MODERN GREECE: A History since 1821 - Amazon Web Services

58 DISTRIBUTION OF LAND AND CONSOLIDATION OF SOCIETY
national property as a fiscal panacea.” 3 In other words, the sale of public
land would provide funds with which to pay off foreign debts.
Armansberg, the most influential of the regents, who managed public
affairs while Otto was still a minor, intended to raise income “for the
endowment of Greek families.” 4 The regency also had high hopes of
land-leases of varying length, but the results were disappointing. Few
families responded to the endowment scheme, the property leased was
mismanaged, and the public domain was constantly depleted through
usurpation and encroachment.
The National Assembly which met after Otto’s deposition included
in the 1864 constitution a mandate to future governments to legislate
for a new distribution program. Sotirios Sotiropoulos, minister of
finance in several cabinets between 1864 and 1888, became the chief
architect of the distribution laws of 1871. These consisted of two related
measures, one to distribute arable land, and the other to legalize the
arbitrary planting of vines and trees on national land. As a result, the
government of Alexander Koumoundouros recognized illegal holdings,
and granted titles to nearly 50,000 peasant families – a process
facilitated by conversion from Ottoman to Roman-Byzantine principles
of tenure. The rule of usurpation in Roman law reversed the Ottoman
inalienability of public land and made possible the recognition of squatters’
rights after 30 years of occupation and use. The absence of a land
registry and official tolerance allowed squatters to present their holdings
as a freehold. Capodistria’s vision of a society of smallholders was
thus vindicated 40 years after his death. However, the Greek state
missed the opportunity to enhance its credibility by distributing the
land itself rather than merely recognizing a fait accompli.
The Koumoundouros distribution of titles and the ensuing proliferation
of small family plots further encouraged Greek agriculture to specialize
in a few export items. Thus the production of currants dominated
the Peloponnese at the expense of cereals. During the 1870s currant
exports made up more than half of the value of all exports. Cereals
declined from 41% in 1845–6 to 38% in 1860, and plummeted to 23.7% in
1880–1. The domestic demand for wheat imports allowed Piraeus to
overtake Hermoupolis on the island of Syros as the state’s busiest port. 5
The dispute over the exploitation of the silver and lead mines of
Lavrion attracted wide attention in the early 1870s and took the Greek
public on a spree of speculation. In 1864 a Franco-Italian firm (Roux-
Serpieri) purchased mining rights from the Greek state, but it was soon