o_19heefouak9i9v4do11ac41pi7a.pdf

SAKIS GEKAS
sion. British influence had a direct impact on those regions wherever it was imposed
or was accepted gladly. The Ionian Islands were such a region for the period
1810-64, first under occupation and then administered as a protectorate.
Recent publications have prompted a debate on the virtues and vices of neoimperialism
3 . Research on the economic history of the British Empire has focused
more on the balance sheet of empire, the costs and benefits of imperial projects for
the European nations but not on the costs and benefits for the colonized 4 . Population,
resources, distance from and access to markets seem to have determined the
potential of each economy in the ‘periphery’ to participate in a globalizing economy
between the 1840s and 1950s 5 . The Ionian Islands were part of that ‘periphery’ and
for about fifty years experienced Britain’s economic expansion and political clout.
Colonialism often brings up the moral argument of the oppression, if not death, that
colonial rule inflicted on millions around the world over the last five centuries. Nevertheless,
the question of the unethical and oppressive character of colonial rule
should not eclipse the historical question of colonialism’s effect on a given economy
and society. Condemning the nature of colonial rule does not answer questions of
development capabilities, inequalities, and divergence in incomes and living standards
that in many parts of the world are becoming ever wider; whether this was a
result of colonial rule or not is the pertinent and important question.
The impact of British rule on the Ionian economies (agricultural, manufacturing,
commercial) was direct, diverse and a mixed blessing. The value of trade (imports
and exports) grew significantly by about a third over the period, while more
Ionians were employed in the agricultural sector by the end of the period than in
the 1820s. New financial services such as banking and insurance emerged, indicating
the development of a more complex and diverse economy. The fifty years of
British rule in the Ionian Islands coincided with the period when liberal imperialism
was unfolding and when free trade was promoted as long as it served the interests
of the British economy; in the Ionian Islands, one of the Mediterranean
outposts of British rule together with Gibraltar, Malta and later in the century Cyprus
and Alexandria, several colonial practices were tried with varied success before
replicating them in the rest of the ‘imperial meridian’ 6 .
3 Niall Ferguson, Empire: how Britain made the modern world, London: Allen Lane, 2003.
For Ferguson the effect for the colonized states was mostly positive.
4 See for example, Patrick Karl O’ Brien, ‘The costs and benefits of British imperialism
1846-1914’, Past and Present 120, 1988, 163-200 and the reply by Paul Kennedy; on institutions
and colonial rule, D. Acemoglu, S. Johnson and J. A. Robinson, ‘Institutions as the Fundamental
Cause of Long-Run Growth’, in P. Aghion and S. Durlauf (eds), Handbook of Economic
Growth, North Holland Amsterdam, 2004 and D. Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James
A. Robinson, ‘The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation’,
American Economic Review 91, 2001: 1369-1401.
5 Patrick Karl O’ Brien, ‘Colonies in a Globalizing Economy, 1815-1948’, GEHN Working
Paper No. 08/04,LSE, http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/economicHistory/GEHN/GEHNPDF/WorkingPaper08POB.pdf
6 C. A. Bayly, Imperial meridian: the British Empire and The World, 1780-1830, London: Longman,
1989.
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