o_19heefouak9i9v4do11ac41pi7a.pdf

SAKIS GEKAS
The increasing criminalisation of poverty and the rise of vagrant beggars worried both
the authorities and moralising Ionians; the Ionian State implemented a number of
measures, laws and regulations to contain vagrancy in the towns. Many Ionians migrated,
whether every season, to the opposite mainland or for several years to ports in
the Black Sea and North Africa 33 .
Significant differences between the islands included the type of crop in which
different islands specialised. The northern islands, Corfu and Paxos, produced olives
and olive oil, while the southern islands, Kefalonia and Zante, produced raisins.
The nature of the crops (vines and olives) and external demand made agricultural
production vulnerable to fluctuations and living conditions in the Islands precarious.
Both production and export levels fluctuated. From the outset the Ionian State
pursued a policy of low duties on British-manufactured goods, despite the obvious
and quickly spreading deleterious effect these imports had on local manufacturers;
colonial officials were clearly aware of them as the impact of local manufacture was
recorded. Independent government under imperial rule was, at least in the case of
the Ionian Islands, a façade. British cotton good and wheat from the Black Sea in
transit through Corfu were subject only to nominal duties 34 . The manufacture of
cotton cloth, coarse wool and linen in the islands was replaced by British machinemade
imports, destined also for neighbouring markets. In Corfu the manufacturing
sector was halved in less than a decade from the late 1820s, from 20% of the working
population down to 9%, while in Zante the number of people occupied in
manufacturing fell from 3,042 in 1828 to 1,369 in 1859 or from 28% of the working
population to 8% 35 . In Zante the local textile industry consisted of handicraft
manufacture of cloth (silk and cotton) that employed about 25% of the working
population in the 1820s 36 . By the end of the period this percentage had fallen to 5-
10% at the most. In the 1820s British manufactured goods, especially textiles, destined
for local consumption and re-export in neighbouring markets, reached the
Ionian Islands en masse. This in turn led to a fall in the number of people employed
in the manufacturing sector in both Corfu and Zante.
The working population moved from manufacturing to agriculture, not the other
way round, even if the actual number of people employed in agriculture declined over
33 Julia A. Clancy-Smith, Mediterraneans. North Africa and Europe in an Age of Migration, c.
1800-1900, University of California Press 2011, p. 40.
34 J. Chircop, ‘British Imperial Network in the Mediterranean 1800-1870. A Study of Regional
Fragmentation and Imperial Integration’ Ph.D, University of Essex, 1997, p. 147.
35 Ionian Islands Blue Books of Statistics, CO 136/1392-1426, National Archives, London.
36 A census of the island conducted in 1811, counting the occupations of more than 4,000
people, showed a significant percentage of the population employed in cotton cloth spinning.
1,260 people (most of them women perhaps) were recorded as employed in the cloth manufacture
sector overall (spinning, weaving and ‘tailors’, thus, production and distribution),
while 750 or 24% of those recorded were spinners, an impressively high number by many
standards. P. Mercati, Saggio Storico Statistico della Citta et Isola di Zante, Zante 1811, published
in Davy, Notes and Observations, Chapter Two.
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