershot, Hampshire, GU11 3HR.

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Map of Syros

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at the time real power, they comprised some of the most dynamic and active members of local society, and played a major role in the issue concerning us now, the construction of a railway line. ‘Railway mania’, that fascinated desire of nineteenth-century societies to get hold of this new technological device - ‘the very symbol of man’s triumph through technology’ which was believed to offer access to all the advantages of progress3 - arrived in Greece (as in other countries of the periphery) after a delay of several decades.4 L. Papayiannakis (1982) has examined the geopolitical, financial and social dimensions of the railway question in Greece at the turn of the century in the context of the policies of Charilaos Trikoupis and his successors aimed at expanding the country’s rail network.5 To date, however, little attention has been paid to the railway venture on Syros, initiated in August 1884 when a general assembly of the citizens of Hermoupolis took the decision to construct a railway line which would connect the city with Posidonia (Dellagracia), a small seaside resort on the other side of the island, where rich Hermoupolitans had their villas and used to spend their holidays. It was intended that the main line should follow the already existing road, and that together with a deviation to another holiday resort, Chroussa, it would run over a distance of 12 to 14 kilometres (see map). The assembly set up a committee of three members, who, after inviting the views of specialized engineers from Athens and Piraeus, submitted a report to the town council in which they supported the whole enterprise. They considered that general consensus on an issue which was identified with the notion of progress itself was self-evident, and in their analytical prediction of the number of future passengers they attempted to present the enterprise as highly profitable. They only wanted to make sure that the council would guarantee interest at 6% on the total cost, so that investors would have additional motivation for taking part in an enterprise with such a limited turnover.6

3 See Hobsbawm 1962: 63-5 and 1980: 55-7, 70-4; Robbins 1965. 4 For Greek responses to the novelty of the railway, see Kteniadis 1936: 26, 34. 5 The issue of connecting Greece by rail to Ottoman Macedonia and the central Balkans, and the political and national complications arising therefrom, are examined in Gounaris 1993. 6 General State Archives, Archives of the District of the Cyclades (ADC), Hermoupolis, Archives of the Community of Hermoupolis (ACH), file T/Municipal Works/74: The committee for the construction of the steam-railway to the mayor of Hermoupolis and the town council (10 November 1884). Also see Anayennisis, nos 181, 182 (28 November and 8 December 1884). Xografakis (1886: 36-7) maintains that around 1875 a parliamentary candidate had proposed the construction of a railway line on the island. His suggestion was not favourably received - indeed it was considered to be insane - and he failed to be elected.

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For its part, the council appointed a five-man committee of its own members to examine the proposal of the citizens’ committee.7 After consultation with one Greek and one foreign engineer, it supported the plan by a majority of four to one on the grounds that it would be beneficial to the island’s agriculture, trade and industry. Moreover, it was pointed out that the railway would contribute to the entertainment of both the inhabitants of Syros and those who visited the island during the summer months.8 Only councillor N. Papadam, the owner of a tannery, was against the proposal.9 Although he unequivocally acknowledged the progressive nature of the enterprise, he argued that the cost of constructing the line would be much higher than the sum his colleagues in the committee had suggested, while the expected revenue from the transport of goods and passengers from manufacturing workshops on the outskirts of the town to Hermoupolis and vice versa was ‘on the whole illusory’. Finally, Papadam suggested that the council should guarantee only 4% interest.10* After protracted deliberations, in February 1885 the council accepted by a majority the committee’s proposal and agreed to guarantee 6% interest on a maximum capital of 400,000 drachmas to the individual, group or company which would undertake the construction of the line. The relevant decree provided that the council would be represented in all stages of the construction process and that, in the event of the venture being a success, half of the profits would go to the municipality.11 Following the approval of its decision by the prefect of the Cyclades, the council charged a committee of lawyers to draft the articles of the proposed contract.12 In the meantime, S. Symonidis, the Athens representative of the French company of Baron Moser Dulfus, had agreed to undertake the enterprise in accordance to the council’s terms with one important proviso: that his investors would enjoy the exclusive operation of the line for a period of fifty years.13 Similar proposals were put forward 7ACH, Proceedings of the Town Council (PTC), no. 50. 8ACH, T/Municipal Works/74: The majority of the committee to the town council (23 November 1884). 9 Together with two other wealthy Hermoupolitans, in 1882 Papadam had purchased bonds in the Piraeus-Athens-Patras railway (see Papayiannakis 1982: 98). In 1901, he won sixty thousand golden francs, a huge sum at the time, in the bond-lottery of the Eastern Rumelia railways; see Elios (22 April 1901). 10ACH, T/Municipal Works/74: Papadam to the town council (30 November 1884). Some reservations about the project were also expressed in the editorials of Patris (29 September 1884) and Anayennisis (2 October 1884), two of the island’s most prestigious newspapers. n ACH, PTC, no. 63 (14 February 1885) and decree no. 142 of the same date. See also Patris (23 February 1885). 12 ACH, T/Municipal Works/74: The prefect of the Cyclades to the mayor of Hermoupolis (2 March 1885); ibid.: The committee for the construction of the railway to the mayor of Hermoupolis (22 April 1885). 13 See the pertinent correspondence in ibid.

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by the engineer A. Kambanakis and the contractor A. Nazos, and these also fell through.14 In a last minute attempt to salvage the project, the council sought to raise the necessary capital by issuing shares in a municipal loan, but to no avail.15 In the event, and after less costly proposals for the construction of a tramway were deemed not ambitious enough,16 this first attempt to introduce ‘the very symbol of man’s triumph’ in Syros came to an end. The issue was reintroduced in 1889-90, following the proposal of Amvrosios Kapparis, a local moneylender, who represented several other potential investors. Kapparis offered to compensate landowners for the expropriation of their property, open up and improve roads where necessary, provide the requisite trucks, carriages and engines, and build stations, a coffee shop, a hotel and a bandstand at the end of the line between Hermoupolis and Posidonia for a total cost of 477,125 drachmas. He requested that the municipality guarantee interest at 6% and a 0.5% sinking fund on the capital, which should not exceed 500,000 drachmas. The company to be set up would enjoy the exclusive operation of the line for a period of fifty years. Finally, the municipality would be entitled to receive three-fifths of the annual net income (i.e. after expenses and the cost of servicing the interest and the sinking fund had been deducted).17 The town councillors who supported Kapparis’ proposal tried to convince their colleagues that receipts from the line would exceed the expenses incurred for its annual maintenance and would also cover the interest and the sinking fund. Therefore, in case of deficit, the municipality would not find itself having to pay part or all of the amount, estimated at 30,000 drachmas per year, required for the interest and the sinking fund of the capital sum spent on construction. Most of the receipts would be generated from use of the line by the inhabitants of Hermoupolis who lived in the countryside, estimated at a little over 500, or from those who would use the line to go to the countryside for fairs, holidays, hunting or entertainment. There would be comparatively less revenue generated by transporting peasants, workers, and agricultural and industrial products.18 14 Ibid. The construction cost was estimated at 558,000 drachmas. 15 See ibid.: The mayor of Hermoupolis to the prefect of the Cyclades (21 April 1885); Pattis (13 April, 4 May and 21 September 1885). 16 See the pertinent correspondence in ibid. 17 Ibid.: Kapparis to the mayor of Hermoupolis (21 September 1889). See also ACH, PTC, no. 89. For Kapparis, see his obituary in Apollon (11 December 1902). 18 Ibid. The following estimates of annual receipts were projected: 27,000 drachmas from transporting passengers to the countryside during the 72 holidays of the calendar year; 4,000 drachmas from the Hermoupolitans’ outings to Posidonia to enjoy full-moon nights; 7,000 and 2,500 drachmas from carrying peasants and workers, and agricultural and industrial products respectively.

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It is obvious that the main argument for the construction of the railway line was that it would improve the social amenities in Syros. On the other hand, the long-term beneficial consequences that the line would have for the development of agriculture, industry and trade were accorded secondary importance in the debates of the town council as well as in other available sources. The limited interest of Hermoupolitans in the island’s agriculture can be explained by the fact that most land was owned and worked by the Catholic inhabitants of Syros, who constituted an independent, separate community, and whose relations with their Orthodox counterparts during the nineteenth century were not generally characterized as harmonious.19 As for the issue of trade with other regions, it seems that the argument that a rail connection between Hermoupolis and Posidonia would facilitate the exchange of goods with the western Cyclades was not seriously considered at the time. It was only put forward in 1901, when it was also pointed out that the railway would release manual labour engaged in the transport of goods by mules, thus doubling agricultural production and increasing stock-breeding.20 Finally, no reference was ever made to the hiring of local workers by the line’s contractor as a means of dealing with the problem of unemployment on the island. Despite certain objections, most of which were related to the issue of the guarantee,21 the town council finally agreed unanimously that receipts would be high enough, and proceeded to prepare the relevant document.22 In successive meetings from September to December 1889 the council discussed in detail all thirty-nine articles of the proposed contract. Kapparis himself was asked to be present at two of the meetings in order to give additional explanations. Both the discussions and the final contract reveal the town councillors’ attempts to control all the activities of the entrepreneur (construction and maintenance of the line, receipts and expenses, matters of personnel, etc.). Strict fines were introduced in case any part of the contract was broken. The entrepreneur was threatened with the loss of his guarantee of 20,000 drachmas if he did not start work on time or failed to complete it within ten months.23 The gauge of the track was fixed at 0.6 metres, and the Decauville system was chosen, probably because the eponymous French engineering company had been 19 See Loukos 1994. 20 Hermoupolitis 1901: 5-6, 12-13. 21 For example, councillor D. Vokotopoulos suggested that the municipality should provide the sum of 10,000 drachmas annually towards the construction of the line; ACH, PTC, no. 98. 22 Ibid.: no. 89. 23 Ibid.: nos 91, 92, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98. Also see Elios (1 October, 12 November and 5 December 1889).

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distinguished at the World Exhibition in Paris a few months earlier for constructing elegant and economical narrow gauge trains.24 While these meetings and discussions were taking place, a representative of Woodhouse & Rawson of London, at the suggestion of Messrs Rhodokanakis, also of London, proposed the construction of a steam or electric railway for £16,000.25 In order to clarify the issue, the council asked for the opinion of a French engineer and of the engineer directing public works in the Cyclades. Both supported steam, since in their opinion electric railways were still at an experimental stage, while the terrain of Syros was distinctly rough. In the event, eleven councillors voted for steam, one for electricity, and one abstained.26 Despite the almost unanimous decision of the council, Mayor K. Tsiropinas, a tannery owner, requested the prefect to postpone approving the contract since the municipality was experiencing a severe economic crisis and had to borrow money in order to undertake municipal works of primary importance. The mayor also pointed out that in the event of the project not being profitable, the municipality would have to pay an interest and sinking fund of 35,000 drachmas for fifty years. From his point of view, the whole enterprise was aimed at the entertainment of the inhabitants and there would be little benefit for agriculture and none for industry.27 However, in the face of the council’s insistence, Tsiropinas reluctantly agreed that the process should be accelerated in order for the government to approve the contract.28 Consequently, the railway of Syros was recognized by law as a ‘work of public need’. The municipality was permitted to appoint the contractor for the construction, who would enjoy exclusive operation of the line (gauge: 0.75 metres) for a period of fifty years, and to guarantee an interest of up to 5% and at least a 1% sinking fund on a capital of no more than 500,000 drachmas.29 To date I have not been able to locate any concrete, factual evidence to explain why the contract between Kapparis and the municipality was never signed. Two other similar proposals, one by a British bank in

24 Ibid.: no. 91; ACH, T/Municipal Works/74: Report of the engineer directing public works in the Cyclades (2 and 14 September 1889); Elios (22 September 1889). 25 Ibid.: no. 94; ACH, T/Municipal Works/74: M.-H. Smith to the mayor of Hermoupolis (10 and 16 October 1889). 26 Ibid.: nos 95, 96, 97. See also the reports of the Greek and French engineers in ACH, T/Municipal Works/74 (19 November 1889) and ACH, T/Municipal Works/57/1 (18 November 1889) respectively. 27 ACH, T/Municipal Works/74: Tsiropinas to the prefect of the Cyclades (25 January and 6 March 1890). 28 Ibid.: 'Tsiropinas to the prefect of the Cyclades (26 April 1890). 29 Efimens tis Kyverniseos (9 June 1890); draft copy in ibid.

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189830 and another by the Greek ‘Company of Public and Municipal Works’ ten years later,31 also failed to materialize. Overall, however, local interest in the issue did not cease, despite the numerous false starts. For example, after all efforts to build a dry dock seemed to have failed, the newspaper Hermoupolitis (1901) devoted a whole series of articles to the question of the railway, while in 1908 the then Mayor Papadam, who twenty-four years earlier had expressed his reservations, emphatically argued that the railway would help Syros become an entertainment ‘heaven’ for foreigners.32 Hitherto I have attempted to show how local society, represented by the members of the town council, responded to the question of the railway. It is obvious that their stance does not constitute a unique phenomenon: corresponding attitudes are to be found to similar attempts (whether these were completed, drafted or simply considered) throughout Europe at the time.33 It would be especially interesting to compare the railway venture in Syros with similar small-scale projects in mainland Greece, for example the Pyrgos-Katakolon line in the western Peloponnese, or with enterprises where the social amenity dimension was equally strong, such as the Volos-Lechonia line in Pilion.34 However, the question that has to be addressed, particularly in the light of the successful realization of similar enterprises elsewhere in Greece at the time, is why all efforts to construct a railway line in Syros failed. That the island was in crisis is too simple an answer to satisfy the complicated nature of the question. Let us examine the issue more closely. When the first attempt was undertaken in 1884-85, D. Vafiadakis, probably the richest person in Hermoupolis, was mayor of the town. His economic status and his close relations with Prime Minister Trikoupis and the capitalist Andreas Syngros, among others, seemed to create an encouraging environment for planning large-scale enterprises. However, the drastic reduction (by at least half) of the municipality’s income from customs duties due to the economic crisis had created a deficit of almost 200,000 30ACH, T/Port of Syros/2/2: K. Saltambasis (representing the director of the Commercial Bank of London) to the mayor of Hermoupolis (12 December 1898). For the general optimism of local society at the time, see Elios (14 September 1898). In 1901 the majority of the town refused to guarantee the annual sum of 30,000 drachmas for the construction of a line; see Apollon (25 October 1901). 31 See the relevant correspondence of July-August 1908 in ACH, T/Municipal Works/152/ 4. 32 Ibid. 33 See Robbins 1965: 43-56; Andrews 1993; Kellett 1993. 34 See Papayiannakis 1982: 95-7, 117-8. For a plan, never realized, to construct a railway line between Souda and Chania on the island of Crete, see Chatzidakis 1969: 95-6. For the use of the railway in excavations in Samos, see Kalpaxis 1990: 66-7.

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drachmas in its budget for 1885.35 This threatened the municipality’s economic stability, and, as a result, potential holders of shares in municipal loans were somewhat reluctant to commit themselves. Even the town councillors who had voted for the loans would not risk buying shares.36 It was only after Vafiadakis’ bold move of buying 100 out of the total of 600 shares that the loan was covered and the municipality was able to face its debts.37 At the same time, political events adversely influenced economic conditions. In the late summer of 1885 Bulgaria annexed Eastern Rumelia, whereupon the new government of Theodoros Diliyiannis ordered a general mobilization. The sense of insecurity regarding the political situation and the obligatory circulation of paper money had a very negative impact on trade, since business was in decline and foreign currency was overvalued.38 As a result the committee which had so actively prepared the contract for the railway was unable to find fundholders to undertake the enterprise or to convince the inhabitants of Hermoupolis to buy shares in a municipal loan to provide the necessary funds, for, inter alia, they were preoccupied with raising funds for the families of those who had been mobilized.39 In the second major attempt, in 1889-90, the presence from the start of the entrepreneur Kapparis, who, representing other investors, was willing to accept almost all terms agreed upon by the council, made possible the acceleration of the whole process, the preparation of the final contract and its approval by the government. However, as we have seen, Mayor Tsiropinas himself wanted to postpone the project and had doubts about its profitability. The economic situation was again discouraging: the municipality’s receipts from customs duties were drastically reduced40 while, on the other hand, the government’s fiscal policy was taking away important revenue from local communities.41 Moreover, the Greek Steam Navigation Company, the biggest enterprise on the island, was facing severe difficulties, while several economic activities were transferred from Hermoupolis to Piraeus.42 At the same time, people became more and more impoverished due to unemployment, and according to contemporary observers even lacked the means to buy their daily bread. The local press referred repeatedly to this issue, giving prominence to the case of a 35 ACH, PTC, nos 61, 66. 36 Pains (16 and 23 November 1885). 37 Ibid. (30 November 1885). 38 Ibid. (21 September, 26 October and 16 November 1885). 39 Ibid. (2 November 1885). 40 Elios (10 September 1889 and 11 September 1893). 41 Ibid. (22 November 1889). 42 Ibid. (9 August 1890 and 18 October 1892). Also see Loukos 1985: 595.

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carpenter who had stolen a loaf of bread from a bakery in order to feed his family.43 Furthermore, the strict terms imposed by the town council on the contractor and the reduction of the interest and sinking fund guaranteed by the municipality to 6% (instead of 6.5%), together with the refusal to approve the work on a per kilometre basis, seems to have discouraged the investors represented by Kapparis.44 In any case, national developments, particularly the inability of Trikoupis to cover interest payments on foreign loans taken out throughout the 1880s, as a result of which he was forced to declare bankruptcy in 1893, were bound to have a negative impact on the project. The proposed railway in Syros had the defect that it did not connect two towns or even a town and a busy port, nor a fertile hinterland to a town or a harbour; on the contrary, the line would end at a rather small holiday resort. As a result, the enterprise was highly risky for most investors, who would consequently only embark on it if the terms were favourable. However, the municipality of Hermoupolis was not sufficiently accommodating on this matter.45 As a consequence, all those interested in promoting the railway had to rely on the participation of local fundholders. The latter were asked to undertake the responsibility and with their own funds save a city that was in decline. But they were accused of doing nothing for the development of the island, preferring to make profits by lending their money instead of investing in projects such as the railway.46 As a local newspaper characteristically put it: If the wealthy but indifferent Hermoupolitans were to spend a small amount of their money, they could transform the whole city. There are over one hundred [of them who are] exceedingly rich. The very same people who spend £300,000 on building steamships can afford to pay a mere £25,000 for the construction of the railway line. And in this way they will benefit Syros as well as themselves, because their villas and their estates will be worth more... We must act if we want to stop this daily worsening decline.47

According to contemporary sources, the value of banknotes and other stocks owned by the inhabitants of Hermoupolis in the early 1880s was 43 Elios (12 November, 31 December 1889 and 10 January 1890). 44 In an undated memorandum submitted to the town council, Kapparis demanded a number of changes in articles 26, 27 and 37 of the proposed contract which, it seems, were not accepted. He specifically insisted that the entrepreneur should undertake the construction at a price of 38,170 drachmas per kilometre. See ACH, T/Municipal Works/74. 45 Compare, for example, the terms included in the contracts signed for the construction of railway lines elsewhere in Greece in Papayiannakis 1982: 94ff. See also the views of the member of parliament O. Pylarinos (1873: 4-5) on the necessity of making concessions to foreign contractors if Greece wanted to possess a well-built and efficient railway network. 46 Patris (8 December 1884). 47 Hermoupolitis 1901: 7, 10.

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35.000. 000 drachmas, while their overall assets were estimated at 140.000. 000 drachmas.48 When the merchant and banker Stamatios K. Proios died in 1884, his fortune was estimated at several million drachmas. In his will, he left most of it to charitable institutions. For instance, the town hospital received shares in the National Bank of Greece valued at 600,000 drachmas - one hundred thousand more than the total cost of constructing the railway line.49 At the same time, and in contrast to those who mainly used their money to buy stocks or property or to guarantee themselves a posthumous mention, two major initiatives actually were undertaken to overcome the crisis. The First was an attempt to build a dry dock in Hermoupolis. The initiative was directly linked to the naval and industrial tradition of the town, and its realization would equip the port to deal with the new requirements related to the expansion of steam navigation. It was also of vital importance for Hermoupolis that Piraeus should not take the lead in this crucial field. To this end the local community, led by the municipal authorities, was mobilized. Despite a certain amount of resistance from opposing interests, the members of parliament for Syros finally managed to persuade their colleagues to approve the necessary laws in 1898 and 1901 to permit the building of the dry dock. However, no entrepreneur expressed an interest, although some had done so in the case of Piraeus. The cost was estimated at 2,500,000 drachmas, and the municipality was willing to guarantee only 5% interest on the capital required.50 It was proposed that the municipality should take out a loan with the National Bank and sell the project by auction, but such suggestions were not followed up. The most beneficial schemes in the field of navigation were in fact related to the establishment of stock companies and the purchase of big sailing boats or steamers, which proved a productive investment for capital hitherto invested in bank bonds.51 T he second initiative was related to the textile industry. The Ladopoulos family provides a revealing example. The founder of the firm, Athanasios, an immigrant from Macedonia, came to Hermoupolis in 1823 and began a career as a merchant. He and his son Elpidoforos enlarged their business interests, accumulated capital, and extended their operations to the banking sector. In the 1890s, a crucial decade for Hermoupolis, Elpidoforos’ sons made a qualitative leap forward by establishing the

48Charatzis 1882: 8. 49 ADC, Secret Wills of the Year 1884. Also see Panopi (17 and 20 November 1884). 50 See the pertinent correspondence and discussions on the issue in ACH, I/Port of Syros/ 2. ^ Elios (10 April 1904); Hermoupolitis 1901: 8. Also see the proposals of Charatzis

(1882).

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largest textile industry on the island. Together with a group of other businessmen who had become interested in textiles, they managed to put an end to the emigration of the local labour force, gain access to the expanding textile market in the country, and provide a breathing space for the local economy for almost three decades.52 In contrast to these attempts to invigorate vital sectors of the city’s economy, sectors so closely connected with its very existence, the construction of a railway line might appear a useless, extravagant and simply luxurious project. It would be anachronistic, however, to judge the whole enterprise from our contemporary point of view. For most citizens of Hermoupolis the railway was a necessity. Its construction would demonstrate that the city was following the ‘irresistible progress of the civilized countries’, especially in an innovation which was known to radically promote social and economic relations. A negative stance towards the construction of the railway line would have been seen as a step towards isolation.53 Even those who originally had doubts about the success of the project at this difficult period, for example N. Papadam, admitted that it was a ‘progressive’ and useful enterprise. Moreover, the construction of the line would be proof of the city’s status. It would constitute an action of self-affirmation, as had been the case in the 1870s and 1880s when the Hermoupolitans had borrowed money in a period of crisis in order to build the largest town hall in Greece.54 A common feature of the relevant debates, the importance attributed to the pleasure and entertainment of the citizens, which the railway would both ensure and improve, follows the same logic of self-affirmation as the need for Hermoupolis to maintain the functions of a big city. The railway would revitalize the villas of the wealthy citizens in the countryside, it would keep them on the island during their holidays, and it would attract visitors from Athens, Piraeus, Cairo and Alexandria. Syros, it was emphatically argued, would become a centre of entertainment, a place where rich people would spend their holidays because it offered more opportunities than Faliron or any other seaside resort in Greece.55

52 For the factory of the Ladopoulos family, see its archives in ADC. For the textile and other industries of Syros, see FJios (10 April 1904); Karellas 1903; Agriantoni 1985: 607; Agriantoni 1986; Loukos 1985: 596. 53 See note 6. Also see Anayennisis (15 December 1884). Papayiannakis (1982: 45) argues that the railway was associated with modernization and ‘the dynamic ideology which it radiates will penetrate spaces where only dreams can function’. 54 See Loukos 1985: 597. 55 Hermoupolitis 1901: passim . In an article on the numerous theatres and cafi-chantants of the island in Patris (25 May 1885), it was maintained that ‘with the simple addition of the railway, Syros would be transformed into little Paris’.

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However, it would be similarly anachronistic to assume that the Hermoupolitans were attempting to invest in tourism. Rather, they tried to invest in certain social groups whose absence would deprive the city of a feature crucial to preserving its status. As its labour force headed for Piraeus or other developing centres, Hermoupolis was bleeding. But Hermoupolis was also bleeding when, seeking refuge from provincial monotony, from the insularity of its social life and the lack of opportunities, members of its leading social groups took up permanent residence in Athens. It was in order to combat this monotony that the municipality hastened to cover the expenses of Italian companies so that its citizens could enjoy the quality entertainment of opera and melo­ drama.56 Contemporary sources refer to the railway as ‘a most desirable enterprise’, and they make it evident that all citizens were looking forward to it enthusiastically and that everybody was interested in it.57 There is, however, no concrete evidence on the reaction of peasants, Catholic in the majority, who would be given the opportunity to transport their agricultural products to the port faster;58 or of the workers who would be able to travel to their jobs by train; or of the fanatic hunters of Hermoupolis who would reach their destinations on time. In the event, the railway never ran through the island. The inhabitants of Syros were not disturbed in their sleep by the roaring engine or blasts of the whistle. Children did not run to stare at this new technological miracle. The train remained a pleasant dream - or maybe a nightmare for the fifteen or twenty carriage owners who used to carry the wealthy Hermoupolitans to their country-houses, and had felt threatened by the railway.59 Perhaps they were the only ones to breathe a sigh of relief when the whole project failed.

References Cited Agriantoni, C. 1983. Άγριαντώνη, X. Ή θέση τής Έρμούπολης στην έλληνική οικονομία τον 19ο αιώνα: οί παγίδες των πηγών. Τα Istorika (Athens), 1: 193-9. 56Loukos 1985: 597. For an overview of the problems facing the island at the turn of the century, see Franghidis 1975: 513-26. 57 Inter alia, see Patris (13 April and 21 September 1885); Elios (12 November and 5 December 1889); ACH, PTC, no. 89. Some reservations about the general responses of the inhabitants are expressed in Hermoupolitis 1901: 7. 58 The annual receipts from the export of such products was estimated at 1.5 million drachmas; see Hermoupolitis 1901: 4. 59Patris (8 June 1885).

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Agriantoni, C. 1985. Άγριαντώνη, X. 01 μετασχηματισμοί τής βιομηχανικής δομής τής Έ ρμούπολης τόν 19ο αιώνα, in Π ρακτικά τοϋ διεθνούς συμποσίου Ιστορίας: Νεοελληνική Πόλη. ’Οθωμανικές κληρονομιές καί έλληνικό κράτος. Athens, vol. II: 603-8. Agriantoni, C. 1986. Άγριαντώνη, X. Οι άπαρχές της έκβιομηχάνισης στήν Ελλάδα τόν 19ο αιώνα. Athens.

Andrews, F. 1993. The Effect of the Coming of the Railway on the Towns and Villages of East Kent, 1841-1914. Unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Kent. (See Urban History, 22/2 (1995): 270.) Charatzis, D. 1882. Χαρατζής, A. Ή Έ ρμούπολις διά τής Έρμουπόλεως. Hermoupolis. Chatzidakis, I. 1969. Χατζηδάκης, Ί. Περιήγησις εις Κρήτην. Athens [Hermoupolis 1881]. Franghidis, A. 1975. Φραγκίδης, Ά. Ιστορία της νήσου Σύρου. Athens. Gounaris, Β. 1993. Steam Over Macedonia, 1870-1912. Socioeconomic Change and the Railway Factor. New York. Hermoupolitis 1901. [Ν.Λ.] Σιδηρόδρομος Σύρου-Ποσειδωνίας. 'Η Διεύθννσις τοϋ ‘ Ερμουπολίτου άσμένως άναδημοσιεύει τά περί τοϋ Σιδηροδρόμου ΣύρουΠοσειδωνίας δημοσιευθέντα άρθρα της, τή αίτήσει πολλών συμπολιτών μας.

Syros. Hobsbawm, Ε. 1962. The Age of Revolution, 1789-1848. London. Hobsbawm, E. 1980. The Age of Capital, 1848-1875. London. Kalpaxis, T. 1990. Καλπαξής, Θ. ’Αρχαιολογία καί πολιτική. Rethymnon, vol. I. Karellas, D. 1903. [Καρέλλας, Δ.] Γνώμαι βιομηχάνου τής πόλεώς μας περί βιομηχανίας εν γένει και τής δι’αύτής άσφαλοϋς προόδου και ακμής τής Σύρου, in A. Foustanos (ed.), Ήμερολόγιον τής Σύρου 1903. Syros, 41-8. Kellett, J. 1993. ‘The railway as an agent of internal change in Victorian cities’, in R. Morris and R. Rodger (eds), The Victonan City. London, 181-208. Kteniadis, N. 1936. Κτενιάδης, N. Oi πρώτοι ελληνικοί σιδηρόδρομοι. Πρωτότυπος ιστορική μελέτη. Athens. Loukos, C. 1985. Λοϋκος, X. Μία ελληνική πόλη σε παρακμή: ή Έρμούπολη τό δεύτερο μισό τοϋ 19ου αιώνα, in Πρακτικά τοϋ διεθνούς συμποσίου ιστορίας: Ν εοελληνική Πόλη. ’Οθωμανικές κληρονομιές καί έλληνικό κράτος. Athens, vol. II: 591-601.

Loukos, C. 1994. ‘La petite ville face a la grande: le cas d’Ano Syra au XIXe siecle’. Ariadne (Rethymnon), 7: 151-64. Papayiannakis, L. 1982. Παπαγιαννάκης, Λ. Ό ί ελληνικοί σιδηρόδρομοι. Athens. Pylarinos, Ο. 1873. Άγόρευσις Όθωνος Πυλαρινοϋ βουλευτοϋ Πάλλης έπί τής συμβάσεως περί κατασκευής σιδηροδρόμου άπό Π όρτο-Ράφτι μέχρι Βονίτσης. [Athens].

Robbins, Μ. 1965. The Railway Age. Penguin Books. Zografakis, N. 1886. Ζωγραφάκης, N. Περί κατασκευής έν Σύρω τροχιοδρόμων, in Ν. Zografakis, Ή Έρμούπολις υπό έμπορικήν, βιομηχανικήν, ναυτιλιακήν έποψιν. Athens, 36-8.

10 Voluntary Associations and N ew Forms of Sociability: Greek Sports Clubs at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century1 Christina Koulouri In the 1870s voluntary associations with educational or philanthropic aims seemed to constitute a prominent feature of Greek society. A conference held in Athens in 1879 and attended by sixty-three Greek associations from both the kingdom and the Ottoman Empire attests to the emergence of this new phenomenon of collective activity. Moreover, the term syllogomania (association-mania), already in use by 1892,1 2 implies the diffusion of ‘associationism’ just before the end of the nineteenth century. In fact, after the foundation of the Ellinikos Filoloyikos Syllogos Konstantinoupoleos (Greek Philological Society of Constantinople) in 1861, a considerable number of associations under different names were established. Their principle aim was to disseminate Greek education in the Greek centres of the Ottoman Empire. At the same time, they assumed a wider ‘national’ role in the context of the Megali Idea (Great Idea) and irredentism. Despite the emphasis placed on the associations’ educational and national aims, their activities varied as much as the social background of their founding members. Local and religious organizations, clubs of alumni, musical and dramatic societies, sports or other clubs were some of the representative types of Greek voluntary associations both within and beyond the frontiers of the kingdom. The emergence and proliferation of voluntary associations may stand as a measure of the social transformations that occurred in Greece after 1870. In this essay I have chosen to concentrate on the new forms of 1 This essay forms part of a research project on ‘Greek sports clubs, 1875-1922’, funded by the Historical Archive of Greek Youth of the General Secretariat of Youth. The findings will be presented in a book published in Greek. 2 Koumanoudis 1980: 943.

From Greek Society in the Making, 1863-1913: Realities, Symbols and Visions, ed. Philip Carabott. Copyright © 1997 by Philip Carabott. Published by Variorum, Ashgate Publishing Ltd, Gower House, Croft Road, Aldershot, Hampshire, GU11 3HR.

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sociability which developed in the context of these associations in parallel with the growth of a middle class and the gradual process of urbanization. Sports clubs comprise particularly fruitful subjects for analysis, since sports belong both to the modern notion of leisure which emerged during the late nineteenth century, and to the collective identity symbols of the rising bourgeoisie, symbols which marked a novel lifestyle and an equally new model of spending free time. Apart from two shooting clubs in Athens and Corfu, which can hardly be defined as athletic associations, the first Greek sports clubs were set up around the mid-1870s. In 1873 the gymnastic club Miloti was founded in Alexandria, followed by Ermis in Constantinople in 1877 and by the Ellinikos Gymnastikos Syllogos (Greek Gymnastic Club) in Athens a year later.3 At that time, as the French traveller Joseph Reinach informs us, only the attachSs d'ambassade practised sports in the Greek capital.4 However, within the confines of the Greek state, to which I shall limit my analysis, the period from 1870, when the second Zappan Olympiads were held,5 to 1899, when Law MMDCCXXI ‘Concerning gymnastics and gymnastic and athletic games’ was promulgated,6 witnessed growing social approval of physical recreation, the establishment of numerous sports clubs, the foundation of training schools for gymnastics teachers, the building of gymnasiums, and the organization of various athletic games. Due to the particular importance of ancient Greece in the intellectual life of the Greek state, the development of athleticism was connected with classical athletic tradition more closely than in other European countries. The sports that were practised (mainly track and field) and the character of most of the first sports clubs were therefore influenced by that tradition. In turn, during the first decades after the emergence of the Greek state the individuals who supported the development of athletics were affiliated to educational institutions. Consequently, the value attached to physical exercise sprang from pedagogic roots and thus took the form of gymnastics rather than sports. The first sports clubs set up in the 1870s constituted only brief and fragmented attempts at organized physical recreation. ‘The majority of these existed only nominally’, displayed no great activity, and were 3 Manitakis 1962: 18, 20. 4 Reinach 1879: 210. ‘’ Named after the rich Greek merchant and benefactor Evangelis Zappas, who in his will left his immense fortune for the revival of the ancient Olympics, the Zappan Olympiads were held in 1859, 1870, 1875 and 1888. They were mainly agri-industrial and cultural contests, with a few athletic events - albeit marginal and badly organized. During the second Olympiads the question of athleticism and gymnastics in Greece was for the first time seriously discussed by the organizing committee; see Manitakis 1962: 13-25. 6 See Antoniou 1987: 396—410.

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dissolved after a few years or even months.7 The publication of their statutes in the Efimeris tis Kyverniseos (Government Gazette) from 1886 onwards allows for the compilation of an indicatory database, although it should be noted that the published statutes correspond to only some of the clubs that were active at the time. To date I have traced as many as sixty-five royal decrees approving the establishment of fifty-nine sports clubs from 1886 to 1899. Twelve of these clubs were based in Athens, while the rest were to be found in small towns all over the country.8 In 1897, some twenty-eight clubs founded the Syndesmos ton Ellinikon Athlitikon kai Gymnastikon Somation (Union of Greek Athletic and Gymnastic Clubs [SEAGS]).9 Up to 1910 a total of one hundred clubs had joined it at one point or another, although at that time SEAGS numbered only forty-five clubs with a total of 2,036 members.101 To a certain extent these figures belie the fact that many sports clubs were set up around the time of the first modern Olympic Games in Athens in 1896. Furthermore, the majority of those which were not dissolved after a short period of time were gymnastics rather than sports clubs, although shooting, rambling and fencing were included among their activities. Apparently, the emphasis on gymnastics (in the case of thirty out of the fifty-nine clubs) was congruent with contemporary ideological tenets related to the classical ideal and the military preparedness of the nation, principles whose realization figured prominently among the clubs’ aims. In fact, the sports clubs which appeared in the 1880s explicitly associated athletics with military alertness and with duty to the fatherland, as their statutes illustrate. This phenomenon may be understood in the context of nationalist ideology on the one hand, and of new power relations, as described by Michel Foucault, on the other. In the words of John Hargreaves, ‘the appearance, treatment and functioning of the body is an important aspect of social order in all societies, and the elaboration and refinement of such forms of control has been critical in the emergence and development of modern societies’.11 Controlling the human body requires discipline in movements, a marked feature of gymnastics. Gymnastics forms a constituent element of military training and is organized in a similar way. Moreover, the organization of athletics in the context of a set of regulations for competitive events embodies an 7Chrysafis 1925: 28. 8 Seven in Hermoupolis, five in Piraeus, three in Kalamata and three in Patras. Additionally, twenty-nine small towns had one sports club each; see Syndesmos 1910: 5. 9 Fifteen of the founding members of SEAGS were among the Fifty-nine sports clubs mentioned above. Moreover, two were based in Cyprus and one in Smyrna. 10 Syndesmos 1910: 112-5, 120-1. Of the forty-four clubs, twenty-five were based in the Greek state, sixteen in the Ottoman Empire and three in centres of the Greek diaspora. 11 Hargreaves 1986: 13.

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adherence to hierarchical and disciplined systems.12 The sports club itself is also a disciplined institution, structured according to the manifest hierarchical relations of its members. Often it employs military symbols such as flags, uniforms, etc. These elements of discipline and hierarchy are important for the understanding of the social ties which developed within this kind of voluntary association. Recreation as well as companionship were also included among the aims of sports clubs, but they did not figure prominently. On the contrary, intellectual and physical development connected to the classical ideal of καλός καί άγαθός and to the revival of the Olympic Games was presented as the principal purpose of sports club activity in the 1890s. The promotion of a military spirit and the raising of national consciousness were no longer explicitly stated, although they still constituted the underlying framework for the legitimization of sports clubs.13 The social identity of a sports club was determined and preserved through a set of mechanisms for recruiting members: membership criteria included the applicant’s educational and professional background as well as registration and subscription fees. Nevertheless, notwithstanding the limitations set by the statutes of each club, new members were often recruited from among a pre-existing network of family, social and professional relations. Thus, to a certain extent these voluntary associations were the places where people of comparable social background could meet and socialize in public. The relationships which developed in the context of these modern forms of social organization were characterized as formal, public and institutionalized, thus differing from traditional forms of sociability which were considered informal, private and fluid.14 These general hypotheses resulting from my research on sports clubs at the end of the nineteenth century are examined in more detail below, based on the example of two Athenian clubs: the Panellinios Gymnastikos Sy/logos (Panhellenic Gymnastic Club [PGS] and the Ethnikos Gymnastikos Syllogos (National Gymnastic Club [EGS]). I will seek to analyse the social and professional framework of the two clubs, their internal organization, the hierarchical relations among their members as well as the forms of sociability which distinguished club life. The two clubs were founded in the early 1890s (the PGS in 1891 and the EGS in 1893), and they were the most important gymnastic clubs in Athens at the turn of the century. Although they had close links, at times their relationship was tense and even antagonistic. In fact the EGS was 12 Liakos 1988: 13. 13The foundation of gymnastic clubs as a means of constructing the ‘new man’ was an important element of all national movements; see Mosse 1975: 324. 14 See Agulhon 1977 and Bidart 1988.

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set up by a group of PGS members who disagreed with the policy which the PGS president Ioannis Fokianos intended to follow.15 Fokianos enthusiastically supported the holding of competitions as a means of diffusing gymnastics, while his opponents gave priority to the building of a gymnasium and castigated the ‘pompous’ character of the games. In later years, the two clubs often confronted each other in national competitions over the control of the SEAGS. Occasionally their antagonism turned into an outright duel and was tinged with fanaticism. Indeed, members and athletes who resigned or were expelled from one club subsequently joined the other. Although by and large comparable in terms of social and professional composition, both clubs sought to project and sustain a particular ‘identity’ which would differentiate them from each other. Predictably, as a splinter group the EGS did not possess the same human capital nor did it exhibit the same turnover as the PGS. It was much smaller and its annual membership fluctuated considerably, a fact which limited its finances and hindered its effective public presence.16 If we take the cost of monthly dues to be a criterion of social differentiation, then it can be argued that both clubs catered for the same social categories. In the case of both clubs, monthly dues amounted to two drachmas, although the registration fee for the PGS was two and a half times higher than that for the EGS (five and two drachmas respectively).17 At the time the minimum wage in Athens was around two drachmas and the average monthly income ranged from 120 to 200 drachmas.18 These figures would seem to indicate that membership of the two clubs was accessible to the middle strata of a city such as the capital of Greece. Moreover, financial considerations set the PGS and EGS apart from the horse-riding, tennis and fencing clubs of Athens which involved only a small and wealthy urban elite. The social exclusion imposed by the economic barrier was manifested at two points: before joining the club, in as much as the registration fee might be prohibitive; and after attaining membership, when any delay in 15 Fokianos (1845-96) contributed significantly to the development and diffusion of gymnastics in modern Greece. He was director of the Public Gymnasium (1868) and of the Public Central Gymnasium in Athens (1879), professor of gymnastics, author of a gymnastics textbook (1883), and first president of the PGS. In 1890 he established a series of athletic events in the capital which were to be held on an annual basis; see Fokianos 1926. 16 Significantly, while from 1891 to 1899 the PGS had a total of 1,837 registered members, of whom around 350 were active (i.e. they regularly paid subscription fees), the EGS numbered only 150 active members. Unless otherwise stated, all information on the PGS is based on its rich archive which has not yet been catalogued. 17According to the 1894 statutes of the PGS. The statutes of 1891 and 1912 fixed the registration fee at three drachmas. 18 See Lozos 1984.

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the payment of dues as a rule led to expulsion. The process of expulsion, as evidenced in successive statutes, was indicative of the increasingly bureaucratic structure which characterized all club activities and even permeated human relations. Similarly, the recruitment of new members depended on the decision of older ones, that is on the pre-existing ‘community’. According to the 1894 statutes of the EGS, each new membership application had to be supported by at least three full members and approved by secret vote at the club’s general assembly. Naturally, this procedure was standardized and repeated in all associations. However, in the case of both these clubs we note the transition from a democratic system of electing new members to a more centralized one. First the PGS in 1894 and nine years later the EGS transferred the right of electing new members from the general assembly to the board of directors. Again secret voting was a precondition, but it is clear that control had now fallen into the hands of a much smaller group. Unfortunately there are no data on the professional and social composition of EGS members that would help us adequately to test the social barrier hypothesis resulting from the limitations imposed by the club’s statutes and the practices of its board of directors.19 On the other hand, there is a wealth of information about the PGS during the last decade of the nineteenth century. An examination of its archive, which has been well preserved at the club’s headquarters in Athens, reveals the varied professional and social composition of the PGS, with most of its members representing the middle and upper social strata. Thus, during the period from 1891 to 1899, when the club had a little over 1,800 members, there were 272 students, 204 private and public sector employees, 200 military officers, 165 lawyers and magistrates, 108 merchants, 86 teachers, 64 doctors, 63 landowners, 32 bankers, and 30 politicians. The considerable presence of military officers and teachers can be explained by the fact that, despite the variety of its athletic activities, the PGS promoted mainly track and field events, though its 1891 founding statutes had stated its purpose as ‘the diffusion of gymnastics to all social classes’. The educational and socializing dimension of its policy was manifested in that from the beginning the PGS had considered the opening of gymnasiums as a means of accomplishing its aims. To this effect, it had planned the building of one central and several local gymnasiums all over the capital where ‘the working classes would be physically educated for a 19 The EG S’ archive and library were almost completely destroyed during a flood in 1968. Only the minutes of the meeting of its board of directors for the period from 1893 to 1907 have survived. Together with various published materials (statutes, newspaper reports, etc.), these constitute the main source on the EGS.

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small fee’.20 In addition, early in its existence it founded a training school for gymnastics teachers of both sexes. In the context of these policies we can see the inherent relationship between athletics, on the one hand, and educational procedures and charity activities on the other. Athletics and sports served as a strategy to enhance the social behaviour of youth and the moral behaviour of the laikes taxis (popular classes), instilling discipline in human conduct and allowing for the proper use of free time. The prominent position of students, mainly from the School of Law of the University of Athens, attests to the fact that athletics constituted an important preoccupation of all youth clubs.21 In most cases it was young people who founded sports clubs, in a conscious attempt to foster a social milieu different from the one they were offered in educational institutions. Finally, the presence of occupational groups of high social status, such as lawyers and civil servants, is indicative of the PGS’s social identity. Of the 204 private and public sector employees who were members of the club, the majority were civil servants (69) and bank employees (39), while we also find sixteen members who were in the service of the royal family. Although in theory the professional and social composition of its members defined each club’s particular identity, this was in practice decided by a small, relatively homogeneous and coherent group made up of the club’s active members represented on the board of directors. As a result, the internal stratification of the club into active and non-active members on the one hand, and into administrators and athletes on the other, together with the ensuing hierarchical relations, influenced considerably the forms of sociability which developed within the club. In most voluntary associations relationships were structured in three levels: a) the internal interaction of club members, which we may call intra-club sociability; b) inter-club sociability among comparable clubs located either in the same or in different cities; and c) intra-urban sociability, that is sociability in the context of the city where the club was located. Inside the club, interaction evolved along with the distinctions between the four categories of members. Although full, associate, corresponding and honorary members comprised the community of each club, when speaking of interaction we need to refer only to the two former types of membership.22 Full members paid the highest dues, participated in the

20 In the event, in 1895 the PGS built a gymnasium, whieh still functions today, on a plot of land in central Athens bestowed by Prince George (the second son of King George I). 21 See Liakos 1988: 24-5. 22 Corresponding members did not live in the city where the club was located while honorary members added to the club’s prestige on account of their personal reputation; neither participated in the club’s activities.

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club’s administration, and enjoyed the right to vote and to be elected to the board of directors. However, the substantive distinction was between those who actively participated in the club’s affairs and those who did not participate at all. Thus, inside the club, there was one level of social interaction among full members, a second level among associate members - who were mostly athletes - and a third among all members within the clear hierarchical pattern. Of particular interest is the time and place that social contacts occurred, their frequency, and the mode of organization of human relationships within the club. It is a truism that beyond the friendly or family relations which may have existed among members outside the club, the internal life of the association itself could create or revive personal relations, familiarity and companionship, and, as a consequence, emotional bonds equally important to the making of the wider social and cultural environment. The established time of contact among full members was potentially those periods devoted to general meetings and to the sessions of the board of directors which were exclusive to the fifteen or so individuals who governed the club. General assemblies took place three or four times a year. By contrast, the board of directors usually met once a month, in addition to extraordinary or emergency sessions.23 Meetings usually took place at the house of one of the members of the board, in most cases that of the president, although the PGS’s headquarters or that of other associations with which the club had contacts were also used. Most meetings began in the early evening (6.30 p.m.) or at night (9 p.m.) and lasted approximately two hours. In the case of a meeting being held at a member’s house, we may imagine that it took the form of an early or late evening visit, before or after dinner. However, if we take into account the fact that only some of the board’s members attended these meetings, we can assume that a small number of individuals enjoyed constant or at least quite frequent contacts as full members of the club. They usually had time to spare for meetings in the evening, that is during the time which middle and upper social strata devoted to leisure. In addition to the locations chosen for these periodic committee meetings, the usual place for socializing was the gymnasium. The location of the club’s headquarters at the gymnasium implied, in effect, the coexistence - if not the identification - of these two different sites of interaction. The small group which governed the club seems to have been subject to frequent changes. For a period of twenty-five years around the turn of 23 Before 1894, when new statutes provided for three general assemblies per year, social interaction among PGS members was frequent. In fact, between 1891 and 1894 as many as 59 general assemblies were held, i.e. one every month. In the case of the EGS we observe similar periodicity, as according to its 1894 statutes general assemblies took place every three months.

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the century, a total of seventy-two individuals alternated on the EGS board of directors and ninety-five on the board of the PGS. Most board members held their seats only for a year, especially in the case of board members without any particular administrative duties. However, in the more important positions, such as those of president and general secretary, we observe a different pattern. For example, Konstantinos Papamichalopoulos, who worked diligently for the dissemination of gymnastics and was a member of numerous other associations, was president of the PGS for an almost uninterrupted period of twenty-three years (from 1900 to 1912 and from 1914 to 1923). In the case of the EGS, the president and the general secretary usually changed approximately every five years. The members of the ‘oligarchic elite’24 which governed the two clubs came from well known Athenian families and had served in positions of authority and prestige. Papamichalopoulos was a member of parliament and minister of education in 1892, while the president of the EGS for six consecutive years, Andreas Kordellas, was professor of mineralogy and general director of the Lavrion mines. Naturally, the presence of people of high social status in the leadership of the two clubs signified a change in the social profile of physical culture, in as much as similar top positions conferred symbolic compensation and additional social esteem on those who held them. Furthermore, at the practical and behavioural level, the allocation of funds from the family budget to cover the costs of registration and membership of a sports club should be examined in the context of the rising bourgeois lifestyle. Given the total number of registered members, participation in general assemblies seems to have been rather infrequent. In the first decade of the twentieth century, on average only one tenth of registered members took part in the PGS’s general assemblies, while the corresponding ratio in the case of the EGS ranged from one third to a quarter.25 This lack of interest in participating in club life may be attributable to the motives for joining the club in the first instance. It seems that many individuals joined a club for reasons which may have had nothing to do with physical 24 The ‘oligarchic’ structure of the PGS and the EGS can be plausibly related to the ‘iron law of oligarchy’ which Robert Michels coined in 1915. According to this law, which applied to all kinds of voluntary associations from political parties to trade unions, every organization - especially a large-scale one - is controlled by a small group of people. ‘Organisational elites have special group interests which are somewhat at variance with those of the people they represent... All dominant minorities... must primarily be interpreted as following a logic of self-interest... to maintain or extend their own privilege and power’; Michels 1968: 34. 25 This difference could be attributed to the fact that in associations like the EGS proportionally more members were active because of the closer relationships which developed in these smaller clubs.

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exercise per sey and which therefore could not lead to full integration into the club’s life. We could safely argue that many employees or professionals joined the PGS or the EGS not so much to exercise but in order to find a receptive environment, to create new relationships or to enter a friendship network. On the other hand, the substantial numerical difference between active and non-active members would seem to suggest that only a few made the sports club the site of their social contacts. Whatever the case may have been, those few were closely united and developed quasi-familiar bonds, as is demonstrated by the letters which PGS members participating in the Greek campaign in Asia Minor from 1919 to 1922 sent to fellow members back in Athens. The relations between the club’s administrators and its athletes assumed a protective and occasionally patronizing character. The example of the athlete Konstantinos Spetsiotis is instructive. In 1905 Spetsiotis left the EGS after protesting at its reluctance to help him arrange leave of absence from his military unit. Subsequently, members of the PGS’s board managed to secure Spetsiotis his leave; as a result, upon completion of his military service, he joined the PGS. The imposition of sanctions, which all known athletic club statutes provided for in cases of late payment of dues or unacceptable behaviour, fell under the jurisdiction of the club’s administrators, a fact which provides further evidence of the power and authority exercised by the oligarchic elite which comprised the board of directors. At the same time, sanctions constituted an important feature of club life to the extent that they corresponded to - or existed in parallel with - a nexus of conflictual relations among club members. Sanctions depended on rules which standardized relations among members, and on the concept of discipline which characterized most athletic and other associations. The imposition of a fine or the expulsion of a member became public knowledge, as the decisions of the board were put up on the gymnasium’s notice board. Sanctions were not meant only to have a detrimental impact upon the individual concerned or exclusively to preserve order; they also served as a warning for all club members. Discipline constituted an integral feature of both gymnastics and athletics as well as of the overall behaviour of club members. It may be that the enforcement of disciplined behaviour surfaced more frequently in athletic than in other leisure associations because it was linked to the general conception of the aims of athletic activity. In the case of the PGS and the EGS, discipline was considered a principal element of club life and of socializing among members. In addition to the imposition of sanctions, a number of clauses in the statutes of the two clubs and the regulations of their gymnasiums aimed at rationalizing human relations and at organizing club life on the basis of the principles of order and

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tranquillity, without the tensions and conflicts which characterized everyday human contact. For instance, the rules of the EGS’s gymnasium prohibited ‘any political or other tumultuous discussion’. Members were not allowed ‘to bring with them guns and dogs or to smoke outside the designated area’. As this clause indicates, particular areas of the gymnasium were open for informal interaction among members, for discussions and smoking.26 Penalties imposed on athletes who ‘misbehaved’ during physical training, the banning of smoking other than in designated areas, as well as other prohibitions included in the regulations provide small but valuable insights into internal aspects of club life which otherwise remains hidden in statutes, rules and administrative documents. However, most of the trivial incidents and even the conflicts of everyday sociability were not recorded at all. A few cases, the seriousness of which promoted the intervention of the board of directors, provide the only evidence on the conflictual side of social interaction among board members, club administrators and athletes. Full members could also meet and socialize at the excursions, public events and athletic games which the association organized. Indeed, the entertainments which accompanied athletic contests constituted the most important opportunity for social contact outside the club’s headquarters and gymnasium. Outings and dances are the two basic examples of club entertainment and social life, regardless of the type or the aims of the association concerned. Moreover, there was a common ritual which seems to have been established by custom and which determined the mode of entertainment on the basis of certain tacitly accepted rules. In the course of an excursion, usually to a nearby countryside resort, a meal was offered, club administrators delivered speeches, and members recited poetry. Excursions had been established as a mode of collective leisure by associations of various types since the second half of the nineteenth century. By the turn of the century, they had become related to country life and physical fitness in the context of the general belief which made national prowess dependent upon an individual’s health and fitness. Naturally, excursions organized by sports clubs revolved around games, in addition to the occasional speech and the playing of music by an amateur band. These largely improvised games were par excellence noted for their entertainment value rather than for the competitive nature which characterized serious athletic contests. Dances constituted the outstanding social event of every occasion. Participants included full and associate members and people from the 26 On the organization of club life elsewhere in Europe, see Lidtke 1985: 50-74 and Banti 1994.

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wider family circle and peer group. The interaction which marked such occasions differed from that related to sports activities, where attendance was informed by the interplay between participants and spectators. Dances were usually held once a year and aimed at raising funds for the club or other charitable causes. The greater the social esteem of a club, the greater the formality of the occasion and the number of celebrities expected to attend. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, the organization of evening dances provided one of the few opportunities for the development of female initiative. Usually, ad hoc committees which comprised the wives and daughters of board members were responsible for the organization of such events. Although the statutes of both clubs either provided for or at least did not prohibit the registration of female members, by and large clubs were fora where only male sociability could emerge and develop. In the EGS, where the presence of women was more significant than in the PGS, women comprised only six per cent of the total membership for the period from 1900 to 1907. It is noteworthy that in 1901 the EGS, together with the Lawn Tennis Club of Athens where half of the full members were women, were the first clubs to include women on their boards of directors. However, with a few exceptions, female members did not attend board meetings, and it appears that only once did the EGS board meet at the house of a female member. At the same time, the mobilization of women in the field of sport was validated from the moment that gymnastics began to be taught in girls’ schools. Hitherto, women’s association with sport had only been possible, or indeed acceptable, through tennis. Gradually, however, female participation in sports began to be associated with new ideas about the necessity of physical exercise for motherhood. Education channelled women towards athletics clubs, where they took up the task of the physical training of young girls. In 1891, the PGS founded a school for female trainers, at a time when there was no state equivalent, while ten years later the EGS established a special gymnastics section for girls. Intra-club sociability occurred in the context of the regular interaction between male members during the everyday life of the club and at entertainments and athletic events. Usually members engaged in club activities during late afternoons and evenings on weekdays, and, before daily working hours were set by law in 1911, even during short breaks at noon or early afternoon. Moreover, although Sunday was not made a public holiday until 1909, it seems that the professional occupations of PGS and EGS members allowed them to participate in club activities on both Saturday afternoons and Sunday mornings. Inter-club sociability, socializing between sports clubs, occurred at the competitions which, after the promulgation of Law MMDCCXXI in 1899,

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took place on an annual basis, depending on the weather. Constituting the main activity of all sports clubs, these games were contested by athletes of one or more clubs. Additionally, associations with more ambitious programmes pursued the institutionalization of their own athletic contests in an effort to gain prestige. The EGS was the first club to organize nation-wide games in 1895, the so-called Tinia,27 as well as athletic contests for children and adolescents in 1898. Nevertheless, the range of inter-club sociability was greater in the case of the PGS, an association which was referred to as the πρύτανις (doyen) of all sports clubs. It was in constant contact with other clubs, both in Greece and beyond, with which it exchanged invitations for joint participation in athletic contests. In 1896 the PGS took the initiative for convening a national conference of sports clubs in Athens, an event which led to the formation of SEAGS. However, inter-club sociability did not reflect consensus alone. Rivalries and conflicts were common among sports clubs and to a certain extent shaped the particular identity of each club. The rivalry between the PGS and the EGS was manifested at numerous levels, from the boards of directors down to the members, athletes and supporters. Winning at the national games and receiving the coveted statue of Victory was the highest ambition of their competitiveness.28 In this context, it was common for the clubs to attract athletes with promises and offers or even to prevent rival competitors from participating. The two clubs’ antagonism extended to the control of SEAGS. Given that this was, together with the Olympic Games Committee, the most important athletic institution in the country and wielded considerable power and authority, the funding of sports clubs as well as many of the rules regarding their participation in competitions were directly linked to control of SEAGS’ administration. It was by no means accidental that both clubs chose to leave SEAGS (the PGS in 1902 and the EGS eight years later) when they came to realize that they no longer controlled it or felt that ‘injustices’ had been committed against them. With regard to intra-urban sociability, as Athenian clubs the PGS and the EGS were representative of the social changes that the capital of Greece witnessed from the 1880s to the first decade of the twentieth century. Formal social interaction in Athens had hitherto been limited. Social visits 27 The Tinia were held on the island of Tinos and coincided with the annual festivities for the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. In the context of late nineteenth-century Greece, the combination of athletic events with religious festivities constituted a decidedly original initiative, although the parallel with classical Greece is unmistakable. 28 Despite its smaller size, the level of the EG S’s athletes was comparable to that of the PGS’s. It is noteworthy that the PGS fielded thirty-six athletes, four less than the EGS, in the first games organized by SEAGS in 1901.

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took place on New Year’s Eve and on name days, and did not last beyond ten, or at the latest eleven, o’clock at night. Luxury shops, florists, perfumeries and dancing schools appeared only after 1882. The modernization initiated by Charilaos Trikoupis manifested itself throughout Athenian life. By the public as well as the private sector, a number of important infrastructure works were undertaken. The horse-drawn trams, were converted to steam power in 1890, linking Athens to the seaside resort of Faliron, while the railway line between Piraeus and Thission was extended to Omonoia Square in 1888. At the same time, public buildings and private dwellings began to be connected to gas and electricity mains, the road network was improved with the construction of Syngrou Avenue, main thoroughfares were paved, and the first telephones were installed. The number of meeting places where Athenians could spend their free time and socialize multiplied to accommodate the increase in the capital’s population from 68,607 in 1879 to 114,355 in 1889, reaching 175,430 by 1907. By the turn of the century Athens had some 69 restaurants, 105 coffee-shops, 10 cafi-chantants, 2 theatres, and 4 open-air theatres.29 From the start the PGS was actively involved in Athenian social life either by participating in or organizing public events. The extent of its social leverage is demonstrated by the fact that the first games which it organized in May 1891 were attended by as many as three thousand spectators, as well as the royal family, the prime minister, and members of the cabinet and the diplomatic corps. Furthermore, the PGS made its presence felt not only by its periodic competitions but also by regular public events. In 1898 it instituted the so-called Sotiria games, held every year in commemoration of the unsuccessful attempt on the lives of King George I and Princess Maria. Because of its smaller size, the EGS, in contrast, was not able to initiate or engage in comparably varied activities. It limited its active presence to the circle of the other sports clubs with which it co-operated in a number of athletic events. Nevertheless, its board members had a manifest presence in Athenian social life, independent of their identity as club members. Indeed most board members of both the EGS and the PGS were also members of other Athenian clubs, athletic or otherwise. We may assume, therefore, that all these individuals met at numerous social events outside their clubs, entertained themselves in a similar manner and at the same places, and had close friendly, or even family, bonds. Thus socializing could take either a formal and organized form - within the association - or an informal and more spontaneous one - at a coffee-shop or at the barber’s. Greek sports clubs at the turn of the century embodied the male, institutionalized, and formal social interaction of the middle and upper 29 See Leontidou 1981: 77; Skaltsa 1983: 459ff.; Houliarakis 1973.

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urban strata, expressed both in the context of physical exercise as a form of leisure and by forging ties of friendship and collaboration among social and professional equals. Gradually, this social interaction became subject to stricter rules as a result of the bureaucratic mechanisms which emerged in the process of the administration and functioning of the clubs. At the same time, order and discipline constituted the principal values around which human relations were formed and developed. However, despite the excitement caused by the first modern Olympic Games in 1896, active participation in, and engagement with, sport remained a marginal leisure preoccupation. On the other hand, athletic contests, particularly national and school competitions, attracted growing audiences. Indeed, by 1906, when mid-term Olympics were held in Athens to support the case, first made ten years earlier, that Greece should be the permanent site of the Olympic Games, athletic contests had emerged as cardinal events of urban life. People rallied to cheer or barrack, to support their ‘own’ athletes, to experience the feeling of belonging to a national or local community, and, finally, to entertain themselves, albeit as spectators, in a new, modern fashion.

References Cited Agulhon, M. 1977. Le cercle dans la France bourgeoise (1810-1848). Etude d'une mutation de sociabilite. Paris. Antoniou, D. 1987. ’Αντωνίου, Δ. Τά προγράμματα της Μέσης ’Εκπαίδευσης {1833-1929). Athens, vol. I. Band, Α.-Μ. 1994. ‘Der Verein’, in H.-G. Haupt (ed.), Orte des Alltags. Miniaturen aus der europaischen Kulturgeschichte. Munich, 105-10. Bidart, C. 1988. ‘Sociabilites: quelques variables’. Revue Frangaise de Sociologie, 29/ 4: 621-48. Chrysafis, I. 1925. Χρυσάφης, Ί. Σωματική άγωγή. Athens. Fokianos 1926. Ιωάννης Φωκιανός 1845-1896. ’Αναμνηστική εκδοσις έπί τη συμπληρώσει τριακονταετίας άπό τοϋ θανάτου του. Athens. Hargreaves, J. 1986. Sport, Power and Culture: A Social and Historical Analysis of Popular Sports in Britain. Cambridge. Houliarakis, M. 1973. Χουλκχράκης, Μ. Γεωγραφική, διοικητική καί πληθνσμιακή έξέλιξις της Ελλάδος , 1821-1971. Athens, vol. I. Koumanoudis, S. 1980. Κουμανούδης, Σ. Συλλογή νέων λέξεων ύπό των λογιών πλασθεισών άπό της 'Αλώσεως μέχρι των καθ ’ ήμάς χρόνων. Athens, 2nd. ed. [1900]. Leontidou, L. 1981. Working Class and Land Allocation. The Urban History of Athens 1880-1980. Unpublished doctoral thesis, University of London. Liakos, A. 1988. Λιάκος, Ά. Ή έμφάνιση των νεανικών όργανώσεων. Τό παράδειγμα τής Θεσσαλονίκης. Athens.

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Lidtke, V. 1985. The Alternative Culture. Socialist Labor in Imperial Germany. New York. Lozos, A. 1984. Λώζος, Ά. Ή οικονομική Ιστορία των 'Αθηνών. Athens. Manitakis, R 1962. Μανιτάκης, Π. 100 χρόνια νεοελληνικού άθλητισμοϋ, 18301930. Athens. Michels, R. 1968. Political Parties. A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy. London and New York. Mosse, G.-L. 1975. The Nationalization of the Masses. Political Symbolism and Mass Movements in Germany from the Napoleonic Wars through the Third Reich. New York. Reinach, J. 1879. Voyage en Orient. Paris, vol. II. Skaltsa, M. 1983. Σκαλτσά, Μ. Κοινωνική ζωή καί δημόσιοι χώροι κοινωνικών συγκεντρώσεων στήν 'Αθήνα τοϋ 19ον αιώνα. Unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Thessaloniki. Syndesmos 1910. Σύνδεσμος των Ελληνικών Αθλητικών και Γυμναστικών Σωματείων. Ήμερολόγιον 1910. Athens.

11 Feminist Awareness and Greek Women Writers at the Turn of the Century: The Case of Kallirroe Parren and Alexandra Papadopoulou Maria Anastasopoulou Introduction In the midst of the multiple practical problems which were confronting it, the newly-established Greek state embarked on a process of redefining its national identity by a dual course: to westernize its manners and, at the same time, find its fundamental Greekness in local customs and mores. The woman question, which raised the feminist awareness of Greek society toward the end of the nineteenth century, was intertwined with the country’s ongoing struggle to define its ethnic identity and secure its national viability. My intention in this essay is two-fold: to point out how the literature produced during that time reflected the current preoccupations of Greek society; and to explore how two of the first women authors of modern Greek prose, Kallirroe Parren and Alexandra Papadopoulou, deal with two of the issues prevalent in the social ferment of the period under consideration, feminism and patriotism.1 The Changing Concept of Women's Role in Greek Society The second half of the nineteenth century was an era of reconstruction for the Greek state. One of the means employed by the first generation of independent Greeks to redefine their national identity was a ‘tilt toward Europe’.12 This ‘tilt manifested itself as a strong inclination towards adopting western European models of life. Such models would not only 1This essay draws heavily on E. Varika’s (1987) study on ‘the genesis of a feminist awareness’ in nineteenth-century Greece and my own study (1977) on Parren’s trilogy of novels. 2Jusdanis 1991: 22.

From Greek Society in the Making, 1863-1913: Realities, Symbols and Visions, ed. Philip Carabott. Copyright © 1997 by Philip Carabott. Published by Variorum, Ashgate Publishing Ltd, Gower House, Croft Road, Aldershot, Hampshire, GU11 3HR.

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move the country away from all vestiges of the Oriental influences of the Tourkokratia, but would also bring it closer to its classical roots, by emulating a West which was based on ancient Greek philosophy and culture. Thus, by the mid 1870s, the western style of life had prevailed in urban centres, not only among the upper middle classes but also among the lower working classes, which emulated the rich. French was the gauge of one’s level of westernization, and there was a flood of French literary works being translated and published in literary journals and newspapers. Urbanization combined with this trend to introduce the new concept of women as objects of ‘conspicuous consumption’. Whereas women in rural Greece had worked the land side by side with their fathers and husbands, and had fought alongside with them during the War of Independence, in the urban social milieu women of the emerging middle classes stayed at home. The degree of their idleness and luxury mirrored the extent of the success of their male family members. Within the family, the public and the private spheres were sharply separated. The private sphere was allotted to women, and their function as wives and mothers was idealized.3 Alongside this westernization, however, there was a parallel force operating within society which made Greeks eschew emulation of western models of life, and attempt to redefine themselves according to local customs and mores. Indeed, it sought to prove the continuity of their ethnicity all the way back to their ancient forefathers, thus refuting Fallmerayer’s allegation that contemporary Greeks were a mixture of ethnicities rather than the direct descendants of the ancient Greeks. In the context of this nationalist agenda, the historian Konstantinos Paparrigopoulos (1815-91) wrote his monumental five-volume Ιστορία τοϋ έλληνιχοϋ έθνους (History of the Greek Nation), in which he traced and established the continuity of the Greek nation from ancient times through the Byzantine Empire to the present day.4 A similar task was undertaken by the folklorist Nikolaos Politis (1852-1921), whose two-volume Μελέται περί τοϋ βίου των νεωτέρων Ελλήνων (