Constructing Ionian identities: the Ionian Islands in British official ...

In Hionidis’s examination of the cession, he demonstrates the increased
attention to representations of Greece in the public British discourse, resulting from
the Greeks’ nomination of Prince Alfred to replace the deposed King Otho and the
possibilities this presented for adopting a British political and economic system in
Greece. Hionidis also examines British perceptions of the Greek character, showing
the variety of Greek stereotypes in British literature, periodicals and newspapers, but
does not consider the idea of “difference” between Greeks and Britons based on
ideas of ethnicity or race. Hionidis analyses the cession from a public point of view
but does not take into account the complexities with which colonial officials viewed
the Islands and the cession of the political maneuverings by Britain and the European
Powers. In the case of the Ionians, Hionidis regards them as Greeks, unlike the
Colonial Office, which refrained from unanimously identifying this ethnically
diverse population as Greek.
Hionidis also notes the British press “disengaged the case of the Ionian Islands
from the debate about colonial policy, consenting to and endorsing the use of the
Islands as a dowry to Otho’s successor.” 17 Hionidis seems to adopt the view that the
Ionian Islands were not considered a colony and does not examine the sense of
ownership Britain had over them. The complexity of the Islands’ ambiguous official
placement in the Empire, as a protectorate but in reality governed as a colony, is not
examined in his thesis. Hionidis claims that in the Septinsula “colonial theories were
not applicable, British liberal principles of national self-determination did emerge
17 Ibid., p. 82.
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