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COLONIAL GOVERNMENTALITY IN THE IONIAN ISLANDS
clear. New forms of knowledge included modern methods of measurement and calculation
explicitly aimed at reaching useful conclusions about the development of the islands’
economy.
The Academy used modern techniques to collect and distribute knowlegde, such
as data collection and its quantification for the study of living conditions and the
economic development of the islands. Every week there were classes in Physics,
Chemistry, Botany, Political Economy, Law, and Mathematics. Relations with correspondents
in Europe show the ambitions and the intellectial networks of several of
its members. The Academy functioned until 1815 and it was somehow resurrected
in 1825 when the Ionian University was established; this however had a clearly
academic character and acquired the formal function of a university. What was
more important was the operation of the Agronomic Society, founded by landowners,
with branches in all the islands. The Society promoted the draining of marshes,
the cultivation of new crops such as tomatoes and the expansion of vinticulture 32 . In
the 1820s the measurement of agricultural production and the classification of the
Ionian population in sectors of the economy elaborated Ionian forms of governmentality
and fixed the tens of occupations and varieties of employment into three ‘sectors’.
The institutional organization and the collection of information on the economy
and the population of the islands signified the liberal era as part of the systematic
use of knowledge on the individual and the territory.
Economic and demographic indicators and British colonial governmentality
The data accumulated during the period of British rule allow us to construct indicators
and extrapolate on the economic activity and demographic measurement of the Ionian
population with the reservations on the sources discussed earlier in mind. Data was collected
on a much larger scale than at any previous time, covering the seven biggest islands
of the Ionian archipelago. The Ionian population increased from about 210,000
people in 1828, the first year colonial statistics were compiled, to nearly 243,000 by
1864, due to an increase in the birth rate as well as decreasing mortality. At the same
time the Ionian population was also becoming younger and turning to agriculture, especially
in Corfu and Zante. Ithaki, where a large percentage of the population remained
employed in maritime commerce and shipping, was an exception. As the Ionian population
grew, the supply of labour increased; the subdivision of land for cultivation continued,
leaving less land for each individual among Ionians. The Ionian State failed to
implement land reform trying to avoid conflict with landowners, who maintained support
for British protection (increasingly fragile from the late 1840s onwards) in return.
The failure to solve the ‘agricultural problem’ added to population pressures, especially
on the island of Kefalonia who migrated seasonally or permanently. Although the
population was rising throughout the Ionian Islands, it was In Corfu and Kefalonia
where population growth placed significant pressure on the social fabric of the islands.
32 Π. Χιώτου, Ιστορικά Απομνημονεύματα Επτανήσου, vol. 6, p. 237.
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