o_19heefouak9i9v4do11ac41pi7a.pdf

NEW EVIDENCE FROM THE PERSONAL ARCHIVE OF MIHAIL VASSILIOU
Greek business relied upon family and kinship solidarity reinforced by marriages
between social and economic equals. Accordingly, women appeared as assets,
bringing to their marriage a prestigious name, a large dowry and business
connections. While they were important in terms of enhancing the business –
guaranteeing the transfer of capital, trust, family and ethnic solidarity– their role
in relation to the business itself appeared static. New evidence from notarial acts,
real property registers, wills, personal and business archives has highlighted the
lives of women who were actually involved in one way or another in family firms.
Widows in most cases –also in their capacity as tutors of their underage children–
participated in financial and real property transactions, and occasionally in enterprises
5 . The presence of Greek women professionals in the communities was another
issue that needed further investigation. While the social and economic status
of the Greek merchant entrepreneurs was incompatible with female labour, there
is evidence of women working as domestics, retailers and teachers in nineteenthcentury
Greek communities, representing an insubstantial share of female business
migration –but that is another subject 6 .
In recent years a number of studies have considered the role of women in the
development of Greek diaspora business in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries 7 .
349-69; Despina Vlami, ‘Η οικογένεια των Ελλήνων εμπόρων της διασποράς: μερικές παρατηρήσεις
για τη περίπτωση του Λιβόρνο’, Ιστορικά, 13, 24-25 (1996), p. 177-204; Vlami, Το Φιορίνι, pp.
429-56; Sirinidou, Οι Έλληνες, pp. 85-108. On seventeenth-century Venice see S. Koutmanis, ‘Όψεις
της εγκατάστασης των Ελλήνων στη Βενετία το 17 ο αιώνα’, Θησαυρίσματα, 25 (2005), pp. 309-39.
5 Anna Mandilara, ‘The secret life of Business Widows and Heiresses in Greek Networking
across the Mediterranean in the 19 th century’ (unpublished paper). Some interesting references
in Katsiardi-Hering, Η ελληνική παροικία, pp. 45, 68-9, 80, 127-8, 130; Vlami, Το Φιορίνι, pp.
389-456; and Papakonstantinou, Ελληνικές εμπορικές επιχειρήσεις, pp. 231-49. For the everyday
life of the diaspora merchants see Olympia Selekou, Η καθημερινή ζωή των Ελλήνων της
διασποράς. Δημόσιος και Ιδιωτικός Βίος (19 ος - αρχές του 20 ου αιώνα), Athens 2004.
6 In the nineteenth century the percentage of Greek women in salaried jobs was very low and
was developing quite slowly. The majority of hired women worked as domestic servants and
midwives; see Efi Avdela, Δημόσιοι υπάλληλοι γένους θηλυκού· καταμερισμός της εργασίας
κατά φύλλα στον δημόσιο τομέα, 1908-1955, Athens 1990, pp. 17-18 and Eleni Varika, Η εξέγερση
των Κυριών. Η γένεση μίας φεμινιστικής συνείδησης στην Ελλάδα, 1833-1907, Athens
1987, pp. 73-131. According to information provided by the census taking place in Livorno in
1841 only three female members of the local Greek community had a job: two were hired as cook
and domestic servant and one was a liquor vendor; see Vlami, Το φιορίνι, pp. 413-14.
7 Despina Vlami, ‘“σκοπός της είναι να έρθη δι’ αυτού και από αυτού διά τον σύζυγόν
της” Γυναίκες, οικογένεια, κοινωνία της εμπορικής διασποράς, 18 ος -19 ος αι.’, Ιστορικά, 45
(2007), pp. 243-80; Katerina Papakonstantinou, ‘Penelope or Clytaemnestra. Women from
Salonica in the Greek trade migration of the 18 th century’, Workshop on ‘New Research on
Gender and Business History’, University of Athens, 19-20 May 2006. Also Ioanna Pepelassis
Minoglou, ‘Greek Women in the world of Mercantile Business, c. 1780-1940’, Business History
Review, v. 81, 2007 (forthcoming), where she stresses the need to investigate the contribution
of women in the development of the merchant and entrepreneurial business networks of the
~ 377 ~