o_19heefouak9i9v4do11ac41pi7a.pdf

SAKIS GEKAS
lands (nominally independent states) and low import taxes for British goods coming to
the islands and their re-export to other markets. These were conditions that encouraged
trade and led to significant gains for the grain and currant merchants of the islands but
were of little benefit to the Ionian State or the majority of the Ionian population.
If the Ionian State failed to maintain public finances at a level that would allow a
program of public works and could result to improved living standards for the
population as a whole, some groups in Ionian towns were forging ahead. Urban institutions,
commercial, literary and philanthropic associations allowed merchants, intellectuals,
professionals and some landowners who shared a belief in modernising
projects to create networks that advanced cooperation between them. The merchants
of Corfu and to some extent of other islands participated in literary associations and
took philanthropic initiatives aimed at preventing social problems such as unemployment
and vagrancy from spilling over into crises. A civil society of the mercantile,
professional and intellectual elite was emerging influenced both by ‘imported’
and locally-generated ideas. Among merchants, Ionians and foreigners, doctors,
lawyers and other professionals and functionaries of the Ionian State, socialisation,
the reading of books and newspapers from abroad and lectures on various subjects
took place at the Reading Society and the Ionian Society, continuing a venerable
tradition of ‘Academies’, which began with the seventeenth and eighteenth century
associations for the progress of knowledge that culminated in the founding of the
‘Ionian Academy’ in 1808 75 . In 1836 the Reading Society became the meeting place
of intellectuals, merchants and British officers who wished to advance their knowledge,
spend time and socialise. Members of the Society, merchants and intellectuals,
met regularly and read English and Italian newspapers, after of course paying the
subscription that increasingly became a requirement of membership in every association.
Merchants and intellectuals converged in both their world views and their
patterns of sociability. The Corfu Merchants’ Club, another exclusive association,
was founded in 1838, initiating a process of developing hierarchies in the Corfu
merchant world 76 . This process led to the establishment of Chambers of Commerce
with published lists of members that determined merchants’ professional identity.
New forms of association introduced into the islands produced new hierarchies
by excluding those who did not participate in those organisations that the Ionian
government supported from the outset. The liberal merchants and landowners of
Zante were the first to introduce novel forms of association to the islands’ societies
in 1825 77 . The Medical Society of Zante established in 1832 an institution for the
poor, a hospital that the Zante doctors funded and administered and to which they
offered their services free, with some help from collections from theatre plays. The
benevolent doctors made their mark in the islands’ social world when the relevant
information was published –and praised– by the government newspaper 78 . These
75 Π. Χιώτου, Ιστορικά Απομνημονεύματα Επτανήσου, vol. 6, p. 230-1.
76 IIGG, Νο. 411, 29 October/10 November 1838.
77 ‘I Primi Proprietari e Negozianti dell’ Isola di Zante’, IIGG, No. 377, 7/19 March 1825.
78 IIGG, Νο. 66, 19/31 March 1832.
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