Ionian Islands Celebrating 150 Years Enosis with Greece 1864-2014

Corfu Paxoi Lefkada Ithaca Kefalonia Zakynthos Ionian Islands Celebrating 150 Years Enosis with Greece 1864-2014 Kythera The Committee of the Eptanesian Federation of NSW welcomes you to the Celebration of the 150th Anniversary of Enosis with Greece Saturday 27th September 2014 CONSULATE GENERAL OF ΓΕΝΙΚΟ ΠΡΟΞΕΝΕΙΟ ΤΗΣ GREECE SYDNEY ΕΛΛΑΔΟΣ ΣΥΔΝΕΥ Μήνυµα Γενικού Προξένου για την επέτειο 150 χρόνων της Ένωσης των Επτανήσων µε την Ελλάδα Με την ευκαιρία της 150ης επετείου της Ένωσης των Επτανήσων στη µητέρα πατρίδα, θα ήθελα να συγχαρώ την Επτανησιακή Οµοσπονδία της Ν.Ν.Ο., καθώς και όλους τους επτανησιακούς συλλόγους, για τις διάφορες εκδηλώσεις τις οποίες διοργανώνουν. Τα Επτάνησα αποτελούν ένα ιδιαίτερο κοµµάτι του Ελληνισµού το οποίο από την αρχαιότητα έως σήµερα έχει σηµαντικότατη προσφορά σε όλους τους τοµείς της πατρίδας µας, µε ιδιαίτερη έµφαση σε αυτούς των Γραµµάτων και των Τεχνών. Σε αυτό το πλαίσιο, θα ήθελα να σας παροτρύνω να αναδείξετε ακόµη περισσότερο την πλούσια πολιτιστική κληρονοµιά και παράδοση του κάθε νησιού καθώς µάλιστα, για ιστορικούς λόγους, τα Επτάνησα κατάφεραν ν’ αφοµοιώσουν και ν’ αναπλάσουν στοιχεία άλλων ευρωπαϊκών χωρών ενσωµατώνοντας τα στον ελληνισµό. Με τις θερµότερες ευχές µου. Δρ. Σταύρος Κυρίµης Γενικός Πρόξενος της Ελλάδος στο Σύδνεϋ 1 A short history of the Ionian Islands “You enter Greece as one might enter a dark crystal, the form of things becomes irregular, refracted … Other countries may offer you discoveries in manners or lore or landscape; Greece offers you something harder – the discovery of yourself” When the great English writer, sions in the Aegean and the Ionian Lawrence Durrell, first arrived in Islands. The islands were over the Corfu he was moved to write these ensuing centuries the subject of inter- words. His gaze was in fact turned est and conquest by various invad- towards the Ionian Islands where “the ers, including Aragonese, Genoese, blue really begins” as far as he was Angevins, Franks and the Turks. concerned. Several of the islands changed hands a number of times but essentially they The Ionian Islands have always been remained under Venetian tutelage as different from the rest of Greece. For the Venetian Republic and its ‘wa- nearly 400 years the Seven Islands tery kingdom’ grew and prospered (Heptanesos or τα Eπτάνησα) of in the Levant. As a result, the Ionian Corfu (Kerkyra), Paxos, Ithaca, Islands largely escaped the Ottoman Kefalonia (Cephalonia), Lefkada yoke that enveloped the rest of the (Santa Maura), Zakynthos (Zante) Greek-speaking world. Corfu was and Kythera (Cerigo) at one and the in fact the only Greek island never same time flourished under and were conquered by the Turks. subdued by their Venetian over- lords. After brief encounters with the The islands were known as the French and Russians in the Napole- Venetian islands of the East and for a onic turmoil that was unleashed in the long time prospered as trade Mediterranean in the late 1700s, the opportunities expanded within the islands finally came under the empire. But this also brought social ‘protection’ of the British and from upheaval as the new middle classes the beginning of the nineteenth grew to resent the local nobility and wealthy land owners who dominated century for a period of over fifty years the local administrative structures. At they were almost a part of the far- the same time, the military fortifi- flung British Empire. cation of the islands proceeded with And then in 1864 the seven islands the construction of dominantly-posi- were ceded to Greece and the tioned castles in the islands, notably Venetian/Italian and British The islands figure prominently in Corfu and Kythera. dominion over the Ionian Sea had history and legend. They were During the 18th century, a Greek formally come to an end. settled by Greeks possibly as early as national independence movement Why the Ionian Islands? 1200 BC. Kerkyra was occupied by began to emerge and the relatively colonists from Corinth in 734 BC but independent status of the Ionian This island group almost appears like almost 300 years later it staged a Islands attracted exiled Greek intel- stepping stones down the west coast successful revolt against Corinth, lectuals, freedom fighters and foreign of mainland Greece with Kythera which was then allied to Sparta, and sympathisers. This movement took (historically if not geographically) became an ally of Athens. This alli- rapid shape as the Romantic National- making up the seventh island at the ance eventually helped precipitate the ism movement of the early nineteenth southern tip of the Peloponnese, Peloponnesian Wars (431–404 BC). century spread across Europe and into between Cape Malea and Crete. Ithaca is the legendary birthplace of Ottoman-occupied Greece. There are more than seven islands in Odysseus and from where he began, In 1797, after Napoléon Bonaparte’s the Ionian Sea and extending as far and ended, his legendary Homeric as Antikythera but the seven largest victory over Venice, the Ionian Odyssey. Cerigo is the mythological Islands were transferred to France. islands account for the name “Eptani- starting point for the cult of Aphrodite. sa”. The origin of the name “Ionian” On Corfu, French rule was welcomed is somewhat more obscure, but is The islands then passed into Ro- and the symbols of Venetian feudal thought to derive from the goddess man and later Byzantine spheres of rule, such as the Libro d’Oro (the Io, one of Zeus’ lovers who fled the influence until 1204 with the fall of Golden Book which listed the nobility wrath of a jealous Hera and passed Constantinople following the Fourth of the island) and the coats of arms of through the waters now known as the Crusade. Venice was allocated parts these families were burnt. Ionian Sea. of mainland Greece, various posses- However, not long after, in 1799, 2 naval forces under the command Majesty the King of Great Britain”. and the impressive masonry viaducts of the Russian Admiral Ushakov on Kythera, provide a vivid testimo- The creation of the Ionian Protec- evicted the French and established the ny. But as Martin Young wrote in torate is now regarded by many Septinsular Republic under joint Rus- his Traveller’s Guide to Corfu and commentators as a form of semi-colo- so-Ottoman protection, the very first the Other Ionian Islands, the price of nisation as they were ruled by a Lord semi-autonomous Greek state. The efficient administration was foreign High Commissioner appointed by the rule and after Greece had achieved newly established state’s flag depicted British who also had and exercised its independence the omnipresence of the Lion of St Mark holding the gos- the right to keep a military garrison the British had become quite irksome pel in its right paw, seven lances held on each of the Islands as well as to a local population which, despite together with a ribbon with the year the right to intervene in the internal centuries of Venetian/Italian domina- 1800 engraved – the date of the newly affairs of the state. According to the tion, had never ceased to feel Greek. established state. The new republic historian Robert Holland, the Brit- had Corfu as its capital and Greek ish regime that oversaw the Seven Gradually the challenge to British was made the official language. Islands was the first classic case of imperial authority started to resonate. an anomalous ‘quasi-colony’, where When William Gladstone arrived in the relations between the islanders the Ionian Islands in 1858 to survey and the expatriate British colonising the Ionian political and colonial land- forces were quite embittered, more scape he was met by demonstrators so than in territories where a formal who demanded Kάτω η Προστασία empire structure had been imposed. (Down with the Protectorate). At the same time, the British had On the 27 September 1859 the developed stereotyped constructions Ionian Parliament demanded Union of the Ionian islanders who they with Greece. Eventually, the Ionian regarded as European aborigines or Assembly in October 1863 formally Mediterranean Irish; a somewhat called on Britain to renounce the Pro- ironic reflection on past experiences tectorate and to hand the islands back However, in 1807, the islands were with other cultures subdued by the to Greece. The Great Powers met in annexed again to the French under the British. The Greeks were frankly November 1863 and finally agreed Treaty of Tilsit because of Napoleon’s seen as corrupt and unreliable, whom to cession of the Ionian Islands to obsession with the strategic impor- the British nevertheless had a respon- Greece on condition that the islands tance of the islands as military bases. sibility to protect. remained neutral and the imposing fortifications in Corfu were demol- But this was not well received in the The British did introduce a number of ished. 1864 was to mark the end of islands, particularly by the commer- economic, social and judicial reforms England’s mastery of the Mediterra- cial and bourgeois classes in Ceph- and the islands’ separate Residents nean. alonia and Zante who wanted closer (equivalent to local governors) were ties with Britain. In 1809 British active in carrying out public works, And so it was that on 21 May 1864, forces landed on the Ionian Islands particularly roads, bridges and after more than 50 years of British capturing Zante, Ithaka, Cerigo and schools as well as the Lancastrian rule, the British regiment lowered its Cephalonia, where their commander model of education. Many of those colours as it left the Old Fortress in proclaimed: “We present ourselves to works, such as colonial buildings and Corfu for the last time. The formal you, Inhabitants of Cephalonia, not as schools throughout the islands, the in- handover of the Ionian Islands was Invaders, with views of conquest, but tricate road networks on Cephalonia, complete and they were Greek again.

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