State and Private Capital in the Making of Modern Mediterranean Tourism

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Partners in Pleasure: State and Private Capital in the Making of Modern Mediterranean Tourism

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Pappas, D. (2021). Partners in Pleasure: State and Private Capital in the Making of Modern Mediterranean Tourism [University of Miami]. https://scholarship.miami.edu/discovery/fulldisplay/alma991031573989602976/01UOML_INST:ResearchR epository

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Please do not remove this page UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI

PARTNERS IN PLEASURE: STATE AND PRIVATE CAPITAL IN THE MAKING OF MODERN MEDITERRANEAN TOURISM

Dale Pappas

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to the Faculty of the University of Miami in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Coral Gables, Florida

May 2021

UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

PARTNERS IN PLEASURE: STATE AND PRIVATE CAPITAL IN THE MAKING OF MODERN MEDITERRANEAN TOURISM

Dale Pappas

Approved:

______Dominique K. Reill, Ph.D. Michael B. Miller, Ph.D. Associate Professor of History Professor of History

______Krista A. Goff, Ph.D. Guillermo Prado, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of History Dean of the Graduate School

______Terrence Peterson, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of History Florida International University

PAPPAS, DALE (Ph.D., History) Partners in Pleasure: State and Private Capital (May 2021) in the Making of Modern Mediterranean Tourism

Abstract of a dissertation at the University of Miami.

Dissertation supervised by Professor Dominique Reill. No. of pages in text. (271)

This dissertation explores the development of tourism in the interwar eastern

Mediterranean. It argues that the forging of networks of state officials and private commercial partners in the interwar years provided a critical foundation for the growth of tourism in the post-WWII period. The dissertation examines the case studies of tourism development in British Colonial Cyprus, Fascist Italian Colonial Rhodes, and the Greek nation-state. Each chapter draws on a diverse archival and printed primary source base from official government, corporate, and private bureaucratic records and travel literature.

This dissertation prompts a reconsideration of the chronology of modern tourism development in the twentieth century Mediterranean.

Acknowledgments

A few paragraphs cannot begin to express the deep gratitude and thanks I owe to so many individuals for their efforts to ensure my success in completing this dissertation.

I am indebted to Dominque Reill, my advisor, for her commitment to this project from initial conception to its completion. Without her guidance, I could not have finished this dissertation. I have also benefited from the intellectual support of faculty in the History

Department at the University of Miami. Special thanks to professors Michael B. Miller and Krista Goff for their support and comments on my dissertation as committee members. I had the good fortune of learning so much from all my UM committee members as a student and teaching assistant during my years in the graduate program.

I also want to thank the department’s directors of graduate studies during my time at UM, Ashli White and Michael Bernath for their encouragement and support in many facets of my graduate education. The welcoming nature of our department enabled me to interact with and benefit from the advice and support of many faculty members. I would like to especially thank professors Hermann Beck, Scott Heerman, Martin Nesvig, Kate

Ramsey, Eduardo Elena, Mary Lindemann, Hugh Thomas, and Max Fraser for all they have done to help me become a better scholar and teacher. Our department administrators, especially Lori Franklin were always there to make sure I was on track.

Outside of the department and the University of Miami, I would like to thank

Professor Terrence Peterson of Florida International University for the opportunity to join

several of his engaging seminar courses and for serving as the outside member of the

committee. I want to thank several archivists who generously donated their time to

locating precious primary sources in this project, especially Koula Pieri and Christos

iii

Kyriakides of the Cyprus State Archives. The staff of the General State Archives of

Greece in Athens, Corfu, and Rhodes were always helpful, as too were those of the

National Archives of the UK and the Caird Library in Greenwich. I would also like to thank the interlibrary loan staff at the University of Miami and Saint Joseph’s University.

Many people have been of immeasurable help to me during European research trips. I am grateful to friends and contacts in the hotel industry for sharing insight and, at times, personal archival materials. Special thanks to Takis Mihailidis of the Hotel Elafos in Rhodes for valuable records and photographs of the island and its hotels in the interwar period. Chris Kordistos offered the same to me in the case of Kos and Rhodes. From my first summer research trip, Niko Clerides and Vera Lipton introduced me to so much of

Cyprus and its history. In Athens, Peter Poulos of the Hellenic Initiative,

Nikos Trivoulidis of the Benaki Museum, and Tassos Sakellaropoulos of the Benaki

Historical Archives directed me to critical archival collections.

I have had the fortune of making many good friends during my years in the Ph.D. program, but I would like to especially thank the members of my cohort for their support and valuable comments on earlier drafts of this dissertation. But to all my colleagues in the program I say thank you for your advice, friendship, and support during what is all too often an isolating experience of writing a dissertation.

This project would not have been possible without my academic and personal ties to Saint Joseph’s University. Current and former faculty and staff in History, Italian,

Economics, Political Science, and many other departments have fostered my passion for historical research and writing. I will be forever grateful for the years I spent at SJU.

In closing, I want to say thank you to my friends and family. The Bachas-Daunert

family has been so welcoming and supportive of me during my time in Miami. My

friends and language tutors Vasilieos Stathias, Alexia Kafkoutsou, Philip Bachas-

Daunert, and Cooper Copetas were always supportive and helped to keep me sane during this process. Finally, I cannot imagine writing about tourism without the many family trips abroad organized by my parents, Stephan and Dori, and my sister, Kali. I would not have undertaken such a project without inspiration drawn from the experiences of my grandparents and great-grandparents. Stories of their lives, along with several of my uncles born in the former Italian Aegean Islands that first drove me to research this time period and corner of the Mediterranean. And so, I dedicate this dissertation to my family.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

LIST OF FIGURES ...... viii

Chapter

INTRODUCTION ...... 1

1 EMPIRE AND NEW MEDITERRANEAN TOURISM IN THE INTERWAR PERIOD ...... 25 1.1 Context: The New Mediterranean (Dis)order: Embattled Empires in the Post- WWI Eastern Mediterranean ...... 30 1.2 Lausanne’s Children: Interwar State-Organized Tourism in the Greek-Speaking World ...... 38 1.3 The New Mediterranean Tourism ...... 51 1.4 Chapter Conclusion ...... 73

2 RHODES: A FASCIST ITALIAN CLUB MED? TOURISM, EMPIRE, AND MEDITERRANEAN RIVALRY ...... 75 2.1 Chapter Introduction ...... 75 2.2 ‘Temporary” Italian Military Occupation and the Construction of “Italian” Rhodes, 1912-1922 ...... 81 2.3 Mario Lago and the Birth of a Modern Tourism Industry in Rhodes ...... 86 2.4 A Place in the Sun? Tourism and Mediterranean Rivalry ...... 108 2.5 Chapter Conclusion: Rupture and Continuity in a Mediterranean Tourist Resort ...... 127

3 CYPRUS: BUREAUCRATS INTO TOUR GUIDES: TOURISM DEVELOPMENT AND IMPERIAL SOVEREIGNTY IN THE BRITISH MEDITERRANEAN ...... 131 3.1 Chapter Introduction ...... 131 3.2 Tourism Development in Britain’s “Cinderella Colony” ...... 137 3.3 Making “British” Cyprus through Tourism: The Troodos Mountains ...... 150 3.4 The Decentralized Tour of Cyprus ...... 160 3.5 Cyprus Tourism Under Threat ...... 174 3.6 Chapter Conclusion ...... 187

4 THE GREEK NATION-STATE: BUSINESS SAVVY BYRONS: FOREIGN INTERVENTION, CRISIS, AND TOURISM DEVELOPMENT ...... 191 4.1 Chapter Introduction ...... 191 4.2 Philhellenism, Transnational Partnerships, and the Birth of an Industry ...... 201 vi

4.3 The Guidebook to Save Greece: Brainerd Salmon’s Glimpses of Greece ...... 209 4.4 Envisioning the Greek Nation in the GNTO Action Plan, 1929-1932 ...... 215 4.5 Paradise Contested: Fears of Greek Undoing, Tourism, and Mediterranean Rivalry...... 221 4.6 Chapter Conclusion ...... 243

CONCLUSION ...... 246

BIBLIOGRAPHY…………… ...... 261

vii

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1.1: Map of Uncle Sam’s “Great Army of American Tourists” by Charles Hodges (The New York Times, June 8, 1930……………………………………………………...62

Figure 1.2: P&O Movement Log for Cruise of Viceroy of India, 1935 (P&O Heritage Collection, Greenwich, UK) ...... 72

Figure 2.1: Cover of Italian Guidebook to Rhodes, (ENIT, Rodi: Guida del Turismo , Roma: ENIT, 1933)...... 96

Figure 2.2: The Avenue of the Knights in 2018 (Author’s photograph) ...... 115

Figure 2.3: The Grand Hotel of the Roses in 2019 (Author’s photograph) ...... 124

Figure 3.1: Signature of Theo Mogabgab (J.R. Hilton Papers, KCL, London) ...... 146

Figure 3.2: Advertisement for Mantovani Agency (Published in Mosditchian’s Cyprus, 1930) ...... 149

Figure 3.3: Cyprus Tourist Advertisement (Published in The Palestine Post, May 20, 1940) ...... 190

Figure 4.1: Postcard Map of “Greater Greece” (ELIA, Athens, Greece) ...... 195

Figure 4.2: Cover of Glimpses of Greece (B.P. Salmon, 1929)...... 210

Figure 4.3: Cover of Bi-Lingual Automobile Guide to Greece (ELIA, Athens, Greece) ...... 221

Figure 4.4: Anti-Italian Leaflet, Corfu (The National Archives, UK) ...... 230

Figure 4.5: Throne Room Corfu Dedication, The Times 1933 (The National Archives, UK) ...... 238

viii

Introduction National governments have often intervened in favor of fostering tourism

development for a range of internal and external economic and public image purposes.

Today, tourism has emerged as one of the world's largest industries, thanks in part to this

state support. Tourism is the world’s largest service sector industry, accounts for over

10% of the global GDP and employs one out of every 11 people on the planet.1 However,

neither tourism nor state intervention in this sector is a relatively recent phenomenon.

While there are connections with earlier antecedents like ancient Roman leisure travel and medieval pilgrimage, modern tourism is more easily connected to the Grand Tour of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Innovations in transportation, evolution in aesthetic tastes and ideas about science and health, as well as rising affluence in the nineteenth century, produced dramatic growth in free time, the democratization of leisure, and proliferation of forms of leisure activities, among other things. This tourism growth was linked to the expansion of European empires throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Scholarship on imperial tourism strategies stresses the instructive value to officials in educating citizens in the metropole on the benefits of empire evident in

1 UN World Tourism Organization. UNWTO Tourism Highlights. 2019 Edition. (New York: UNWTO, 2019), 3; In 2013 there were roughly 1 billion tourist arrivals worldwide and the industry was growing at 5 percent. According to UNWTO data, global tourist arrivals had grown to 1.5 billion in 2019. These numbers reflect an increase of over 3000 percent over the same numbers in 1950. This growth in 2019 occurred despite growing uncertainty surrounding Brexit, geopolitical and trade tensions, and the global economic slowdown, weighed on growth. 2019 was also the year of major shifts in the sector with the collapse of Thomas Cook and of several low-cost airlines in Europe. United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) Tourism Barometer, January 2020. https://www.unwto.org/world-tourism- barometer-n18-january-2020. Accessed February 4, 2021. 1

colonial tourism excursions. For example, the title of historian Ellen Furlough’s article on

French colonial tourism promotion and official efforts to express a notion of French

imperial identity through tourism is “’ Une leçon des choses,’ [an object lesson] of the range of mutual benefits afforded by colonialism for metropolitan and colonial subjects, cultures, and economies.”2

In the abstract, tourism is usually conceived as a product of capitalist, imperialist,

racialist liberalism. But other forces played important roles in its development. During

the interwar years, authoritarian nationalist regimes like Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, and

the Stalinist Soviet Union actively promoted tourism and leisure travel to consolidate a

national community. In Mussolini’s Italy, the Dopolavoro (OND, After Work) provided

the masses with excursions and short holidays, and this model was adopted in Nazi

Germany by Kraft durch Freude (KdF, Strength through Joy). These regimes recognized

the value of tourism development as a vehicle to instruct the masses in national unity and

imperial expansion.3 However, as scholars such as Diane Koenker and Shawn Salmon

point out, the inherently capitalist nature of tourism development prompted Soviet and

other socialist governments to find ways of reconciling tourist experiences with the

state’s ideological imperatives. Put another way, much of the scholarship on pre-WWII tourism has focused on how states hoped to harness tourism to form societies, both within the European continent and beyond.4 However, there is little understanding of how the

2 Ellen Furlough, “Une leçon des Choses Tourism, Empire, and the Nation in Interwar France,” French Historical Studies, Vol. 25, No. 3 (Summer 2002), 443.

3 Shelley Baranowski, Strength through Joy: Consumerism and Mass Tourism in the Third Reich (Cambridge, 2004), esp. chap. 4; see also Kristin Semmens, Seeing Hitler’s Germany: Tourism in the Third Reich (New York: Palgrave MacMillan 2005); Julia Boyd, Travelers in the Third Reich: The Rise of Fascism through the Eyes of Everyday People (London: Elliot & Thompson, 2018); Victoria de Grazia, The Culture of Consent: Mass Organization of Leisure in Fascist Italy (Cambridge, 1981).

mechanisms and know-how of state tourism actually developed into the guiding forces

they became in the second half of the twentieth century.

In this dissertation, I explore interwar tourism development patterns beyond the

boundaries of individual states by focusing on the imperial and international dimensions

of state-organized tourism and how this shaped postwar mass tourism and the states

which made it. This dissertation participates in this growing body of scholarship on the

history of modern tourism in the Mediterranean. It argues that capitalist liberal/imperial

state tourism development was critical in reimagining Mediterranean tourist landscapes.

The learned muscle memory of these policies set the groundwork for tourism’s dramatic

post-Second World War expansion and transformed the social and cultural spaces left in

its wake.

The Greek-speaking world including the modern Greek nation-state was a

playground of this capitalist and imperial model of interwar state-organized tourism

development. For the modern observer, present-day Greece appears to have been exceptionally well-positioned as a Mediterranean tourist activity center. A favorable

climate, vast collections of monuments from antiquity, picturesque scenery, and rich folk

traditions held as much fascination for the small intrepid number of Grand Tourists

4 Diane P. Koenker, Club Red: Vacation Travel and the Soviet Dream (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2013); Shawn Salmon, “Marketing Socialism: Inturist in the Late 1950s and Early 1960s,” in Turizm: The Russian and East European Tourist under Capitalism and Socialism, ed. Anne E. Gorsuch and Diane P. Koenker (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006), 186-204; Michael David-Fox, Showcasing the Great Experiment: Cultural Diplomacy and Western Visitors to the Soviet Union, 1921–1941 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011); Marguerite S. Shaffer, See America First: Tourism and National Identity, 1880– 1940 (Washington, DC, 2001), 2–6; Aldis Purs, “‘One Breath for Every Two Strides’: The State’s Attempt to Construct Tourism and Identity in Interwar Latvia,” in Turizm: The Russian and East European Tourist under Capitalism and Socialism, ed. Anne E. Gorsuch and Diane P. Koenker (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006), 97–115; Andrew Behrendt, “Educating Apostles of the Homeland: Tourism and Honismeret in Interwar Hungary,” Hungarian Cultural Studies, Volume 7 (2014), 159-176.

4 before 1914 as for the more than 30 million annual visitors to Greece today. Few would have considered the end of the First World War to be a propitious moment for tourism development of these eastern Mediterranean lands. The Greek nation-state in the 1920s was a country plagued by the effects of nearly a decade of constant warfare, financial collapse, domestic political crises, and the challenge of settling and assimilating over a million Orthodox Christian refugees from Anatolia. The tiny tourist flows to the modern

Greek-nation state after independence from the Ottoman Empire in the early 1830s did not experience dramatic change, despite the growth of mass tourism in Europe and the

Mediterranean in the late nineteenth century. However, the interwar years reflected marked increase in tourist arrivals, as by the mid-1930s, roughly 90,000 foreigners visited annually.5 Following the end of WWII, tourist arrivals to the Greek nation-state continued to grow in large part because of the infrastructure created in the interwar period.

However, the Greece familiar to the modern tourist did not yet exist as a cohesive political unit before WWII. Today Greece incorporates the southern portion of the Balkan peninsula and several surrounding island chains. The Ionian Islands including Corfu are the country’s western maritime frontier. The Dodecanese and Northern Aegean islands represent the eastern maritime frontier. Crete (as well as the tiny island of Gavdos) and the mainland provinces of Epirus, Macedonia, and Thrace constitute the southern and northern frontier, respectively. In the interwar period, however, these geographic boundaries were only beginning to take shape and would not be completely realized until the end of WWII. At the close of WWI, the Greek-speaking world was divided between

5 “Tourist Statistics for the year 1933,” Touristiki Ellas, Vol. 4, No. 39 (January 1934), 153.

5 the modern Greek nation-state and the British and Italian empires. The Dodecanese

Islands, including Rhodes, were part of Fascist Italy’s expanding Mediterranean empire in the interwar years. Italy had conquered them during the Italo-Ottoman War of 1911-

1912 after nearly four centuries of Ottoman rule. Cyprus, an island with a substantial

Greek-speaking Orthodox Christian majority, became a formal British colony in 1925, even though Britain had governed already Cyprus since 1878, as a protectorate on behalf of the Ottoman Sultan. In late 1914, following the Ottoman entry into WWI against the

Entente, Britain annexed Cyprus, ending over three centuries of Ottoman rule. Both

British officials in Cyprus and Italian authorities in Rhodes and the Dodecanese encountered Greek nationalist aspirations for enosis (union) with the Greek nation-state.

At the same time, Greek authorities feared for the country’s territorial integrity considering Italian imperial ambitions and largely sympathized with Greek nationalists in

Cyprus and Rhodes. Seeing interwar tourism in today’s Mediterranean presents a challenge as today’s world does not align with conditions at that time. The Mediterranean and the Greek-speaking world in the interwar was not one world; rather it was many interlocking imperial ones.

Tourism development has, until recently, remained situated in the context of national or imperial histories. However, tourism, as historian Eric G.E. Zuelow points out, “is an inherently transnational phenomenon.”6 Scholars, including Zuelow, thus have

6 Eric G.E. Zuelow, “Introduction,” in Touring Beyond the Nation: A Transnational Approach to European Tourism History Edited by Eric G.E. Zuelow. (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), 12. In 1999 the first peer- reviewed journal dedicated to tourism history, Annale di Storia del Turismo (Annals of Tourism History) appeared in Italy. The first peer-reviewed journal dedicated to the subject in English appeared in 2009. See, the Journal of Tourism History. For a discussion of developments in tourism history see, Eric G.E. Zuelow et al. “Discussion: Teaching Tourism History,” Journal of Tourism History, Vol. 8, No.1 (January 2016), 57-84.

set out to demonstrate that respective national or imperial tourism industries, which have

too often been studied in isolation, can only be understood when situated within the

broader regional and global contexts in which they operated. Indeed, one point that is

made clear in this dissertation is that the development of modern tourism industries is

also profoundly local and transnational in nature, regardless of how national the origin of

capital invested in such projects and the politics of tourism may be.

This dissertation situates the Greek-speaking world of the interwar eastern

Mediterranean in a transnational framework through the lens of tourism development

strategies and cross-border tourist traffic. With few exceptions, studies of the Greek

world to date have focused on the local and national questions and the “struggle” for the

enosis of majority Greek-speaking territories into the modern Greek nation-state. A significant reason for this is due to archival organization, consisting, in the case of modern Greece, Cyprus, and the Dodecanese, in national, subject-bound official

correspondence. But it also owes much to the interpretative frameworks employed.

Understandably, much of the research on modern Cyprus has sought to trace the

origins of the post-WWII ethno-nationalist violence and the enduring division of the island, seen as the result of the gradual internationalization of a colonial conflict pitting

Greek-speaking Greek Orthodox Christians and Turkish-speaking Muslim Cypriot

nationalists against their British rulers. However, the focus on how Cyprus became

divided and the choice to frame it as a conflict between Greek and Turkish nationalists

obscures the island’s diverse population and the complexity of social and political life

under British colonial rule.

The historiography of the Dodecanese Islands, including Rhodes, which officially

7 became part of Greece in 1947, often proceeds along the teleological narrative of local

Greek national resistance overcoming Italian efforts at “de-Hellenization.”7 However, there are several excellent studies in English and Italian on the rich history of the island’s

Jewish community, which was tragically decimated in the Holocaust. Most studies in

Italian focus on specialist topics such as architecture, urban planning, and archaeology.

Nevertheless, much of the scholarship on Rhodes focuses on Greek-Italian interactions or specialized topics about a particular community. Because many urban development initiatives undertaken by the Italians -- including hotels, spas, museums, and roads --- involved tourism development, the industry has attracted the attention of a number of scholars interested in dissecting Fascist Italy’s empire and its relationship with the Italian metropole.8 What tourism did to Rhodes itself and how it set the stage for what was to come has been mostly lost in these histories.

Similarly, much of the scholarship on other areas of modern Greece tells a story

7 Most of the scholarship on this period of history in Rhodes in Greek is produced by local and mostly amateur scholars. The preeminent professional Greek historian of Rhodes is Zacharias N. Tsirpanlis. In his influential work on the period of Italian rule in the Dodecanese, Tsirpanlis neglects the experiences of the Muslim and Jewish communities, even ending his study chronologically in 1943, the year before the mass deportations of Rhodian Jews to death camps during the Holocaust. For Alexis Rappas, this demonstrates the intent of Tsirpanlis to confine the history of Italian rule in the Dodecanese to a narrow homegnized nationalist narrative of Greek rebels against Italian oppressors. See, Zacharias N. Tsirpanlis, Italokratía sta Dodekánisa, 1912–1943: Allotríosi tou anthrópou kai tou perivállontos [Italocracy in the Dodecanese, 1912–1943: alienation of man and of the environment]. (Rhodes: Zete Publications, 1998); Alexis Rappas, "Memorial Soliloquies in Post-Colonial Rhodes and the Ghost of Mediterranean Cosmopolitanism," Mediterranean Historical Review, Vol. 33, No.1 (January 2018), 94-95.

8 Specialized topics also include, Simona Martinoli e Eliana Perotti, Architettura coloniale italiana nel Dodecaneso, 1912-1943 (Torino: Edizioni Fondazione Giovanni Agnelli,1999); Giovanni Cecini, La Guardia di Finanza nelle isole italliane dell’Egeo 1912-1945 (Roma: Gangemi Editore, 2014); On the history of the island’s Jewish community, see Esther Fintz Menascé, A History of Jewish Rhodes. (Los Angeles: The Rhodes Jewish Historical Foundation, 2014); idem, Buio nell'isola del sole: Rodi 1943-1945: la tragedia dei militari italiani e l'annientamento degli ebrei (Milano: Mimesis, 2014 [2005]); Marco Clementi, Eirini Toliou, Gli ultimi ebrei di Rodi: leggi razziali e deportazioni nel Dodecaneso Italiano (1938-1948) (Roma: DeriveApprodi, 2015); Anthony McElligott, “The Deportation of the Jews of Rhodes, 1944: An Integrated History” in, The Holocaust in Greece edited by Georgios Antoniou and A. Dirk Moses (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 58-86.

of the territorial expansion of the modern nation-state in the nineteenth and twentieth

centuries, as well as the struggle to develop a functioning modern state, stable

democracy, and viable economy. Greek scholarship primarily considers efforts to

incorporate different territories over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries into the

modern Greek nation-state as inevitable, or at the very least justified because of

longstanding Hellenic cultural and religious associations. In the case of Cyprus and

Rhodes, scholarship devotes considerable attention to nationalist efforts to achieve enosis

with the Greek nation-state. Apart from interdisciplinary studies on the assimilation of

Anatolian refugees into modern Greek society, there are few works on the country’s

minority populations. Instead, many scholars insert specific areas of the Greek world like

Rhodes, Cyprus, Crete, and Corfu among others in a continuum of heroic Greek

resistance against different foreign occupations – xenokraties – which sought to alter the

Hellenic cultural and religious fabric of lands that nationalists desired to be incorporated

into the modern Greek nation-state.9 As a result, experiences and narratives involving

communities other than Greek-speaking Greek Orthodox Christians remain obscured by the drive to situate the territorial expansion of the modern Greek-state since the nineteenth century in starkly nationalist terms.

To combat these trends, the historiography of modern Greece in a transnational framework is on the rise. This dissertation aims to be part of that story, building on the recent work of scholars, including Alexis Rappas, Valerie McGuire, and Konstantina

9 Tourkokratia is used to describe the period of Ottoman rule over most of present-day Greek territory. Enetokratia refers to the Venetian domination of different parts present-day Greece and Cyprus between 1204 and 1797 including Corfu and the Ionian Islands. Anglokratia refers to the British protectorate of the Ionian Islands (1815–1864) and colonial rule in Cyprus (1878– 1960), while Italokratia describes the period of Italian rule in Rhodes and the Dodecanese (1912-1943).

Zanou, in challenging the archives' national framework in today’s Greece and Cyprus.10

A transnational focus on the Greek-speaking world offers a powerful corrective to the homogenized nationalist narratives on modern Greece and Cyprus. My dissertation aims to build on this scholarship by concentrating on actors that could not easily be categorized as “Greek” in the sense that they were not primarily native Greek-speakers

and/or Greek Orthodox Christians. As I argue in the subsequent case studies, actors

engaged in tourism development in Cyprus, Rhodes, and Greece, including the Ladino-

speaking Jewish community of Rhodes, polyglot Cypriot civil servants, Italian and

English-speaking imperialists, expatriate philhellenes, as well as mostly Turkish-speaking

Anatolian refugees in Greece, were critical to the foundation of the respective tourism

industries. This thesis also connects the three spaces beyond questions of enosis and

Greek nation-building, preferring to see this imperial competition as a foundation for

mutually beneficial tourism industries by the early post-WWII years. A focus on these

actors and debates in interwar tourism development reveals a more ethnically,

linguistically, and religiously diverse Greek-speaking world than is widely presumed.

This discussion is even more pressing today as the modern Greek nation-state prepares to

commemorate the bicentennial of its independence from the Ottoman Empire.

Despite the significance of tourism to the Greek and Cypriot economies today,

10 Notable works include Thomas Gallant, Experiencing Dominion: Culture, Identity, and Power in the British Mediterranean (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002), Alexis Rappas, “The Transnational Formation of Imperial Rule on the Margins of Europe: British Cyprus and the Italian Dodecanese in the Interwar Period,” European History Quarterly, Vol. 45, No. 3 (July 2015), 467–505; Valerie McGuire, “Arcadian Histories: Italian Encounters in the Eastern Mediterranean,” edited by Graziella Parati, New Perspectives in Italian Cultural Studies. Volume I: Definition, Theory and Accented Practices (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2012); Devin Naar, Jewish Salonica: Between the Ottoman Empire and Modern Greece (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2016); Konstantina Zanou, Transnational Patriotism in the Mediterranean, 1800-1850: Stammering the Nation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019).

there is surprisingly little scholarship in Greek or foreign languages on the industry's

development in either country. As prominent Greek business historian Margarita Dritsas

observes, part of the reason for this is accepting an incomplete chronology of modern

tourism in both Greece and Cyprus. Dritsas points out that many Greek academics and

people in the tourism sector assume a national tourism infrastructure was absent before

the 1960s.11 A survey of tourism in Greece between the First World War and the modern

era by Angelos Vlachos has ushered in a new phase of scholarship on tourism history in

Greece.12 This dissertation aims to build on this work in reconsidering the origins of

modern tourism in Greece.

Cypriot scholars share a similar traditional narrative in terms of the tourism

industry’s chronology in Cyprus. The argument claims that after little efforts by the

vulnerable British colonial regime following WWII, Cypriots in the “Greek” republic

after the island’s 1974 partition “dreamed of hotels and taxis” in response to the ethno-

nationalist conflict's emotional and economic trauma.13 Perhaps the trauma of division

explains the omission of the fact that multiple luxury hotels and other elements of a

tourism infrastructure built during the interwar and early post-WWII years had been

11 Margarita Dritsas, “Tourism during Economic and Political Crisis in Greece 19th-20th Centuries” in, Tourism and Crisis in Europe XIX-XXI centuries: Historical, National, and Business History Perspectives, edited by Margarita Dritsas, (Kerkyra, Greece: Economia Publishers 2013), 82-95.

12 Angelos Vlachos, Tourismos kai Dimosies politikes sti Synchroni Ellada 1914–1950. I anadysi enos neoterikou fainomenou [Tourism and Public Policies in Contemporary Greece 1914–1950 The Emergence of a Modern Phenomenon]; (Kerkyra, Greece: Economia, 2016).

13 Today Cyprus, like Greece, is a member state of the European Union. However, the island has been partitioned since 1974 between the “Greek” Republic of Cyprus and the self-styled “Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus.” Mark Simmons, The British and Cyprus: An Outpost of Empire to Sovereign Bases, 1898-1974 (Stroud, UK: The History Press, 2015), 20; For an example of the chronology of Cyprus tourism as a postwar phenomenon see, Georgia Daskalaki, “‘Aphrodite’s Realm’: Representations of Tourist Landscapes in Postcolonial Cyprus as Symbols of Modernization.” Architectural Histories, Vol. 5, No. 1 (Winter 2017), 1–16.

abandoned due to the conflict. As Greek, Cypriot, and many other Mediterranean tourism

industries continue to expand in the twenty-first century, the need to understand these

historical transformations and their impact on how populations have viewed themselves,

their neighbors, guests, leisure time, and the natural environment will only grow in

importance with the increase of the industry’s share of their respective national and the

global GDP.14

This dissertation also aims to provide a revision to the chronology of modern

tourism through an emphasis on interwar developments. In the historiography of tourism,

the interwar period is generally broken down along three approaches. Arguably the

central approach to interwar tourism has focused on the relationship between tourism,

identity, and the state in authoritarian dictatorships.15 However, an emphasis on

authoritarian models for state tourism policies suggests that many interwar developments

were lost in the devastation of WWII across Europe and the Mediterranean, along with a

number of those regimes. Moreover, the legacies of those interwar developments in

tourism are often tied to the individual regimes rather than attempting to see any broader

transformations in the industry’s regulation and promotion.

If not remembered for the interventions of Soviet, Fascist Italian, or Nazi German

policies, interwar tourism runs the risk of being viewed in nostalgic terms. One

14 According to a 2018 World Bank report, tourism either directly or indirectly accounts for between 25.7- 30.9% of Greece’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Similarly, in Cyprus, tourism accounts for nearly 22% of the country’s GDP. The substantial percentage of the tourism’s contribution to the GDP has led to considerable concern in Greece that the country is over-reliant on tourism. See, Ilias Bellos, “Greece is over-reliant on tourism,” Kathimerini, (September 29, 2019); Idem, “Bad news for tourism business,” Kathimerini August 4, 2020, https://www.ekathimerini.com/255406/article/ ekathimerini/business/bad- news-for-tourism-business. Accessed August 17, 2020.

15 See Shelley Baranowski, Strength through Joy; Sasha D. Pack, Tourism and Dictatorship: Europe’s Peaceful Invasion of Franco’s Spain (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2006).

interpretation of the social history of the interwar years has been to frame it in largely

positive terms. Rather than dwell on gloomy elements, from the massive economic

dislocation to the rise of extreme political forces on all sides of the spectrum, some

scholars like Martin Pugh argue that for the growing middle class the interwar period was

a time of relative prosperity. Prosperity after WWI fueled new developments in leisure,

including within tourism industries.16 This interpretation also takes the form of the last

gasp of the pre-1914 “golden age” of bourgeois tourists, the famed Simplon-Orient

Express, and the world of ubiquitous Thomas Cook offices.17 For those who enjoyed

these benefits, their activities bordered on excess.

Within the more conventional historiography of tourism development, excess and

decadence are nowhere to be found in discussions of interwar conditions. Instead, in this

view, initial economic optimism in the interwar years gave way to despair and volatility

before the outbreak of WWII. The traditional approach to writing about state-organized

Mediterranean tourism in the interwar period has been to fit it into the framework of the

national industry that offered great promise to many states of the region, but sadly failed

to deliver prosperity—an industry sent to an early grave because of internal issues and

massive external crises like the Great Depression and WWII.

16 Martin Pugh, We Danced All Night: A Social History of Britain between the Wars (New York: Vintage Books, 2009).

17 By the interwar period, Thomas Cook’s travel offices became a symbol of the modern world, with an extensive global presence. “The whole world is civilized now, isn’t it, a character in Evelyn Waugh’s novel, A Handful of Dust, remarked sardonically, “charabancs and Cook’s offices everywhere.” Quoted in, Piers Brendon, Thomas Cook: 150 Years of Popular Tourism (London: Secker & Warburg, 1991), 276. With the firm’s financial support, American novelist Polan Banks published a romanticized account of a Cook’s employee titled The Man from Cook’s, (New York: Lee Furman, 1938); Alexis Gregory, The Golden Age of Travel: 1880-1939 (New York: Cassell, 1998).

Indeed, the historiography of modern tourism emphasizes the Second World War

as the critical foundational moment for the industry. Indeed, the war caused massive

disruptions to travel and tourism while creating numerous obstacles to reconstruction

efforts. At the same time, national governments turned to tourism as a central plank of

their economic reconstruction. Scholars of the Cold War have explored how both the

United States and the Soviet Union deployed tourism as a political tool designed to construct economic and ideological solidarity within their respective areas of influence.

According to this narrative, modern tourism was born through ambitious policies such as the Marshall Plan, the European Travel Commission's foundation, related developments in consumerism, and significant commercial aviation innovations.18 My approach uses

the tourism industry to cut across traditional boundaries of state, empire, and nation in a

moment after WWI when it appeared the nation-state was in the ascendant.

Indeed, state tourism policies emanating from Marshall Plan reconstruction efforts

and related innovations in travel and leisure led to the significant expansion of cross-

border tourist traffic through the democratization of travel and the tourism industry’s

annual revenue. However, this chronology obscures the growth of tourism in the years

between the wars. This expansion of tourism took several forms, all of which involved

state participation. Historians of business and mobility stress the importance of the

interwar period and the Great Depression, particularly on the expansion of pleasure

cruising and commercial aviation's early years.19 Indeed, by the mid-1930s, legislation in

18 Christopher Endy, Cold War Holidays: American Tourism in France (Chapel Hill, NC, 2004); Tourism and Travel during the Cold War: Negotiating Tourist Experiences across the Iron Curtain Edited by Sune Bechmann Pedersen and Christian Noack. (New York: Routledge, 2019); Turizm: The Russian and East European Tourist under Capitalism and Socialism, ed. Anne E. Gorsuch and Diane P. Koenker (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006); Daniel Aaron Rubin, “Suitcase Diplomacy: The Role of Travel in Sino-American Relations, 1949-1968.” PhD Dissertation (2010) University of Maryland College Park.

fourteen countries around the world and two Swiss cantons, including Britain, France,

and the Soviet Union, enshrined the right to rest, leisure, and annual paid holidays.20

Moreover, over a dozen European governments, including Italy, Greece, and Britain,

founded national tourism organizations and travel agencies between 1919 and 1939. In

many states where such tourism organizations existed before 1914, governments passed

legislation expanding budgets or the scope of their activities.21 Across many areas of the

world in the interwar years, states and provincial governments intervened and protected

the rights of their respective populations to leisure, of which a form would be tourism.

The foundation and expansion of national tourism organizations during the

interwar years also gave rise to new forms of international cooperation under the League

of Nations' guidance. The League of Nations Economic Committee urged national

tourism organizations and their respective governments to standardize and share tourism

statistics while reducing cross-border tourist traffic barriers such as visa fees and customs

duties.22 For their part, representatives of European national tourism organizations

organized several congresses in the interwar years to tackle these questions and exchange

knowledge of promotional and administrative practices. Interwar cooperation between

19 Lorraine Coons and Alexander Varias, Tourist Third Cabin: Steamship Travel in the Interwar Years (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2003); Michael B. Miller, Europe and the Maritime World: A Twentieth- Century History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 254-258. On the early years of commercial aviation and tourism see, Gordon Pirie, “Incidental Tourism: British Imperial Air Travel in the 1930s,” Journal of Tourism History, Vol. 1, No.1 (January 2009), 49-66.

20 Ellen Furlough, “Making Mass Vacations: Tourism and Consumer Culture in France, 1930s to 1970s,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 40, No. 2 (April 1998), 253.

21 France had a national tourism office since 1910, but in 1929-1930 the government voted to expand funding to 30 million francs and appointed a new director Office National du Tourisme to a cabinet position. Elisabeth Piller, “Managing Imponderables: The Rise of U.S. Tourism and the Transformation of German Diplomacy, 1890–1933,” Diplomatic History, Vol. 44, No. 1 (January 2020), 71.

22 League of Nations Economic Committee, Survey of Tourist Traffic: An International Economic Factor (Geneva, 1936).

national tourism organizations resulted in the 1930 founding of the Union Internationale

des Organes Officiels de Propagande Touristique (UIOOPT). Building on a joint

publicity campaign designed for the profitable American tourist market in 1927, the

European national tourism organizations, through the UIOOPT, established the

framework for later international tourism bodies, including the United Nations World

Tourism Organization (UNWTO) and the European Travel Commission (ETC).23

Tourism industries were thus entered into forms of international cooperation built on the

exchange of knowledge, ideas, and efforts to streamline the practice of international

travel.

The industry’s expansion also pertained to the cooperation between public and

private actors in tourism development. Private firms partnering with governments in

tourism projects were not new to the interwar period. Indeed, British firm Thomas Cook

enjoyed a lucrative partnership with the British military establishment in late nineteenth-

century Egypt. According to historian F. Robert Hunter, “[b]y the turn of the twentieth

century, there were two empires on the Nile—Britain’s military occupation, and

[Thomas] Cook’s Egyptian travel.”24 The interwar period produced closer cooperation between public and private actors, in large part, out of practical or financial necessity.

Private firms engaged in tourism were valuable partners for state officials previously uninitiated in the art of attracting foreign tourists. Though there were still many skeptics

23 Like the UNWTO since its founding in 1974, the UIOOPT was headquartered in Madrid. For more on the history of these international tourism bodies, see Frank Schipper, Igor Tchoukarine, and Sune Bechmann Pedersen, The History of the European Travel Commission, 1948-2018 (Brussels: European Travel Commission, 2018); Elizabeth Becker, Overbooked: The Exploding Business of Travel and Tourism (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2013), 9-10.

24 F. Robert Hunter, “Tourism and Empire: The Thomas Cook & Son Enterprise on the Nile, 1868-1914,” Middle Eastern Studies Vol. 40, No. 5 (May 2004), 44.

convinced that tourism was a frivolous pursuit, officials by the end of the First World

War increasingly saw the promotion of tourism as a vital national interest for economic,

social, and political reasons.25 As a result of the Depression, deteriorating economic

conditions made state partnerships a crucial lifeline to many tourism firms. As numerous

firms collapsed due to the sharp downturn, surviving businesses emerged more

competitive through partnerships with national governments and national tourism

organizations.26

While these developments in state tourism policies resulted in different forms of

cooperation, it also produced areas of competition. Recent scholarship has begun to

explore how interwar national tourism policies were shaped by the competition for

foreign tourist currency and broader European rivalry. For example, historian Elisabeth

Piller has examined how national tourism policy in Weimar Germany pitted the country

against its rival France in the competition for American tourist dollars.27 Few areas in the interwar period experienced both the turbulence of rivalry and tourism development as much as the eastern Mediterranean. The Greek-speaking world and other regions of the

Mediterranean were embroiled in competing imperial claims and aspirations on the part of Fascist Italy, Britain, France, Greece, Turkey, and several other regional actors.

State-organized tourism development in the interwar period mattered not only

25 Economists often hired by national governments to produce studies of tourism development repeatedly stressed the reality that “this new and yet old industry” had attracted “practically all the world” from an economic perspective. A.J. Norval, The Tourist Industry: A National and International Survey (London: Sir I. Pitman & Sons, 1936), 35.

26 In the case of Thomas Cook, the firm weathered the storm of the worst years of the Depression through a merger with Belgian firm Wagon-Lits. For more on the impact of the Great Depression on Thomas Cook, see Piers Brendon, Thomas Cook: 150 Years of Popular Tourism, 267-270.

27 Elisabeth Piller, “Managing Imponderables,” 70-71.

because of the level of attention it did or did not generate among policymakers but also

because it revealed deeper connections between domestic and foreign policies. Tourism

promotion, travel writing, and the act of traveling or acting as a host to tourists prompted

people to ask questions about what it meant to identify with a particular national or

imperial identity. Tourism intensified debates about defining the nation or empire and

how to modernize the economy while preserving traditions. Furthermore, interwar-era institutions, legislation, and ideas were not the only elements of state-organized tourism to survive the Second World War in some capacity.

In some instances, the actors behind tourism development policies from the

Marshall Plan and other postwar initiatives were the same people involved in the interwar period. Italian tourism expert and bureaucrat Angelo Mariotti is one example of this continuity. Mariotti (1883-1974) lobbied for the Italian Parliament to establish a national tourism organization in the immediate aftermath of the First World War. He then became one of Mussolini’s leading tourism experts, serving as director of the national tourism organization (ENIT). In the early years following the Second World War, Mariotti wrote one of the first guidebooks to postwar Italy and remained a prominent figure in the industry.28

Interwar state-organized tourism development illuminates far more than the

hidden continuities of fascism. The career of Henry A. Hill of American Express reflects

the powerful continuities of capitalism in the Greek nation-state. Hill began his

28 For more on the life and career of Angelo Mariotti, see R.J.B. Bosworth, “Tourist Planning in Fascist Italy and the Limits of a Totalitarian Culture,” Contemporary European History Vol. 6, No. 1 (January 1997), 11-14; Taina Syrjämaa, Visitez l'Italie: Italian State tourist propaganda abroad, 1919-1943: Administrative Structure and Practical Realization (Turku, Finland: Annales Universitatis Turkuensis, 1997).

professional career as an American consular official in Greece before joining American

Express in 1923. His familiarity with Greece and its leading political and economic

figures resulted in his appointment as manager of the new American Express Branch in

Athens later that same year. Hill used this position to lobby Greek officials to establish a

national tourism organization. He served American Express in Greece until the Second

World War. His knowledge of Greek affairs attracted American officials' attention, who

secured his temporary leave from American Express to draft an economic report with an

eye toward Greece's postwar reconstruction. Hill returned to American Express

immediately after the war to take up the most critical position in its European business,

the Paris branch manager. While he was no longer on the ground in Greece on behalf of

either the US government or American Express, Hill’s 1944 report became one of the

main blueprints for Greece's economic reconstruction under the Marshall Plan,

particularly in the area of state-organized tourism. This dissertation reasserts how post-

WWII figures such as Mariotti and Hill took their prewar experiences and networks to make the tourism world we know.

In a 1997 article titled “Taking the History of Tourism Seriously,” a leading authority on tourism history in Britain, John K. Walton lamented, “tourism has not been accepted into the charmed circle of acceptable themes in European history.”29 Indeed,

earlier scholars, including conservative historian Daniel J. Boorstin, disdained modern

tourism and the tourist’s enthusiasm for the ‘‘pseudo-event,’’ the sightseeing itinerary

manufactured by commercial agents to insulate visitors from the ‘‘real’’ culture and

people of their destination. He mourned the ‘‘lost art of travel,’’ a relic of a bygone era

29 John K. Walton, “Taking the History of Tourism Seriously,” European History Quarterly, Vol. 27, No. 4 (October 1997), 573.

when the refined and highly educated ventured abroad with a sense of purpose, youthful

adventure, a desire to engage with local cultures, and a willingness to take risks. Boorstin

referred to modern mass leisure travelers by the derogatory term ‘‘tourist,’’ a group whose thoughtlessness made their international experiences nothing more than a series of prearranged pseudo-events.30

However, this classic scholarly critique of the tourist and modern tourism is more anecdotal than analytical and contributes little to understanding the evolution of state- organized tourism in the twentieth century that played a major role in the economies and development plans of the modern Mediterranean. Actors engaged in tourism promotion and the tourists they entice both possess historical agency. The word ‘‘tourism’’ is derived from ‘‘travail,’’ which means suffering or work. Holiday preparation generally begins months (even years) in advance and requires planning, saving, packing, and other responsibilities. More than anything, it requires moveable, fluid money: money that can pay for future plans, money that can be used wherever whenever, money that can make host communities willing to host. While international hotel and restaurant chains provide familiarity and a sense of security, few modern tourists confine themselves to such spaces. Most tourists seek meaningful educational and cultural experiences and desire to explore the host destination’s streets, natural environment, cuisine, and museums. The proliferation of credit cards, travel insurance plans, guidebooks, as well as language- learning booklets, and smartphone applications indicate that the act of travel is challenging and often anxiety-provoking. As historian Rudy Koshar has argued,

‘‘Tourism finds its meaning through effort, contact, and interaction, no matter how

30 Daniel J. Boorstin, The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (New York: Vintage Books, 1992 [1962].

programmed or structured, and if something is learned through tourism, it reaffirms or

alters the traveler’s sense of self in unpredictable ways.”31 Between meticulous planning,

financial requirements, educational value, and various obstacles associated with travel,

tourist experiences are laden with the type of meaning that Boorstin rejected as

thoughtless.

With some degree of overlap, each chapter of this dissertation is based on a

different type of source. In each case study, archival materials come from multiple

physical and digital archives in Cyprus, Italy, Greece, and the United Kingdom. The first

type of source is the official bureaucratic records from various state agencies and

departments in Greece, Fascist Italy, and the British empire. Administrative records from

multiple state departments, coupled with officials' personal correspondence connected to

tourism development, shed light on the extent of government ambitions for the industry.

Through an analysis of these official records, I demonstrate that officials regarded

tourism development projects as critical components of economic and political strategies

in their respective missions of a more Greek, British, or Italian territory. Moreover, I explore how transnational, and trans-imperial transfers of knowledge and actors across

the Greek-speaking world shaped tourism development projects in the interwar period

and beyond. The voices of those engaged in interwar tourism development are also found

in the corporate archives of travel firms like Thomas Cook, P&O, and Holland America

Line. Beyond the archival records of civil servants and corporate staff, I track tourism

promoters, and tourists' experiences in messages scrawled on postcards, well-worn guidebooks, self, and mass-published travelogues, press articles, and advertisements of

31 Rudy Koshar, German Travel Cultures, Leisure, Consumption & Culture (Oxford: Berg, 2000), 8.

leisure travel to the interwar eastern Mediterranean.

This thesis's organization is as follows and moves from debates and conceptions of state tourism development to policies and the lived experience of these tourism industries. In chapter 1, I examine how, in an age of imperial dissolution, the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne recalibrated the Greek-speaking world as an imperial space. I argue that provisions in the treaty regarding Greece, Cyprus, and Rhodes coupled with innovations in transport and consumer taste catalyzed state involvement in tourism development projects across this interwar Greek-speaking world. In doing so, I also introduce the debates and landscape of tourism at the onset of the interwar period in this corner of the eastern Mediterranean and beyond.

Following the first chapter on the interwar Greek world and the origins of tourism development, the chapters thereafter concentrate on a particular space and official tourism projects. Each chapter explores institutions tasked with tourism regulation or promotion in Cyprus, Rhodes, and Greece and how they served as forerunners of later industry developments. The first of the case studies explores the Dodecanese or the

Italian Aegean Islands, with special focus on the island of Rhodes in particular. The island’s capital, Rhodes Town, and its environs emerged as one of the leading

Mediterranean tourist resorts between the wars. This chapter argues that the interwar

“Club Med” envisioned by Governor Mario Lago (1878-1950) was built upon imperial connections between state and private commercial actors and formulated in response to

Fascist Italian Mediterranean imperial aspirations and anxieties. Tourism development strategies included commodifying Rhodes Town’s medieval walled city and its ties to

Italian heritage. Tourists traversing the region on an ocean liner’s Mediterranean cruise

22 itinerary or yacht in the interwar years might have visited the extensive and impressive

Italian historic preservation and modernization projects of Rhodes, the renovated capital of the neighboring island of Kos, and pass close to the formidable new defenses of the island of Leros, dubbed “the Gibraltar of the Aegean.” However, it was Rhodes Town and its medieval walled city built by the Christian crusader Order of the Knights of St.

John that offered the condensed vision of Fascist Italy’s imperial ambitions to thousands of foreign and Italian tourists each year. The official tourist itinerary of Rhodes Town essentially created a tour of the imagined Fascist Italian empire in miniature. This was a project that Italian officials envisioned would situate Italy among the ranks of imperial powers like Britain and France. It was also a project they hoped would make money for an ever-more cash-strapped empire.

Next, I turn to the most distant space in the interwar Greek-speaking world:

Cyprus. This chapter investigates the interplay between official efforts to create a “more

British atmosphere” in Cyprus and the development of a modern tourism industry. It tracks civil servants' activities from two colonial administration departments involved in the island’s development as a tourist resort. I argue that despite precarious funding and lack of consistent institutional support from superiors on the island and in London, this assortment of bureaucrats with no prior engagement in tourism management provided the groundwork for modern tourism in Cyprus. This analysis shows that imperial strategies of political neutralization acted as the direct brainchild for the development of Cyprus’ modern tourism industry. A reinvigorated and reformed colonial bureaucracy could project ease at imperial sovereignty, which created an industry for comfort and leisure.

Finally, I transition from islands associated with Greece but ruled by other

imperial powers to studying the Greek nation-state’s tourism development efforts in the interwar period. This chapter examines the early years of the Greek National Tourism

Organization (GNTO) in Greek nation-building following a failed imperial bid in 1919-

1922. It analyzes the relationship between tourism development and state-private

commercial partnerships in the interwar period. It argues that despite limited success in

realizing many of its more ambitious projects from the interwar years, the relationship

between state and private capital set the foundation for the tourism industry's postwar

economic success. I begin with the immediate response of private actors, both foreign

and domestic, including Henry Hill from American Express, to the financial, political,

and social crises of early 1920s Greece. The chapter then analyzes the GNTO initial

action plan, affiliated guidebooks, and related promotional literature. Finally, the chapter

examines a GNTO project and the effort to utilize tourism as an arm of the state in

response to minority relations, foreign relations, and Mediterranean rivalry.

The interwar Greek-speaking world's Mediterranean tourism industries—largely

subsumed on the surface by post-1945 constructions of international conglomerate hotel

chains and other developments—is now largely preserved in some surviving family-

managed hotels, tour operators, and related businesses, but mostly in archives and period

travel literature. The story of interwar state-organized tourism development is thus not a

story of dramatic financial success, but in part of progress impeded by the shocks of

factors like the Great Depression and the outbreak of WWII. Yet, developments in the

interwar years also contained the accumulation of experience for actors engaged in state-

organized tourism, the foundations of postwar tourism infrastructure, and international

24 cooperation in the arena of tourism regulation and promotion. It is thus a story of possibility, impeded progress, and miscalculations that deserves and has not yet received its due measure of recognition in relation to the tourism developments of the postwar era.

Chapter 1 Empire and New Mediterranean Tourism in the Interwar Period

In 1920, the same year Greece gained international recognition of its most prized

city of territorial expansion to date—Smyrna (present-day Izmir in Turkey)—Swiss

photographer and travel writer Frédéric Boissonnas published a tourist guidebook to the

city and its environs, L’Image de la Grèce: Smyrne.32 Eager to promote the newly- acquired port city, Greek state entities including Hellenic Railways funded the

Boissonnas publication, which included more than 50 photographs taken by the Swiss photographer. His camera captured Smyrna’s Greek quarter and the city’s famed port, at the time filled with Greek ships of both military and commercial nature. The book’s cover photograph of a Muslim cemetery beneath an image of classical Greek forms suggested an official desire that visitors admire Smyrna as a city reconnected with markers of Hellenic antiquity rather than the recent Ottoman past. To many Greeks, such images heralded the imminent realization of the imperial-nationalist expansionist project, known as the Megali (Grand) Idea.33 A spoil of war gained through joining the victorious

Entente side in WWI, Smyrna appeared to most observers destined for a future as a major commercial port and tourist destination for Greece. For the most fervent adherents of the

32 Boissonnas was one of a group of foreign commercial and political figures involved in interwar tourism development in Greece. I characterize this group as “business-savvy Byrons” for their modern-day philhellenism in chapter 4. Frédéric Boissonnas, L’Image de la Grèce: Smyrne (Geneva: Editions d’art Boissonnas, 1920).

33 Smyrna was considered one of the Mediterranean’s great port cities in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. For an account of Smyrna’s rise and fall as a major port city, see Philip Mansel, Levant: Splendour and Catastrophe on the Mediterranean (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010), especially Chapters 3 and 10.

25 26

Megali Idea, Smyrna’s status as a Greek city signaled the coming resurrection of the

Byzantine Empire.

A tourist guidebook to Greek-occupied Smyrna reflected the anticipated outcome

of Ottoman imperial dissolution at the end of WWI. Enshrined by the August 1920

Treaty of Sèvres, Greek officials expected sweeping territorial gains at the expense of the

defeated Ottoman Empire. At the same time, diplomatic negotiations with Italy and

Britain left open the possibility that Greece could receive Cyprus, Rhodes, and the

Dodecanese Islands of the Aegean in exchange for certain concessions in Anatolia.

However, by September 1922 Greek military reversals in Anatolia and domestic political

strife ensured that the Treaty of Sèvres proved “as fragile as the porcelain of that

name.”34 Indeed, Greek historiography recognizes the arrival of Greek forces in Smyrna

as the final chapter in the story of the Megali Idea’s demise at the hands of Turkish

nationalists in 1922.35 Between May 1919 and September 1922, Greek forces gradually

advanced in hopes of securing much of Anatolia, only to be routed by Mustafa Kemal

(later Atatürk 1881-1938) and his Turkish nationalist army. This defeat resulted in the

influx of thousands of Greek Orthodox Christian civilian refugees, whose flight ensured

the destruction of Anatolia’s longstanding multi-ethnic and multi-confessional social fabric. The shock of this rapid defeat ushered in a period of profound social, political, and economic crisis known to Greeks as the “Catastrophe.” Smyrna met a grisly fate in

September 1922, produced by several days of violence against non-Muslim communities

34 Philip Marshall Brown, “From Sèvres to Lausanne,” The American Journal of International Law, Vol. 18, No. 1 (January 1924), 113.

35 See A.A. Pallis, Greece’s Anatolian Venture and After (London: Methuen, 1937); Thanos Veremis and Youla Goulimis, Eleftherios Venizelos: Kinonia, economia, politiki stin epochi tou [Eleftherios Venizelos: society, economy, and politics in his times] (Athens: Gnosi, 1989).

27 concluded by a massive fire.36 At this point, images of charred ruins, destitute refugees, and victorious Turkish troops rather than the Boissonnas photos of a future tourist paradise became the visual reflection of 1920s Smyrna.

Whereas Sèvres was the place associated with the anticipated outcome of the post-WWI order in the eastern Mediterranean, Lausanne became the home of the actual result. In 1923, eight states, including Greece, the nascent Turkish Republic, Britain,

France, and Italy, signed the Treaty of Lausanne.37 This agreement contributed to the recalibration of imperial order in the post-Ottoman eastern Mediterranean for Britain,

France, and Italy. At the same time, Lausanne formally recognized the Turkish Republic and enshrined the League of Nations’ supervised population exchange between Greece and Turkey.38 With Lausanne, the idea of Smyrna becoming a desired tourist center of

Greece in the war’s aftermath did not just vanish, it emblematized how unrealistic it was to think of Greece as the natural lodestone of post-WWI Mediterranean economic consolidation plans.

36 For a concise summary of the catastrophe and its repercussions see John S. Koliopoulos and Thanos M. Veremis, Greece: The Modern Sequel, from 1821 to the Present (New York: New York University Press, 2002). 130. For the classic account in English of the Greek campaign in Anatolia, see Michael Llewellyn- Smith, Ionian Vision: Greece in Asia Minor, 1919-1922 (London: Hurst, 1998 [1973]).

37 The other signatories were Japan, Romania, and Yugoslavia. For an interwar-era analysis of Lausanne, see Brown, “From Sèvres to Lausanne,” 113-116.

38 Indeed, the terms of Lausanne had a widespread impact and weighty legacy on post-conflict resolution and the fate of minority populations. On Lausanne’s impact on the landscape of international diplomacy and law see, Eric D. Weitz, “From the Vienna to the Paris System: International Politics and the Entangled Histories of Human Rights, Forced Deportations, and Civilizing Missions.” The American Historical Review, Vol. 113, No. 5 (December 2008), 1313-1343; George Kaloudis, "Ethnic Cleansing in Asia Minor and the Treaty of Lausanne," International Journal on World Peace, Vol. 31, No. 1 (March 2014), 59-88; Sevtap Demirci, “Turco-British Diplomatic Maneuvers on the Mosul Question in the Lausanne Conference, 1922-1923.” The British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 37, No. 1 (April 2010), 57-71.

While the anticipated tourism industry promoted by Boissonnas in Smyrna was

lost in the flames of 1922, state-organized tourism development, tourists, and empire

were fixed presences in the subsequent post-Ottoman Greek-speaking world order set out at Lausanne. Both the imperial powers of Great Britain and Italy as well as the Greek nation-state embraced tourism development in the aftermath of Lausanne. These states shared some motivations for embracing tourism, while others threatened to put them in direct competition with one another. From the imperial perspective, tourism development presented an opportunity to promote a civilizing mission that would unleash the economic potential of once Ottoman provincial backwaters like Rhodes and Cyprus. At the same time, tourism offered British, Italian, and Greek officials as well as colonized and minority populations support for arguments surrounding historical continuity of competing national and imperial visions. From a financial standpoint, tourism development became associated in circumstances like that faced by Greek officials with the promise of attracting foreign capital. British and Italian authorities in Cyprus and

Rhodes equally welcomed the potential for foreign capital, particularly as economic conditions deteriorated with the onset of the Great Depression. Collectively, the beaches, hotel bars, classical ruins, and postcard villages of this Mediterranean became peopled by tens of thousands of non-Mediterranean tourists eager to “tourist it all up.” The states of the interwar Greek-speaking world engaged in this state-organized tourism development along the contours of the post-Lausanne imperial-national Mediterranean.

In many locations around the Mediterranean in the aftermath of WWI, states embraced tourism development for at least six purposes. 1) Leisure travel in the interwar period provided the opportunity to teach citizens about the nation or empire, its

landscapes and culture, and the racial/political superiority of the state and its people.39 2)

Furthermore, tourism offered a showcase for modernity: improved roads, cars, resorts

could stand as symbols for the regime's modern vision. 3) State-organized tourism also served as a source of economic growth. As an economic aspect, tourism served both practical and aspirational objectives. An influx of tourists translated into opportunities for states to acquire valuable foreign currency reserves while holding out the promise of an economic engine for development. 4) Tourism encouraged the pursuit of health and wellbeing. 5) Tourism in the interwar period enabled state and private actors to promote peace and cooperation or pursue imperial rivalries. 6) Finally, state intervention in tourism expanded opportunities for at the very least seasonal employment in a moment of economic uncertainty.

The opportunities and anxieties encountered by officials in the aftermath of the

Ottoman collapse and Treaty of Lausanne, coupled with innovation in transport and emerging leisure practices during the interwar period, set the foundation of the postwar tourism industries that transformed the Greek-speaking world and the wider

Mediterranean. This dissertation examines tourism development strategies in three ambitious, yet vulnerable states enmeshed in the conditions produced by the Ottoman collapse and Lausanne: British Colonial Cyprus, Italian Colonial Rhodes, and the Greek nation-state. This chapter provides the context to answer how imperial state-organized

39 While this was particularly evident in Nazi German and Soviet tourism in the interwar period, there were similar motivations as part of Fascist Italian as well as other imperial entities. See Shelley Baranowski, Strength through Joy: Consumerism and Mass Tourism in the Third Reich (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 139-143; Michael David-Fox, Showcasing the Great Experiment: Cultural Diplomacy and Western Visitors to the Soviet Union, 1921–1941 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).

tourism developed in this corner of the eastern Mediterranean and why it was the product

of the interwar years.

1.1 Context: The New Mediterranean (Dis)order: Embattled Empires in the Post- WWI Eastern Mediterranean

At the close of World War I, Mediterranean lands that had long been under

Ottoman imperial rule now witnessed a scramble for territory among various states and the birth of new political formations. The aftermath of the Ottoman collapse was, according to Professor of Italian at Vassar College and early enthusiast for the Fascist regime, Bruno Roselli, “Chaos—pure and simple, in the former Asiatic Empire of

Turkey. Jews, Arabs, French, Turks, English, Greeks, Armenians, and Italians disagree totally as to possessions, boundaries, forms of government, spheres of influence, and the rest.” Writing in a 1922 article for The North American Review, Roselli explained the chaotic nature of the “New Mediterranean” as the incessant jockeying for power among

“no less than nineteen different flags…and one or two more may at any minute be hoisted.”40 Among the crowded sea of flags were those of newly sovereign states as well

as those of existing empires and nations. Whether they were existing or emerging states,

each had acquired or sought to acquire Ottoman territory in the aftermath of WWI.

Despite the momentum in the development of nation-states from the Ottoman

imperial demise, the post-WWI eastern Mediterranean remained a region dominated by

empires and rival imperial ambitions. It also was an area economically and socially

decimated by the war and in deep need of new projects to build it up again. Both Britain

and France entered the interwar period with considerable imperial gains, particularly in

40 Bruno Roselli, “The New Mediterranean,” The North American Review, Vol. 216, No. 804 (November 1922), 592.

the Mediterranean. Part of this imperial expansion for both countries included mandates

in the region through the League of Nations Permanent Mandates Commission. Former

Ottoman provinces were now controlled by the British in Palestine, Transjordan and Iraq,

while France dominated Syria and Lebanon. None of these mandates represented

transitions to sovereign nationhood; they functioned instead as thinly veiled forms of

imperial rule hotly contested by anti-colonial nationalists.

Undoubtably unjust for victims of mandate, the rulers of mandate did not have an easy time of it either. Both the victorious British and French empires were now grossly cash-poor, overextended, and embattled. Even several years before WWI, an Edwardian-

era Colonial Office official described the British empire as reminiscent of "some huge

giant sprawling over the globe, with gouty fingers and toes stretching out in every

direction, which cannot be approached without eliciting a scream."41 The victory that

these empires achieved in 1918 came at a staggering cost in human, material, and

financial terms, with an estimated 40 million casualties, including 20 million killed

between all the belligerent nations. Britain and France alone suffered over 40% of the

roughly 5.7 million Entente soldiers lost in the conflict.42 These war dead and badly

maimed influenced demographic decline and crippling infrastructure, and financial

damage to the belligerent states. As a result, vulnerable imperial powers like Britain and

France engaged in various forms of “empire strengthening.” What this meant in practice

was an official effort to invest in only the most critical infrastructure projects to squeeze

41 Quoted in, Ronald Hyam, Britain’s Declining Empire: The Road to Decolonisation, 1918-1968 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 74.

42 On WWI casualty statistics see, Nadège Mougel, “World War I Casualties,” translated by Julie Gratz. REPERES Centre européen Robert Schuman, 2011, 1-13

out as much from the territories they controlled to keep conditions in the metropole

afloat.43

Traditionally, the historiography of the post-Ottoman period paints imperialism in the Mediterranean differently, however. Taken from the eyes of the victims of mandate, post-WWI settlements are portrayed mainly in the historiography as indicative of the apex of imperial rule before the dominance of the nation-state. However, revisions of this narrative convincingly urge caution when considering the strength of imperial power in the face of mounting anti-colonial nationalist sentiment from Egypt to Korea.44

At the war’s end, many nationalist leaders, and the populations they claimed to speak for, were hopeful that imperial powers would recognize and reward the colonial world’s sacrifices on the battlefield and homefront. Harnessing the language of U.S.

President Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points and its articulation of national self- determination, nationalist leaders like Egyptian nationalist Saad Zaghlul Pasha (1859-

1927) urged imperial powers to honor Wilson’s vision of peace and the postwar international order. Within just months, it was clear that imperial powers would not accept the appeals of nationalist leaders. What followed was a period of bloody anti- colonial nationalist upheaval in the colonial world and race riots against colonial and minority populations in the metropole.45

43 For post-WWI imperial strategies see, Marc Matera and Susan Kingsley Kent, The Global 1930s: The International Decade (New York: Routledge, 2017), 8-9.

44 See Erez Manela, The Wilsonian Moment: Self-Determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007).

45 As evidenced by the 1919 Egyptian Revolution as well as the race riots and pogroms across urban centers of Britain as well as the United States between 1919 and 1921. See, James Whidden, Egypt: British Colony, Imperial Capital (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2017); Matera and Kinsley, The Global 1930s, Introduction.

The Greek-speaking world experienced this wave of anti-colonial nationalist tumult which swept across the Mediterranean and Middle East. Cypriot Greek and

Turkish nationalists (along with their counterparts in Rhodes and the other Dodecanese

Islands) channeled the same Wilsonian language of self-determination in an ultimately unsuccessful effort to achieve autonomy or political union with the nation-state of Greece or Turkey.46 Thus, my focus on interwar imperial entities in the Greek-speaking eastern

Mediterranean in no way discounts the tide of nationalism across the globe in the

aftermath of WWI. It is one of the central contentions of this dissertation that in the

interwar Mediterranean states (both imperial and national) embraced tourism to confront

economic shocks, nationalist agitation, and imperial rivalries.

Precisely because many empires were so embattled in the interwar period,

colonial possessions appeared even more indispensable than before. In the case of

metropolitan Britain, the human and material losses from WWI limited markets for

goods. Furthermore, declines in agricultural prices meant farmers could not afford to

purchase manufactured goods, thus further reducing markets.47 The Wall Street Crash of

1929 only made the economic situation worse and increased the percentage of trade

within empires. British initiatives like the founding of the Empire Marketing Board and

the Colonial Development Act of 1929, which fostered intra-imperial trade and promoted

46 When several demonstrations were violently suppressed by British and Italian forces respectively, nationalist leaders in both Cyprus and the Dodecanese adopted a united front. Rather than plead for enosis, Cypriot and Dodecanesian Greek nationalists petitioned the League of Nations for an autonomous joint Anglo-Italian protectorate. Greece also encountered the full force of post-WWI nationalist movements in its short-lived protectorate in Smyrna. Rather than advocate for the right to independence in the gilded halls of Versailles, Turkish nationalists largely secured this victory on the battlefields of Anatolia against an overextended and poorly led Greek army. On the nationalist movements in Cyprus and the Dodecanese in the early post-WWI years see, Nicholas Doumanis, Myth and Memory in the Mediterranean: Remembering Fascism’s Empire (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997), Chapter 2.

47 Matera and Kingsley, The Global 1930s, 9-10.

34 consumption of colonial products signaled this increasing value of colonial markets.

Following the departure from the gold standard in 1931, the British took 49 percent of exports due to imperial preference between 1932 and 1937.48 Economic contributions from imperial possessions also strengthened and shaped what some scholars have argued is a shared colonial culture among European metropolitan communities in the interwar period. Scholars including Matthew Stanard and Ellen Furlough have demonstrated the significance of interwar imperial exhibitions in developing a shared colonial culture.

Tourism was the “in situ” version of these exhibitions, promoting common cultures in the colonies.49

Beset by economic challenges and political opposition from anti-colonial nationalists, domestic political opponents, and rival imperial actors, officials increasingly turned to tourism as an effective development strategy in the interwar period. As colonial authorities in Italian Rhodes and British Cyprus during the interwar period envisioned tourism as a supplement to more conventional programs of either agricultural or demographic colonization, this “soft” service industry emerged as one of the few, if not the only profitable sector of their respective economies.50 In Cyprus for example, both

48 Imperial Preference was the tariff policy from 1932-1937 at the heart of London’s economic response to the Depression. As a League of Nations mandate, Palestine did not fall under this agreement, which was guided by the principle of “home producers first, empire producers second, and foreign producers last.” Robert Boyce described this strategy as a clear repudiation of the tradition of free trade in Britain. Robert Boyce, The Great Interwar Crisis and the Collapse of Globalization (New York: Springer, 2009), 328-331.

49 Matthew G. Stanard, “Interwar Pro-Empire Propaganda and European Colonial Culture: Toward a Comparative Research Agenda,” Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 44, No. 1 (2009), 27-48; Ellen Furlough, “Une leçon des Choses’: Tourism, Empire, and the Nation in Interwar France,” French Historical Studies, Vol. 25, No. 3 (Summer 2002), 441-473.

50 The role of tourism as a tool of “soft power” is a critical element of the historiographies of tourism, empire, consumerism, and diplomacy. Victoria De Grazia deploys the concept of ‘‘soft power’’ to explain how a soft resource such as consumerism joined with the hard power of diplomacy and military preparedness to spread what she calls America’s ‘‘irresistible empire’’ through twentieth-century Europe. Dennis Merrill has considered tourism as a tool of “soft power” in informal U.S. empire in twentieth-

35 the numbers of foreign visitors and the island’s annual revenue increased as a result of state intervention in tourism development. On the eve of WWI, the island barely raised

£1 million per year. By the outbreak of WWII this had increased to over £9 million annually. This was in no small part due to the development of tourism across the island, as suggested by foreign tourist arrivals. In 1925, the island received roughly 500 foreign tourists annually. By 1935 this number reached nearly 18,000.51 Greek officials shared similar hopes for tourism development as their counterparts in Cyprus and Rhodes, particularly as they sought to navigate the challenges of refugee resettlement, economic reconstruction, political stability, and defense against potential Italian aggression. For example, an annual report for 1932 from the National Bank of Greece revealed that the country’s tourism sector had joined shipping and emigrant remittances as primary sources of capital for the Greek state, less than five years after official intervention through the creation of the Greek National Tourism Organization (GNTO) in 1929.52

century Latin America. Exactly what the phrase ‘‘soft power’’ means remains somewhat elusive. According to de Grazia, the terminology arose in the context of debates within the U.S. foreign policy establishment during the early 1990s regarding the types of resources available to sustain America’s world leadership following the end of the Cold War. Victoria de Grazia, Irresistible Empire: America’s Advance through Twentieth-Century Europe (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005); Dennis Merrill, Negotiating Paradise: U.S. Tourism and Empire in Twentieth-Century Latin America (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2009).

51 Tourist data collected by colonial officials suggested that roughly 500 visitors were arriving by one-day pleasure cruise during tourist high seasons in the 1930s. Moreover, these tourists alone spent about £1 (£72 in 2020) each while visiting Cyprus. According to tourist arrivals data from Troodos area resorts, more than 11,000 visitors stayed in accommodations in one of the health resort-designated villages in 1934. Of those tourists, 3,779 were from Egypt and 2,907 from Palestine. The importance of these regional markets, which included people of various backgrounds resident in Egypt or Palestine, is clear from the available data. See, W.H. Flinn, Tourist Trade of Cyprus Report 1935. 1174/1935/1/4, 2-3, CSA. On the economic development of Cyprus under British rule see, Alexander Apostildes, “Economic Growth or Stagnation during the Interwar Period: Reconstruction of Cypriot GDP, 1921-1938” MPRA Paper No. 17051 (April 2009); Mark Simmons, The British and Cyprus, 36-40.

52 Emmanouil Tsouderos, The Economic Situation in Greece and the National Bank of Greece, 1932 (Athens: Hestia Publishing, 1933), 2.

For all the clashing interests of rival empires and anti-colonial nationalist movements in the interwar Mediterranean, tourism attracted commercial interests, policymakers, and various observers. While he regarded much of the news from the

Mediterranean political situation as “troublesome,” Bruno Roselli noticed the “large amount of American tourist travel in Mediterranean lands.”53 Roselli’s observation of the

rising number of American tourists was not lost on Mediterranean states and their firms.

Their presence was part of a strategy embraced by many states in the interwar period to

develop profitable tourism industries. The capacity of states to “brand” their territories

for touristic consumption existed for decades, if not centuries, before the popularization

of the term in the late 1990s. States differentiate themselves within the global imaginary,

or consciousness, developed in tandem and the burgeoning worldwide communication

systems. This type of state branding, also described as nation-branding, includes both the

deliberate manufacture of images by governments and private actors on the one hand and

unpredictable news events and their dissemination on the other.54 Nowhere were these

developments more acutely felt than in the eastern Mediterranean and the Greek-speaking

world, where imperial rivalries, nationalist aspirations, and an official desire to

modernize promising tourism industries converged.

In Cyprus, colonial authorities in the 1930s established a formal tourism apparatus designed to manage and regulate the island’s nascent tourism industry. Branding efforts centered on the idea of transforming Cyprus into “Little Britain” ---a model British

53 Roselli, “The New Mediterranean,” 592.

54 On nation-branding see, Evan H. Potter, Branding Canada: Projecting Canada’s Soft Power Through Public Diplomacy (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2009); Wally Olins, Trading Identities. (London: Foreign Policy Center, 1999); Michael Dawson, Selling British Columbia: Tourism and Consumer Culture, 1890-1970 (Vancouver, UBC Press, 2005). Especially Chapter 3.

Crown Colony with an ethnically, linguistically, and confessionally diverse, yet loyal

subject population. In practice, this meant the networks of British and Cypriot civil

servants, local and foreign capitalists, and an array of technical specialists to construct,

restore, excavate, and protect the island’s nascent modern hotel infrastructure, natural

scenery, ancient monuments, picturesque villages, and other potential tourist attractions.

To brand these spaces as markers of “Little Britain,” colonial officials had to cover over

any historical associations with modern Greece, Turkey, and Italy evident in the Cypriot

landscape. Such associations through such symbols as ancient monuments and religious

shrines concerned colonial officials, particularly as British imperial interests met

opposition from Italy during the interwar period, and anti-colonial nationalist agitators

became increasingly vocal from the Greek and Turkish communities of Cyprus.

Italian officials in Rhodes desired to recast the island as deeply connected to Italy

on historical associations to the Christian crusader Order of the Knights of St. John and

imperial Rome. Branding efforts largely centered on the island’s capital, Rhodes Town,

and the medieval walled city originally built by the Knights of St. John. However, Fascist

Italian branding efforts in Rhodes did not solely dwell on a nostalgia-fueled imperial fantasy about the Romans and Christian crusader knights. The regime was equally concerned with crafting an image of benevolent and modern imperial power. Urban development projects, like new hotels and roads designed for or in part to develop a tourism industry were to signal Fascist Italy’s imperial vision and the modernization of what was once a remote provincial backwater of the Ottoman Empire. As in Cyprus,

Italian officials sought to obscure historical associations with “secondary” former imperial powers in Rhodes. This applied primarily to associations that could be linked to

38 contemporary challengers to Italian rule in Rhodes, such as the island’s Ottoman or

Byzantine legacies.

Branding efforts in the Greek nation-state sought to create the image of a timeless yet modern tourist destination. In doing so, these state and private commercial partners imagined the Anatolian refugees forced to resettle in Greece after 1922 as a boon to tourism development. The tourism industry could employ refugees while also making areas they inhabited stops in Athenian itineraries. In this way Greek officials and the tourism entrepreneurs sought to capitalize on foreign sympathies for the plight of those impacted by the population exchange. Donations from tourists could offset some of the massive cost of resettlement as tourist interactions with refugees also promised a chance to showcase the good work Greek authorities had accomplished to date in efforts to reconstruct the social fabric of the country. Through Anatolian refugees in Greece and recognition of permanent sovereignty for the British in Cyprus and Italians in Rhodes, the

Treaty of Lausanne provided the common thread for interwar developments.

1.2 Lausanne’s Children: Interwar State-Organized Tourism in the Greek-speaking World

Nowadays, the Greek mainland, islands in the Ionian and Aegean seas, including

Rhodes, and Cyprus appear to be similar destinations for millions of tourists each summer. For armies of sun blockers in Mediterranean tourist destinations, there is little on the surface that would separate Corfu or Athens from Rhodes, Crete, or Cyprus except for a personal preference in beaches, nightlife, or cost of the budget airline flight.

Geographically each is quite close, separated by less than 800 miles at the greatest extent.

Culturally, each has maintained links from antiquity to the former Ottoman and Venetian

empires and successor states through language, religion, and different forms of mobility,

including commercial networks. Indeed, tourists arriving today at an airport in Athens,

Rhodes, or Cyprus would be forgiven if they mistakenly thought all three were part of the

same member state of the European Union, as a result of the ubiquitous presence of the

Greek flag on virtually every public building.55 However, less than 90 years ago, the

sight of a Greek flag on a building other than the Greek consulate in Rhodes and Cyprus

would not only have been unusual but illegal under interwar period legislation by Italian

and British colonial authorities. The 1923 Treaty of Lausanne made possible the imperial

ambitions of Britain and Fascist Italy evident in such legislation. At the same time, the

impetus behind such colonial policies also catalyzed state investment in the nascent

tourism industries.

In his compelling work on the human experience of the Greco-Turkish population

exchange, Twice a Stranger, Bruce Clark reminds us that “Whether we like it or not,

those of us who live in Europe or places influenced by European ideas remain the

children of Lausanne; that is to say, of the convention signed on a Swiss lakeside after the

First World War which decreed a massive, forced population movement between Turkey

and Greece.”56 Indeed, the provisions enshrined in the treaty outlining the conditions for

55 In the Republic of Cyprus, which also shares the Greek national anthem and multiple Greek national holidays. For more on Cypriot connections to Greek national symbols see Yiannis Papadakis, “Reflections on the 1st of October Commemoration of the Independence of Cyprus,” The Cyprus Review, Vol. 22, No. 2 (Fall 2010), 61-66.

56 Bruce Clark, Twice A Stranger: The Mass Expulsions that Forged Modern Greece and Turkey (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), xi. Another value of Clark and Onur Yildirim’s work is that there was another history beyond the triumphalist narratives in national historiographies from the interwar years that shows the challenges faced by refugees in assimilation that did not largely take place until the 1980s and that has informed the painful and complex legacy of the population exchange among descendants on either side of the Greco-Turkish border. See Onur Yildirim, Diplomacy and Displacement: Reconsidering the Greco-Turkish Exchange of Populations 1922-1934 (New York: Routledge, 2006).

the population exchange established a disturbing precedent regarding the expulsion and

resettlement of minority populations. It appears unlikely that an agreement recognizing

“population unmixing” and the attendant misery and hardship for nearly 2 million people

could also create conditions favorable for the promotion of pleasure through tourism

development. However, two largely forgotten articles of Lausanne spurred extensive

government and private investment in tourism industries. The same treaty forever

associated with the agonizing question of population exchanges contained with it the

seeds of considerable state investment in tourism infrastructure within areas controlled by

several of the signatory powers.

Through Articles 15 and 30 of the Treaty of Lausanne, the nascent Turkish

successor state to the Ottoman Empire renounced its claims on Rhodes and the other

Dodecanese Islands and Cyprus in favor, respectively, of Fascist Italy and Britain. From

1925 onwards, the Dodecanese was rebranded by the Italians as the “Possedimento delle

Isole Egee,” ([Italian] Possession of the Aegean Islands) and after 1929,” le Isole Italiane

dell’Egeo” (the Italian Aegean Islands). Cyprus officially became a British “Crown

Colony” in 1925. In both instances, the treaty resolved what constituted longstanding

diplomatic uncertainties. Thus, with the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, these Dodecanesian

and Cypriot former Ottomans became respectively Italian and British subjects, although

the practical implications of this new legal nationality differed and took on multiple

forms in the interwar period. The agreement also exempted Cyprus and Rhodes from the

conditions of the Greco-Turkish population exchange. As a result, these islands remained

among the last post-Ottoman multi-ethnic areas in the eastern Mediterranean.57

57 The other populations exempted from the population exchange were the Greek community and the Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarchate of Istanbul, as well as the largely ethnic Pomak Turkish-speaking

This was perhaps more salient in the case of Cyprus where, in 1925, the majority of Greek-speaking Orthodox Christians – 265,855 inhabitants out of a total population of

330,601 – largely cohabited with the minority of Turkish-speaking Muslims – 64,746 – in mixed villages throughout the island.58 The 1923 population of the Dodecanese on the other hand, (102,669 inhabitants) was overwhelmingly Greek-speaking Orthodox

Christian. Turkish-speaking Muslims, Greek-speaking Cretan Muslims and Ladino- speaking Jews lived exclusively in Rhodes and Kos. In the former, out of a total population of 41,571, 7,600 Rhodians were designated as “Turks,” 3,000 as “Israelites” and 1,800 as “Catholics,” the majority of whom resided in the island’s capital city (also called Rhodes or Rhodes Town).59

Initially seized as part of military operations against the Ottomans during the

Italo-Ottoman War in 1911-1912, Rhodes remained a legal gray area and diplomatic pawn until the confirmation of Italian sovereignty through the Treaty of Lausanne.60

Rhodes is the administrative and geographic heart of the Dodecanese Islands in the

Muslims in the Greek province of Thrace. However, much of the Greek community in Istanbul fled after a pogrom amidst Greco-Turkish tensions over Cyprus in the 1950s. The Pomak community in Thrace continues to stir political anxieties for both Greek and Turkish politicians. See Clark, Twice a Stranger; Speros Vyronis, The Mechanism of Catastrophe: The Turkish Pogrom of September 6-7, 1955, and the Destruction of the Greek Community of Istanbul (New York: Greekworks, 2005). 58 The Cyprus Blue Book of Statistics for the Year 1925, 166, CO 456/48, The National Archives of the United Kingdom, Kew (hereafter TNA).

59 Ermanno Armao, Annuario amministrativo e statistico per l’anno 1922 (Roma: G. B. Paravia e C., 1923), 155-156; A 1935 census of the Dodecanese estimated the total population to be 140, 848, of which approximately 80% was Greek, 8% Turkish, and 8% Italian, with a Jewish population of some 5,000 largely located in Rhodes and Kos. Rhodes itself boasted a population of 56,754, with roughly 25,000 resident in Rhodes Town. An estimated 10,000 primarily Turkish and Jewish residents lived within the walls of the Old Town. Istituto centrale della statistica del Regno d'Italia, Colonie e possedimenti (Roma: Tip. Failli, 1935), 46.

60 On the question of Italian sovereignty in Rhodes and the Dodecanese before 1923, see R. J. B. Bosworth, “Britain and Italy's Acquisition of the Dodecanese, 1912–1915,” Historical Journal, Vol. 13, No. 4 (1970), 683–705; Maria Gabriella Pasqualini. L’Esercito Italiano nel Dodecaneso: speranze e realtà: i documenti dell'Ufficio storico dello Stato maggiore dell'Esercito (Roma: AUSSME, 2005).

Aegean, located about five miles off the coast of Anatolia.61 The Italian conquest had

been initially well-received by the majority Greek-speaking Orthodox Christian

population and the Ladino-speaking Sephardic Jewish minority. The island’s

predominately Turkish-speaking Muslim minority gradually warmed to Italian

administration, particularly as Greek nationalists became increasingly vocal in calling for

enosis (union) between Rhodes and the modern Greek state.62 In 1919, Italian and Greek

representatives even signed a short-lived diplomatic agreement to unite the Dodecanese with Greece, though deteriorating diplomatic relations and the rapid collapse of Greek positions in Anatolia rendered the agreement a dead letter. Italian rule in this corner of the Aegean remained mostly superficial and administered by the military until the 1923

Lausanne Convention. Confirmation of permanent sovereignty through Lausanne produced more change beyond the formal name of the islands.

The Italian state that first seized Rhodes in 1912 was very different from the one that would officially incorporate the island in 1923: Mussolini and the Fascist regime came to power only months earlier in October 1922. Mussolini’s supporters hailed the terms of Lausanne as an early diplomatic triumph for the regime.63 More importantly for

61 The other islands of the Dodecanese or Southern Sporades are Kos, Patmos, Leros, Kalymnos, Kastellorizo, Kasos, Astypalaia, Halki, Tilos, Nisyros, Symi, and Lipsi.

62 Led by intellectuals including Skevos Zervos and Michalis Volonakis, Greek nationalists in Rhodes and the other islands of the Dodecanese advocated for union with Greece and at times, even an autonomous state with the island of Cyprus where both Italy and Britain could maintain naval bases. This proposal received no traction from Italian or British officials though Greek nationalists in both the Dodecanese and Cyprus favored this arrangement in the early 1920s. On this Greek nationalist activity see, M. Volonakis, The Island of Roses and her Eleven Sisters; or the Dodecanese from the earliest time down to the present day (London: MacMillan,1922); G.S. Georghallides, A Political and Administrative History of Cyprus 1918-1926: With a Survey of the Foundations of British Rule (Nicosia Cyprus Research Centre, 1979), 343- 344; Idem, Cyprus and the Governorship of Sir Ronald Storrs: The Causes of the 1931 Crisis (Nicosia, Zavallis, 1985)

63 Doumanis, Myth and Memory in the Mediterranean, 47.

the development of state-organized tourism projects in Rhodes, Lausanne paved the way

for widespread government investment that would offer a physical manifestation of

Italian permanent sovereignty. At the forefront of these efforts were extensive urban

development projects, including modern hotels and ambitious restoration efforts at potential tourist attractions. Within a decade of the Lausanne Convention, Rhodes stood

as one of the preeminent Mediterranean tourist destinations and a model for developing

regional resorts, including the British Crown Colony of Cyprus.

The largest Mediterranean island behind Sicily and Sardinia, Cyprus, lies to the

southwest of Antalya in Turkey, 65 miles from the coast of Syria, 377 miles east of

Rhodes and 562 miles east of Athens. Formally a British protectorate on behalf of the

Ottoman sultan between 1878 and the Ottoman entry into WWI in late 1914, Cyprus had

received little attention from British politicians and colonial authorities before its

designation as a formal colony. In the late 1870s, before the British occupation of Egypt

and the ports of Alexandria and Port Said, Cyprus had been considered as an eastern

Mediterranean naval station for the Royal Navy. With no comparable ports to rival those

of Egypt, Cyprus lacked a characteristic resource for British imperialists and became

known to critics in Parliament as the “Whitest of White Elephants” — an expensive,

unnecessary, and ultimately useless outpost of empire.64

Even more troubling for the British was the attitude of the Cypriot population. As

in the case of Italian authorities in Rhodes, British officials presided over a majority

Greek-speaking population, Turkish-speaking Muslim minority, and smaller Armenian,

Italian, Assyrian, Jewish, and Arab minority communities. From the arrival of the first

64 Quoted in, Alexis Rappas, Cyprus in the 1930s: British Colonial Rule and the Roots of the Cyprus Conflict (New York: I.B. Tauris, 2014), 12.

British forces in 1878, Greek nationalist Cypriot leaders, both secular and religious

articulated demands for enosis (union) with Greece. British authorities, like the Italians in

Rhodes, briefly considered ceding Cyprus to Greece amid WWI.65 Instead, the terms of

Lausanne ensured that the island remained under British control. The island’s transition from obscure, remote protectorate to formal colony only made the “Whitest of White

Elephants” the “Cinderella” of the British colonies. Deteriorating economic conditions and rising Greek nationalism coupled with the formal recognition as a colony galvanized colonial officials to explore development projects designed to appease an anxious population. However, anti-colonial nationalist sentiment on Greek nationalists soon boiled over and resulted in a brief rebellion in October-November 1931.

The historiography of Cyprus characterizes the years following the 1931 revolt and the outbreak of the Second World War as Palmerokratia (Palmerocracy), a derogatory term coined by Cypriots after the last name of Governor Sir Herbert

Richmond Palmer. For many Cypriots, particularly those sympathetic to the cause of enosis, Palmer’s tenure was infamous for the repressive measures implemented by colonial authorities in the aftermath of 1931. Scholars long characterized 1930s Cyprus as a period of inertia in comparison to the violent anti-colonial and ethnonational conflagrations of the 1950s through the 1970s. Cypriot historian Doros Alastos wrote that

“after the [British] occupation [in 1878], the file labeled ‘Cyprus’ was bound in red tape

65 The idea of Cyprus being a pawn had a long historical context, dating back to the initial British occupation in1878. During a period of instability in Ottoman Crete in 1908, the Great Powers briefly considered returning Cyprus to direct Ottoman rule in return for the Porte’s acceptance of Crete’s cession to Greece. During WWI, Cyprus remained a pawn of British policy in the Balkans as London sought to entice Greece into the conflict. For an analysis of Cyprus as a pawn of British foreign policy interests in the early twentieth century see, Andrekos Varnava, British Imperialism in Cyprus, 1878-1915: The Inconsequential Possession (New York: Manchester University Press, 2009); Peter Clarke and Andrekos Varnava, “Accounting in Cyprus during the last four decades of British Rule.” Accounting History, Vol. 18 No. 3 (Summer 2013), 293-315.

and tucked away. It may have been opened in 1931, but it was surely left untouched for

the next fifteen years.”66

Recent scholarship has begun to refine this vision of Cyprus in the 1930s and the

island’s place within British imperial interests in the wider Mediterranean. As scholars

such as Alexis Rappas and Antigone Heraclidou have convincingly argued, the ambitions

of successive interwar era governors went much further, and a series of experimental,

authoritarian, and repressive policies were considered a necessary step in the process

towards the creation of a more loyal Cypriot population and secure British Crown

Colony.67 Scholars to date have paid little attention to the interwar developments of one of the island’s leading industries and most enduring legacies of British colonial rule: tourism. Tourism development figured prominently in early post-1931 revolt legislation, which sought to ensure such an uprising from an anti-colonial movement would not happen again while simultaneously providing the foundation for economic reforms designed to offer cash-strapped islanders “extra prosperity.”68 The promotion of tourism

in Cyprus also attracted the successive ambitious governors of the island in their

programs of reasserting imperial sovereignty in the increasingly volatile and vulnerable

eastern Mediterranean possessions of the British Empire.

The modern Greek nation-state emerged from a military conflict for independence from the Ottoman Empire in the 1820s and 1830s. State-building efforts and locating

66 Doros Alastos, Cyprus Guerrilla: Grivas, Makarios, and the British (London: Heinemann, 1960), 37.

67 Alexis Rappas, Cyprus in the 1930s; Antigone Heraclidou, Imperial Control in Cyprus: Education and Political Manipulation in the British Empire (London: IB Tauris, 2017).

68 In the words of British MP Rear Admiral Sueter to the Secretary of State for the Colonies. Extract of Official Report of 20 December 1933. SA1 1173/1933/1/13, Cyprus State Archives, Nicosia (hereafter CSA).

what constituted the Greek nation in the country’s formative years proved a durable

struggle of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Politically, this formative project

became defined by the Megali or Grand Idea. Victories in the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913

nearly doubled the country’s territory and placed Greece on a trajectory to achieve the

Megali Idea.69 Only a decade later, Lausanne shattered the Megali Idea, and left the

Greek state in a massive financial, social, and political crisis.

In interwar Greece, as in both Rhodes and Cyprus, Lausanne's terms left a deep

impression on the trajectory of social, economic, and political life for several decades. In

the immediate context of the interwar period, subsequent Greek governments proved

unable to survive what was at times violent opposition from military officers loyal to a

rival political figure. In fact, between the Greek entry into WWI in December 1916 and

WWII in October 1940, the country had 23 different prime ministers representing seven

different political parties or the military. Greece was at various intervals a kingdom,

republic, or authoritarian dictatorship. The common thread woven through this dizzying

succession of political systems was a crippling financial cycle of external debt and

dependence.

In recent years, the words “debt crisis” and “Greece” have been deeply

intertwined in academic studies, media, and popular culture because of the country’s

economic instability within the Eurozone. However, a debt crisis is not a recent

69 At times also translated as “Great Idea.” The best account of nineteenth-century political developments is John A. Petropoulos, Politics and Statecraft in the Kingdom of Greece, 1833-1843 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968); On the tensions between state-building and nation-building in modern Greece see, Roderick Beaton, Greece: Biography of a Modern Nation (New York: Penguin, 2019), Kostis, History’s Spoiled Children, especially chapters 4 and 5; Paschalis M. Kitromilides, ‘The Enlightenment and the Greek Cultural Tradition’, in The Greek World under Ottoman and Western Domination: 15th-19th Centuries, eds. Paschalis Kitromilides and Dimitris Arvanitakis (New York and Athens: Onassis Public Benefit Foundation and the Benaki Museum, 2008), 63-75.

47 phenomenon in the history of the modern Greek nation-state. Economists Carmen

Reinhart and Christoph Trebesch have concluded that “the history of Greece is a narrative of debt, default, and external dependence.”70 The country’s chronology of economic woes largely confirms this characterization. In fact, the modern Greek nation- state defaulted on foreign loans raised in London during the Greek Revolution of the

1820s, several years before the country became independent. Economic instability and staggering debt plagued the Greek nation-state throughout the nineteenth century to the point where between 1898 and 1942 the state’s budget was controlled by the International

Finance Commission.71 Chronic economic issues and lack of institutional control over the country’s finances sapped most initiatives of the predominately short-lived Greek governments in the early years of the interwar period.

However, this began to change upon return to power of leading Greek statesman

Eleftherios Venizelos in 1928. Venizelos government initiatives resulted in temporary political, social, and financial stability and a series of ambitious economic and social reforms. As part of reforms aimed as a response to the social, political, and financial crises in the wake of defeat in Anatolia and the Treaty of Lausanne, Venizelos authorized

70 Carmen M. Reinhart and Christoph Trebesch, “The Pitfalls of External Dependence: Greece, 1829- 2015.” Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, (Fall 2015), 307.

71 The International Financial Commission (IFC) was originally comprised of representatives from Britain, France, Austria-Hungary, Russia, Germany, and Italy formed in the aftermath of the Greek defeat in the war against the Ottomans in 1897. The IFC was designed to deal with supervision of payment of war indemnity to the Ottoman government, management of tax incomes to pay the loans raised for the indemnity, and debt restructuring to oversee Greek state repayment of previous international loans from earlier in the nineteenth century. The insistence on the part of the International Finance Commission that the Greek debt from 1897 be paid in full, including any arrears and accrued interest resulted in a situation where Greece was still servicing the bailout debt of 1833 a century later, in the 1930s. As one Greek economic historian concluded dramatically, "The undeniable fact remains, that the two loans, which were contracted to establish the independence of the Greek state, were the basic factors in its enslavement." Theodoros Lignadhis quoted in, David Brewer, The Greek War of Independence (New York: Overlook, 2011), 296. For an analysis of IFC activities as well as the League of Nations loans see, Carmen M. Reinhart and Christoph Trebesch, “The Pitfalls of External Dependence: Greece, 1829-2015,” 312-317.

the foundation of the Greek National Tourism Organization (GNTO) in 1929.72 Greek

state involvement in tourism development through the GNTO sought to harness interwar

trends in tourism industries and consumer tastes. For Greek officials, tourism

development offered the promise of offsetting some of the worst effects of the debt crisis through access to foreign capital. Moreover, the potential for tourism to secure foreign capital also held the promise of serving the government’s broader economic and social reforms. Above all, this meant that tourism could emerge as both a product of and engine of the country’s modernization.

Tourism development could also be deployed by the state as a response to social and political conditions. Despite the population exchange sanctioned by the Treaty of

Lausanne, interwar Greece remained one of the more heterogeneous areas of the post-

Ottoman eastern Mediterranean alongside Rhodes and Cyprus. The 1928 census revealed sizable populations of Muslim Turkish-speakers spared from the population exchange,

Muslim and Christian Albanians, Sephardic and Romaniot Jews, Armenians, Italians,

Maltese, Slavic-speaking adherents to the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, as well as the over

1.2 million Turkish or Greek-speaking Orthodox Christian refugees.73 Indeed, the

Anatolian refugees resettled in Greece as set out by Lausanne constituted another

72 I distinguish the GNTO founded in 1929 from the current iteration of the Greek National Tourism Organization, as the interwar equivalent was officially disbanded in 1936 by the dictatorship of General Ioannis Metaxas. The Metaxas dictatorship founded another tourism organization, though this was short- lived as a result of the outbreak of WWII and the death of Metaxas. The current GNTO was founded in 1946, though it was built on the experiences and leadership of several interwar GNTO officials.

73 Kostis, History’s Spoiled Children, 226; For more on the Jewish community of Thessaloniki in the interwar period, see Devin Naar, Jewish Salonica: Between the Ottoman Empire and Modern Greece (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2016). On the interwar period Slavic speakers, known as “Slavophone Greeks,” now officially known as “Slavo-Macedonians,” see, Koliopoulos and Veremis, Greece: The Modern Sequel, 278-279; André Gerolymatos, Red Acropolis, Black Terror: The Greek Civil War and the Origins of the Soviet-American Rivalry, 1943-1949 (New York: Basic Books, 2004)., 34-37.

minority community to some Greeks in the interwar years. According to anti-Venizelists,

refugees constituted an insurmountable advantage at the ballot box for the Venizelist

Liberal Party. Labeled as “Turkish-seed” and “baptized in yoghurt,” refugees endured a

daunting path to assimilation, a process that remained incomplete until the second half of

the twentieth century.74 At the same time, refugees faced hostility in their new homes across Greek urban and provincial areas, Venizelos and his supporters pursued policies

designed to disenfranchise and otherwise exclude minority populations from the

Sephardic Jewish community of Thessaloniki (Salonika), and “Slavo-Macedonians,” to

the Italian and Maltese minorities of Corfu. The interwar Greek state embraced some

imperial characteristics, particularly regarding tourism development and minority

relations. I investigate how the Greek nation-state and its private commercial partners

sought to rebrand Greece in Lausanne's aftermath as timeless yet modern, a country

connected with its rich classical legacies, modernization, and ties to great powers like

Britain in the face of Italian aggression.

While the above introduction involves developments in interwar Greece, the

evidence and analysis from the Greek state case study centers on Athens and Corfu.

Although today Athens and Corfu vie for tourists with many other destinations in Greece

like Crete, Mykonos, and Santorini, this was not the case in the interwar period. Few

locations in interwar Greece boasted Athens and Corfu's tourism infrastructure, as both

possessed hotels of international notoriety and had attracted European elites before the

outbreak of WWI. While some pleasure cruises called at other Greek ports, such as

74 For a detailed account of the refugee experience in twentieth century Greece, see Renée Hirschon, Heirs of the Greek Catastrophe: The Social Life of Asia Minor Refugees in Piraeus (New York: Berghahn Books, 1998 [1989]; Bruce Clark, Twice a Stranger, 67-72.

Katacolo (to visit ancient Olympia), Itea (for Delphi), Patras, Thessaloniki, Crete, or

Santorini, Athens and Corfu were the only regularly scheduled destinations. Frequent steamer connections linked Athens and Corfu to Italian, Egyptian, and French ports, and by the late 1930s, the same could be said for commercial aviation routes.75 Tourism

promoters, guidebooks, and travel writers also advised prospective visitors to travel to

Athens and Corfu when planning a trip to Greece. Both Athens and Corfu contended for

recognition as the tourist “gateway to Greece.” Arguments on behalf of the two centered

on geographic and cultural grounds. Corfu, located on the western frontier, was the first

port of call for ships approaching from the west. Athens captured the label of “gateway to

Greece” for the vestiges of classical glory embodied by the sight of the Parthenon rising

above the cityscape and visible to tourists as they motored along the newly built avenue

that connected their arrival point of Piraeus harbor to the city center.76

There is also a methodological component behind the choice of Athens and Corfu.

Taken together, studying the capital and a major provincial capital on the volatile

maritime frontier with Albania and Italy reveals how Greek officials and their private

commercial partners approached tourism development in both the center and periphery. It

also brings into focus the intersection between tourism and state policies toward minority

75 Athens attracted Grand Tourists and Victorian travelers while Corfu became a popular resort for European royalty and aristocracy like Habsburg Empress Elizabeth (Sissi). On early tourism to Greece see Konstantinos Andriotis, “Early Travellers to Greece and their Modern Counterparts,” in Tourist Experiences: Meanings, Motivations, Behaviors, April 1st-4th 2009, University of Central Lancashire, Preston, UK; Ina Berg and Johan Edelheim, The attraction of islands: travellers and tourists in the Cyclades (Greece) in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change, Volume 10, No.1 (2012), 84-98; I estimate this based on examining timetables and itineraries from several steamer companies in the interwar period, including the Italian Lloyd Triestino, French Messageries Maritimes, and British P&O.

76 Ernest A. Gardner & S. Casson. Greece and the Aegean (London: George G. Harrap & Co. 1933); Lawrence Durrell, "Corfu: Isle of Legend." The Geographical Magazine Vol.8, No.5 (1939), 325-334.

populations which I argue mirror the concerns of British and Italian officials in Cyprus

and Rhodes. The two spaces are also characteristic of the two strands of Greek state

rebranding for touristic consumption. Athens to Greek officials and their private

commercial partners like Boissonnas reflected Greece's timeless yet modern nature

embodied by classical monuments, refugee resettlement efforts, and urban development

projects that both parties believed would appeal to foreign visitors. Tourism development

in Corfu focused on the intersection of foreign and domestic policy objectives and the state’s imperial nature in the conduct of policies directed at minorities.

Whether it was through an official response to the influx of refugees and

remaining heterogeneous population in Greece, or colonial strategies to valorize prized

territorial concessions while denying Greek nationalist aspirations in the case of Cyprus

and Rhodes, the Treaty of Lausanne established the conditions for the initial state

investment in tourism industries across this corner of the eastern Mediterranean. The

post-Ottoman “New Mediterranean” social and political landscape after WWI enshrined

by Lausanne is deeply enmeshed in the lineage of modern tourism in the Greek-speaking

world. At the same time, Cyprus, Greece, Rhodes, and many other Mediterranean

locations benefited from innovations in international tourism following WWI.

1.3 The New Mediterranean Tourism

The war shattered the lives of millions as the conflict industrialized killing on the

frontlines, and spread infectious diseases, hunger, and political instability on beleaguered

homefronts. Nevertheless, within months of the November 1918 armistice, many

Americans and Europeans sought escape through various forms of leisure, including new

patterns of touristic praxis.77 The immediate post-WWI years witnessed a profound shift in Mediterranean tourism, from consumer tastes to transport and travel literature innovations. These developments collectively shaped the landscape of tourism industries in the Greek-speaking world and the wider Mediterranean during the interwar period.

In 1929, American tourism expert Dr. D.E. Lorenz published the fifteenth edition

of his book, The New Mediterranean Traveller-A Handbook of Practical Information.

Like Bruno Roselli, Lorenz identified a “new Mediterranean, born in the throes of the

war.”78 According to Lorenz, the war resulted in a new Mediterranean, not only in

shifting borders, populations, and economic conditions but also in tourist attractions.

While some sites were casualties of war, other attractions in the conflict’s aftermath

experienced restoration or expansion. Ambitious modernization projects such as roads,

railways, and steamship routes transformed transport and communication modes since

1914. For Lorenz, the American tourist who read his publication constituted a new type

of visitor to the storied region, one equipped with the latest knowledge of the history,

culture, contemporary events, and prevailing conditions in the Mediterranean from

Gibraltar to Jerusalem. Innovations and shifting attitudes evident in interwar tourism

77 Social and cultural studies of the interwar period debate whether this truly reflected a dark, morbid time, emotionally, socially, economically, and politically. Revisionist scholars like Martin Pugh argue that while the interwar period gave rise to a number of troubling trends including disillusionment with liberal democracies, fascist dictatorships and Stalinist brutality, culturally the same decades marked a renaissance in the pursuit of pleasure after four years of unprecedented slaughter. Pugh’s social history of the interwar years is titled “We Danced All Night. “On the other hand, Richard Overy argued intellectual and scientific currents contributed to what was largely a morbid culture in the 1920s and 1930s in Western Europe and the United States. Richard Overy, The Twilight Years: The Paradox of Britain Between the Wars (New York: Viking, 2009), 3-4; Martin Pugh, "We Danced All Night:" A Social History of Britain Between the Wars (London: Vintage, 2009).

78 Dr. D.E. Lorenz, The New Mediterranean Traveller-A Handbook of Practical Information Fifteenth Edition. (New York: Revell, 1929), 5.

informed tourism development in Greece, Cyprus, and Rhodes, while also contributing to

placing these destinations in organized tourism itineraries.

The interwar period is primarily considered a sort of interregnum in the history of

tourism, between the “golden age” of Victorian-era leisure travel and the advent of mass tourism after WWII. However, as the Lorenz guidebook suggests, leisure travel reemerged and expanded over the roughly two decades “between the wars.” Indeed, The

New Mediterranean Traveller implied an evolution in the perception of the tourist and tourism. Tourists once considered those engaged in frivolous pursuits and categorized in the New English Dictionary as “usually depreciatory,” now attracted the attention of academics, civil servants, and entrepreneurs alike.79 By the 1930s, the League of Nations

Economic Committee created a formal definition of the tourist. At the same time, several

newly formed international organizations dedicated to aspects of tourism development

and promotion sought cross-border cooperation and standardization of visa requirements

and other potential barriers to tourist traffic.80

Officials and economists in numerous countries began to consider tourism as an

industry offered, in the words of the British ambassador to France, Lord Derby, “an

invisible export of great value.”81 Invited to contribute an article for the inaugural issue

of Touristiki Ellas, the first magazine in Greece dedicated to tourism, Italian tourism

79 F.W. Ogilvie, The Tourist Movement: An Economic Study (London: P.S. King & Son, 1933), 4.

80 The Economic Committee of the League of Nations in 1936 defined the tourist as follows: “A tourist is the individual that spends a period of time of at least 24 hours in a country different than that of residence.” This definition is one of the most expansive of the tourist. It makes no distinction for the purpose of travel, instead emphasizing residency as the key element. The League’s successor, the United Nations amended this definition by including a maximum stay of six months consecutively. Economic Committee of the League of Nations, Survey of Tourist Traffic: An International Economic Factor (Geneva: Publications Department of the League of Nations, 1936).

81 Brendon, Thomas Cook, 261.

expert Angelo Mariotti observed that “the development of tourism is a phenomenon that

each day assumes greater international importance. There is hardly a nation in Europe, in

fact, that today does not consider it one of the principal elements of the economy.”82

Mariotti did not dwell on exactly how and why tourism assumed such great importance to various states in the aftermath of WWI. South African economist A.J. Norval stressed

WWI's psychological impact and a desire to escape from dreary realities and fear of future conflict. While Norval believed people were “glad to have the chance to leave their countries after four years of war,” it “was also a fact that many hundreds of thousands of people, from all parts of the world, rushed to the scene of war during the years immediately following 1918 merely to satisfy a morbid curiosity.”83

Indeed, the early postwar years were marked by both the physical and emotional

scars of WWI as well as a mounting interest in new or evolving forms of leisure,

including tourism. American leisure travel to the Old World resumed in earnest only

months after the guns fell silent on the Western Front. In the spring of 1919, American

Express organized the first post-WWI tour of Europe from New York on board the

Cunard liner Mauretania, sister ship of the ill-fated Lusitania.84 Enthusiasm for tourism

extended well beyond a desire to visit and commemorate recent sacrifices at the somber

battlefields of WWI. In part as an escape from the restrictions of Prohibition, many

82 Angelo Mariotti, “Collaborazione turistica fra L’Italia e la Grecia,” Touristiki Ellas, Vol. 1, No. 1 (November 1930), 5.

83 A.J. Norval, The Tourist Industry: A National and International Survey (London: Sir I. Pitman & Sons, 1936), 48.

84 Coons and Varias, Tourist Third Cabin, 75; An officer in the American Expeditionary Force stationed in Germany in 1919 noticed the wave of travelers despite the war-torn conditions in Western Europe. “Baedeker himself,” wrote the officer, “never aspired to see his land so crowded with tourists and sightseers as in that spring of 1919.” Quoted in, Julia Boyd, Travelers in the Third Reich: The Rise of Fascism through the Eyes of Everyday People (London: Elliot & Thompson, 2018), 17.

American tourists enjoyed the fruits of U.S. formal and informal empire across Latin

America and the Caribbean. Compatriots set off on holidays to Europe and the

Mediterranean, where they would often visit areas controlled by either British, French, or

Italian empire.85 Americans at the onset of the 1920s were comparatively well-off

financially compared to their European counterparts, thanks in large part to a booming

economy launched by the country’s role in WWI. As a result, the Yanks spent over

$839,000 ($14.3 million in 2020) on international travel in 1929 alone, with more than

$301,000 ($5.2 million in 2020) expended in Europe and the Mediterranean.86

Interwar tourists were also distinguished by the rise of middle-class participants,

particularly among Americans. Incentivized by the introduction of the budget-friendly

Tourist Third Cabin Class by shipping companies and a pent-up desire to travel after

WWI, greater numbers of Americans took to the sea for leisure. In the 1920s, travel in

Europe was particularly cheap for American and British tourists as their currencies were significantly stronger than those on the Continent.87 The thousands of American tourists

traveling abroad constituted what political scientist Charles Hodges described as the

“Great Army of American Tourists.”88 Hodges found that in addition to the economic

85 There are a number of studies on the role of American tourists in Latin America and other zones of American influence during the early twentieth century, see Dennis Merrill, Negotiating Paradise: U.S. Tourism and Empire in Twentieth-Century Latin America (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2009); Christine Skwiot, The Purposes of Paradise: U.S. Tourism and Empire in Cuba and Hawai’i (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010).

86 Herbert M Bratter, The Promotion of Tourist Travel by Foreign Countries (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1931), 2.

87 According to Coons and Varias, “Such conditions indeed made European nations in the 1920s and 1930s vulnerable to fascist movements. The carefree American tourist who profited from Europe’s post-war economic slump would later learn the dear price to be paid for such ‘bargains.’” Coons and Varias, Tourist Third Cabin, 48.

88 Charles Hodges, “Uncle Sam’s Tourists: Why They Go Overseas,” New York Times, June 8, 1930, 53.

56 boom, desire to travel, and the introduction of affordable and efficient transport, many

Americans sought to visit family in the Old World. This type of American tourist presented a significant opportunity to the nascent Greek world’s tourism industries, as many Greek Americans and Dodecanesian Americans maintained close links to their homeland.89 Commercial travelers in search of new markets in the aftermath of WWI constituted another category of American tourists. Transport firms marketed specific itineraries to American businesspeople that offered the promise of mixing business with pleasure. A U.S. Department of Commerce report from 1931 observed that “the manufacturer in the interior of this country began to realize that the names he had learned in his school geography were the names of real places. Orders from Java for typewriters, or from South Africa for shaving cream have done their part in awakening a desire to visit foreign lands.”90

The early years of the Depression prompted further innovation in the interwar tourism landscape. Leading travel firm Thomas Cook embarked on various opportunities to offset the decline in customers for the company’s celebrated package tours. Many of

89 Greek Americans in the interwar period were responsible for an estimated $50,000 in remittances to the Greek state. Wealthy Greek Americans and other diaspora communities in places like Egypt even funded the construction of several Greek naval vessels and other military equipment. Herbert M Bratter, The Promotion of Tourist Travel by Foreign Countries (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1931), 29. For an analysis of the diaspora links to the Greek state in the interwar period, see Mogens Pelt, Tobacco, Arms, and Politics: Greece and Germany from World Crisis to World War (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, University of Cophagen, 1998), 48-52. Dodecanesian-Americans constituted a significant lobbying group for enosis in the interwar period and during WWII. The Dodecanesian League of America sponsored a series of publications in favor of enosis with Greece and popularizing allegations of brutal discriminatory measures designed to harm the Greek community by Italian officials. See Jack Casavis, Italy and the Unredeemed Isles of Greece (New York: Dodecanesian League of America, 1935); Idem, A Symposium on the Dodecanese, protesting Italian oppressions (New York: Dodecanesian League of America, 1938).

90 Bratter, The Promotion of Tourist Travel by Foreign Countries, 4. For more on the growth of business travel in the interwar period, see Waleed Hazbun, “Travel to Egypt. From the Nineteenth Century to the Second World War: Thomas Cook, the Mechanization of Travel, and the Emergence of the American Era,” in Marie-Charlotte LeBailly, ed. Red Star Line: Cruises (1894-1934) (Leuven: Davidsfonds/ Infodok, 2016), 124-131.

the company’s initiatives focused on new services designed to complement traveler’s

needs while potentially attracting some business from locals. These ranged from the opening of a laundry in Egypt, a personal shopper service in France, to a kiosk selling flowers and chocolates in London. However, British firms in 1931 also had to contend with a “moral ban on foreign holidays” in the country’s worst year of the Depression.91

Unable to consistently depend on large numbers of American and British tourists in the

early 1930s, travel promoters in Mediterranean destinations appealed to prospective

visitors from regional neighbors. Travel firms outside of the most popular tourist resorts

of the period increasingly targeted advertisements toward neighboring states. This

approach to tourism promotion was motivated in part because of financial limitations

imposed by the Depression and by growing concerns of a potential outbreak of hostilities

between Britain and Italy. In the Greek-speaking world of the eastern Mediterranean,

Greek, British, and Italian officials competed for regional tourists from Egypt and

Mandatory Palestine. Wealthy communities of diaspora Greeks in Egyptian cities like

Cairo and Alexandria represented one group of regional tourists both state tourism organizations and private businesses sought to attract to Greece, Rhodes, or Cyprus.

While regional tourist markets remained a central concern of tourist promoters in

the second half of the 1930s, tourist arrivals steadily recovered from the worst effects of

the Depression and the diplomatic fallout of the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935.

Following a steep decline in revenue in the early part of the decade, Thomas Cook

recorded record profits totaling nearly £270,000 (£18 million in 2020) in 1937.92

91 Brendon, Thomas Cook, 269.

92 In the 1920s, Thomas Cook’s average profits were estimated at £200,000 annually (£12.2 million in 2020). Ibid., 274.

American tourists found paths back to Europe by 1936, largely via the cruise industry.

The Mediterranean region benefited from the return of American tourists. Greece

averaged roughly 90,000 visitors each year between 1935 and the outbreak of WWII.

Declining tourist arrivals between 1935 and 1936 did not deter visitors to Rhodes

following the Italian conquest of Ethiopia. British officials in Cyprus anticipated the

largest influx of tourists yet seen in the summer of 1940 before Italy’s declaration of war

put the island on alert.93 Deteriorating diplomatic conditions in the late 1930s did not

consistently deter thousands of tourists from flocking to popular Mediterranean

destinations before WWII.

As social classes traveling abroad for leisure changed, so too did the types of

guidebooks visitors consulted and carried in their baggage. Guidebooks produced in the

interwar period reflect a distinct shift in subject and tone from earlier periods. Classic

guidebooks produced in the nineteenth century such as the British Murray’s series or the

German Baedeker guides were pedagogical and designed to organize leisure activities of

the rising middle-class due to industrialization. These guidebooks instructed readers on

how to behave as tourists by cataloging “what ought to be seen” in each itinerary.94 The language, tone, and form of interwar guidebook writing suggested that leisure travel no

longer neatly aligned with the practices of the Grand Tour from the eighteenth and

nineteenth centuries. Popular American travel writer and entrepreneur Clara Laughlin

93 Margarita Dritsas, “Tourism and Business during the Twentieth Century in Greece,” in Europe at the Seaside: The Economic History of Mass Tourism in the Mediterranean, eds. Luciano Segreto, Carles Manera and Manfred Pohl (New York: Berghahn Books, 2009), 56.

94 Koshar, German Travel Cultures, 8; Murray’s first included Greece in guidebooks in 1845. Baedeker’s incorporated areas of Greece and majority-Greek speaking areas in several guidebooks to the eastern Mediterranean and Italy from 1871.

rejected “old-fashioned” academic essays on high culture and favored her personal first- person reflections of tourist destinations.95 Monuments and other cultural attractions

competed for the tourist’s attention alongside modern comforts and pleasures. As the

inaugural Fodor’s On the Continent guidebook explained to readers in 1936:

Our interpretation of what constitutes information of interest to travellers in foreign countries is as different from the traditional conception as a soufflé is different from haggis. We have proceeded on the assumption that your thirst for historical knowledge is nothing like so great as your thirst for the beer of Pilsen or the slivovitsa of Belgrade. When travelling with us on the Continent you will not require a foot rule, for we will never call your attention to the size of an ancient monument; on the other hand, we will tell you the size of the tip that will earn you a smile from a pretty waitress in Vienna.96

Fodor’s books then were as much for the tourist with a greater “thirst for the beer of

Pilsen” and hedonistic pursuits then for the studious and sober religious or intellectual

pilgrim to Europe. In other words, the interwar tourist differed from the predecessors not

only in their emphasis on additional pursuits beyond the search for historical or cultural

knowledge but in the expectation that their holiday destination featured such modern

amenities and comforts. Few areas experienced these developments as profoundly as the

Mediterranean.

Interwar guidebooks can be distinguished from pre-1914 predecessors for more

than a preference for pleasure over rigid sightseeing itineraries. Numerous publications

stressed the value of tourism in efforts to promote peace and international goodwill. This

95 Endy, Cold War Holidays, 134. Michelin guides from 1927 introduced the famous restaurant star rating system. Stephen L. Harp, Marketing Michelin: Advertising & Cultural Identity in Twentieth-Century France (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), 247. Budget guidebooks also gained in popularity during the interwar years. For example, the Ten Pound Series promised readers how to travel around the UK on a shoestring budget. See, Sydney Aylmer Clark, England on Ten Pounds (London: Ivor Nicholson, 1935).

96 1936 on the Continent…The Entertaining Travel Annual Edited by Eugene Fodor. (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1936 [1986]), xiv.

emphasis marked yet another innovation in interwar guidebook writing and emerged as a

product of the violence in the trenches of WWI. Youth travelers appear to be the primary

targets of this message of travel as an act of peace. One of the architects of the 1923

Greco-Turkish population exchange, Norwegian diplomat, scientist, and former polar

explorer Fridtjof Nansen explained to readers of the International Confederation of

Students Handbook of Student Travel in Europe that “The only means to a true

knowledge of other peoples, of their thought, culture, and outlook upon life, lies in

travel.”97 Clara Laughlin reminded readers as part of her “Twenty Rules for Travellers”

that “the best League of Nations is that of travellers seeking to find much in common

with their hosts.”98 Indeed, the League of Nations' newly constructed headquarters in

Geneva, the Palais des Nations, emerged as a popular interwar tourist attraction.99 For

tourism promoters in various fields, from economists to travel writers and government

officials, there was much hope that international tourism could be a vehicle for peace and

stability.100

While guidebook authors advocated for peace and their belief in tourism’s role in

preventing another conflict, they also discussed contemporary political troubles. In the

Mediterranean, these guidebooks focused contemporary concerns on developments in

97 International Confederation of Students. Handbook of Student Travel in Europe Second edition. (London: The Commission for International Relations and Travel, 1930), vi.

98 Clara Laughlin, So You’re Going to the Mediterranean! (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1935), 612.

99 For an analysis of the League of Nations complex as an interwar tourist attraction see, Timo Holste, “Tourists at the League of Nations. Conceptions of Internationalism around the Palais des Nations, 1925– 1946,” New Global Studies, De Gruyter, Vol. 10, No. 3 (December 2016), 1-19.

100 For a recent version of the concept of travel as an act of peace and mutual understanding, see Rick Steves, Travel as a Political Act: How to Leave your Baggage Behind Second Edition. (New York: Avalon Publishing, 2018).

Fascist Italy. Lorenz described Mussolini to American tourists nearly a decade before the

Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935 as presenting a “danger that his Napoleonic ambition

for himself and his country… may eventually plunge Europe into another war.”101

Perhaps what troubled Lorenz was not the brutality and inequalities of empire, but rather

that Mussolini’s imperial ambitions could pose the greatest threat to what contemporaries

considered “western civilization” since WWI.

Travel writing, like guidebooks took on new forms in the interwar period. By the

early 1930s, a series of publications authored by popular British journalists combined the

travel narrative with informed observations of current events in the Mediterranean.102

Interwar travelogues, as in earlier periods, also featured commentary on conditions within

various outposts of empire. Propagandists in Mussolini’s Italy published accounts of

travel to different destinations in the so-called Second Roman Empire. The focus of such travel writing aimed to foster attachment to colonial possessions within the metropole.

Efforts to harness tourism to imperial strategies did not always produce the intended results. In the Greek-speaking world and other areas in the interwar period, such intentions were prone to failure when anti-colonial nationalist agitators appropriated, recast, and redeployed imperial tourism discourses to advance their rival agendas. Nor were tourists always susceptible or particularly useful in promoting respective imperial

messaging from travel writers and officials engaged in the tourism industry.

101 Lorenz, The New Mediterranean Traveller, 300.

102 A short list of examples includes, George Slocombe, The Dangerous Sea: The Mediterranean and its Future (London: Hutchinson & Co,, 1936); George Martelli, Who’s Sea?: A Mediterranean Journey (London: Chatto & Windus, 1938); Elizabeth Monroe, The Mediterranean in Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1939).

Figure 1.1: Tracking the Movement of Uncle Sam’s “Great Army of American Tourists,” (Charles Hodges, “Uncle Sam’s Tourists: Why They Go Overseas,” The New York Times, June 8, 1930, 53).

Expanding interest in the Mediterranean as a tourist destination after WWI, as

evidenced by the growth in foreign tourist arrivals and the proliferation of travel

literature, reflected changes in attitudes toward Mediterranean lands, consumer tastes,

and forms of leisure. Although the Mediterranean attracted generations of travelers from

northern Europe and later North America on the Grand Tour, such a journey and the areas

traversed presented visitors with a range of challenges and dangers. Fears of falling

victim to marauding pirates at sea or brigands in the unforgiving mountainous terrain of

places like mainland Greece lingered well into the nineteenth century.103 More common

than outbreaks of piracy or thievery was the outbreak of epidemic disease. Lord Byron,

103 In fact, one of the more singularly infamous foreign hostage situations in the region occurred in the vicinity of Thessaloniki in 1901. American Ellen Stone was kidnapped by a leader of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO) and thus became the first American victim of modern terrorism. The so-called Miss Stone Affair gripped an international audience, particularly in the United States. See Mark Mazower, Salonica: City of Ghosts, Christians, Muslims, and Jews, 1430-1950 (New York: Vintage, 2004), 247-248; Teresa Carpenter, The Miss Stone Affair: America’s First Modern Hostage Crisis (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004).

himself a participant in the Grand Tour before his role in Greek independence, lost his

life during that conflict due to illness. As late as the final months of WWI, an American

naval officer on a submarine deployment in the Mediterranean offered few positive

comments of the regional port cities visited. The American found several unnamed port

cities to be “dirty holes…I’m scared to open my mouth in any of them for fear of

swallowing forty million germs.”104

The interwar period and modernization projects across the Mediterranean on the

part of colonial administrations and the Fascist regime in Italy produced more favorable

views of the region, particularly from foreign tourists' perspective. Bruno Roselli turned

to this topic in his 1922 article on the “New Mediterranean.” While he resented French

policies in Tunisia as harmful to Italian interests, Roselli hailed the new railway linking

Casablanca with Tunis and a road-building program in French North Africa. “The sleepy

days,” he wrote, “are over.”105 Roselli’s beloved Italy registered as an attractive interwar

destination to American and British tourists, now that Mussolini had supposedly made the

trains run on time. As an article in Thomas Cook’s monthly publication, Traveller’s

Gazette asserted in December 1923, “through typical Fascista thoroughness,” the Duce

had made “discipline among the staff” and the “regular working” of railway services

“two highly important accomplished facts.”106 Mussolini’s “conquest” of malaria, when

he ordered the drainage of the Pontine marshes in the 1920s, also enhanced the country’s

104 Herman Whitaker, “The Mediterranean: The Last Stand of the Submarine,” Century, Vol. 96, (November 1918), 50.

105 Roselli, “The New Mediterranean,” 593-594.

106 Thomas Cook’s Traveller’s Gazette, December 1923 Quoted in, Brendon, Thomas Cook, 223.

64 appeal as a tourist destination. Improved hygienic measures made it increasingly safe to visit the Mediterranean during the summer months of the interwar period.107

Foreign visitors to the Mediterranean increasingly sought more than material comforts on their interwar journeys to the region. The Mediterranean emerged as an escape from distressing realities of interwar Western Europe and the United States. First articulated by literary and artistic figures in the aftermath of WWI, romanticized notions of reality in the Mediterranean soon permeated the language of the popular press and various tourist accounts.108 The Greek-speaking world of the eastern Mediterranean was a clear beneficiary of this sweeping form of romanticism, which conceived the

Mediterranean as a “pre-civilized world, Eden before the Fall, inhabited by men and women with no history, languid as plants or energetic as animals ... this image held great appeal for the over-civilized” of northern Europe and North America.109 Shortly after

WWI, the Greek-speaking world came to fit this bill and attracted the likes of painters like Henri Matisse, George Braque, and Pablo Picasso to architects like Le Corbusier and literary figures including Henry Miller and Lawrence Durrell. Durrell and his family

107 The interwar years witnessed the growth of public health infrastructure in different areas of the Mediterranean. A 1928 epidemic of dengue fever infecting over 1.5 million Greeks including the incoming prime minister Venizelos prompted the founding of a public health arm of the Greek government. The state requested aid from the League of Nations and after suggestions from a committee of foreign experts, the new framework for the Greek state’s health policy was established. Kostas Kostis, History's Spoiled Children: The Story of Modern Greece (New York: OUP, 2018), 187.

108 For example, A Literary Digest article from 1933 stressed the affordability of travel to the “three continents” of “Mediterranean lands.” The author noted that in 1934 eleven cruise ships would depart the United States for the Mediterranean. Mediterranean attractions included “romantic Spain,” Monte Carlo, the lovely hue of the Côte d’Azur,” and sun-kissed Italy.” Much of North Africa, made available and safe for tourists by French rule, was said to be a good idea for winter tourism, now facilitated by air travel. “On every side are primitive methods and customs of Biblical days, but always modern hotels with comfortable accommodations.” “Mediterranean Lands offer many attractions, Past Gibraltar Three Continents Beckon to Tourists Who have Time on Their Hands, but Only Modest Funds,” Literary Digest Vol. 116 (December, 16 1933), 32.

109 Robert Hughes, Shock of the New (New York: Alfred Knopf, 2013), 63.

found refuge from dreary England on the Greek island of Corfu between 1935 and 1939.

Like the Durrells, many British artists and writers sojourned among the ranks of fellow

expatriates in the so-called Kyrenia Colony in Cyprus. Some compatriots relished the charm of a medieval home built by the Knights of St. John in Rhodes. In each instance, mentally, emotionally, and physically exhausted western Europeans and Americans believed a preferred corner of this Greek-speaking world was the perfect elixir to the

trauma produced by industrialization, WWI, and the social and economic strife of the

interwar years.110

Shifting attitudes toward Mediterranean summer sun and heat transformed leisure

practices across the region. The summer months, regarded in Braudel’s Mediterranean

world of the sixteenth century as a time of inactivity when populations retreated indoors

to escape the heat and seasonal maladies, now emerged as a significant asset for tourism

promoters. What once was purely a winter tourist “season” expanded into a second

summer period of significant tourist arrivals in various Mediterranean areas. In the

region, summer tourism stemmed in part from the shift in consumer attitudes toward

warmer weather, sunbathing, and innovations in transport and communication.

While concerns about seasonal maladies mostly kept Victorian and Edwardian

visitors away, interwar tourists embraced Mediterranean beaches and sunbathing as a

rejuvenating, fun, and healthy experience. Embodied by the tourist experience along the

110 Perhaps the best example of this romanticism in the specific context of interwar Greece is Henry Miller, Colossus of Maroussi (New York: New Directions, 2010); The works of Lawrence and Gerald Durrell on Corfu and many other Mediterranean locations enticed generations of readers to visit the region. Their family’s experiences in 1930s Corfu has been dramatized in a recent ITV series. See Michael Haag, The Durrells of Corfu (London: Profile Books, 2017); For a brief history of the Kyrenia Colony in interwar Cyprus see, Rita C. Severis, Travelling Artists in Cyprus, 1700-1960 (London: Philip Wilson Publishers, 2000), 207-219; On British expatriates in the Italian Aegean Islands see, Isabel Anderson, A Yacht in Mediterranean Seas (Boston: Marshall Jones Company, 1930), 350-352.

Côte d'Azur during the interwar period, beaches and sunbathing became valuable assets

for Mediterranean states and their respective tourism industries. As historian Patrick

Young points out, “the transnational imaginary of Mediterranean beach tourism that has

become a mass culture phenomenon in present time owes a considerable debt to tourist

crossings and initiatives of the interwar period.”111

Even as the Mediterranean lost many of its associations as a hotbed of disease and

other dangers, the interwar period’s volatility permeated the region's depictions in

travelogues and newspaper articles. British travel writer Harry Greenwall described the

Mediterranean on the eve of the Second World War as “Paradise for pleasure-seekers….

A long and glorious pathway to the sun. But across the Mediterranean, right across it,

appears the shadow of a mailed fist. Submarines are below the waters, battleships are on

the surface; and in the skies above squadrons of aeroplanes maneuver.”112 Nevertheless,

interwar fears about a potential conflict that replaced some of the dissipated concerns of

travel to the Mediterranean did little to disrupt the expansion of transportation routes to

the region. Perhaps, the iron fist on its southern rim actually helped the northeastern

Mediterranean to become a greater hub than before.

The resumption of commercial maritime traffic in the aftermath of WWI featured

expanded routes to reflect imperial gains for Britain, France, and Italy. The

111 Patrick Young, “Tourism, Empire and Aftermath in French North Africa,” Journal of Tourism History, Vol. 10, No. 2 (2018), 194. Many adventures of Agatha Christie’s fictional Belgian detective Poirot involve interwar British tourists in the Mediterranean and new forms of leisure. A forerunner of legendary postwar French travel firm Club Méditerranée (Club Med) was Dimitri Philipoff’s Club de l’Ours blanc (The White Bears Club). Their first holiday camp was founded in 1935 in Calvi, Corsica and they soon expanded activities to the Côte d'Azur. The club emphasized sports and swimming in the Mediterranean, and, of equal if not greater importance, cavorting in skimpy swimsuits. See, Bertram M. Gordon, “The Mediterranean as a Tourist Destination from Classical Antiquity to Club Med,” Mediterranean Studies, Vol. 12 (2003), 214-215.

112 Harry J Greenwall, Mediterranean Crisis (London: Nicholson & Watson, 1939), 245.

Mediterranean was also critical as a thoroughfare en route to the Indian Ocean, providing

a faster and less storm-prone route than Cape Town. It was a vital lifeline of Britain’s

empire, an important part of which centered on the routes to and from the Indian Ocean.

As a result, British strategic imperialism focused on the Mediterranean and its

protection.113 Cyprus benefited from this renewed focus on the Mediterranean, as it

became a possible site for naval and air force stations as well as related areas of

development. Collectively, British journalist George Slocombe labeled Cyprus, Malta,

Rhodes, Corfu, Crete, and Corsica as key “strategic islands” in the Mediterranean for

Britain, Italy, Greece, and France connected by these maritime links.114 The advertising

posters of the newly established Empire Marketing Board emphasized mutual

dependence and maritime lines of communication. For example, MacDonald Gill’s 1927

poster Highways of Empire concentrated on maritime links to the British Empire.115

The interwar maritime world was not just a highway of imperial trade, as the

Great Depression ground much of the global economy to a screeching halt. As a result,

shipping companies encountered dramatic declines in demand for transatlantic passage.

In search of an option to keep their respective fleets in operation during the early years of

the Depression, shipping lines turned to package pleasure cruises to a particularly travel-

crazed American public, which accounted for roughly 80 percent of customers.

113 As argued by historian Reynolds Salerno, the Mediterranean constituted an area of strategic consideration for the British Royal Navy, on the basis of security rather than concerns of national identity in the case of France and Italy. The Mediterranean in the interwar period became an area for naval exercises and staging area for operations in the Far East. Reynolds M. Salerno, Vital Crossroads: Mediterranean Origins of the Second World War, 1935-1940 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002), 6-9.

114 Slocombe, The Dangerous Sea, 243.

115 Empire Marketing Board: Buy and Build 1927. CO 956/77, TNA.

Although pleasure cruising has origins in the mid-nineteenth century, the industry

took on its modern form during these cash-strapped years of the interwar period.

Shipping companies reintroduced prewar ocean liners and constructed a series of new

ships to add to their respective fleets. The Italians were particularly active in ambitious

construction projects, as evidenced by the launching of prominent liners like the Saturnia,

Conte Grande, and the Rex. The Blue Riband drove much enthusiasm for steamship

travel in the interwar years. The competition for the fastest crossing time of the Atlantic

constituted another form of imperial rivalry as liners from various states sought the

distinction.116

Nor were Americans the only tourists enamored with the cruise industry and the

desire to see the Mediterranean region in this fashion. The archives of British shipping

firm Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Company (P&O) include travel narratives

of cruises from passengers and employees. J.W. Rawdon, a British tourist, left an account

of a Mediterranean cruise onboard the P&O liner S.S. Mongolia in August 1932. In the

introduction to the account of his family’s cruise holiday, Rawdon explained the rationale

behind booking the trip.

When the important question of ‘Where shall we go for our holidays next year’ cropped up at Christmas 1931 it was decided upon that we should try something entirely different from the usual routine of a seaside holiday and the unanimous choice was a sea cruise. So a trip to the Mediterranean was decided upon; that offered by the P and O Company at roughly a pound a day for a fortnight appealed very strongly.117

116 Coons and Varias, Tourist Third Cabin, 9.

117 John W. Rawdon, Reminisces of a Mediterranean Cruise of August 1932, May 1933, Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Company Heritage Collection, Greenwich, UK: Caird Library National Maritime Museum, (hereafter P&O), (P&O 73/15), 1.

Rawdon’s account demonstrates three key features of the cruise industry during the interwar period. On the one hand, this type of travel was novel for most and enabled tourists to visit a range of attractive destinations worldwide, including landmark

Mediterranean attractions like Egypt, Italy, and Greece. Critically, in a moment of financial uncertainty, cruises offered tourists an unforgettable holiday at a reasonable cost. Finally, cruising was exceedingly popular. Rawdon explained in this same account that he booked an August 1932 sailing that previous February, and “this early booking was advisable in that this cruise had proved so popular that the ship was booked up soon after that time.”118 The cruise industry’s success was evident by the summer of 1932 when an estimated 100,000 British tourists alone charted a course for the world’s port cities aboard a pleasure cruise, many of which sailed the Mediterranean.119

Cruise itineraries did more than offer transport to thousands of pleasure-seekers to the sun and culture of the Mediterranean. The routes plied by cruise ships stitched together imperial networks across the globe. In the eastern Mediterranean, cruise lines contributed to the reconnection of former Ottoman and Venetian lands in the Greek- speaking world. The Mediterranean, crowded with many flags of competing states as

Roselli lamented, meant that the routes not only transported tourists but potential imperial rivalries and anti-colonial nationalist agitators. In Greece, Cyprus, and Rhodes, officials had to contend with the challenges posed by such threats against the benefits offered by the arrival of hundreds and at times over 1,200 tourists per visiting cruise ship. Indeed,

118 Ibid., 1.

119 Coons and Varias, Tourist Third Cabin, 59.

cruising itineraries and other forms of organized touring proved to be testing grounds for

the official state-branding efforts in this part of the eastern Mediterranean.

Innovations in transport were not confined to the sea, as the interwar period marked the origins of significant passenger traffic in commercial aviation. Although jet age mass tourism awaited in the post-1945 tourist boom, interwar commercial aviation expanded networks between Europe and imperial outposts in Africa and Asia. Passenger lists, of course, remained restricted to the wealthy and government officials in most instances. Logistically, interwar airlines made the most of the necessity of frequent stopovers for refueling by locating these required detours in attractive tourist destinations.

In what one scholar has described as “incidental tourists,” passengers on intercontinental flights enjoyed stopovers by touring local sights and staying in hotels arranged through partnerships between airlines and tourism organizations.120 Several Greek destinations,

including Athens and Corfu, alongside Rhodes and Cyprus, came featured on itineraries

of British, French, Dutch, Italian, German, and other carriers. Across maritime and

aviation networks, transport firms carried the flag of their respective countries.

Correspondence between the headquarters of shipping lines and airlines and government

ministries attest to developing critical state-private partnerships during the interwar period. Local firms and administrators also partnered with these flag-carriers in tourism development and promotion projects on tourist destinations.121

120 Gordon Pirie, “Incidental Tourism: British Imperial Air Travel in the 1930s,” Journal of Tourism History, Vol. 1, No.1 (January 2009), 49-66.

121 For an analysis of the connections between state and private business in the development of commercial aviation in the interwar period see, Peter Lyth, “Deutsche Lufthansa and the German State, 1926-1941,” in Business and Politics in Europe, 1900-1970, essays in honor of Alice Teichova, edited by Terry Gourvish. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 246-266.

Many actors and observers in tourism development recognized the post-WWI years marked a time of significant innovations to the industry. However, for all the changes, several factors remained at the forefront of state-organized tourism.

Mediterranean tourism traditionally revolved around a combination of ancient ruins, natural beauty, and favorable climate, particularly in the winter months. Sightseeing along established itineraries to view ancient monuments was a significant concern of

Grand Tourists and the focus of early guidebooks like Baedeker and Murray’s. By the interwar years, archaeological monuments gained additional importance to states.

Monuments that once derived value for their cultural capital and educational aspects for

Grand Tourists became significant assets to governments eager to present a desired imperial or national message. British, French, Italian, Greek, and many other governments as well as their businesses promoted travel to archaeological sites and other symbols of cultural patrimony to foster attachment to these domains, educate citizens about different areas of the state, project power to international observers, and aim to generate economic growth.122 Subsequent chapters explore how the respective states and

their private commercial partners sought to incorporate ancient monuments in their

tourism development strategies.

As in earlier forms of tourism, travel for health purposes remained an important

aspect of interwar tourism. While no longer the exclusive preserve of royals, aristocrats,

and the wealthy, spas remained popular amenities for foreign visitors. Italian officials

122 Patricia M. E. Lorcin, “Rome and France in Africa: Recovering Colonial Algeria’s Latin Past,” French Historical Studies Vol. 25, No.2 (2002), 295-329. Stephen L. Dyson, In Pursuit of Ancient Pasts: A History of Classical Archaeology in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006) Chapter 6; Stephanie Malia Hom, “Empires of Tourism: Travel and Rhetoric in Italian Colonial Libya and Albania, 1911-1943,” Journal of Tourism History, Vol. 4, No. 3 (2012), 281-300.

invested considerable attention to the thermal springs at Kalithea in Rhodes. In interwar

Greece, officials contracted with foreign firms to develop Loutraki's thermal springs in

the late 1920s. The natural environment also remained a significant factor in informing

interwar tourism development. Alongside admiring scenic vistas and following hiking

trails, mountain tourism attracted government officials and private businesses alike in

Cyprus and Rhodes. Mountain areas, and the forest areas they commonly contained,

emerged as sites where efforts to expand imperial control and tourism development

converged.123 Together with the professionalization of various tourism industry elements, from hotel management to tour guide training programs, traditional components of the tourist trade like spas and hill stations were critical to interwar branding efforts by

government officials and their private commercial partners in Cyprus, Greece, and

Rhodes.

Figure 1.2: P&O Movement Log of Cruise “C” of Viceroy of India, January-February 1935. The cruise called at the ports of Famagusta, Cyprus, Rhodes, and two destinations in Greece (Athens and Katacolo). (P&O 45/2).

123 On the wider historiography of colonial hill stations, see Eric T. Jennings, Imperial Heights: Dalat and the Making and Undoing of French Indochina (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012); Dane Kennedy, The Magic Mountains: Hill Stations and the British Raj (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996).

1.4 Chapter Conclusion

As tourism experts like Lorenz and other academic and political observers like

Roselli noted, the new types of pleasure seekers to the Mediterranean including the

“Great Army of American Tourists” as well as innovations in tourism infrastructure

helped breathe life into the “New Mediterranean” social and political order structured

around different forms of empire in the aftermath of Ottoman rule. At the same time,

imperial economic, political, and strategic concerns informed the establishment of both

practical and symbolic tourist itineraries through the state-private agreements behind passenger steamer and commercial aviation routes and the publication of guidebooks and travelogues. Interwar efforts to solidify imperial order in the shifting political and social landscape of the “new” post-Ottoman eastern Mediterranean mirrored the “new and yet old industry” of tourism in the Mediterranean.124 Together, the post-WWI

Mediterranean's social and political developments and new patterns of touristic praxis

and consumption spurred state and private actors in tourism development. The following

chapters explore three strategies of state-organized touristic branding in this volatile corner of the eastern Mediterranean between 1923 and the onset of the Second World

War's Mediterranean theater in June 1940. The Greek nation-state, Rhodes, and Cyprus

had varied experiences with tourism before the First World War and pursued different

strategies in the interwar years to develop the industry. However, by the time storm

clouds gathered over the Mediterranean in the summer of 1940, each destination

124 Norval, The Tourist Industry, 271.

74 possessed a tourism infrastructure that laid the foundation for the region's postwar mass tourism boom

Chapter 2 Rhodes A Fascist Italian Club Med?: Tourism, Empire, and Mediterranean Rivalry

2.1 Chapter Introduction At the July 1929 dedication of a restored medieval church located within the

imposing crusader fortifications of the walled city of Rhodes Town Italian governor

Mario Lago presided over the ceremony dressed in the garb of a Christian Knight flanked

by an honor guard of Italian troops and fascist Blackshirt militia. American author and

philanthropist Isabel Anderson was vacationing in Rhodes and attended the dedication.

The local Italian press had described the event as a “superb re-evocation of other

times.”125 Her assessment seemed eerily similar. She admired Lago’s appearance as “a

sturdy representative of Italian officialdom,” as he returned the fascist salute amid shouts

of “Long Live the King!”126 Anderson may not have realized that this ceremony, with its

combination of Christian crusader imagery and fascist military power, revealed as much

about the regime’s representation of the desired future for the island as it did about its

past. To be sure, the arcane crusader garb played in well with tourist fantasies. But the

Blackshirts and modern military paraphernalia dramatized to visitors and islanders alike

Fascist Italy’s imperial success at “reclaiming” the eastern Mediterranean for the self-

styled heirs of Ancient Rome and Crusader Knights, an act that suggested a fascist-led tourist repackaging that all could enjoy (and profit from).

125 General State Archives of Greece, Dodecanese Division (Rhodes) (hereafter GAK DOD), 148/1926/17 Il Messaggero di Rodi, July 11, 1926, 3.

126 Isabel Anderson, A Yacht in Mediterranean Seas (Boston: The Marshall Jones Company, 1930), 346.

Barely attracting 700 visitors in 1922, Rhodes, by the time Anderson visited in

1929, drew nearly 25,000 tourists from Europe, the Middle East, and North America.127

Although attracted to Rhodes for its climate, beaches, and modern luxury hotels, the island’s primary draw for tourists was the medieval walled city's fortifications. The ceremony Anderson witnessed was part of an Italian project to create an interwar “Club

Med” style tourist resort in the eastern Mediterranean, something that had not existed in the decades before the Italian fascists arrived. By the late 1920s, the island boasted a grand hotel, popular tourist attractions highlighted by a historic walled city, archaeological ruins, pristine beaches, golf courses, tennis courts, theaters, dance halls, cinemas, and countless scenic vistas. As a result of heavy investment and planning under the Fascist state, Rhodes emerged as a premier tourist destination in the early twentieth century Mediterranean.

Yet, the identification of Rhodes as “Italian” and “fascist” complicated island’s status as an Italian colony and “Club Med” tourist paradise in the interwar period. This chapter argues that the interwar “Club Med” envisioned by Governor Mario Lago was built upon imperial connections between state and private commercial actors and formulated in response to Italian Mediterranean imperial aspirations and anxieties.

Tourism development in Rhodes provided a patina of leisure upon the harsh surface of fascist imperialism. But at the same time, it undermined those ambitions by intensifying

127 These statistics were widely cited in official Italian economic and colonial services, the Treccani Encyclopedia of 1936, as well as in several contemporary accounts of travel to Rhodes. The figure itself should be read with a healthy dose of skepticism, as scholars, including Valerie McGuire caution. Valerie McGuire, “Fascism’s Mediterranean Empire: Italian Occupation and Governance in the Dodecanese Islands (1912-43)” (PhD Diss., NYU 2013), 74.

the regime's Mediterranean rivalry with Britain, France, and Greece, while exposing

Italian imperial anxieties.128

Historian Gordon Pirie defined the strategy of colonial governments and tourism

promoters in attracting foreign tourists to imperial possessions as a drive to “moderate

strangeness.” According to Pirie, moderating strangeness influenced the choice of empire

touring itineraries. Some elements of the nature of travel would have been daring; some

more tentative, perhaps for people exploring European overseas empires for the first time.

Opportunity in terms of finances and time as well as knowledgeable guiding would all

have factored into the trip-planning equation. For perspective tourists to imperial lands in

the interwar period, the security of being in the charge of a reputable European touring

firm (e.g. Thomas Cook or Touring Club Italiano), on a European ocean liner (e.g. P&O,

Holland-America, Lloyd Triestino), to a destination where a semblance of familiar

customs (including rule of law), brands, and symbols dominated, might have been

decisive in inspiring the confidence of even the most timid of tourists.129 Building on

Pirie’s concept, I argue that Lago and his partners’ policies designed to “moderate

strangeness” in the island’s tourism industry shaped the effort to harness the leisure resort

into a symbol of an “Italian” and “fascist” Rhodes.

For the Italians in Rhodes, moderating strangeness for European visitors entailed

a vigilant curation of landmarks and other tourist attractions associated with both the

128 The expression “patina of leisure” is borrowed from Stephanie Malia Hom, “Empires of Tourism: Travel and Rhetoric in Italian Colonial Libya and Albania, 1911-1943,” Journal of Tourism History, Vol 4, No.3 (September 2012), 283.

129 Pirie wrote specifically on British imperial projects in Africa during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. See, Gordon Pirie in, Shelley Baranowski, Christopher Endy, Waleed Hazbun, Stephanie Malia Hom, Gordon Pirie, Trevor Simmons & Eric G.E. Zuelow, “Discussion: Tourism and Empire,” Journal of Tourism History, Vol. 7 No. 1-2, (2015), 106.

island’s “primary” (Rome, Knights of St. John) and “secondary” (Greek/Byzantine,

Ottoman) imperial associations. Like the rhetoric evident in propaganda about Rhodes

from Federzoni during the period of “temporary” administration and the church

dedication ceremony witnessed by Isabelle Anderson, Italian efforts to moderate

strangeness in the tourist experience appeared to strengthen the regime’s credentials to

permanently retain Rhodes. Yet, certain tourist attractions and symbols presented in

tourist itineraries undermined “Italian” and “fascist” impressions of the island and its

tourist trade. Lago and the Italian administration sold the experience of Rhodes (focused

on antiquities and summer leisure activities) to British and other foreign tourists as a

packaged commodity that could be consumed from within an early form of what political

scientist Dennis R. Judd characterized as the “tourist bubble.”130 Italian initiatives in

tourism development can be viewed as varying degrees of moderating strangeness. This

chapter investigates this process and its application to tourist attractions within the walled

city of Rhodes and the island’s hotels.

Few scholarly works in any language have been focused exclusively on the

interwar period of Italian rule in Rhodes and the Dodecanese, and even the most

comprehensive of those remain quite specialized, dedicated to military, architectural, or

urban history.131 Recent scholarship has positioned the Dodecanese in relation to the

130 Judd describes the tourist bubble as a symbiotic relationship between tourist and entertainment facilities and downtown corporate towers, shopping malls, bars that cater to both tourists and daytime professionals who work downtown or weekend suburban commuters in cities. Such areas constitute, in effect, tourist “bubbles” that “envelop the traveler so that he/she only moves inside secured, protected and normalized environments.” See, Dennis R. Judd, “Constructing the Tourist Bubble,” in The Tourist City, eds. Dennis R. Judd and Susan S. Fainstein (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999), 35-53.

131 The most comprehensive scholarly works on Italian rule in the Dodecanese in English, Italian, and Greek include Nicholas Doumanis, Myth and Memory in the Mediterranean: Remembering Fascism’s Empire (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997); Christos Karousos, Rhodos: History. Monuments. Art (Athens: Esperos Editions, 1973); Vasilis Kolonas, Italike architektonike sta Dodekanesa. 1912-1943

79 larger Italian empire. Some scholars, including Stephanie Hom, Valerie McGuire, and

Filippo Marco Espinoza, have considered the relationship between Italian imperial ambitions in Rhodes and questions of identity in the Italian nation-state under liberal and fascist rule.132

Almost all the works that consider the period of fascist Italian rule in Rhodes focus on nationalism, on how the Italian state’s activities prodded and blocked Greek life in Rhodes. It has rarely been told as anything more than an exclusively Italian story or as an object of the Greek nationalist struggle to achieve enosis with the Greek nation- state. Greek language historiography stresses the contentious relationship between Greek nationalists and Fascist Italian officials. Italian language historiography privileges the motivations of Italian officials in their relations with the island’s different communities as well as the experience of Italian tourists rather than international visitors in discussions of

(Athens: Olkos, 2004); Simona Martinoli and Eliana Perotti, Architettura coloniale italiana nel Dodecaneso. 1912-1943 (Torino: Edizioni Fondazione Giovanni Agnelli, 1999); and Ettore Vittorini, Isole dimenticate: II Dodecaneso da Giolitti al massacro del 1943 (Firenze: Casa Editrice Le Lettere, 2002). Several Italian memoirs of the Dodecanese were also published in the 1980s and 1990s including Gianni Baldi, Dolce Egeo. Guerra Amara (Milano: Rizzoli, 1988) and Giuseppe Corrado Teatini, Diario dall’Egeo: Rodi-Lero. Agosto-Novembre 1943 (Milano: Mursia, 1990). In addition to published memoirs, the Oscar-winning film “Mediterraneo” presented a romanticized interpretation of Fascist Italy's presence in the Aegean, Mediterraneo. dir. Gabriele Salvatores, Miramax, 1991. There are multiple memoirs of Jewish life in interwar and WWII-era Rhodes, including Rebecca Amato-Levy, I Remember Rhodes (New York: Sepher-Harmon Press, 1987); and Laura Varon, The Juderia: A Holocaust Survivor's Tribute to the Jewish Community of Rhodes (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1999).

132 On Rhodes in the wider Italian colonial and national context, see Stephanie Hom Cary, “Destination Italy: Tourism, Colonialism, and the Modem Italian Nation-State, 1861-1947,” (PhD Diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2007), 184-246; Nicholas Doumanis, “Italians as ‘Good’ Colonizers: Speaking Subalterns and the Politics of Memory in the Dodecanese,” Italian Colonialism, eds. Ruth Ben-Ghiat and Mia Fuller (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2005) 221-232. On the relationship between Rhodes and Italian imperialism, see Filippo Marco Espinoza, “Fare gli Italiani dell’Egeo: Il Dodecaneso dall’impero ottomano all’impero del fascismo,” (PhD Diss., Università degli Studi di Trento, 2017); Simona Martinoli, “Gli anni dell’imperialismo coloniale: la politica totalitaria del govematore De Vecchi,” Architettura coloniale italiana nel Dodecaneso. 1912-1943 eds. Simona Martinoli and Eliana Perotti (Torino: Edizioni Fondazione Giovanni Agnelli, 1999) 57-68; Valerie McGuire, “Arcadian Histories: Italian Encounters in the Eastern Mediterranean,” in New Perspectives in Italian Cultural Studies edited by Graziella Parati. Vol. I. (Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2012), 231-258.

the island’s tourism industry. However, the Italian project behind shaping a more

“Italian” and “fascist” Rhodes and Mediterranean tourist paradise was largely directed

not at Italians or even Greeks. The population most on the minds of Italian fascist tourist

developers was an international one. Indeed, the actors engaged in developing the

island’s tourism infrastructure -- from politicians, diplomats, financiers, and travel firms to shipping companies -- represented many areas of Europe, the Middle East, and North

America and worked hard to get the worldly traveler to come to Rhodes.

Situated just 25 nautical miles (47 kilometers or roughly 29 miles) from the

Anatolian coast, the island of Rhodes has long been situated within an area of the eastern

Mediterranean laden with trade routes as well as the ambitions of numerous empires.

Centuries before the Fascist regime seized power in Italy and its colonial possessions,

Rhodes had long been a “destination” for travelers in the Mediterranean. As early as 305

BC, travelers arrived on the island’s shores to see its most spectacular attraction, the

legendary Colossus, which was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.133 The

island’s natural scenery attracted equal attention. Distinct from many Aegean islands

because of lush vegetation, Rhodes became linked to flowers, most notably the rose. In

the early modern period, the Knights of St. John fortified Rhodes and made the walled

city a requisite stopover for pilgrims and crusaders on their way to and from Jerusalem.

The Knights lost most of their Aegean possessions with the Ottoman conquest of Rhodes

in 1522, after Sultan Suleiman I (the Lawgiver, or Magnificent, r. 1520-1566) laid siege

to the walled city. For nearly four centuries, Suleiman’s successors on the Ottoman

133 The famed Colossus of antiquity stood 110 feet high at the opening of the Mandraki harbor in present- day Rhodes Town. Constructed in 292BC, it lasted for only 66 years before it was destroyed in an earthquake in 226BC. See Vincent Gabrielson, ed., Hellenistic Rhodes: Politics. Culture, and Society (Aarhus, Denmark: Aarhus University Press, 1999).

imperial throne ruled Rhodes until Italian forces conquered the island in May 1912.134

Despite the relatively light traffic in foreign visitors during much of the Ottoman period,

the island’s associations with the Colossus and natural beauty ensured that Rhodes would

not lose its appeal as a potential tourist attraction.

2.2 “Temporary” Military Occupation and the Construction of “Italian” Rhodes, 1912-1922 Initially seized as part of military operations against the Ottomans during the

Italo-Ottoman War in 1911-1912, Rhodes remained a legal gray area and diplomatic

pawn until the confirmation of Italian sovereignty through the Treaty of Lausanne in

1923.135 Despite the diplomatic uncertainty swirling around the question of Italian

sovereignty until 1923, both in Rome and on the ground in Rhodes Italian officials took

steps to stake a claim to permanent sovereignty.

By the interwar years, actual visitors and yearning travelers read more than two

decades of exuberant praise for Italy’s efforts to modernize Rhodes and its medieval

crusader city. Strangely, this paper trail of Italian modernizing ambitions for Rhodes

began even before Italian forces invaded Ottoman Libya in 1911. An Italian Member of

Parliament warned just weeks before the invasion of Libya, “the Mediterranean and

Adriatic are Italy’s lungs, if Tripoli [Libya]…. should fall under the control of any power,

134 The Ottoman conquest of Rhodes stood as a watershed moment for Ottoman dominance of the eastern Mediterranean. See, Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, trans. Sian Reynolds (New York: Harper & Row, 1976), 669; Anthony Lutrell, The Hospitaller State on Rhodes, and its Western Provinces. 1306-1462 (Aldershot, Hampshire: Ashgate, 1999); Christodoulous Papachristodoulou, Istoria tes Rodou: apo tous nroistorikous chronous hdos ten ensomatose tes Dodekanlsou (1948) [History of Rhodes: From the Prehistoric Years to the Integration of the Dodecanese] 2nd ed. (Athens: Demos Rodou, Stege Grammaton kai Technon Dodekanesou, 1994).

135 On the question of Italian sovereignty in Rhodes and the Dodecanese before 1923, see R. J. B. Bosworth, “Britain and Italy's Acquisition of the Dodecanese, 1912–1915,” Historical Journal, Vol. 13, No. 4 (1970), 683–705; Maria Gabriella Pasqualini. L’Esercito Italiano nel Dodecaneso: speranze e realtà: i documenti dell'Ufficio storico dello Stato maggiore dell'Esercito (Roma: AUSSME, 2005).

we would be unable to breathe in that area.”136 Such arguments also revealed Italian

unease about the ambitions of rival powers like France and Britain. As recently as 1881,

Italy had endured the shock of the French “theft” of Tunisia, a country Rome targeted as

within its respective sphere of influence.137 Thus, for Italian nationalists, the 1911-1912

foray into the Ottoman Maghreb and Aegean was done as much to preempt a similar

move on the part of a regional rival like France as it was an act of aggression against the

Ottoman Empire. From the start Rhodes was part of a larger Italian Mediterranean project

of securing space for Italy “to breathe” against the ever-enclosing constraints of its

imperialist western European neighbors.

Although Italian forces quickly secured Rhodes and the Dodecanese in the spring

of 1912, the fate of these Ottoman possessions was anything but certain long after

hostilities concluded. In fact, on paper at least, Italy’s presence was at first only meant to

be temporary. Rome promised that troops would withdraw from Rhodes and the other

Dodecanese islands upon Ottoman recognition of Italian sovereignty in Libya. Yet, even

after the Ottomans agreed to cede Libya to Italy and signed what is now regarded as the

first Treaty of Lausanne in late 1912, Italian forces remained stationed across the

Dodecanese. Italy played a game of international chicken over the Dodecanese and won.

Its sovereignty over Rhodes and the Dodecanese was recognized as “temporary,” to be

officially determined via international accord.

136 Quoted in Sean Anderson, “The Light and the Line, Florestano Di Fausto and the Politics of ‘Mediterraneità’”, California Italian Studies, Vol. 1, No.1 (2010), 3.

137 On the Franco-Italian rivalry in Tunisia see, Mary Lewis, Divided Rule: Sovereignty and Empire in French Tunisia, 1881-1938 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013).

Just how unrealistic this “temporary” Italian sovereignty over the islands would

be is shown by how the Italian state planned and manned its presence in Rhodes. Rome

offered few signals of an intention to relinquish control. Rhodes was governed by a

succession of administrations that were mostly headed by military officers who pushed

more than they bided. The islands were first administered by the victorious commander

of Italian forces during the invasion of the Dodecanese, General Giovanni Ameglio

(1854-1921) followed by a succession of military administrators.138

From the start, Ameglio’s conquest of Rhodes and his administration prefigured a

lasting break with Ottoman rule, something many communities in Rhodes seemed to

warm to (at least initially). The majority Greek-speaking Orthodox Christian population

and the Ladino-speaking Sephardic Jewish minority saw the Italian presence as

irrefutable proof that their Ottoman days of subordination had come to an end.

Interestingly the island’s predominately Turkish-speaking Muslim minority also

gradually warmed to Italian rule, because how the Italian administration was digging its

heels into the Rhodian economy and society seemed to indicate that future annexation of

Rhodes to Greece was not in the cards, either. For their part, successive Italian

administrations in Rhodes embarked on a range of social and economic policies designed

in large part to suggest the permanent nature of Italian rule. For “temporary” rulers,

Italian officials exerted considerable effort and expense on projects in Rhodes, ranging

138 Ameglio was a veteran of earlier Italian colonial conflicts, and later became an administrator in Libya. He was succeeded in Rhodes by a series of short-term military governors including: Gen. Franceso Marchi (November 1913-April 1914), Maj. Gen. Giovanni Croce (April 1914-May 1917), Lt. Gen. Vittorio Elia (May 1917-December 1919), and Brig. Gen. Achille Porta (December 1919-August 1920). In 1920, the military administration was replaced by a civilian one, beginning with Felice Massa (September 1920- August 1921), Alberto De Bosdari (August 1921-November 1922), and finally, Mario Lago (November 1922-1936).

from education reforms introducing Italian language courses to new aqueducts and other

urban development interventions.

Despite these initiatives, the future of the Rhodes and the Dodecanese remained

unclear at the conclusion of WWI. Italian authorities increasingly recognized that the

islands constituted a diplomatic pawn that could be leveraged for greater concessions

from Britain and France in other areas of the eastern Mediterranean and Middle East as

part of the postwar peace settlement. In 1919, Italian and Greek representatives even

signed a short-lived diplomatic agreement to unite the Dodecanese with Greece, though

deteriorating diplomatic relations and the rapid collapse of Greek positions in Anatolia

rendered the agreement a dead letter. Confirmation of permanent sovereignty through the

second Treaty of Lausanne in 1923 produced more change beyond the formal name of the islands. Mussolini’s supporters hailed the terms of Lausanne as an early diplomatic triumph for the regime.139

From the start, Italian nationalists wasted little time in valorizing Italy’s presence

in the Aegean. Writing under the pseudonym Giulio de Frenzi, future Minister of the

Colonies Luigi Federzoni (1878-1967), published a series of articles in the Italian press

during 1912-1913 to voice support for maintaining control of the Dodecanese. Federzoni

urged Italians to treasure Rhodes “like an antique jewel of the family.”140 Propagandists

thus connected Rhodes and Libya to the idea of a “reborn” Italian dominance of the

Mediterranean. Italian rhetoric designed to bolster claims to permanent Italian

139 Doumanis, Myth and Memory in the Mediterranean, 47.

140 Giulio de Frenzi [Luigi Federzoni], L’Italia nell’Egeo (Roma: G. Garzoni, 1913), 113. Federzoni returned to visit Rhodes in July 1933. Upon his departure, Lago said “we are proud to show one of the most important figures in the state and the regime how the regime has made a Rhodes with hard work, love, and perfect justice.” Il Messaggero di Rodi Digital Archives, Università degli Studi di Padova, (herafter MR), 3/7/1933, 3.

sovereignty in the Dodecanese marked the onset of several tropes associated with the

country’s historical (and imperial) past to be applied to Rhodes. The deployment of the

trope of rebirth and related tropes of Italian imperial ambitions served as an attack on the

notion of “temporary” rather than permanent sovereignty in Rhodes. The central links

propagandists like Federzoni promoted was to the empires of Rome and medieval

Christendom. With so many links to forebears of Italy, nationalist writers like Federzoni

had made any outcome short of permanent sovereignty in Rhodes a betrayal of the

country’s imperial aspirations, and by extension the very feasibility of the modern,

unified, Italian state’s existence.

Although there was little logistical opportunity in 1912 to facilitate tours of

patriotic Italians to Rhodes, the privately-owned Touring Club Italiano shared in the

enthusiasm for this Mediterranean conquest. In fact, the 1913 edition of the company’s

Italian guidebook already included several passages on Rhodes and the other Aegean

islands. While visitors were largely unable to reach Rhodes as tourists in 1913, the

guidebook informed readers of some of the potential attractions being unearthed or

restored in Rhodes by Italian archaeologists.

Archaeological excavations indeed breathed life into the rhetoric of nationalist

propagandists like Federzoni during the uncertain period of “temporary” Italian rule.

Within weeks of the Italian seizure of Rhodes in May 1912, the Italian Archaeological

School at Athens sent a mission led by Amedeo Maiuri (1886-1963) to assess the state of

the island’s archaeological remains.141 Although archaeological excavations were

141 Maiuri left Rhodes in 1924 to direct excavations at Pompeii and other areas in the Bay of Naples. By the end of his career Maiuri was considered one of Italy’s most distinguished archaeologists.

86 designed at first to bolster Italy’s claims to permanent sovereignty in Rhodes, these projects created ready-made attractions for the island’s tourism industry in the 1920s.

While classical monuments associated with ancient Greece and Rome attracted the attention of Italian propagandists, the archaeological mission was largely drawn to the physical legacies of the Christian crusader knights. By the early fourteenth century, the

Knights of St. John, a Christian military organization tasked with protecting pilgrim routes from Europe to the Holy Land, used Rhodes as the base of their burgeoning footprint in the Aegean. Areas once ruled by the Order including Rhodes, other

Dodecanese islands, and Malta shared a common characteristic of crusader fortresses of varying sizes dotting their respective coastlines. State funding for archaeology and rhetoric connected to the effort to lay claim to the island’s Italian heritage provided for the maintenance and exhibition of antiquities that served as an indirect boon to tourism development. In 1914, military governor, Giovanni Croce established a museum in

Rhodes Town as well as archaeological zones across the island aimed to attract not only

Italian tourists, but thousands of foreign visitors as well. Initiatives overseen by the island’s military government from thus cemented the permanent nature of Italian rule, while also preparing the foundation for interwar growth in tourism development.

2.3 Mario Lago and the Birth of a Modern Tourism Industry in Rhodes Tourism was always part of the Italian military administration’s vision of how to make Rhodes part of a flourishing Mediterranean empire. But other more prosaic initiatives also took up the government’s time. Agriculture and mining were earmarked to be flagship industries for Rhodes and all other Italian colonial possessions. Italian permanent sovereignty recognized through the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne did little to alter

this desire for Rhodes among many Italian observers. This all changed in early 1923 with

Governor Mario Lago’s arrival. From a stopgap solution to aid a struggling economy,

Lago’s turned tourism into in Rhodes’ primary hope. Under his governorship, it became

one of the few (albeit briefly) profitable colonial initiatives in all the Italian Empire. And

given the current importance of tourism in the eastern Mediterranean, it is arguably the

most enduring legacy of Italian rule in Rhodes and the Dodecanese.

In Rhodes as in many areas of the world during the interwar period, tourism was

increasingly recognized by political and economic actors as an industry in need of

planning, organization, regulation, and promotion. In a 1930 article published in a

magazine dedicated to Italian colonial projects, fascist propagandist Vittorio Buti

observed, "The old mentality, for which attracting the stranger to a particular country was

considered as a form of parasitism, unworthy of a civilized people, is now outdated.”142

Indeed, by the early 1920s the Ministry of Education had established a professorship in

Tourism Economics at the prestigious La Sapienza University of Rome.143 At the same

time, tourism institutions, specifically the Ente Nazionale per le Industrie Turistiche

(Italian National Tourism Organization, ENIT), Touring Club Italiano (Touring Club of

Italy, TCI), and Compagnia Italiana per il Turismo (Italian Tourism Company, CIT)

were engaged in various elements of the industry.

Yet, in the early years of Mussolini’s regime that coincided with the onset of

Lago’s term as governor in Rhodes, Italian authorities displayed a certain ambivalence

142 Vittorio Buti, in Rivista delle colonie italiane, 1930,1086, in Martinoli and Perotti, Architettura Coloniale, 47.

143 A position held at that time by Angelo Mariotti. See, R.J.B. Bosworth, “Tourist Planning in Fascist Italy and the Limits of a Totalitarian Culture,” Contemporary European History Vol. 6, No. 1 (1997), 16-18.

88 regarding the promotion of international tourism in Italy and the colonies. Mussolini himself in 1922, the year he rose to power, declared that Italy under the new regime would not be dependent upon foreign tourist capital: “Italians do not intend to live on alms by acting as tour guides to foreigners who wander around our venerable ruins.”144

Instead, Mussolini sold this “new Italy” molded in the Fascist regime’s image to foreign journalists, academics, and other observers on modernity, production, and growing military capabilities.

As the historiography has shown in so much about Mussolini’s plans and his rhetoric, the anti-tourism fascist project was more hype than reality. Throughout the

1920s and 1930s extensive state involvement in tourism development was seen everywhere in the lands controlled by Rome. From Tuscan hill towns to desert oases in

Libya, Mussolini’s government pushed tourism forward, even though his speeches claimed otherwise. As historian R.J.B. Bosworth observed, “Mussolini and [the regime press organ] Il Popolo d’ltalia both regularly underlined the economic importance of tourist promotion, even if they could not help boasting that Italy had a natural ‘tourist primacy in the world.’”145 Italian authorities and forces within the Italian tourist industry responded wholeheartedly to this; focus on the creation of comfortable, reliable, and interconnected international-oriented modern tourist infrastructures grew ever more even as anti-globalist Mussolini pushed ever more towards autarky. In the case of Rhodes, these efforts accelerated particularly after the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923. This was

144 Opera Omnia di Benito Mussolini. edited by Edoardo and Duilio Susmel. Vol. IV (Firenze: La Fenice, 1961), 457.

145 R.J.B. Bosworth, “Visiting Italy: Tourism and Leisure, 1860-1960,” Italy and the Wider World (London: Routledge, 1996), 173.

related to the increase in the real and potential clientele of European, Middle Eastern, and

North American bourgeois tourists, changing patterns of travel, as well as political

priorities surrounding Italian efforts to solidify Rome’s rule in the Aegean.

The Rhodes governor Lago emblematized Italian fascism’s prioritization of

tourism. Within weeks of Mussolini forming his first government, Mario Lago received

through royal decree the nomination for the position of governor of the Dodecanese (soon

to be Le Isole Italiane dell’Egeo or Italian Aegean Islands) “with full powers” over

civilian matters.146 Lago developed his economic model around two strategies. For the islands generally, Lago desired to improve agricultural conditions through the establishment of model villages inhabited by Italian settlers, much as was happening in newly annexed territories in the alps and along the Adriatic.147 In Rhodes Town, he set

out to develop his capital city as a tourist destination. The governor involved himself in

nearly all matters related to tourism, from negotiating contracts with travel and

transportation firms, to advertisements and architectural design.

Lago’s ambitious plans for Rhodes and the Dodecanese are one thing, but this was

already an existing world, Thus, the situation in Rhodes was far more complicated than

the tourist spectacle Lago had planned to create. The islands over which Lago assumed administrative control contained four distinct ethnic and linguistic communities—Greek,

Turkish, Sephardic Jewish, and Italian. A 1935 census estimated the total population to be 140, 848, of which approximately 80% was Greek, 8% Turkish, and 8% Italian, with a

146 Excluding command of military forces stationed on the islands. Gazzetta Ufficiale del Regno D’Italia n. 214, Regio Decreto 28 Aug. 1924 n. 1355, 3104. http://augusto.digitpa.gov.it/ Accessed August 9, 2019.

147 The Italian government sponsored the development of several model agricultural villages, primarily in Rhodes and Kos. In his retirement, Lago wrote a novel about a Ligurian family eager to establish a farm in Rhodes. Mario Lago, E Intanto Lavoriamo (Milan: Mondadori, 1941).

Jewish population of some 5,000 largely located in Rhodes and Kos. Rhodes itself

boasted a population of 56,754, with roughly 25,000 resident in Rhodes Town. An

estimated 10,000 primarily Turkish and Jewish residents lived within the medieval walled

city.148 Rhodes Town’s diverse population presented Lago’s government with both opportunities and obstacles to tourism development. What this suggested above all though, was that state intervention in tourism would have a direct or indirect impact on each of the communities.

While Lago’s tenure in Rhodes corresponded with Mussolini’s consolidation of

power in Italy, he never demonstrated fervent support for the regime. Both his public and

his personal writings reveal a man who, while complicit in the regime’s policies, was

largely indifferent to the appeal of the Duce. Above all, as a career diplomat with

impressive nationalist credentials, Lago did believe in the Italian nation-state. As a result,

he felt it his duty to transform Rhodes into a shining model of Italian imperial ambitions.

Lago, as evidenced by his activities described below, was a workaholic who

micromanaged every detail he encountered, from long-term agricultural and industrial

planning to napkin inventories for local restaurants.149 Lago assumed a post invested with considerable power. The governor’s office had its own budget, civil service, and the governor had the right to issue decrees, detain and expel civilians without trial, appoint magistrates and administrative personnel, dismiss local government appointees, as well as the power to establish and issue monopolies.150 As relations with Britain and Greece

148 Istituto Coloniale Italiano, Annuario dell'Italia all'estero e delle sue colonie (Roma: Tipografia dell’Unione Editrice, 1935), 395-437.

149 On napkin inventories, see Lago’s extensive memos regarding the Crociera Nazionale nel Mediterraneo Orientale (The national cruise in the eastern Mediterranean), GAK DOD 140/1925/78, 344.

150 Doumanis, Myth and Memory in the Mediterranean, 41-57.

deteriorated after 1936, the governor’s authority expanded to both civilian and military

matters. Lago in Rhodes was a man with the powers to transform his island kingdom. But

he was also a man deeply committed to making sure Rhodes nurtured the world he cared

about most of all, Italy.

Under Lago’s administration, extensive public works projects transformed the

island’s landscape; government ran with unprecedented efficiency; and new industries

emerged as important components of the economy, the most prevalent being tourism. In

the eleven years of “temporary” Italian administration before Lago’s appointment as

governor, Rhodes was almost exclusively the subject of political propaganda evident in

the type of rhetoric discussed above. Posters, brochures, and articles like those published

by Federzoni extolled the island’s “Italian” historical associations and its agricultural

potential, all designed to validate permanent possession of Rhodes and the Dodecanese.

However, after Lago came to power, the tone and tenor of Italian propaganda evolved. In

the Lago era, Italian propaganda stressed the island’s favorable climate and beaches, and

proclaimed it an ideal port of call for pleasure cruises. Over the course of the subsequent

decade, a mass tourism industry emerged in Rhodes, because Lago orchestrated its rapid

development through a combination of personal energy and strategic partnerships with

Italian officials and private commercial partners from Italy, Rhodes, and abroad.

All this development fostered by Lago’s seemingly boundless energy elicited both groans and hopes. Florestano Di Fausto, chief architect in the Italian Aegean Islands in the late 1920s resented the “implacable demands of the Governor” during his stints in

Rhodes Town.151 On the other hand, local and foreign visitors alike admired Lago’s

151 Florestano Di Fausto Quoted in, Giuseppe Miano, “Florestano Di Fausto from Rhodes to Libya.” Journal of Islamic Environmental Research Development Centre (1990), 59.

92 efforts. British M.P. Sir Rennell Rodd wrote in a 1930 article “it would be difficult to speak too warmly of the admirable work which the cultivated and enthusiastic Governor,

Signor Mario Lago, has done during the six years he has occupied his post.”152 In the course of conducting interviews of local Rhodians, historian Nicholas Doumanis encountered much praise for Italian projects in the Lago era. One resident remembered streams of tourists “arriving everyday…they loved our city.”153

Lago’s tourism development efforts took shape in interwar Rhodes on three fronts: 1) physically, through hotel construction, cruise ships, tourist offices, attractions, and commercial air traffic; 2) rhetorically, through propaganda, guidebooks, and exhibitions; and 3) commercially, through the participation of local financial elites,

Italian entrepreneurs, and foreign investors. In its physical manifestation, Rhodes Town epitomized a modern Italian town; its hotels, baths, roads, golf courses, tennis courts, and restored monuments underscored the island’s “Italian” character as well as its “fascist spirit.”154 Rhetorically, Rhodes reflected a divided image, at once highly Italian and fascist yet also an exotic “Other” type of destination for Italians and foreign visitors alike.

To disseminate such images to incoming tourists and armchair travelers alike, Lago established an official tourism office.

Lago's initial strategy to attract tourists to Rhodes was to “sell the bear skin before killing the beast.” In other words, Lago intended to disseminate an impression of Rhodes as a thriving tourist resort even if the “new image” was largely non-existent in the early

152 Sir Rennell Rodd, “The Island of Rhodes,” The Daily Telegraph, 12 September 1930, 10.

153 Quoted in, Nicholas Doumanis, Myth and Memory in the Mediterranean, 153.

154 Istituto LUCE, Archivio Storico Luce. Giornale LUCE “Rodi Capitale” http://www.archivioluce.com Accessed September 6, 2019.

1920s.155 To organize tourism promotion, Lago turned to an enthusiastic engineer, Franco

Benetti (1895-1971). Benetti soon proved to be as tireless in his promotion of the island

as a tourist resort as the island's dynamic governor. Employed by both Lago and his

successor, Cesare Maria De Vecchi, Benetti was responsible for day-to-day tourism

operations in Rhodes. He answered all correspondence that pertained to tourism, handled tourists’ complaints, oversaw the management of hotels, promoted public works that benefited the tourism industry (i.e., roads, spas, golf courses, tennis courts, an aquarium, and airport), organized events like sporting competitions and festivals for visitors, and produced an array of promotional materials for Rhodes and the other Italian Aegean

Islands. Because Lago identified tourism early on as a key sector of the colonial economy, he created Benetti’s position and the Office of Tourism and Propaganda in late

1924. Archival documents reveal that Lago and Benetti worked closely together to envision the mission of the island’s official tourist office.

In cooperation with the Italian National Tourism Organization (ENIT) in Rome,

Benetti recruited and trained local tour guides. Advertisements in the local paper, Il

Messaggero di Rodi (the Messenger of Rhodes) described ideal applicants for tour guide positions as “young people of good moral standing and culture, with good knowledge

(written and spoken) of Italian and French, and with some knowledge of English, to participate in a training period of several months.”156 Applicants were typically drawn from the island’s Sephardic Jewish community, as children often attended the French-

language Alliance Israélite Universelle schools and spoke several other languages in

155 Letter from Mario Lago to Franco Benetti, 7 February 1924. GAK DOD 212/1924/639.

156 Il Messaggero di Rodi, 6/5/1927, 3, MR.

94 addition to their native Ladino.157 Involvement in the tourism infrastructure in positions like the Office of Tourism and Propaganda tour guides provided critical opportunities for young educated Jewish men from working-class families.158

Benetti and Lago wanted Rhodian tourism to be profitable, efficient, and modern.

And from a visitor’s first steps, a living orchestration of this goal came true. Tour guides in their scarlet caps and grey uniforms lined the waterfront near the jetty to meet awaiting passengers from each ship that docked in port. British travel writer Peter Stucley described them as reminiscent of a musical chorus from a theatrical production “waiting, it seemed, to huzzah the principals as they stepped lightly from the launch.”159 Visiting cruise lines generally pre-arranged tour guides, though guides without a shore excursion group could be hired from their waiting area at the marina. Stucley took a tour of the walled city accompanied by one of these guides. He wrote, “an obliging member of the

157 The Alliance israélite universelle is a Paris-based organization founded in 1860 by French statesman Adolphe Crémieux to protect the human rights of Jews around the world. Education emerged as a primary focus, and by 1900 the organization operated more than 100 schools, largely concentrated in the eastern Mediterranean and the Maghreb. For a detailed account of Jewish education in interwar Rhodes, see Nathan Shachar, The Lost Worlds of Rhodes: Greeks, Italians, Jews, and Turks between Tradition and Modernity (Brighton, UK: Sussex Academic Press, 2013), 78-80.

158 Scholars have given some indication of the stark numbers behind the Jewish community’s dire financial situation in the interwar years. Women between the ages of 15 and 35 in the Jewish community during the 1930s outnumbered men by a third. Working populations represented about 26 percent of the population “housewives” (casalinga) represented over 40 percent (including unmarried women and young girls not attending school) school-age and pre-school aged children formed 20 percent Renee Hirschon points to archival records that show 320 people were listed as having unknown occupation. Many families sent sons abroad to live with relations due to financial hardship. In Central Africa and the Americas their language abilities typically involved them in import/export activity, and wholesaling with several family enterprises developing into large commercial concerns with international connections. Decolonization brought further migration to South Africa, Belgium, the USA, and Argentina. On economic conditions in the Jewish community of Rhodes, see Renee Hirschon “Cosmopolitans in the Old Town;” idem; "The Jews from Rhodes in Central and Southern Africa" in, M.Ember, C.Ember and I. Skoggard (eds) Encyclopedia of Diasporas (New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, 2005), 925-934; Andreas Guidi, "Patterns of Jewish Mobility between Rhodes and Buenos Aires (1905-1948)," Südosteuropäische Hefte Vol. 4, No. 2 (November 2015), 13-24.

159 Stucley, Two Months’ Grace, 113.

chorus conducted me round the ramparts (usually guides are repugnant to me, but at

Rhodes their scarlet caps are irresistible; besides this young man offered to guide me for

nothing), and pointed out the various hostels in the Via dei Cavalieri.”160 A March 1934 article in The Messenger of Rhodes congratulated Benetti’s tour guides and local police in their work reuniting a visiting cruise ship passenger with lost camera equipment.161

Though their appearance and knowledge earned considerable praise from visitors like

Stucley, tour guides also gained recognition for their efficiency and professionalism.

None of this was accidental. All of this was programmed, trained, and supported.

Together with the Italian National Tourism Organization and the Touring Club

Italiano, Benetti’s Tourism Office published numerous guidebooks, pamphlets, and newspaper editorials in various languages. The worldly ambitions are evident in the rainbow of languages featured in promotion booklets. By 1935 the local tourist office published materials in Italian, French, German, English, and Arabic.162 A 1933 ENIT

guidebook to Rhodes featured a new logo for the island. The image includes a crest with

symbols of the Italian Royal House of Savoy and the Knights of St. John, as well as the

island’s iconic deer and rose. Below the crest is the outline of the medieval walls of

Rhodes Town facing out to the sea and the coast of Anatolia. In the sky, an airplane is

depicted above the walls and passing ships, one a modern steamer, the other a ship from

the age of sail. In this image, Rhodes is clearly presented as embracing both the island’s

knightly traditions as well as modern technologies including the steamship and plane.

160 Ibid., 114.

161 Il Messaggero di Rodi, 22/3/1934, 3. MR.

162 Rhodes Tourism Materials in Arabic Language, 1935. GAK DOD 529/1935/137.

Advertising is rarely shy in the messages it wishes to put across and Rhodes’ tourism materials are no different: here was a world of the past geared for the pleasures of a cosmopolitan, modern, and rich future.

Lago and officials in the tourist office and archaeological institute led Italian efforts to brand Rhodes as the “Pearl of the Mediterranean” and the “Capital of the Italian

Levant” through tourism. Such designations were not possible, however, as Lago was warned, without the construction of adequate accommodations for international tourists.163 And this led to the construction of Fascist-era Rhodes’ most important

attraction and the most enduring symbol of the era: the Grand Hotel of the Roses.

Figure 2.1: ENIT Rhodes Guidebook Back Cover Design (ENIT, Rodi: Guida del Turismo Roma, ENIT, 1933)

163 Lago received regular reports from experts in the field as well as prominent Italian travelers. Travel writer and geologist Giotto Dainelli corresponded with Lago in the early 1920s, pointing to recent developments in Lebanon’s hotel industry as worthy of consideration. A contemporary US bulletin reminded hoteliers and innkeepers that “tourists remember good beds and clean baths.” USDA Press Service, Office of Information, Homemaker News no. 17, 1936; http://www.archiviofotografico.societageografica.it/index.php?it/155/fondo-giotto-dainelli.

The Grand Hotel of the Roses (Grande Albergo delle Rose) was the island’s

largest and most luxurious hotel. Building began in 1924; it was one Lago’s first major

projects as Rhodes’ governor. It is a prime example of the interchange between Italian

policymakers and their private commercial partners (as well as their employees). The

hotel, originally opened with 200 rooms (each featuring a bath and telephone), was

constructed exactly where any water-crazed tourist would want it to be, along a pristine

stretch of beaches around the northern tip of the island. Not just its position enticed; the

Grand Hotel of the Roses also was emblematic of the “Club Med” leisure resort tourism

Lago envisioned. When he commissioned the grand hotel, he did not limit his plans to

monies easily available. He pushed hard, asked widely, and eventually covered the 4.5

million lire bill for its construction by getting funds from by the Italian government, the

Banca Commerciale Italiana, the shipping company Lloyd Triestino, the Venice-based hotel conglomerate Italian Company of Grand Hotels (CIGA), local financiers, and obligatory funds collected from the Rhodian population. The Venetian hotel group only agreed to manage the hotel project after considerable state and local investment in the creation of the SAGAR (Grand Hotel of Rhodes Company) subsidiary.164 The Grand

Hotel of the Roses was a gargantuan project for all concerned, one all parties only

invested in because of the ambitions for money-making it promised.

From the opening festivities in May 1927, the Grand Hotel of the Roses captured

the sweeping sense of change Lago’s administration brought to daily life and the island’s

tourism infrastructure. As recently as May 1912, the walled city’s seven gates locked

each night as they had done on a nightly basis for over four hundred years. Only fifteen

164 Grand Hotel of Rhodes. GAK DOD 113/1926/330.

years later, in May 1927, distinguished guests (including a delegation from the Egyptian

government), hotel management, local notables, and Italian administrators danced the

“Charleston” until the wee hours of the morning during the hotel’s opening

celebration.165 The symbolism was overwritten, to a certain extent. Lago’s Grand Hotel

was not just open; Rhodes was open for the world to come and spend money there.

In its location, architectural appearance, amenities offered, and guest list, the

Grand Hotel of the Roses epitomized the “Club Med” resort atmosphere Lago and other

tourism promoters envisioned. The famed guest list of international dignitaries and

celebrities was both real and imagined. The Messenger of Rhodes published a daily

record of the hotel’s guest log, which included names from the Fascist regime’s top brass

to ex-monarchs like Tsar Ferdinand of Bulgaria, Greek Prime Minister Eleftherios

Venizelos, and the former court physician to British King George V.166 In the 1937 short

story “Triangle at Rhodes,” Agatha Christie sent her fictional eccentric Belgian detective

Hercule Poirot on holiday to Rhodes and situated much of the murder mystery plot in the

Grand Hotel of the Roses. In both reality and fiction, the Grand Hotel of the Roses

became synonymous with a luxurious Mediterranean holiday.

Events held at the hotel reinforced the desired “Club Med” image. Beach and

nautical activities dominated daily activities at the hotel during the summer months, from

sailing regattas, to canoeing races, gymnastics, and swimsuit competitions among young

165 Virginia Aloi described the hotel as “the very symbol of the Dodecanese's golden years, a privileged destination for luxury tourism.” “Rodi: un posto al sole? L’identità territoriale dell’isola sotto i governatorati civili di Mario Lago e Cesare De Vecchi (1923-1940),” Ph.D. Dissertation Universita degli Studi di RomaTre (2008), 223.

166 Venizelos arrived as a refugee from political crisis with his wife and about 80 loyal supporters in March 1935. He departed Rhodes for Naples on board the Rex where he traveled on to exile in Paris. Il Messaggero di Rodi, 18/3/1935, 3, MR.

women.167 This was possible in part because of the hotel’s choice position along the less

windy area of the shoreline. As captured by the images below, large bathing huts, rows of

beach umbrellas, and multiple water activities were at the forefront of promotional

materials. Local organizations and the hotel management were quick to capitalize on the

hotel’s internal and external facilities as an attractive event space. For example, the

island’s rowing club paid homage to the rising popularity of pleasure cruising through its

March 1935 “The Cruise of the Roses” gala event. Hosted by the rowing club and one of

its most distinguished members, Governor Lago’s wife Ottavia, the event elaborately

transformed the hotel into several representations of celebrated contemporary luxury

liners.168 Here local leisure organizations, Lago, and primary engines of the tourism

infrastructure (the hotel and the cruise industry) converged.

Telling the history of Grand Hotel often seems like telling a history of Lago and

his intrepid personality. But serious structural investments made the hotel impervious to

the ups and downs of personal administration. Records do not conclusively indicate

whether finances, personal quarrels, or a combination of these prompted the CIGA-

appointed manager to depart within three years of opening in 1930. What followed

according to Benetti was a succession of “unhappy” and inexperienced managers.169 One

of the hotel’s managers was a retired member of the local branch of the Italian Finance

Police (Guardia di Finanza) with no prior experience in the hospitality industry. Despite

their lack of qualifications, there is little evidence of a marked decline in the hotel’s

167 The Messenger of Rhodes frequently published articles about upcoming events and recaps of past activities.

168 Il Messaggero di Rodi, 3/5/1935,3, MR.

169 Office of Tourism and Propaganda, Director’s Report February 7, 1938. GAK DOD 639/1938/46.

100 service on the part of ineffective management. Lengthy guest logs as well as largely positive tourist recollections suggest the hotel maintained its image as a reputable luxury hotel in the eastern Mediterranean.

Foreign tourists navigating the familiar in the streets of the Italian-built New

Quarter and the foreign in the narrow alleyways and bazaars of the walled city found a common point of reference in the Grand Hotel of the Roses. The hotel epitomized Italian efforts to moderate strangeness in the interwar tourist experience. Architecturally prior to

1938, the hotel’s façade blended influences from across the Mediterranean. Despite the varied influences behind the hotel’s external appearance, for most visitors it clearly reflected a foray into the exotic “Orient.” Italian cruise passenger Maria Benzoni considered the Grand Hotel of the Roses to be:

A luxurious building, that is reminiscent of the style of the Orient. It seems to evoke the charms of the island: they call it the Hotel of the Roses, but it does not have the typical appearance of a hotel; or perhaps it’s the nature of this place that transforms all things, the air is so terse that it obliterates space, softens the consistency of the material, and eludes our senses as if reality were the effect of a fantasy that is suddenly prodigious inside us.”170

For some visitors at least, to see the Grand Hotel itself was a transformative element of their holiday in Rhodes. The view from the hotel’s patio or the balcony of any room was also itself an exercise in moderating strangeness. A panoramic glance brought into focus the modern, “Italian” and “fascist” New Quarter, and most likely a cruise ship in the harbor. Just beyond the Palace of Government, Fascist Party headquarters, Post Office, and New Market, the medieval walls and Ottoman-era minarets came into view. From

170 Maria Benzoni, Oriente Mediterraneo: memorie di crociera (Milano: La Prora, 1935), 134.

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their vantage point in the Grand Hotel of the Roses, interwar foreign tourists interacted

with the desired official imaginings of “Italian” and “fascist” Rhodes.

By the close of the 1920s, there were six other hotels in Rhodes managed by

Italians, including the Hotel Savoia (60 beds), Hotel des Etrangers (35 beds), and Hotel

Rhodes (36 beds) in the center of the New Quarter. Paradise Pension (15 beds) provided a

more budget-friendly option. Five kilometers south in the village of Trianda, the Hotel

Miramare (75 beds) proved a more affordable beachfront option than the luxurious Grand

Hotel of the Roses. Most popular guidebooks and travelogues, like the 1928 guide to

Rhodes by Bestetti & Tumminelli, omitted all Greek Orthodox- and Muslim-run pensions

as potential alternatives to the newly constructed Italian hotels. Discrimination against

many businesses managed by locals was widespread within the island’s tourism industry

to persuade Italian and foreign tourists to patronize Italian-run institutions, and as such,

reinforce the regime’s desire to promote a more “Italian” image of Rhodes. Fascist-run

Rhodian tourism was about economics and bringing money to the island, but islanders themselves were not the primary envisioned benefactors of all this. The state was, as well as the international networks of travel that helped bring tourists there.

Founded in 1924 by a group of Trieste-based bankers and merchants, the Italian

Aegean Commercial Company (CCIE) joined Lago at the forefront of tourism promotion and management. The company’s branch manager in Rhodes, Edoardo Coffino, rarely stood far from Lago and other leading officials at ceremonies welcoming distinguished guests, cruise ships, or flights. The CCIE involved itself in a range of economic interests in the region, including the acquisition of licenses for much of the heavy freight

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transportation and exploitation rights to a salt-lake on the nearby island of Kos.171 Shortly

after its founding, the CCIE turned to the island’s nascent tourism industry. Initially, the

CCIE worked with various shipping lines while also branching into shore excursion sales

on behalf of vising cruise ships.

The island’s tourism industry became intrinsically linked to cruises because of

Lago and the management of the CCIE. Rhodes was uniquely suited to attract the

business of shipping firms engaged in the pleasure cruising industry. Here, urban

planning initiatives designed to modernize Rhodes accelerated under Lago’s guidance,

such as the improvement of port facilities and construction of a new road network. These

initiatives simplified the task of Benetti’s tour guides as they whisked cruise shore

excursion groups from the port in Rhodes Town to the island’s numerous attractions and

back to the ship before its scheduled departure. The success of all these initiatives is

astounding. While in 1925 Rhodes did not feature on a single pleasure cruise itinerary,

but by 1933 more than 60 ships included the island as a port of call. A 1928 article in the

Touring Club Italiano magazine reported that "the island of Rhodes has now become an

obligatory stop for international tourism in the East and all the great Mediterranean

cruises call there.”172 Indeed, by 1929, roughly 4,000 tourists arrived by cruise ship for a visit of 1-2 days. According to an internal assessment conducted by Lago’s staff, by 1933 this number expanded to over 18,000 cruise passengers.173 The number of cruise

passengers generally exceeded foreign nationals in transit or the expatriates living on the

171 Doumanis, Myth and Memory in the Mediterranean, 46.

172 Pietro Silva, “Il Mediterraneo e L’Italia Imperiale.” Rivista mensile del Touring Club Italiano, No. 10 Oct. 1936, 970.

173 Tourism Office Rhodes, Annual Tourism Statistics, 1933. GAK DOD 176/1933/23.

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island. Rhodes emerged as a primary destination for companies rounding out itineraries of the Mediterranean’s main attractions-from the Holy Land and Egypt to Italy and the

Maghreb. As a result, thousands of cruise passengers toured a medieval walled city whose gates still locked each night less than two decades earlier.

Arrivals of some of the world’s largest and most accomplished ships like the Italia

Line’s S.S. Rex in March 1935 became as much of an attraction to locals as Rhodes Town

to the cruise passengers. At the time, the Rex held the coveted Blue Riband for the fastest

Atlantic crossing time. CCIE agents negotiated with the cruise companies to arrange

afternoon tours of the ships while passengers were out exploring Rhodes Town.

According to an article in The Messenger of Rhodes, the CCIE sold more than 200 tickets

to tour the Rex.174 While curious locals toured the celebrated vessel in port, several

hundred passengers hired cars or guides to visit Rhodes Town and other attractions

including Kalithea and Fileremo. In the afternoon, locals and cruise passengers gathered

at the stadium to watch the soccer game between a Rhodian club and crew from the Rex.

The ship’s visit concluded with a dinner dance at the Grand Hotel of the Roses held in

honor of the cruise guests. For a Mediterranean island in the interwar years, there was no

more significant market than the cruise industry. By attracting major companies and their

flagships, as well as several Blue Riband winners, Lago and his associates ensured that

the finest society in the world would admire Rhodes and the regime's development

program.

During economic and political uncertainties in moments of the 1930s, efforts were

accelerated to promote domestic tourism, of which tourism via state-organized cruise to

174 Il Messaggero di Rodi, 15/3/1937, 3, MR.

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Italy’s colonies and possessions like Rhodes was one part. Leisure organizations like the

state Opera Nazionale Dopolavoro, or National Leisure Hours Organization (OND),

Fascist Youth and the private TCI arranged cruises to Rhodes through the CCIE and

Benetti’s office. The island’s tourism industry benefited from a range of specialty tours

arranged to the eastern Mediterranean. Admirers of Horace marked the bi-millennium of his birth with a cruise to destinations in the Mediterranean affiliated with the celebrated

Roman poet, including Rhodes.175 Pilgrimages of both a religious and secular nature included stops in Rhodes. Pilgrims from around the world on their way to the Holy Land combined their visit to Patmos, “the island of St John,” with a brief respite in nearby

Rhodes Town. The cruise industry promoted by Lago assumed many forms and attracted a diverse range of shipping companies and state-sponsored cruises.

Despite the booming cruise ship passenger traffic in the early 1930s, the CCIE underperformed financially. As a result, in late 1931 Lago engineered the transition of

CCIE administration to a group of prominent locals, including two members of the

Rhodian commercial and banking class: Mazlia Notrica and John Menascé.176 Members

of the Notrica and Menascé families were leading figures in the island’s Jewish

community and operated two of the three largest financial institutions in Rhodes.

However, in the early 1920s, the most important among these families was undoubtedly

the Alhadeffs. An Italian banker in 1925 wrote to the Director of the Italian Commercial

Bank, “There is indeed hardly an initiative or business of some importance which is not

associated with the name of Alhadeff, as there is not some nice property [in Rhodes] that

175 “The Horatian Pilgrimage and Classical Cruise” Latin Notes, Vol. 12, No. 4 (January 1935), 21.

176 See Information Bulletin: Italian Commercial Company for the Aegean, 31 October 1931, GAK DOD 238/1931/151, 109.

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does not belong to one of them.”177 The bank of Salomon Alhadeff & Sons, which was

founded in Rhodes Town in 1819, had branches from Istanbul to Manchester. The

Alhadeff brothers, Giuseppe, Asher, and Vittorio, managed the bank and several other

businesses in Rhodes Town, including the city’s department store. The Alhadeffs

admired the Italian conqueror of Rhodes, General Ameglio, and maintained friendly ties with the successive Italian administrators. However, the arrival of Mario Lago radically changed the relationship between the Alhadeffs and the Italian state.

As noted above, an ambitious Lago was determined to sell Rhodes as a prominent tourist destination and commercial emporium in the eastern Mediterranean. In the

Alhadeffs, Lago found a mutually beneficial partnership for a range of initiatives. The governor, as observers noted, relaxed several financial regulations on local banking firms like the Alhadeffs. As in the case of the CCIE, Lago also granted concessions to certain local firms, including the Alhadeffs, Notricas, and Menascés. According to one Italian banker, the Alhadeff business was worth an estimated 80 million lire by 1935.178 In a

time of financial uncertainty within the Italian Empire and beyond, the Alhadeffs

appeared to be a bastion of financial stability, and precisely the type of reliable partner

Lago required to expand and maintain the island’s flourishing tourism industry.

By the early 1930s, the Alhadeffs and other prominent local financiers like the

Notricas contributed to a range of projects in the tourism industry, from the construction

of the Grand Hotel of the Roses to sponsoring popular annual events like the Rosa d’Oro

177 Private Letter A. Paladini to Bonaldo Stringher, April, 14 1925. GAK DOD 141/1925/17.

178 Vittorio Alhadeff of the powerful Rhodian banking and commercial family remembered that under Lago, “business was going wonderfully well. In branch after branch, the bank was constantly developing and financing all kinds of activities, from fishing for sponges in Cyrenaica to harvesting cotton, tobacco, and sesame in Anatolia. Everything was going great.” Shachar, The Lost Worlds of Rhodes, 248; See also, Renee Hirschon, “Cosmopolitans in the Old Town,” 14.

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(Golden Rose) auto race.179 In return for these contributions, Lago lavished awards and

distinctions on several members of the commercial families. The Messenger of Rhodes

archives reveal frequent articles that sought to link local commercial elites with Lago. As

evidenced by the photograph of the Alhadeff department store, the family assumed a

public image that was intimately linked to Lago’s administration. Italian flags and other

symbols of the regime were prominently displayed in Alhadeff-owned businesses.180

Furthermore, all three Alhadeff brothers took Italian citizenship by 1933. As I discuss below, the Alhadeff family’s Jewish background and Italian citizenship shaped the future of the three brothers and reflected the growing crisis in the Mediterranean on the eve of the Second World War. But in the early 1930s, financiers like the Alhadeffs were critical to refashioning Rhodes Town as a modern Mediterranean tourist destination.

Lago’s initial tourism development strategy included the construction of appropriate facilities to accommodate commercial aviation. Work on facilities for aircraft began in the late 1920s in the island’s interior. By 1928 Italian airline Aero Espresso

Italiana initiated the first flights of a Brindisi-Athens-Rhodes-Smyrna route. Airlines like shipping companies partnered with the government and the CCIE on a range of initiatives. Companies including shipping firms the Lloyd Triestino, the Adriatic, and San

179 Organized between 1930 and 1938, the Rosa d’Oro featured a 14-mile course through Rhodes Town and the area around Mount Fileremo. Although the race failed to draw the desired international attention, it intrigued Fascist Party Secretary Achille Starace. From 1934, Starace personally sponsored the trophy awarded to the race’s champion. Il Messaggero di Rodi, 6/3/1934, 3, MR.

180 Italian historian Esther Fintz-Menascé is the granddaughter of John Menascé, the President of the island’s Jewish Community organization in the interwar period. She has revealed family stories from the period in several valuable monographs on the Jewish Community of Rhodes between the late Ottoman period and the Holocaust. One story related to her family’s ties with the Lago administration involved childhood memories of her mother purchasing dresses from Paris to wear at festivities organized either by the local commercial families or the Italian administration. See Esther Fintz-Menascé, The History of Jewish Rhodes (Los Angeles: The Rhodes Jewish Historical Foundation, 2014), 87.

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Marco as well as Italian and foreign aviation firms including the Polish LOT invested in

hotel projects such as the Grand Hotel of the Roses. These firms also offered discounted

rates and packaged holidays in conjunction with the Grand Hotel of the Roses and the

CCIE.181 Most air traffic to Rhodes involved tourists on a short stopover in the island on

their way to a more distant destination.

Due to the technological constraints of commercial aviation in the interwar

period, which required frequent stops on long-distance routes, airlines sought

partnerships with suitable accommodations in attractive destinations for their wealthy

clientele.182 The combination of cultural monuments, pleasant climate, appropriate

accommodation in the Grand Hotel of the Roses, and suitable landing facilities produced

contracts between several airlines and the government in Rhodes. By the early 1930s,

Rhodes featured on the Europe-Asia routes of Dutch airline KLM and British Imperial

Airways. Throughout the period, the arrival of a flight from a new travel route prompted press coverage and official welcoming ceremonies. An October 1937 arrival of a new

KLM plane resulted in an official welcome from government officials, Coffino, local

KLM travel agents, and “all relevant Fascist and religious dignitaries.”183 Those gathered

congratulated the pilot, toured the plane, and mingled with the small group of passengers

until they departed for the next leg of the journey. Although these flights involved far

fewer passengers than cruise ships, such stopovers in Rhodes enabled even more visitors

to briefly experience the island as tourists.

181 Advertisements for these concessions frequently appear in the pages of The Messenger of Rhodes.

182 For a detailed analysis of primarily British commercial aviation in the interwar period, see Gordon Pirie, “Incidental Tourism: British Imperial Air Travel in the 1930s.” Journal of Tourism History, Vol. 1 No. 1 (March 2009), 49-66.

183 Il Messaggero di Rodi, 3/10/1937, 3, MR.

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By the mid-1930s, much of Lago’s vision for the island’s tourism industry had

emerged to some degree. Infrastructure projects and tourist attractions attracted the

business of shipping companies and airlines which transported thousands of pleasure-

seeking visitors to Rhodes. Yet, the laid-back atmosphere encouraged by the tourism

industry did not obscure the imperial anxieties and Mediterranean rivalry simmering

beneath the surface of pristine beaches, sunbathers, and cheerful tour guides.

2.4 A Place in the Sun? Tourism and Mediterranean Rivalry Emphasis on the centrality of the Mediterranean to Italy had been at the heart of

Italian nationalist discourse from the Risorgimento as well as in the country’s imperialist

designs from the Maghreb to the shores of Anatolia. In antiquity, the Roman Empire

dominated the Mediterranean including the Dodecanese Islands, introducing the term

Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) into the modern Italian and later Fascist vocabulary. Although

formerly anti-imperialist, leading Italian intellectuals following the Risorgimento

including Giuseppe Mazzini and Pasquale Stanislao Mancini spoke of the necessity of

protecting the Mediterranean through expansion for the sake of ensuring the survival of

the Italian nation-state.184

Tourism propaganda to Rhodes championed the fascist Italian "resurrected" mare

nostrum, and accordingly played up the island’s imperial heritage as an object of tourist

consumption. Archaeological ruins testified to the vestiges of Roman and

Greek/Byzantine antiquity. The medieval walled city was billed as a Christian fortress

first defended by the Knights of St. John and retaken from the Ottoman Muslim

184 Maurizio Isabella, “Liberalism and Empires in the Mediterranean: The View-Point of the Risorgimento,” in The Risorgimento Revisited: Nationalism and Culture in Nineteenth Century Italy edited by Silvana Patriarca and Lucy Riall (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2012), 248.

109 conquerors by the Italians in 1912. Even new constructions during the 1920s, like the

Venetian-styled Palace of Government and other structures in the New Quarter were meant to echo the island's imperial past. Furthermore, tourism propaganda invoked the legacies of “secondary” empires—Ottoman, Greek/Byzantine, and Genoese, —to sell

Rhodes to foreign tourists. Nowhere on the island was this official effort to recall this imperial past more in evidence than within the walls of the medieval city constructed by the Knights of St. John.

Sunday July 3, 1933 started as a typical summer day for residents of the walled city’s Juderia (Jewish Quarter). Children played soccer in the alleyways while women sat on balconies chatting and singing with their neighbors. Others strolled the quarter’s central promenade, La Kay Ancha (The Wide Street) on their way to the waterfront where a cruise ship had just arrived. Though the site of cruise ships and smartly dressed foreign tourists was a common occurrence, particularly during the height of summer in the 1930s, something about this group of visitors invited curiosity among many of the Juderia’s inhabitants. The feeling was mutual, as these tourists disembarked that morning from the

Transmediterranea Lines vessel, Ciudad de Cadiz en route from Barcelona to the Holy

Land. This “friendly invasion” of Spanish tourists was enjoyed by all the city according to an article in The Messenger of Rhodes. The paper noted how the Spanish visitors found linguistic commonalities and were warmly received by the Jewish community.185 After visiting Italy, Greece, the Holy Land, and Egypt, the Spanish tourists according to one cruise passenger: “never suspected that Rhodes would be so precious. In this medieval city, voices resound that are familiar to us. They speak the language of our old

185 Il Messaggero di Rodi, 4/7/33, 3, MR.

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parchments and royal inventories.” After several hours of discussions with multiple

generations of extended families in the Juderia, the Spanish tourists reluctantly departed

for the cruise ship, “dazed by history, emotions, and sweet wine.”186 The encounter with

Ladino-speakers within the walled city left a deep impression and sense of familiarity

amid the foreign tour on this group of Spanish visitors to Rhodes, particularly in contrast

to the other ports of call on their itinerary.

While the encounter between the Spanish cruise passengers and the residents of

the island’s Jewish Quarter was unintended from an official standpoint, the tourists’

response reflected Italian desires in the nature of the island’s tourism industry. This

interaction was another example of moderating strangeness on a Mediterranean cruise

itinerary. The central node of this tourist enclave was the restored Avenue of the Knights

within the walled city and its association with the Knights of St. John.

Indeed, the most pervasive imperial referent common to Italian tourist propaganda

in Rhodes Town was the Crusader Christian knights of the eastern Mediterranean. For

roughly two centuries (1308-1522), the Knights of St. John used Rhodes as a base for

protecting pilgrims to the Holy Land and “defending” that land from Christendom’s foes.

Yet the island’s Christian heritage ran even deeper; it was one of the first locales beyond

Jerusalem to be converted by St. Paul circa AD 100. Thus, the island’s deep associations with Christianity proved an essential justification for Italy’s colonial claims. With the

Catholic Church based in Rome, Rhodes was considered an extension of that center of

Christianity. Rhodes had long been a bastion of Christianity, and despite its majority-

186 Guillermo Diaz-Plaja quoted in Shachar, The Lost Worlds of Rhodes, 111-112; An academic study of this Mediterranean cruise exists in Spanish. See, Francisco Gracia Alonso and Josep Ma Fullola Pericot, El sueño de una generación: el crucero universitario por el Mediterráneo de 1933 (Barcelona: Universitat de Barcelona, 2006).

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Greek Orthodox Christian population, Italian colonial rule was thus reconnecting the

island to the “true” Christian Church. Furthermore, the Order of the Knights of St. John

had been based in Rome following Napoleon’s conquest of Malta in 1798. Tourist texts

emphasized this crusader Christian empire, often describing the history of the Knights of

St. John in extensive detail. For example, the 1929 TCI guidebook to Rhodes featured an

almost encyclopedic account of battles fought by the Knights and their respective

victories.187

The expansion of archaeological projects in the walled city reflected this use of

the island’s crusader heritage for tourist consumption. Under Lago’s guidance in 1927,

the Italian archaeological mission became the Historical-Archaeological Institute of

Rhodes (FERT).188 Lago appointed the archaeological mission’s director, hardline fascist

Giulio Iacopi (1898-1982, FERT Superintendent, 1927-1934) to the position of

Superintendent of the FERT. Under Iacopi’s leadership, the FERT spent much of its early

years restoring the Avenue of the Knights, the centerpiece of the walled city.189 The

FERT's Avenue of the Knights work was part of carving out Italian space in moderating

strangeness amid an “exotic” experience within the walls. Archaeological work served

the regime’s political purpose by “cleansing” the knightly residences of Ottoman-era

187 The Messenger of Rhodes often included articles about groups of pilgrims visiting the island on the way to/from the Holy Land. Special attention was given to groups of Catholic clergies from across Europe who sought to visit Rhodes for the island’s deep historical connection to Christianity and the Catholic Church under Italian rule.

188 FERT is the abbreviation for the Latin phrase Fortitudo Eius Rhodum Tenuit ("His strength conquered Rhodes"). This phrase is often attributed to a Savoyard ancestor of Italian King Victor Emmanuel III, who used. FERT as his devise. The Times, “The City of the Knights: Italian Rule in Rhodes. From a special correspondent,” August 25, 1925, 9.

189 Although Italian restoration efforts on sites affiliated with the Knights of St. John dated back to the founding of the museum in 1914, the French initiated this work the previous year. French consul Albert Lafont oversaw the restoration of the Auberge of the Tongue of France in 1913. Esther Fintz-Menascé, A History of Jewish Rhodes, 113.

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interventions. In this corner of the walled city and in many guidebook discussions of the

Knights, these Italian projects made it appear as though the centuries of Ottoman rule and

the diverse makeup of the island’s population did not exist.

Yet even with these interventions, some voices celebrated the exploration of the

Jewish and Muslim quarters of the walled city. Despite unusual encounters, some voices

sought to make the walled city more familiar and Italian to visitors. Italian guidebooks

like Ardito Desio and Giuseppe Stefanini’s Le Colonie, Rodi, e le isole Italiane dell’Egeo

argued that Rhodes had an exceptional place in the Italian imperial imagination. The

authors stressed evidence of both familiarity and difference among the island’s

communities. Greeks held much in common with their new Italian rulers, possessing

traits that made them appear similar southern Italians combined with the “Venetian sing-

song” manner of speech.190 Guidebooks encouraged readers to view the island’s different

communities as attractions to witness in their visit to Rhodes. Many Italian and foreign

language accounts such as Rodi: Guida del turista (1928) encouraged visitors to explore

both areas of Rhodes Town, beginning with the modern New Quarter built by the Italians

in the 1920s.

Despite the familiarity of the sound of Greek to some Italians, most

characterizations stressed the foreign or “exotic” elements that an Italian or international

tourist would encounter within the walled city. The Juderia itself became an essential

stop on the “exotic” tour of the walled city for more than just the group of Spanish

tourists discussed above. The Juderia and its inhabitants was stereotyped as a passport to

a bygone age. No references were made to the dynamic international businesses and

190 Ardito Desio and Giuseppe Stefanini, Le Colonie, Rodi, e le isole Italiane dell’Egeo (Torino: Unione Tipografico Editrice, 1928), 393.

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financial institutions managed by families like the Alhadeffs. American travel writer

Clara Laughlin encouraged her readers to wander the narrow labyrinth of the Juderia (so

long as one did not have a cruise ship to return to).191

Similarly, the Turkish-speaking Muslim population became a symbol of a slice of

the old world of the Ottomans. Desio and Stefanini’s guidebook embraced familiar

orientalist tropes to describe the average Turkish-speaking Muslim that an Italian tourist would encounter in the walled city. Contrary to the constant action, obedience, and sense of duty that defined the fascist ideal-type Italian man, the Turkish-speaking Muslim man

of Rhodes Town was chain-smoking, and lazy: “He likes to sit and smoke the narghile, in

mute contemplation.”192 A correspondent from the British paper, The Times reinforced

the characterization presented in the Italian guidebooks of the Muslim population. For the

journalist, a walk through the Turkish Quarter of Rhodes Town resembled a miniature

working model of the Turkey of yesterday.”193 Because these areas were located within

the monumental zone designated by the government as a tourist space, throngs of tourists

passed through the streets of the Jewish and Muslim quarters. This made the streets, as

well as their inhabitants a tourist attraction within the walled city.

Italian officials and local shopkeepers alike benefited from the influx of tourists to

the walled city. Tourists sought to take a piece of the walled city home with them. Shops

with local clientele now began to sell their wares to foreign customers in search of

191 Laughlin, So You’re Going to the Mediterranean!, 377.

192 Desio and Stefanini, Le Colonie, Rodi, 394.

193 The Times, August 25, 1925, "The City of the Knights: Italian Rule in Rhodes. From a special correspondent," 9. Following the Ottoman collapse and confirmation of Italian sovereignty in Rhodes in 1923, this became the desired connection to Turkey fostered by the Italian regime. This gained traction as younger Muslims began to identify with the Kemalist Turkish Republic, which potentially presented another claimant to Rhodes.

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“authentic” souvenirs. Clara Laughlin’s travel companion delighted in Persian prints

“purchased in a local Turkish shop.”194 Local shopkeepers were not the only beneficiaries

of the tourist boom within the Walled City. Italian monopolies in various industries, from

tobacco and wine to pottery sought to expand their respective businesses through the

acquisition of property within the crusader walls. By the mid-1930s, the ICARO

(pottery), TEMI (Italian Aegean Tobacco), and CAIR (wine) monopolies organized spots

in shore excursion itineraries for many cruises. The ICARO set up shop on the corner of

the Avenue of the Knights, the area’s most popular attraction. Tourists had the

opportunity to explore the factory premises to see local artisans at work crafting

traditional “Lindos” pottery before concluding their visit at the company shop. P&O

shore excursions designed for 150 passengers included stops at the ICARO factory and

occasionally to the TEMI factory shop.195 Tourists thus had ample opportunity to

purchase Lindos pottery, local tobacco products or wines as part of their shore excursions

or guided tours of the walled city. More importantly, the location of the monopolies

functioned as a type of official gift shop to the “open-air museum” experience packaged

by the Italians.196

194 Lauglin, So You’re Going to the Mediterranean! 383.

195 P&O Cruises Handbook of Information 1938. Cruise No. 15 S.S. Strathden, 11. P&O/ 44/26.

196 I borrow the term “open-air museum” to describe the walled city of Rhodes from Mia Fuller, Moderns Abroad: Architecture, Cities, and Italian Imperialism (New York: Routledge, 2006), 178.

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Figure 2.2: The Avenue of the Knights in 2018 (Author’s Photograph) However, as many foreign accounts indicate, visitors did not always take comfort in the trappings of Italian colonial rule on their visit to Rhodes. In fact, tourists often recorded their surprise and unease over examples of fascist “efficiency.” American guidebook author Clara Laughlin noted the peculiarity of registering hotel guests with their full names and delivering the data to the local authorities.197 Cruise passengers were advised to keep close watch of identification cards issued for the occasion of their visit by

Italian authorities. American physician Ralph Major found himself in a more serious situation with authorities during his 1934 visit to Rhodes and the nearby island of Kos.

Upon his arrival by an Italian passenger steamer in Rhodes, customs authorities detained

Major and accused him of falsifying the nature of his trip. At his point of departure,

Brindisi, Major mistakenly told Italian customs officers that his destination was the

Greek port of Piraeus and not Rhodes. He was quickly detained and threatened with deportation on the next steamer, the Piero Foscari, which happened to be in port. As

Major protested his innocence and desire to remain in Rhodes and visit Kos, the ship in the words of the American doctor “quietly and with great dignity steamed out of the harbor.”198 Whatever commitment on the part of Italian authorities to maintain their

197 Laughlin, So You’re Going to the Mediterranean!, 442.

116 adherence to fascist “efficiency” apparently departed with the steamer, as Major continued his journey. Yet, Major’s experience certainly did not describe the conditions most locals and even foreigners encountered when dealing with Italian authorities in

Rhodes.

Areas once considered remote now became the focus of both government authorities and visitors alike. Writing in the early 1950s about his interwar experience in

Rhodes, French archaeologist Raymond Matton downplayed Italian efforts to control the movements of foreign tourists. For Matton, “The foreigner who made a stopover (in

Rhodes), seduced by the new town, the flowers sown in profusion, the spotless roads, could hardly notice what was going on behind the façade.”199 Matton’s reminisces reflect what the interwar Italian regime preferred in the tourist experience, but how did the government assert control over areas designated as tourist zones? Moreover, how were these actions received by visitors? Lago issued a series of decrees designed to improve sanitary conditions and the overall appearance of the walled city to foreign visitors.

Several ordinances interfered with traditional practices during holy days in the Juderia.

Despite opposition, Italian officials strictly enforced the measures, threatening to fine any violation. British travel writers, C.D. and I.B. Booth described this behavior on the part of

Italian officials as counterproductive when it came to their interactions with different communities. The visiting British couple agreed with locals that in this way the police acted as “absolute monarchs.”200

198 Dr. Ralph H. Major, Hippocrates and the Isle of Cos (Chicago, IL: Society of Medical History of Chicago. 1946), 46.

199 Raymond Matton, Rhodes (Athens: Institut français d'Athènes, 1954), 77.

200 C.D. and I.B. Booth, Italy’s Aegean Possessions (London: Arrowhead, 1928), 258.

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Despite the praise received in both Italian and foreign sources for the tourist industry in Rhodes, Lago and other Italian officials could not conceal imperial anxieties which stemmed in part from travel accounts produced by foreigners. Archival records reveal one particularly illuminating example of Lago’s imperial unease around foreigners in Rhodes. This document provides rare insight into the competing views of the Avenue of the Knights’ legacy and the political insecurity that haunted the Italian administration.

Written by French journalist Camille Fidel and designed to offer readers of a technical

magazine a sense of the attractions on Rhodes, the extensive restoration projects, and the

nature of Italian administration, the draft came under Lago’s personal scrutiny. Lago’s

extensive notes offer a glimpse into the regime’s priorities in terms of imperial

representation. For example, Lago essentially rewrote the section on tourism; he listed

specific attractions in the margins and aimed to control tourist itineraries to experiences

made possible in recent years by the Italian administration. Yet the author’s discussion of

the Knights of St. John and crusader attractions was what prompted Lago’s opposition.

While Fidel praised Italian restoration efforts within the walled city, she made the

mistake according to the regime’s official narrative of characterizing the Avenue of the

Knights and the former crusader inhabitants from across Europe as essentially early

forerunners of the League of Nations.201 Lago excised the entire discussion, drawing

thick black lines through nearly two pages. Lago likely rejected the article’s

characterizations on two grounds: political insecurity regarding the League of Nations

and ultimately the French identity of the publication. Only six years earlier in August

1923, Italy bombarded and briefly occupied the Greek island of Corfu amid a Greco-

201 Manuscript Draft by Camille Fidel for Vie technique et industrielle. GAK DOD, 461/1930/757.

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Italian political dispute, only to be forced to withdraw following pressure from the

League. Contentious relations between Italy and France far predated this 1923 incident,

dating back to the 1880s and the imperial rivalry over Tunisia. Despite the confidence

projected in promotional materials, newsreels, and ceremonies, the island’s Italian

administration continued to view developments in Rhodes through the lens of

Mediterranean rivalry.

Lago’s anxiety was no doubt on high when he did have the power to censure

because he rarely could. Indeed, it was the lack of control over the dissemination of

impressions regarding Rhodes and the island’s tourism industry which unnerved Lago

and other Italian officials. Indeed, many foreign accounts consciously and likely

unconsciously undermined Italian tourist propaganda. Although Lago could erase

portions of the Fidel article, he was powerless to do the same in the case of dozens of

guidebooks and travelogues with similar sentiments. American travel writers Madeleine

S. and J. Lane Miller found similarities between the Knights and the League’s

international mediation policies. The Millers came away from their visit to Rhodes and

the walled city with the impression that just as representatives of various nations sought

stability and security within the League in Geneva, “so was the city of Rhodes policed by

groups from several lands.”202 While many foreign visitors may have toured the walled

city with optimism about a renewed crusader spirit built around international cooperation,

their fascist hosts had only scorn for the “spirit of Geneva” emanating from the League of

Nations, which the author of a 1936 article in the Touring Club Italiano magazine derided

as an Anglo-French “plot” to deprive Italy of her rightful place as the dominant power in

202 Madeleine S. Miller and J. Lane Miller, Cruising the Mediterranean (New York: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1938), 243.

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the Mediterranean.203 Clara Laughlin’s guidebook devoted nearly equal attention to

“secondary” imperial legacies like classical Greece and Byzantium as she did to Imperial

Rome or the Knights of St. John. For these observers Rhodes was certainly a tourist

paradise, but not necessarily a uniquely fascist or Italian one.

Italian authorities in Rome shared Lago’s unease about foreign tourist impressions

and feared interactions between these visitors and the local population, particularly as

relations deteriorated with Britain. In internal documents drawn up in the late 1930s,

Rhodes and the other Italian Aegean islands were characterized as having “populations

not yet absorbed, on which the enemy's propaganda would have an easy grip.” For these

reasons, Lago was recalled to Italy to be replaced with a personality “more suitable” to

enact Italianization and fascistization policies while also attending to possible military

mobilization.204

In October 1936, Governor Lago and various dignitaries stood at the front of a

crowd gathered to welcome the island’s latest distinguished visitor, Count Cesare Maria

De Vecchi di Val Cismon (1884-1959). Lago, Benetti, and tour guides duly escorted De

Vecchi around the island’s major tourist sites from the walled city to Kalithea and

Lindos. The frontpage article in The Messenger of Rhodes described the illustrious guest

as “one of Italy’s most noble warriors,” with “a distinguished combat record matched by

few men.”205 Indeed, De Vecchi’s credentials impressed many of his hosts. Ennobled for his military service in the First World War, De Vecchi became an early adherent to the

203 Silva, “Il Mediterraneo e L’Italia Imperiale,” 972.

204 Quoted in, Marco Clementi and Eirini Toliou eds, Gli Ultimi Ebrei di Rodi, 156.

205 Il Messaggero di Rodi, 19/10/1936, 1, MR.

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Fascist cause and emerged as one of the Quadrumviri (four leaders of the Fascist March

on Rome in October 1922). He previously governed Somalia, represented Italy as its first

ambassador to the Vatican, and most recently served as Minister of Education. Despite

the official praise in the local fascist press, De Vecchi rarely received positive comments

in private. One Rhodes Town inhabitant described the new governor as “obtuse, arrogant,

and, on top of that, a bigot.”206 For locals, De Vecchi stood in sharp contrast to the more

modest and sociable Lago.

De Vecchi returned to Rhodes less than two months after the October 1936 visit,

though this time to assume the post of Governor of the Italian Aegean Islands. De Vecchi

arrived as governor in December 1936 determined to enact a “reclamation” (bonifica)

project in the Aegean. The concept of “reclamation” was a common buzzword for the

Fascist regime, deployed by propagandists to describe various reforms and initiatives

such as the draining of the Pontine Marshes in southern Italy. According to De Vecchi,

this concept informed his approach to each of his career postings.207 His objective in his

latest official capacity centered on making the islands more Italian and above all fascist in

character. According to one resident, “De Vecchi wanted to make even the air we breathe

Fascist.”208 In other words, moderating strangeness was no longer enough to satisfy

Italian authorities, deteriorating relations in the Mediterranean called for greater

familiarity (read fascist) policies that could be delivered through De Vecchi’s

“reclamation” projects.

206 Quoted in, Esther Fintz-Menascé, A History of Jewish Rhodes. (Los Angeles: The Rhodes Jewish Historical Foundation, 2014), 149.

207 De Vecchi published a massive volume titled Bonifica Fascista della Cultura (Milano: Mondadori, 1937).

208 Quoted in Fintz-Menascé, A History of Jewish Rhodes, 150.

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De Vecchi readily embarked on this “reclamation” project as he launched a verbal

and physical assault on Lago’s policies and the island’s tourism industry. From his first

report to the Foreign Ministry in early 1937, De Vecchi took a critical view of state

involvement in the tourism industry. Quick to criticize his predecessor’s interest in

fostering tourism, De Vecchi said that the Grand Hotel of the Roses, with its capacity of

“two hundred beds hardly constitute a proper grand hotel.”209 Benetti, perhaps fearful of

crossing the new governor and one of the Fascist regime’s most influential figures,

offered his support of this characterization. Benetti wrote to superiors at ENIT in Rome

that service standards at the hotel declined in recent years. He cited two recent reports

from visitors from Lloyd Triestino ships that food quality was not as they had

remembered on previous trips.210 Regardless of his personal feelings toward the industry

he along with Lago and others built, Benetti could offer little resistance to the new

governor’s plans for the island.

The verbal assault on the island’s tourism industry from the new governor

expanded to concrete action with the official order to renovate the Grand Hotel of the

Roses. In February 1938, the building underwent substantial changes aimed at giving it a

“modern” appearance.211 Following this, De Vecchi oversaw the transition of the state’s

remaining assets in the tourism infrastructure to the management of a Milan-based firm

known as the SAVIA.212 He then continued his reimagining of the island’s tourism

209 De Vecchi Report to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, January 1937 reproduced in, The Dodecanese: the long road to union with Greece: Diplomatic Documents from the Historical Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, edited by Lena Divani and Photini Constantopoulou (Athens: Kastaniotis Editions, 1997), 224-231.

210 Office of Tourism and Propaganda. GAK DOD 853/1938/32.

211 Il Messaggero di Rodi, 13/6/1938, 3, MR.

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infrastructure and general purpose by harnessing the industry to his personal interests. He

encouraged the development of a more secluded and exclusive area at the Deer Hotel in

the mountains for the use of Italian military officials and colonial administrators. De

Vecchi essentially reduced the activities of the FERT to those he desired for personal

benefit. In 1938 the institute’s superintendent, Luciano Laurenzi (1902-1966, FERT

Superintendent 1934-1940), was ordered to deliver recently excavated early Christian

mosaics from the neighboring island of Kos to the latest restoration project in the walled

city. While this request was unusual for historic preservation projects in Rhodes Town,

its purpose was suggestive of the shift in direction for the island’s tourism industry

implemented by De Vecchi. Rather than secure the early Christian mosaics for a tourism

development project, De Vecchi envisioned their installation at the reconstructed Palace

of the Grand Masters. De Vecchi then denoted the imposing structure as his personal

office and residence upon the completion of restoration efforts.

Originally built in the fourteenth century, the Palace of the Grand Masters had

been a decrepit shell upon the Italian conquest in 1912, the result of a devastating

earthquake and gunpowder explosion in the Ottoman era. Extensive and expensive reconstruction efforts took place between 1936 and 1938. Though Italian architects and engineers expressed their dedication to faithfully preserve as much of the original palace as possible through the study of “medieval” descriptions and engravings, the new palace clearly stands as emblematic as fascist “cleansing” policies. From the outside the palace was imposing and austere, with exaggerated crenellations and oversized ramparts. Its interior, instead, featured an eclectic mix of design elements, ranging from marble

212 Within months, the previous management company of the Grand Hotel of the Roses, the SAGAR dissolved. Il Messaggero di Rodi, 11/10/37, 3, MR.

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staircases to vaulted ceilings and stunning early Christian mosaics extracted by the FERT

from the neighboring island of Kos. Each intervention in the palace’s design was meant

for foreign visitors to see the palace as an imperial center, both of the Christian empire of

the crusader Knights and that of the nascent Fascist Italian empire. An article in an Italian

tourism magazine declared the palace “worthy of an imperial government.”213 Similarly,

a promotional newsreel by the Italian state media company of the same period visually

presented the palace’s reconstruction and its elements of design to the Italian public.214

The tourism article and newsreel articulated a view that Fascist Italy’s imperial genealogy

culminated in the reconstruction of the Palace of the Grand Masters. The palace is no

longer a dilapidated relic, neglected as it had been by the island’s former Ottoman rulers,

but rather a vital and vibrant testament of Fascist Italy’s imperial project. Moreover, by

commandeering the palace as his office and personal residence, De Vecchi eschewed its

potential as a tourist attraction. The Palace of the Grand Masters emerged as the

headquarters for fascist imperial expansion in the eastern Mediterranean rather than

tourist attraction.

De Vecchi’s most consequential and infamous actions involved the

implementation of anti-Semitic racial laws in 1938. De Vecchi received a warm reception

from the Jewish community during his October 1936 visit to Rhodes. He told an audience

during a reception at the island’s prestigious Rabbinical College that “I can assure you

that Italy could not be imperial if she did not respect the religious beliefs of all the

213 A. Valori, “La Rinascita di Rodi,” Rivista mensile del Touring Club Italiano, No. 4 Apr. 1937, 1248.

214 Istituto LUCE “Una visita alla capitale delle isole egee” Giornale Luce C0059 del 1939 Archivio Storico LUCE http://www.archivioluce.com Accessed September 6, 2019.

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peoples living under her protective shield.”215 However, his attitude shifted shortly after assuming the post of governor. Rather than protect the community as he stressed in his earlier visit, De Vecchi from September 1938 issued a series of anti-Semitic decrees.

These first concentrated on education reforms that saw greater Italian control of the island’s schools as well as the dismissal of Jewish students from public and private institutions. By November, the island’s Jewish-owned banks were forced to suspend their activities and Jews lost their jobs in the public sector. In one stroke, the state through De

Vecchi’s decree severed ties with critical partners in a range of economic activities, including the tourism industry through the dismissal of many tour guides and the forced closures of banks like Salomon Alhadeff & Sons. Later decrees further distressed and agitated the island’s Jewish population, including De Vecchi’s order to deliver 100 tombstones from the Jewish cemetery to the government to reconstruct the Palace of the

Grand Masters (De Vecchi’s official residence and personal obsession).216

Figure 2.3: The Grand Hotel of the Roses in 2019. The hotel appears much the same as it did in the late 1930s, when De Vecchi ordered the “purification” of its façade. (Author’s Photograph).

215 De Vecchi Quoted in, Esther Fintz Menasce, A History of Jewish Rhodes, 127.

216 Ibid., 155.

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As tensions escalated in the Mediterranean between Italy and Britain after 1935,

De Vecchi grew suspicious that foreign visitors might shield British espionage activities.

De Vecchi’s fears, however exaggerated, contained some truth as intelligence reports in

the UK National Archives demonstrate. Over the course of the late 1930s, a certain “Mr.

Hammond” regularly sent information to British authorities on Italian military

movements and troop strength in Rhodes under the guise of an archaeology

enthusiast.217 The combination of De Vecchi’s deep suspicion of locals and foreigners

alike, coupled with fascistization policies and the regime’s increasingly belligerent

actions, drastically reduced tourism activities. At the same time, these developments

ensured that a range of groups, from the island’s Jewish community to many foreign

tourists would fall into the regime’s crosshairs.218 De Vecchi’s desire to extricate the state

from what he considered a failing investment in the tourism industry in favor of increased

defense spending coupled with the implementation of anti-Semitic legislation transformed the island’s social, political, and economic landscape. What had been the product of a state-private partnership dissolved as the regime grew more militant and events in the Mediterranean escalated fears of war, which arrived in the region in June

1940.

217 Report on Mr. Hammond’s Visit to Dodecanese and Cyprus, 1939. HS 5/499, TNA.

218 By March 1937 for example, Italy was essentially at war with the Spanish Republic in the Spanish Civil War. There were more than 75,000 Italian troops deployed to Spain to join Francisco Franco’s nationalist rebellion. See, Helen Graham, The Spanish Civil War: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 51; The Jewish community would be largely deported by occupying German forces and murdered at Auschwitz in August 1944. The island’s Turkish consul, Selahettin Bey, intervened to save Jews who could claim Turkish citizenship through marriage and family ties to Anatolian towns. He was consistently harassed by German officials and his wife was killed during a bombardment. Selahettin Bey was later recognized in Yad Vashem, Jerusalem as among the Just/Righteous for his efforts to save members of the Jewish community of Rhodes and the other Dodecanese. In all through his interventions, at least 39 Rhodians and 13 Koan Jews were saved. See, Hirschon, “Cosmopolitans in the Old Town,” 16-17.

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De Vecchi presided over the drift towards Italian participation in WWII, which

temporarily disrupted tourist flows around the world. Beyond the altered façade of the

Grand Hotel of the Roses, the SAVIA management, and the implementation of the racial

laws in 1938, how exactly did De Vecchi’s tenure impact the island’s tourism

infrastructure? As previously mentioned, reliable statistics related to the interwar tourism

industry remain elusive. Ultimately, it appears that in the De Vecchi era, visitor numbers

briefly rebounded from the international crisis during the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in

1935-1936. However, the most significant change in tourist arrivals in the De Vecchi

administration was not the numbers per se, but the ratio of Italian to foreign visitors. By

the eve of the Second World War, Rhodes had ultimately evolved into a destination for

Italians made by Italians, particularly as relations with powers like Britain and France

deteriorated.

Archival records and travelogues written by British and other foreign tourists to

the 1930s Mediterranean illustrate this shift as well. Some prospective tourists to Rhodes

were motivated by patriotic or anti-fascist sympathies to avoid the island and Italian territory more broadly on their holiday travels. Anglo-Australian travel writer Eric

Muspratt determined that he “did not hanker to see anything of Italian territory” on his

Mediterranean yacht journey. Rather than opting to visit the more popular destination of

Rhodes, Muspratt instead traveled to “Cyprus: a spot of the British Empire…an island combining all the advantages of the Mediterranean with all the advantages of

England.”219 While these personal allegiances might account in part for the decline in

foreign tourist arrivals to Rhodes, others opted against such travel for fear of being

219 Eric Muspratt, Greek Seas (London: Duckworth, 1933), 179-181.

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detained. In Cyprus, tourist representative Theo Mogabgab reported to the island’s

Director of Antiquities the weighty decision taken by Belgian Baron Jean D’Empain. The

Belgian stopped in Cyprus while on a Mediterranean cruise on his yacht “Heliopolis.”

From Cyprus, D’Empain initially intended to sail for the next popular destination,

Rhodes, though some suggested Crete as an alternative. Crete was eventually decided

upon, “on account of the British nationality of the crew and the fear of internment in case

of hostilities breaking out between Great Britain and Italy while there.”220 Such were the

perils of Mediterranean leisure travel in the mid-1930s. Now imperial tensions mattered more than ever.

2.5 Chapter Conclusion: Rupture and Continuity in a Mediterranean Tourist Resort

In the summer of 1945 author and poet Lawrence Durrell (1912-1990) arrived in

Rhodes Town along with fellow British administrators and soldiers. These British forces

had the task of administering Rhodes and the Dodecanese on a provisional basis before

their union with Greece in 1947. Durrell, like many a visitor to Rhodes, had his first meal

at the town’s preeminent luxury hotel, once popular with European royalty and other

notables during the interwar period. Durrell's experience, however, bore little

resemblance to those of tourists from the previous decade. He found the Grand Hotel of

the Roses, with its "desolate corridors, chipped marquetry, smashed fittings, and marble

cornices suggested nothing so much as a carnival which had ended in an earthquake.”221

220 Touristic Notes from Theo Mogabgab to Director of Antiquities, 1 October 1935, 2, SA1/1173/33/2/177, CSA.

221 Lawrence Durrell, Reflections on a Marine Venus: A Companion to the Landscape of Rhodes (London: Faber and Faber, 1953), 15.

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As he finished breakfast amidst the debris in the once lavish dining hall, Durrell might

have contemplated the collapse of Italian imperial rule from the desolate shell that was

the Grand Hotel of the Roses.

Despite the physical destruction to the hotel and the presence of occupying British troops, Durrell found after a short walk around Rhodes town that although Fascist Italy’s

Mediterranean empire had collapsed, the empire of leisure built under Italian rule

emerged from the war battered but largely preserved. Indeed, provisional British

administrators like Durrell and the incoming Greek officials eagerly sought out the

counsel of remaining Italian officials on the island, particularly those involved with the

much-admired tourism industry and historic preservation. Benetti from the local Tourist

Office and FERT superintendent Luigi Morricone (1906-1979, FERT Superintendent

1941-1947) oversaw the transition of their respective offices into the incoming Greek administration.222 Fascism might have been expelled from the island, but the legacies of

interwar Italian domination helped in the rebuilding of the world tourists now come to

see.

Greek officials in the postwar years though, did what they could to obscure such

legacies form the public view. The result, particularly within the Italian-built New

Quarter and the Avenue of the Knights, was an exercise in moderating strangeness from

the Greek official perspective. Italian urban development projects were maintained by

Greek officials as were Ottoman era mosques and monuments. Italian-language signage

was replaced with Greek equivalents. Catholic Churches in some instances were

222 Durrell dedicated his book chronicling the years he spent in Rhodes, Reflections on a Marine Venus, to the final superintendent of the FERT, Luigi Morricone. Durrell praised Morricone’s commitment to maintaining the monuments of Rhodes and thanked him for aiding in his “study of the island and use of an impressive personal library.” Lawrence Durrell, Reflections on a Marine Venus, vii.

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converted to Greek Orthodox churches.223 Rather than stress the legacy of the Knights of

St. John, Greek guidebooks emphasized the role of local Greek-speaking Greek Orthodox craftsmen in constructing the buildings along the Avenue of the Knights. Unlike former

Italian Governor Lago at the restored church ceremony described in the chapter introduction, the island’s Greek Governor would not parade in public dressed as a medieval knight. From this point, it would be the Knights of St. John and other legacies not associated with Greece that would be the focus of moderating strangeness. Greek projects in the postwar years thus placed Rhodes Town on a path to being at once familiar and yet an exotic area of the country for Greeks.

The Greek state that incorporated Rhodes in the late 1940s was torn apart by civil war before any meaningful recovery from the scars of conflict and Axis occupation from

WWII. Unlike much of the country’s infrastructure that was in ruins, by the late 1940s

Rhodes Town had been largely restored to its prewar tourism glory. In subsequent years,

many areas of the town became common backdrops for films designed to reinforce the

island’s image as an attractive tourist destination and to package a vision of the future of

Greece to both a war-weary population and foreign visitors alike. Thus, the tourism

infrastructure of Rhodes Town and its cultural monuments had transitioned from Italian

to Greek rule. The task for Greek officials amid a civil war was to maintain order in a

newly acquired province and establish a sufficiently “Greek” image of Rhodes and its

223 Greek efforts to convert non-Orthodox Christian places of worship for other uses is well documented in the case of former Ottoman mosques. Most Ottoman mosques in Greece were either converted to or back to Greek Orthodox churches. Others became cinemas and warehouses in increasingly urbanized cities in northern Greece. Greek authorities pursued a similar strategy when it came to Roman Catholic churches built by the Italians in the Dodecanese. Catholic cathedrals built during the Lago administration along the waterfronts of Rhodes Town and Kos Town both became Greek Orthodox churches in the late 1940s. See Bruce Clark, Twice a Stranger, 1-3; Simona Martinoli e Eliana Perotti, Architettura coloniale italiana nel Dodecaneso, 1912-1943 (Torino: Fondazione Giovanni Agnelli, 1999).

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valued tourist attractions. British officials in interwar Cyprus encountered similar

challenges regarding public order. Moreover, British authorities desired to construct a

suitably “British” image of Cyprus through a tourism industry that could compete with the attractions of interwar Rhodes.

Chapter 3 Cyprus Bureaucrats into Tour Guides: Tourism Development and Imperial Sovereignty in the British Mediterranean

3.1 Chapter Introduction

On the evening of October 21, 1931, a crowd of protestors converged on

Government House, the seat of the colonial administration and private residence of the

Governor of Cyprus, Sir Ronald Storrs. The demonstrators marched with a list of grievances against the British colonial administration: outrage at heavy taxation and deteriorating economic conditions made worse by the effects of the Great Depression.

Encouraged by leading members of the Orthodox clergy and the Legislative Council, the island’s representative body, demonstrators embraced the opportunity to advance the cause of enosis (union) with Greece. Despite unifying grievances and aspirations, there was no coordination among the ranks of protestors as to what would happen once they arrived at Government House. Neither Storrs and the assembled British forces at

Government House nor the seething protestors expected what happened next, later described by one scholar as “the most humiliating blow sustained by the British in any of their Crown Colonies in the years between the two world wars.”224

224 Robert Holland, Britain and the Revolt in Cyprus, 1954-1959 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 7.

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What first began with a few stones thrown through the building’s windows spilled into

several overturned vehicles being set ablaze amidst loud chants of “enosis.” Government

House was soon torched, at which time British forces fired into the now frenzied crowd,

killing six and wounding dozens.225 The Cyprus Revolt had begun.

The bloody chaotic climax of that October evening sparked several weeks of

similar demonstrations across the island among the Orthodox Christian Greek-speaking

Cypriot community, which constituted 80 percent of the population. Many Cypriots in

urban and rural areas sympathized with the economic concerns of the protestors.

However, the island’s Muslim Turkish-speaking Cypriots, who represented 18 percent of

the population, steered clear of openly opposing British rule once enosis took center stage

in subsequent destructive demonstrations. Unable thus to create a broader coalition to

counter British rule in Cyprus, Greek nationalist protests were finally suppressed in early

November by reinforcements called in from Egypt.226

The raw shock and shame that the events of October-November 1931 brought to the colonial government offered, as historian Alexis Rappas has pointed out, “a blank check for the implementation of new policies.”227 Rapidly recovering from this blow to

imperial authority, the colonial administration sought to construct the foundation of a

public policy designed to foster “a more British atmosphere” and “public spirit” which

would eventually secure loyalty and obedience from all Cypriots.228 Tourism

225 Despatch from the Governor of Cyprus to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, 11 February 1932. SA1 1588/31/4. CSA.

226 Smaller minorities included Arab, Armenian, Assyrian, Italian, Jewish, and British communities largely concentrated in urban centers such as Larnaca, Limassol, Nicosia, and Famagusta.

227 Alexis Rappas, Cyprus in the 1930s: British Colonial Rule and the Roots of the Cyprus Conflict (New York: I.B. Tauris, 2014), 7-8.

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development emerged by the summer of 1932 as one of the central components of the

government’s strategy, mainly as other avenues of economic development collapsed

under mounting environmental concerns over deforestation as well as internal and

external financial pressures from the Great Depression.229 Through the development of

official tourist management, legislation, guidebooks, and itineraries, the tourism industry

offered expansive opportunities for British authorities to realize an ideal iteration of the

Crown Colony of Cyprus. This chapter tracks the activities of civil servants from two

departments of the colonial administration involved in the island’s development as a

tourist resort. It argues that despite precarious funding and lack of consistent institutional

support from superiors on the island and in London, this assortment of bureaucrats with

no prior engagement in tourism management provided the groundwork for modern

tourism in Cyprus. In short, this chapter shows how British colonial administration in

Cyprus went into the tourism industry to quell the economic discontent most blamed for

the 1931 revolt.

Cyprus was not the only site of local opposition to British colonial rule in the

interwar period, though it was one of the most vocal. In Malta for example, critics of

British rule sought closer ties to rival Mediterranean power Italy. By the late 1930s,

228 Memorandum by Governor Sir R.E. Stubbs, 16 October 1933. CO 67/254/4 1933A. TNA.

229 As recent scholarship demonstrates, interwar Cyprus faced several environmental challenges, the most pressing of which involved deforestation and reforestation efforts. Indeed, one-sixth of the island’s woodlands had been felled to bolster the British war effort in WWI. Financially, this had been a boon to Cyprus as by the end of the war, 100,000 tons of Cypriot timber had been shipped from Famagusta to Egypt. However, by the time a reforestation program was implemented in 1921, the fate of the island’s forests hung in the balance. British strategies, as several works demonstrate, were often misguided and damaged relations with locals just as anti-colonial agitation escalated in the early 1930s. On the topic of environmental concerns in British colonial Cyprus, see Tabitha Morgan, Sweet and Bitter Island: A History of the British in Cyprus (New York: I.B. Taurus, 2010), 106-114; Sarah Elizabeth Harris, “Colonial Forestry and Environmental History: British Policies in Cyprus, 1878-1960” unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, (University of Texas at Austin, 2007).

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British officials also had to contend with the volatile position of Gibraltar because of the

Spanish Civil War as well as the outbreak of the Arab revolt in Palestine.230 Staving these

discontents in so many places across the different shores of the Mediterranean required

either heavy military investment or domestic neutralization strategies. The British, always

eager to do empire on the cheap, tried throughout to encourage commercial activities to

bolster their rule’s popularity. A range of urban development and economic initiatives

was tried almost everywhere. Influenced by the economic, social, and political trends

discussed in the first chapter, tourism development emerged as a common strategy for

British authorities across the Mediterranean in the interwar years. However, nowhere was

tourism development as intimately linked to wider British imperial interests as Cyprus.

As mentioned above, 1931 signaled a radical turn in relations between the

colonial administration and Cypriots, as well as the island’s place in the British

Mediterranean and the empire more broadly. Governors Sir Reginald Edward Stubbs

(1876-1947, Governor of Cyprus 1932-1933), Sir Herbert Richmond Palmer (1877-1958,

Governor of Cyprus 1933-1938), and their colleagues in the colonial administration and

the Colonial Office in London embarked on an ambitious program of social engineering

designed to turn Cypriots from all communities into loyal British subjects. Governor

Palmer explained the strategy to an official in the Colonial Office as follows: “in order to

have ease in the future on the island, we have to continue the administration on the basis

of ‘exceptis excipiendis’ (opening the way to exceptions), on the basis of districts.”231

230 For a detailed analysis of Britain’s role in the Mediterranean see, Robert Holland, Blue-Water Empire: The British in the Mediterranean Since 1800 (New York: Allen Lane, 2012).

231 Secret Letter from Governor Palmer to W. Ormsby-Gore, Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies, 23 October 1936, CO 67/271/1. TNA.

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British district commissioners and nominated municipal and village officials received

greater authority under the new legislation, described as “decentralization.”

Decentralization was the colonial administration’s watchword for tighter control of

Cypriot society starting with municipal governments.232 Decentralization, in part, meant

fragmentation of numerous facets of Cypriot political, economic, and social life to inhibit

opportunities for Greek nationalists and other anti-colonial agitators to create unified

movements involving communities from across the island.

Thus, the task before district commissioners and other newly appointed officials

was to encourage Cypriots to focus on local political matters, rather than enosis and other

anti-colonial movements. Increased measures of government control over educational

institutions and social organizations were intended to break ideological links emanating

from Athens and Ankara. At the same time, emergency measures could counter potential

infiltration from Mediterranean rival Fascist Italy, and encourage the development of a

specifically pro-British Cypriot identity.233 Stringent anti-communist legislation

introduced in 1932 sought to eliminate this anti-colonial movement in Cyprus.234 Finally,

officials sought a government-sponsored development program designed to improve the

economic prospects of Cypriot entrepreneurs, small farmers, and shopkeepers in order to

form the backbone of loyal subjects. These ambitious official projects for the island post-

232 On the overarching objectives and outcomes of decentralization, see Alexis Rappas, Cyprus in the 1930s, 48; idem, “The Elusive Polity: Imagining and Contesting Colonial Authority in Cyprus during the 1930s,” Journal of Modern Greek Studies, Vol. 26 (2008), 369-372.

233 See Alexis Rappas, Cyprus in the 1930s.

234 The most recent detailed study of the Communist Party of Cyprus in the interwar period is Yiannos Katsourides, History of the Communist Party in Cyprus: Colonialism, Class, and the Cypriot Left (New York: I.B. Tauris, 2014).

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1931 revolt also pertain to the political and intellectual climate of the 1930s in Europe,

which favored administrative expertise and social planning.235

Tourism development in 1930s Cyprus encompassed both the administrative

reforms in response to the 1931 revolt as well as the colonial government’s desire to

explore economic opportunities on an island wracked by the effects of the Great

Depression and political unrest. In the minute papers found in the Secretariat files in the

Cyprus State Archives, a number of voices among the British administration expressed

confidence in the “potential gold-mine that is tourism."236 Colonial authorities assumed

greater control over local municipalities, cultural monuments, and other potential tourist

attractions. At the same time, colonial officials forged close ties with Cypriot commercial

elite eager for a new start amidst the social, economic, and political tumult produced by

the events of October and November 1931. Finally, as in the areas of education and

political participation, legislation designed to both promote a “more British atmosphere”

and politically neutralize Greek and Turkish nationalist movements in favor of a pro-

British “Cypriot” character informed a range of tourism development projects. Within

British official circles, the 1931 revolt was blamed on the colonial administration’s

capitulation to local “petty politics” of Greek and Turkish nationalists evident in electoral bodies like the Legislative Council and respective religious hierarchies.237 Tourism

235 On the rising influence of professional civil servants and experts in the interwar period, see Richard Overy, The Twilight Years: The Paradox of Britain Between the Wars (New York: Viking, 2009) 367-372; Mark Mazower, Governing the World: The History of an Idea (New York: Penguin, 2012), 144; and idem, Dark Continent: Europe’s Twentieth Century (New York: Knopf, 1999), 138-140.

236 G.M. Pietroni, Secretary of Trade Development Board, minute of 14 February 1933 CO 67/252/12, TNA.

237 Cyprus. Setting Up of an Advisory Council 1933. Governor Stubbs, semi-private letter to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, 18 August 1933. CO 67/251/7 TNA.

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development under a dedicated team of civil servants and local capitalists provided a

canvas upon which official efforts to reassert imperial sovereignty after 1931 could be

physically manifested, in order to deny the political ambitions of anti-colonial and anti-

British movements.

3.2 An Official Response to the 1931 Revolt: Tourism Development in Britain’s “Cinderella Colony”

Situated “pistol-like” in the corner of the eastern Mediterranean, Cyprus is bounded by two mountain ranges. In the north, the 170km-long Kyrenia Range is known for the five-ridged peak known as Five-Fingers Mountain (Pentadaktylos in Greek) that runs roughly parallel to the island’s northern coastline. From this northern coast emerges the thin finger of the rugged and remote Karpas Peninsula, which extends outward towards Lebanon. South of the Kyrenia Range is the vast Mesaoria (in between the mountains in Greek) plain, which extends from Morfou (Güzelyurt) in the west to the port city of Famagusta in the east, with the capital of Nicosia in the middle. Before reaching the southern coastline, the vast range of the Troodos Mountains and the island’s highest point, Mt. Olympus comes into view. Beneath the Troodos Range are the port cities of Limassol and Paphos as well as Larnaca, where the first British troops landed in the summer of 1878.238 From the coastlines to the mountain ranges, there was no shortage

of natural scenery to market to foreign visitors.

The British colonial administration’s plan to invest in tourism development in

Cyprus after the 1931 revolt encompassed a broad spectrum of motivations, ranging from

embarrassment and indignation to optimism. Images of the burned-out shell of

238 John Reddaway, Burdened with Cyprus: The British Connection (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1986), 10.

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Government House in Cyprus startled British public opinion as well as officials in the

Colonial Office and members of Parliament. Weeks before newly arrived reinforcements

crushed the final elements of Greek nationalist opposition in November 1931, the press

and British officials in Whitehall and Parliament eagerly sought scapegoats for the

“disturbances” in Cyprus. Sir Ronald Storrs (1881-1955, Governor of Cyprus 1926-1932)

was the first casualty in this public blame game. By the end of the year, Storrs was

unceremoniously recalled and eventually reassigned to the post of the governor of

Northern Rhodesia.239 Representative institutions, including the Legislative Council,

were abolished in favor of rule by decree. British authorities wasted little time in enacting

a range of repressive measures aimed at quashing the expression of Greek and Turkish

nationalism, including restrictions on the press, assembly, and public display of flags

besides that of Great Britain.240

Such rapid and severe legislative reactions to the 1931 revolt did not satisfy

British public opinion. For all the British public’s indignation over Cypriot actions that destroyed Government House, there was much sympathy expressed for the people of the troubled island. British journalist and author Elizabeth Monroe described the island at that time as “Cinderella, and the Fairy Godmother, though announced two or three times,

has not yet put in an appearance.”241 Sympathetic British attitudes towards Cypriots

found expression in the press through a series of articles in The Times written by a

“Special Correspondent.” The author pointed to conditions that made such anti-colonial

239 Sir Ronald Storrs, Orientations: The Memoirs of Sir Ronald Storrs (New York: Doubleday, 1937), 577.

240 Record of meeting held by Sir Robert Hamilton on future government of the colony, 6 November 1931. SA1/1416/1931 Red 6-1. CSA.

241 Elizabeth Monroe, The Mediterranean in Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1939), 49.

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Greek nationalist agitation possible, which they identified as “the inhumanity of the

administration.”242 In this characterization, the “Special Correspondent” meant to

articulate that officials in Cyprus were out of touch with local conditions. Specifically,

several columns targeted official neglect of the island’s cultural heritage. An editorial in

response to one of these “Special Correspondent” articles asked, “can we, as an Imperial

power which stands for culture, allow Byzantine cathedrals and churches and great

Lusignan monuments to collapse?243 There were related lamentations that, to date, the

island had not been developed as a Mediterranean tourist resort. One article noted “the

trade which could most easily be improved is the tourist trade. But this, as many other

aspects of the island had been disgracefully neglected, and its nickname, the Cinderella of

British possessions, is well deserved.”244

For the “Special Correspondent” and their supporters, the colonial

administration’s record of inaction and “neglect” shown towards Cypriots, the

environment, and cultural treasures posed a threat to British rule perhaps as significant if

not greater than Greek or Turkish nationalism. A 1933 article attributed to the same

author summed up the damage of this official “apathy” as “not that we [British] have

242 The Times, January 11, 1932, 3.

243 Quoted in, John Robert Hilton, A Camel-Load of Woad, unpublished memoir, 5. K/PP94 Box. 1 No. 4. King’s College London Library Archives and Special Collections (hereafter K/PP94 KCLCA). The momentum from these debates produced a private organization dedicated to funding historic preservation projects in Cyprus. Organized by Sir Charles Peers and Sir George Hill, Director of the British Museum, the Cyprus Committee for the Preservation of Ancient and Medieval Monuments raised critical funds for preservation projects and advised both the Governor and Secretary of State for the Colonies on the activities of the Antiquities Department. See, Report of Cyprus Committee, First Annual Report, January 1935. John Robert Hilton Papers, Box. 2 Item 5. K/PP94 KCLCA.

244 The Times, February 10, 1932, 10; Harry J. Greenwall wrote later in the decade, “just as the coast of Dalmatia has been turned into an attractive and luxurious resort, so could Cyprus be treated in the same way. The climate is salubrious, the scenery most picturesque, and one can easily visualize gambling in beautiful casinos on the sunny shores of this most pleasant island.” Harry J Greenwall, Mediterranean Crisis (London: Nicholson & Watson, 1939), 160.

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governed Cyprus badly…but that we have not governed sufficiently well.”245 The overall

message emanating from these debates in the press was clear: the colonial administration

and its lack of planning for Cyprus must be addressed if Britain desired a peaceful, stable,

and loyal colony.

Disgruntled by the unflattering columns in The Times and similar references to the

“Cinderella Colony,” the island’s new Governor, Sir Reginald Edward Stubbs, and his

successor, Sir Herbert Richmond Palmer, aimed to stabilize Britain’s position in Cyprus.

The governors worked closely with Secretary of State for the Colonies, Sir Philip

Cunliffe-Lister (the future Lord Swinton, 1884-1972) in London. The task before them

appeared considerable, according to the Stubbs-Cunliffe-Lister correspondence throughout 1932 and 1933. Stubbs privately admitted to Cunliffe-Lister that a rapid improvement in economic conditions and political climate in Cyprus appeared remote,

“now that all our major products are suffering--wine from the prohibitive duties in Egypt, carobs and olives from bad crops, copper and asbestos from bad prices and oranges from excessive competition--we have to scratch about for money wherever we can, and the amounts spent by tourists are of great assistance.”246 While not exactly a forceful

endorsement of tourism, Stubbs offered what was at the time a crucial voice of support in

officially organizing a modern tourism industry in Cyprus.

Officials did not appear confident in what constituted any semblance of the

tourism industry in early 1930s Cyprus. Before 1932, there were fewer than two dozen

hotels of all classes of comfort on the entire island, as small Ottoman-era inns still

245 The Times, April 28, 1932, 4.

246 Copy of letter from Governor of Cyprus to Secretary of State for the Colonies, 26 July 1933. CO 67/251/16 no. 54. TNA.

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dominated in accommodations.247 The lack of accommodation was only part of the

logistical challenge to tourism development as transportation links were even more

scarce. One administrator characterized the available routes to Cyprus from Europe and

the Middle East as a “lottery.”248 Indeed, in the early 1930s, only two shipping

companies, the Italian Lloyd Triestino and the Anglo-Egyptian Khedivial Mail Line made

regularly scheduled fortnightly trips to Cypriot ports. Seasonal schedules increased the

number of routes to and from Cyprus for prospective tourists. Cyprus was also a minor

beneficiary of the rising popularity of pleasure cruising in the Mediterranean during the

early 1930s. Despite negotiations personally handled by Governor Storrs in the late

1920s, commercial aviation would not arrive in Cyprus until the second half of the

1930s.249 Logistical limitations were only the beginning of the obstacles faced by

colonial authorities determined to develop the tourism industry.

Before 1932, no officials had been formally tasked with the regulation and

promotion of tourism in Cyprus. Several private individuals and associations applied for

official recognition to promote Cyprus as a tourist destination on behalf of the colonial

administration between the late 1920s and 1930. However, in each case, authorities found

reasons to decline a partnership.250 By July 1932, Cunliffe-Lister declared in Parliament

247 Report from Director Public Works to Colonial Secretary, 11 October 1930. SA1/673/1930/1/46, CSA.

248 Memorandum suggesting a future policy about the Tourist Trade in Cyprus, 7 September 1935, SA1/1173/1933/2/158A, 3, CSA.

249 See, Cyprus-Egypt Economic Agreements: Misr Air Ways Negotiations, CO 852/125/3, TNA.

250 Notable examples involved two British travel entrepreneurs, the first based in Cyprus and the other in Britain. H. Preston Giles owned a hotel in Nicosia and sought to create a “Come to Cyprus” publicity campaign designed around a new guidebook he authored on the island. A review of the guidebook by colonial officials found numerous factual errors about British rule in Cyprus. The most egregious of these was the mistaken association of the British protectorate in 1878 with the Crimean War of more than two decades earlier. See, Letter from Colonial Secretary to H. Preston Giles, 19 November 1930. SA1/1533/1930, CSA. After Giles was rejected, the well-known British adventurer and travel writer Major

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that “the encouragement of the tourist industry is a definite function of the Trade

Development Board in Cyprus and of the Cyprus Trade Commissioner in London.”251

Founded under Storrs in 1930, the Trade Development Board (TDB) in Cyprus featured civil servants appointed by the Colonial Office with the assistance of a group representing British and Cypriot commercial interests. The TDB was aided in their activities by the Trade Commissioner for Cyprus in London. This arrangement between officials in Cyprus and London soon agreed to a contract with renowned British travel firm Thomas Cook to advertise the island in various marketing campaigns across Europe, the Middle East, and North America.252

The bureaucrats tasked with the regulation and promotion of tourism in Cyprus

were anything but seasoned experts in the industry and its various components. Secretary

of the TDB since 1930, G.M. Pietroni (1889-1967), was a mid-level civil servant and an

authority in “matters of Levantine trade.”253 With his knowledge of regional trade

networks, position on the TDB, and his confidence, Pietroni quickly emerged as the de-

facto head of the tourism development project. Forty-three years old in 1932 and fluent in

6 languages, Pietroni also had the added benefit in post-1931 Cyprus to British authorities of being from one of the island’s smaller communities rather than the Orthodox Christian

WT Blake applied to the government through his company Publicitas. Blake’s bid to gain a contract with the Cyprus government was dashed by the fact that he had been embroiled in a financial scandal involving a hotel in Gibraltar. He was indicted by a British court on charges of embezzlement, but eventually cleared. Despite this, colonial officials felt it was best to avoid association with someone so recently in the spotlight for legal reasons. See, Tourist Representation for Cyprus. Applications for appointment. SA1/548/1930, CSA; Activities of WT Blake, CO 323/1151/2, TNA.

251 Extract of Official Report of 9 July 1932. SA1 1173/1932/1/12, CSA.

252 On negotiations between Cyprus administration and Thomas Cook, see, SA1 1173/1933/1/62, CSA.

253 Trade Development Board Annual Report on Tourism for 1932, 14 February 1933. CO 67/252/15 no. 15 p. 8. TNA.

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or Muslim populations. Pietroni came from the Roman Catholic or “Latin community” of

Cyprus.254 His credibility in the eyes of Colonial Office officials was bolstered by the

fact that he was not among the island’s roughly 70 Italian nationals despite his Italian

ancestry.255 Thus, Pietroni was neither a national of Fascist Italy-- Britain’s growing

Mediterranean rival-- nor a potential Greek or Turkish nationalist.256 After the TDB was

disbanded in late 1933, Pietroni became the chief Trade Development Officer (TDO)

attached to the Agriculture Department.

Pietroni was unofficially paired with the island’s chief administrator behind the

Governor, the Colonial Secretary, to manage tourism affairs with a railway clerk, grade

three: archaeology and Byzantine monument enthusiast Theophilus Amin Halil (Theo)

Mogabgab. An Antiochian Orthodox Christian born in Ottoman Syria but resident in

Famagusta, Mogabgab claimed to have been raised to become “a statesman on an

international scale.”257 Instead, Mogabgab (1888-1965), who was forty-four in 1932,

supervised the 50-mile track of railway in Cyprus. This job apparently afforded him

much free time to pursue his real passion for historic preservation. The files of the Land

Registry and Surveys Department in the Cyprus State Archives are laden with detailed

field reports and personal appeals to superiors made by Mogabgab that were based on his

254 The Latins of Cyprus are Roman Catholics of primarily Italian descent, though the community traces its existence to 1192 and the island’s acquisition by French Crusader Guy de Lusignan from the English King Richard the Lionheart. For a brief history of the community see, Alexander-Michael Hadjilyra, The Latins of Cyprus (Nicosia: Press and Information Office, 2017).

255 On the number of Italian nationals in Cyprus in the 1930s, see, Confidential Letter from Governor Palmer to Malcolm MacDonald, 7 February 1938. CO/323/1578/2, TNA.

256 Confidential Letter from AJ Dawe to Colonial Secretary, Cyprus. 19 February 1932. CO 67/252/15 no. 21. TNA

257 Details of Mogabgab’s youth and family are murky. Despite his charismatic personality, the best available sources on Mogabgab’s life come from close associates like J.R. Hilton. Hilton, A Camel-Load of Woad, p. 35. K/PP94 Box 1 No. 4, KCLCA.

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visits to vandalized archaeological sites and decaying historic buildings in cities like his

beloved Famagusta.

Unlike the 1931 rioters, Mogabgab did not push for the British to be kicked out;

he rallied like The Times columns for it to do more. Mogabgab railed against the habitual

practices of looting ancient monuments and the colonial administration’s indifference

towards the condition of historic buildings. In April 1932, Mogabgab was livid when

local authorities declined to investigate a village after villagers severely damaged nearby

ancient monuments to acquire building materials. For Mogabgab, not only was this act an

affront to the island’s cultural heritage, but it also deprived the government of an “asset”

to preserve and promote to visiting tourists.258 Despite this, Mogabgab became convinced

that “tourism will be the salvation of this island,” especially if developed around the

combination of natural beauty, favorable climate, and historic tourist attractions like

archaeological zones.259 He pursued this with his characteristic passion and energy,

embracing the title of “crusader” in his campaign to promote historic preservation and

tourism in Cyprus as an Antiquities Agent, first attached to municipal authorities in

Famagusta and later to the newly-formed Antiquities Department in early 1935.

Both Pietroni and Mogabgab assumed several different titles within the ranks of the colonial bureaucracy in the 1930s, though such changes did nothing to curtail their

tourism development activities. Pietroni not only retained his TDB salary but received an

additional stipend in recognition of the travel expenses required to ensure the chief TDO

could monitor tourist experiences from the ports and beyond. Neither Pietroni’s nor

258 Letter from Theo Mogabgab to Director LRS, 14 April 1932. LRS1 25292/32. CSA.

259 Tourist Trade of Cyprus Report 1932, 7. SA1 1173/1932/1/4. CSA.

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Mogabgab’s direct superiors in Agriculture and Antiquities showed interest in assuming supervision of the island’s tourism industry. J.R. Hilton, the first Director of Antiquities, found that tourism was Governor Palmer’s “only impatience” when it came to his department.260 Fortunately for Hilton, whose professional interests did not extend beyond archaeological projects, he had a “natural barker” in Mogabgab to promote the island’s tourist attractions connected with the Antiquities Department.261

Pietroni and Mogabgab boasted responsibilities that were as diverse as their various titles. Pietroni frequently attended colonial fairs and international tourism congresses in the 1930s as the island’s tourism representative. However, his daily responsibilities included escorting tourists from the ports of Larnaca and Limassol to their hotels.262 Mogabgab represented the island’s tourism bureaucracy on study tours of prominent tourist destinations, including Madeira. His routine duties included serving as a guide to shore excursion parties from visiting cruise ships and personal tour guide to dozens of royal, aristocratic, and celebrity visitors to Cyprus.263 Although their varied

260 Hilton, A Camel-Load of Woad, p. 123. K/PP94 Box 1 No. 4, KCLCA.

261 Despite Mogabgab’s passion and ability to manage tourism affairs, Hilton’s tenure in Cyprus was cut short by Palmer for his “lack of qualification” in this industry of mounting significance for the colonial administration. Letter from Malcolm MacDonald, Secretary of State for the Colonies to Dr. Oliver Hilton, 6 February 1937. Box 1 Item 1. K/PP94, KCLCA.

262 Pietroni also personally responded to complaints and other letters written by tourists. He was designated by colonial officials as the initial point of contact for visitors, as well as their complaints. See, Trade Development Officer Notice Broadsheet, Signed by G.M. Pietroni on behalf of the Government of Cyprus, SA1/1173/33/4/271, CSA.

263 Belgian Baron Jean Empain was one of Mogabgab’s most famous guests. The Baron visited Cyprus in September 1935 with his yacht, “Heliopolis,” and enjoyed the island’s attractions. According to Mogabgab, who accompanied the Baron’s party across the island for 2 days, their main concern was where to travel after Cyprus. Initially they intended to sail for the next popular destination, Rhodes, though some suggested Crete as an alternative. Crete was eventually decided upon, “on account of the British nationality of the crew and the fear of internment in case of hostilities breaking out between Great Britain and Italy while there.” Such were the perils of Mediterranean tourism in the mid-1930s. Touristic Notes from Theo Mogabgab to Director of Antiquities, 1 October 1935, p. 2, SA1/1173/33/2/177, CSA.

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responsibilities and titles created “some confusion” among other colonial officials and

different segments of the tourism infrastructure, Pietroni, and Mogabgab’s diverse tasks

made them the public faces of the island’s tourism industry. At the same time, this put

both Pietroni and Mogabgab in frequent contact with tourism experts and officials from

countries across Europe, the Middle East, and North America.264 Transnational networks

of tourism experts provided Pietroni and Mogabgab with a crash course in the latest

innovations in the industry as well as opportunities to distribute promotional materials on

Cyprus tourist attractions abroad.

Figure 3.1: Signature of Theo Mogabgab, self-styled crusader for historic preservation and tourism development in Cyprus. (Letter from Theo Mogabgab to J.R. Hilton, October 12, 1935. KCLCA K/PP94 Box 2 No. 6)

In Cyprus, the nascent tourism bureaucracy led by Pietroni and Mogabgab worked

closely with the only established players in the so-called tourist trade before the early

1930s: shipping agencies. The island’s prominent shipping agents, as in other locations,

often doubled as consuls of either an official or honorary nature. This was a particularly

significant dual status in interwar Cyprus and the development of the island’s tourism

industry, as the preeminent shipping firm and travel agency also boasted the Italian

264 Mogabgab maintained close contact with tourism experts in Madeira, an island destination he believed offered a useful model for Cyprus. He took particular interest in Madeira for the way tourist officials courted foreign journalists and hosted sporting events like tennis tournaments with Wimbledon veterans. See, A Report on the Present Tourist Traffic of Cyprus By Theo Mogabgab, 15 April 1935, SA1/1173/33/2/149, CSA.

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Consulate within its headquarters. A.L. Mantovani & Sons of Larnaca had a history of

profitable partnerships with leading international firms like Thomas Cook and American

Express as well as official recognition from the King of Italy to serve as the country’s

Consul in Cyprus. The Italian Consul in 1932, Pietro Mantovani and his Vice-Consul and brother Vittorio also managed the family business. Like Pietroni, the Mantovani’s were prominent members of the island’s Latin community.265 However, as Mussolini’s policies

became more aggressive throughout the 1930s, the Mantovani family’s status as major

private actors in the island’s tourism industry and role in Fascist Italy’s diplomatic

representation emerged as a significant challenge for the colonial administration in

Cyprus. Nevertheless, colonial officials generally respected and sought partnerships with

the Mantovani agency and Pietro Mantovani, the businessman. While Mantovani’s status

as Italian Consul generated unease at times, colonial officials did not see him as an

“ardent Fascist,” and thus preferred him to a Consul de Carrière (Career Consul) sent

from Rome.266

In London, Secretary of State for the Colonies Sir Philip Cunliffe-Lister duly

involved the Colonial Office in the search for financial partners to invest in the island’s

tourism industry. Styling himself as the island’s “dedicated travel agent,” Cunliffe-Lister

265 For the escalation of Anglo-Italian tensions over the Consulate in Cyprus, see, Confidential and Secret Letter from H.R. Palmer to Sir Sidney Waterlow, British Minister Athens, 23 September 1936, CO 323/1383/8 Italian Consul at Larnaca 1936, TNA. Currently, Mantovani’s granddaughter Antonella Mantovani is an MP in the Republic of Cyprus representing the island’s Latin community. She remains the director of the Mantovani family’s travel and tourism company. The Cypriot Parliament’s House of Representatives includes elected representatives from three religious minority communities: the Armenians, Latins, and Maronites. http://www.parliament.cy/en/composition/representatives-of-the-religious- groups/mantovani-antonella Accessed October 4, 2020.

266 In September 1936, Italian authorities demoted Mantovani to Vice-Consul in favor of a well-known “platform speaker on the subject of Fascism,” and career foreign ministry official. Between 1936 and the outbreak of WWII colonial authorities suspected successive Italian consular officials of subversive activities designed to foment unrest in Cyprus. See, Italian Consul at Larnaca 1936, CO 323/1383/8, TNA; Italian Consul in Cyprus 1938, CO/323/1578/2, TNA.

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wrote to the management of several steamship companies to gauge interest in Cyprus as a

port of call for their respective Mediterranean pleasure cruising itineraries.267 He stressed

the island’s attractiveness of the natural scenery and climate. Cunliffe-Lister also alluded

to debates from The Times by making a patriotic appeal when he reminded the directors

of the many ancient monuments in Cyprus, which he described as “a unique possession

of the [British] Empire which it is incumbent upon us to preserve.” He concluded each

letter with the assurance to the director “that a visit to a British Mediterranean Colony

with these attractions ought to prove a popular item in a cruising itinerary. It would be a

contribution towards the development of a British Colony which I myself, as well as the

Governor, would value greatly, and I hope, therefore, you will find it possible to give

these suggestions the fullest consideration.”268

Cunliffe-Lister’s appeal to directors on the grounds of King, Country, and Empire

met with mixed responses. While he generally received words of encouragement and

recommendations to fund publicity campaigns to garner more attention for Cyprus as a

tourist resort, most companies declined to immediately place the island in their upcoming

itineraries unless a Cypriot port had been previously scheduled. Several directors,

including those from Canadian Pacific, Cunard, and P&O, agreed to test the island’s port

facilities on upcoming Mediterranean itineraries in 1933-1934.269

Sir Percy Bates of Cunard articulated the main issue for Cyprus tourism.

Although previous Cunard cruises had “generally favorable” experiences in Cyprus, “it is

267 Semi-private letter from Secretary of State for the Colonies to Governor Stubbs, 25 Sep. 1932. CO 67/251/16 no. 28 TNA.

268 Draft Letter from Secretary of State for the Colonies to Directors of Steamship Companies, 12 September 1933. CO 67/251/16 no. 15. P. 2. TNA.

269 See, The Tourist Trade of Cyprus. SA1/1173/33/1 CSA.

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thought that the island does not perhaps possess the same attractive interest as the

Palestine and Egypt calls.”270 As Bates put it politely to Cunliffe-Lister, the reality

remained that Cyprus was a harder sell to both companies and tourists because of its lack

of a singular tourist attraction compared to regional destinations like Egypt and the Holy

Land. Unable then to attract widespread attention among the burgeoning pleasure cruise

industry in the Mediterranean, but keen to replace the island’s label of “Cinderella

Colony,” officials and entrepreneurs in Cyprus turned to specialized projects designed to

cater to specific categories of visitors. Thus, with little revenue expected to come from

one-day pleasure cruise visitors, officials targeted areas in the scenic Troodos Mountains

and along the coasts to appeal to tourists based on their respective national or imperial

interests and associations, so long as these did not include political ties to Greece,

Turkey, or Fascist Italy.

270 Semi-private letter from Sir Percy Bates of Cunard Steamship Company to Secretary of State for the Colonies, 18 September 1932. CO 67/251/16 no, 20. TNA.

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Figure 3.2: 1930 Advertisement for Mantovani Tourist Agency. The large Italian flag pictured indicates the building’s dual purpose as company headquarters of the Mantovani family tourist business and office of the island’s Italian Consul, Pietro Mantovani. (Mosditchian’s Handbook of Cyprus, 1930, 53).

3.3 Making “British” Cyprus through Tourism: The Troodos Mountains

If the management of British shipping firms seemed lukewarm at the prospect of developing Cyprus as a Mediterranean tourist destination, there was little debate among the colonial administration ranks that the Troodos Mountains in the southwest of the island offered an ideal summer holiday. British administrators and troops stationed in

Cyprus sought refuge from the dry, hot, and dusty summers of the island’s interior in the

Troodos Mountains since the early 1880s. While relief from these elements certainly appealed, colonial officials and British visitors also admired the calm and quiet of the pine forests and the omnipresent smell of wood-smoke. For artist, author, and wife of a colonial official, Gladys Peto, this scent “will remind you of Alpine villages, of English cottages on summer evenings, of the Indian cold weather, and by filling you with these happy memories, will make you feel at home and contented.”271 Located 5,700 feet above

sea level, and only 200 feet below the summit of Mount Olympus, the Mount Troodos

area was the highest of mountain retreats. From Mount Troodos, vacationing colonial

officials must have had a sense of mastery over the whole of the island. Peto marveled at

the view, recalling "From this summit, you see that curious cape, the Karpas, or Finger,

running away into the sea mist, the well-known Kyrenian Hills, the Messaoria Plain and

Nicosia, and the wonderful sweep of the Bay of Morphou."272 For those whom the

271 Gladys Peto, Malta and Cyprus (London: John M. Dent & Sons, 1928), 113-114.

272 Ibid., 230.

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elevation of Mount Trodoos proved a discomfort, opted to visit the village of Platres,

situated approximately 2,000 feet above sea level to the south. To the north of Platres,

about 1,500 feet lay the village of Prodromos. Over the course of the interwar period,

these areas would be centers of tourism development activities.

British tourism development initiatives in the Troodos region began from the

highest habitable peak with Mount Troodos. The first permanent structure to be built on

Mount Troodos was the high commissioner's (later governor’s) summer residence. The

gray stone building was said to resemble “a rather gorgeous Scottish shooting lodge,” and

became known as “Government Cottage.”273 By the early 1920s, this British imperial

Camp David stood about 500 feet above a cluster of stone-built summer cottages housing

the Secretariat from senior civil servants to junior office clerks. These summer quarters

for bureaucrats included private bedrooms, a mess, and a shared recreation area. Visitors

and those not on government allocation stayed in one of the growing numbers of

commercial summer hotel camps. Some of these camps were managed by English

owners, but Cypriot hotelier and entrepreneur George Marangos operated multiple hotel

camps in the Troodos region. Summer accommodation for such visitors on Mount

Troodos remained primarily under canvas until the 1940s— possibly by choice to cater to

consumer taste. For one early visitor from the British Raj, the network of cream-colored

bell tents gave the camp an otherworldly charm, unlike most imperial hill stations, such

as Simla, where everything was “so English and un-picturesque...one would fancy

273 Writing about late nineteenth-century British Cyprus, Andrekos Varnava argued “it was only at the isolated confines of Troodos that the British could recreate the social and cultural setting of home, because it was only there where they could disengage from the social, political, and cultural conditions of the cities.” Andrekos Varnava, “Recreating Rural Britain and Maintaining Britishness in the Mediterranean: The Troodos Hill Station in Early British Cyprus” The Cyprus Review, Vol. 17, No.2 (Fall 2005), 47.

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oneself at Margate.”274 Indeed, part of the appeal of summer life on Mount Troodos was

its emptiness. Before the first full summer under British rule in 1879, Mount Troodos had

been uninhabited. Thus, with no potentially troublesome local population to contend

with, this rocky outcrop among the thick pine forests of the Troodos Range was a clean

slate where British officials and visitors could enact an imperial shared imagining of what

constituted “British” Cyprus.

British visitors to Troodos increasingly found the annual summer pilgrimage as a

respite from more than just the dust and heat of Nicosia. Sir Samuel Baker, one early

visitor to British Cyprus in 1879, described the area as a “haven from all the storms and

troubles that embitter life.”275 Colonial officials sought to act on Baker’s assessment of

Troodos as a “haven” in the summer of 1932, the first administrative transition to the

mountains since the revolt and destruction of Government House. Rather than simply use

Troodos as a summer retreat, colonial officials envisioned the expansion of the

government’s footprint beyond the slopes of Mount Troodos to other areas of the

mountains. Beginning in the 1920s, some Cypriot and British entrepreneurs successfully

applied for permits to build hotels in some of the Troodos villages.276 Together with these

hoteliers, colonial officials from 1932 desired to transform the Troodos into a prominent

Mediterranean tourist resort. Here in Troodos, Governors Stubbs and Palmer could safely

introduce their vision of a “more British atmosphere” for Cyprus while simultaneously

274 Val Prinsep Quoted in, Tabitha Morgan, Sweet and Bitter Island: A History of the British in Cyprus (New York: I.B. Taurus, 2010), 27.

275 Sir Samuel W. Baker, Cyprus as I Saw it in 1879 (London: MacMillan and Co., 1879), 189.

276 The earliest known Troodos camp site was operated by a British woman known as Miss T. Young and dated from the early 1880s. In 1905, an Egyptian hotelier named N. Houry constructed a hotel in the village of Platres to cater to Egyptian visitors. His family continued to manage properties in the Troodos area during the interwar period. See, Varnava, “Recreating Rural Britain,” 49-50.

153 demonstrating a commitment to the island’s economic development through tourism.

The government added legislative force to tourism development efforts as reinforcement for the assembled team of civil servants and commercial interests aligned to transform Cyprus into a Mediterranean tourist paradise and loyal British Crown

Colony. The Health Resort Law of 1932 was the product of earlier efforts during the

Storrs administration to establish the legal authority for government oversight of tourism development and promotion.277 This legislation set the framework for hygiene standards and protocols for hotels and other spaces frequented by tourists. At the same time, the legislation established the parameters whereby municipalities could be designated as a

“health resort,” which offered the promise of government funding for public works projects designed to facilitate tourism and public hygiene.278

While the Health Resort Law did much to set in motion plans for tourism development and promotion in Cyprus, it also accomplished the colonial administration’s broader aim of tighter control over municipalities in the aftermath of the 1931 revolt. As in other post-1931 colonial legislation, the Health Resort Law provided for the creation of government-appointed advisory committees comprised of civil servants like trade development officers, hoteliers, representatives of local municipalities, the district medical officer, and chaired by the respective district commissioner. British-appointed officials like district commissioners and mayors thus acquired more authority over villages and local economies.279

277 Public Health (Summer Resorts) Law No. 12, 1928. SA1/807/1933, CSA.

278 Summer Health Resorts: Troodos. 1932. SA1/1114/32, CSA.

279 Report from TDB to Colonial Secretary, 7 June 1933, SA1/731/1933/1, CSA.

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The inaugural recipients of the “health resort” distinction under the law were

Troodos area villages, including Platres, Pedoulas, and later Prodromos. Beyond the

Mount Troodos preserve of the colonial administration, Platres and Prodromos were

preferred destinations of both British and foreign tourists in the 1930s. Platres and

Prodromos offered visitors “burbling streams, rosy oleanders, vines, and lush

vegetation—quite pleasant to see when you have tired of the stony pine-clad slopes of

Troodos.”280 More importantly, for colonial authorities, the inaugural health resorts in the

Troodos Mountains possessed no immediate remains of Hellenic antiquity, Ottoman

mosques, or Venetian monuments that could be claimed as a political symbol by different

anti-colonial nationalists or Fascist Italian agitators. The model of colonial hill stations

also gave Troodos resorts an instant familiarity for many British civil servants and

tourists alike.281 In this remote corner of the island, colonial officials could escape the

physical reminders of Greek or Turkish nationalists and enjoy the rejuvenating clean air,

scenery, and other outdoor activities with foreign tourists.

Pietroni and other TDB representatives were undeterred by the unflattering press from the 1931 revolt as they sought to promote the Troodos resorts as a popular summer tourist destination. In a July 1932 memorandum, Pietroni argued that this was the moment for colonial authorities to seal the loyalty of British tourists to Cyprus and encourage regional visitors. In search of “cheap living” while on holiday, and discouraged by higher prices in countries like Italy, Pietroni saw the opportunity to secure

280 “Cyprus, the Happy Isle: Cyprus as a Holiday Resort.” A Special Correspondent, The Palestine Post, 9 August 1936, p. 10.

281 By the turn of the century, Mount Troodos was commonly referred to as the “Simla of Cyprus.” Varnava, 49. For an analysis of hill stations in the British Empire see, Dane Kennedy, The Magic Mountains: Hill Stations and the British Raj (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1996).

155 the business of “British subjects from all over the Levant, Egypt, and Iraq who are either in the Civil Service, the Army, or in Commerce.” Together with “Palestinians and

Egyptians,” these British visitors to Cyprus and the Troodos resorts would assure the fledgling tourism industry of steady clientele each summer season.282

For Pietroni and the TDB, the establishment of modern, comfortable accommodations became the key to spurring the tourism industry in the Troodos following the improvement in transportation links. Governor Storrs had encouraged visits of Egyptian and Swiss hoteliers to examine the prospects for foreign investment in the industry, though the Great Depression, the 1931 uprising, and the transfer of Storrs delayed this development. Cypriot entrepreneurs, often based in Egypt, came to capitalize on the investment potential. One such investor was Ioannis Kokkalos (1900-1965), a former architect and native of one of the villages in the vicinity of Troodos. Kokkalos was determined to return to his native Troodos foothills and build a modern hotel. Built between 1928 and 1930 by a British architect selected by Kokkalos with government approval, the massive Berengaria Hotel opened as the first luxury resort hotel in the

Troodos.

Originally named the Prodromos Hotel, it soon became known as the Berengaria, a move emblematic of the desire to instill “a more British atmosphere” in Cyprus following the 1931 uprising. The hotel’s new name came from the English King Richard the Lionheart’s wife Berengaria, whom he married in Cyprus in 1191. As Kokkalos and some tourism promoters stressed, this medieval English connection gave Cyprus a claim

282 According to the same report, Cyprus and Greece were the cheapest destinations in the Mediterranean. Memorandum by G.M. Pietroni suggesting a future policy regarding the Tourist Trade in Cyprus 11 July 1932. SA1/133/1932/158A, 2-3. CSA.

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to be Britain’s oldest colony, and the only one ever to have hosted a royal wedding.283

Kokkalos hoped the tribute to the history of the English presence in Cyprus would

translate into a lucrative business from British visitors. For more than two decades, this

was the case as the Berengaria emerged as the center of the luxury resort side of

Troodos.284

The Berengaria, however, was not sold on this homage to Britain’s imperial

legacy alone, as it boasted numerous amenities, first-class dining, and transport options throughout the island. Each of the hotel’s 88 bedrooms located on the second and third floors featured impressive stone fireplaces evoking the island’s crusader heritage. The building was heated by a combination of fireplaces and hot water radiators and featured its own electricity generating system. The first floor featured a reception, a series of lounges/bars, dining rooms, and a grand ballroom. The property also included a nightclub and casino, which was a favorite holiday spot of Egypt’s King Farouk. A 1934

Department of Land Registry and Surveys report found the Berengaria to have a registered value of £12,000, the highest appraisal of any hotel on the island.285 The

Berengaria Hotel’s ascent confirmed to both colonial authorities and private commercial

actors that the Troodos Mountains offered ideal conditions for a flourishing series of hill

station resorts. Soon other hoteliers and entrepreneurs sought government aid in pursuit

of similar hotel projects in the area.

283 Hickey Borman Pamphlet, “The British Colony of Cyprus,” SA1/1533/1930/6A, CSA; Astrid Swenson, “Crusader Heritages and Imperial Preservation,” Past and Present, (2015), 8. Others marketed Cyprus as Britain’s “youngest colony,” as it was only made a Crown Colony in 1925. Mosditchian's Cyprus: An Illustrated Guide Second Edition (Larnaca, Cyprus: Mosditchian Press, 1930), 1.

284 Costas Georghiou, British Colonial Architecture in Cyprus (Nicosia, Cyprus: En Typis, 2013), 138.

285 Director LRS Report to Colonial Secretary, Nicosia. 7 September 1934. LRS1 556/1934/4. CSA.

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The Forest Park Hotel in nearby Platres further represents the colonial

administration’s intimate role in the development of the Troodos resorts in the 1930s.

Unlike the Berengaria, the Forest Park architecturally reflected a contemporary design

rather than drawing on local and British imperial traditions. The hotel’s interior design

reinforced the emphasis on modern luxury. From the onset, the hotel established close

links to the colonial administration. Governor Palmer took a personal interest in the hotel

and cultivated a friendship with the Cypriot proprietor George Skyrianides (1891-1983).

Skyrianides embodied both the professionalization of the island’s hospitality industry and

the close ties between Cypriot commercial elite and the British authorities. He was first

introduced to hotel and restaurant management in his youth as his father, Heracles,

operated a waterfront bar in the port city of Limassol and a guesthouse in Platres that

would later become the Pausilipon Hotel. Following studies in hotel management in

Switzerland, George Skyrianides returned to Cyprus and became involved in the family

businesses. Skyrianides, described by colonial authorities as a “sound businessman,” by

the interwar period operated multiple hotels in the Troodos resorts and Nicosia.286 But it

was the Forest Park that solidified his connection to the colonial authorities and the

“Little Britain” under construction in the foothills of the Troodos range.

The hotel’s close ties to the image of “Little Britain” and the colonial regime

began with its initial funding organized in part by the government. As mentioned above,

Skyrianides like his father in the early years of British rule, cultivated personal

286 Skyrianides married into a prominent Greek-Egyptian family of hoteliers from Cairo, which further bolstered his credentials in the hotel industry in the eyes of colonial officials. An interview with his son, Heracles, details much of the family’s history in the hospitality business in Cyprus and Egypt. See, https://allaboutlimassol.com/en/a-talk-with-the-78-year-old-man-from-limassol-who-found-the-secret-to- eternal-youth-in-platres. Accessed November 14, 2020; Report of DPW to Colonial Secretary, 12 July 1930. SA1/1040/1930, CSA.

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friendships with senior colonial officials. These connections would only grow in

importance for Skyrianides after the 1932 Health Resort Law invested British-appointed

officials like the district commissioners with greater authority over various administrative

affairs. The hotel’s choice of name, Forest Park reflected its intended British character.

Hotel advertisements presented a fusion of British and Cypriot elements, with the

traditional symbol of Cyprus, the mouflon wild sheep situated beneath an outline of the

structure and the name Forest Park Hotel. The “British atmosphere” Skyrianides

promoted at the Forest Park along with the hotel’s sleek modern design and amenities

soon attracted a loyal clientele of prominent British and foreign tourists.287

Cypriot hoteliers like Skyrianides and Kokkalos were prominent members of the

island’s commercial, religious, and political elite that prioritized closer ties with the

colonial administration in the aftermath of Greek nationalist turmoil. Post-1931 legislation like the Health Resort Law offered incentives for such cooperation with authorities. The partnership between the Cypriot elite and the colonial government is further evidenced by the fact that Palmer’s administration awarded more medals to

Cypriots for loyalty and service to the British Empire than had been issued in the first five decades of British rule in Cyprus.288

287 Like the Berengaria and the Grand Hotel of the Roses in Rhodes, the hotel in the 1930s featured an impressive guest list during the height of the tourist season. The hotel’s bar in particular hosted figures including young King Farouk of Egypt, who would become a frequent visitor in the postwar years. British author Daphne Du Maurier spent multiple summers at the Forest Park in the 1930s, drew inspiration from Platres. She wrote most of her celebrated 1938 novel, Rebecca, at the Forest Park Hotel in 1936-1937. See, Demetra Dimitrou, “The Presence of Cyprus in English Literature: From Shakespeare to Durrell and Du Maurier” in, Linked by History United by Choice: Cyprus and its European Union Partners, edited by Maria Michael (Nicosia, CY: Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Cyprus, 2012), 830-840.

288 Yiannos Katsourides, History of the Communist Party in Cyprus: Colonialism, Class, and the Cypriot Left (New York: I.B. Tauris, 2014), 177. Themistoklis Dervis, Mayor of Nicosia is illustrative of this partnership with British officials. Like other members of municipal leadership, Dervis saw his mandate extended under post-1931 legislation. See, Letter from Governor Palmer to J.H. Thomas Secretary of State for the Colonies. 27 December 1935, SA1/854/1935/3, CSA.

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Closer ties between Cypriot tourism entrepreneurs and the colonial government in

the 1930s was perhaps best in evidence in the summer of 1932. The first summer after the

political instability of late 1931 marked a crucial moment in the development of the

island’s tourism industry and the government’s message of neutralizing the anti-colonial nationalist forces that undermined British rule. District commissioners responsible for tourist resort areas and hoteliers recognized the potential of the Health Resort Law as a tool to preserve the image of the island’s fledgling tourism industry.

In June 1932, Ioannis Kokkalos sent a blistering complaint to the District

Commissioner of Nicosia demanding that several “unsightly huts made of old and rusty

tins” be removed from the vicinity of the Berengaria Hotel. Kokkalos complained that the

structures and their inhabitants inconvenienced several of his distinguished guests,

including Yves Lamontagne, Trade Commissioner of Canada, and the editor of Egypt’s

preeminent English-language newspaper.289 G.M. Pietroni investigated the complaint

personally and concurred, adding his shock at the sight of “about 20 dirty looking persons

and boys standing outside the huts listening to phonographs and blocking the road to the

hotel.” He ultimately concluded that the structures “cannot possibly create a good

290 impression to visitors and especially to the class of visitors staying at the Berengaria.”

The specific guests in question would also have been of interest to Pietroni, as the TDB

sought positive impressions of Troodos by a prominent voice from the vital regional

Egyptian market and a Canadian (Dominion) commercial representative.

The permit for the removal of these structures soon followed from the district

289 Letter from Ioannis Kokkalos, Berengaria Hotel to DC Nicosia, 15 June 1932. LRS1 25588/1932/11. CSA.

290 Report from GM Pietroni to DC Nicosia, 30 June 1932. LRS1 25588/1932/13. CSA.

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commissioner’s office. Similar incidents played out throughout the Troodos region,

which led the Director of the Land and Surveys office to encourage district

commissioners to use the Health Resort Law in order to remove “such unsightly

structures in summer residential villages such as Platres and Prodromos,” as these

villages were “developing into the most suitable summer residences of Cyprus.”291 The

authority invested in district commissioners through the Health Resort Law and other

post-1931 legislation enabled authorities to execute such permits within weeks. With the

proliferation of hotels named for a British market and the deepening of administrative

control over municipal and tourism matters designed to reassert imperial interests, the

colonial administration ensured the transformation of Troodos from a remote government

retreat to an attractive summer tourist destination. British-Australian travel writer Eric

Muspratt visited Cyprus in 1933 and confirmed Pietroni’s vision for Troodos tourism:

“one seemed to have all the advantages of the Mediterranean here, combined with the advantages of England. The most expensive hotel in the place charged 6s. 6d. a day inclusive. The English Club supplied brandies at nine glasses for a shilling. And there was a great sense of British law and order amidst all the foreignness.”292

3.4 The Decentralized Tour of Cyprus: Fragmentation and De-Politicization in Official Tourist Itineraries

Pietroni’s planning and Muspratt’s glowing impressions of “British law and

order” that one encountered on a visit to the Troodos reinforced the area’s British

character in the aftermath of the 1931 revolt. Officials however, faced a steep challenge

to foster a similar environment in itineraries once tourist hire cars descended from the

291 Report from DLRS to District Commissioner Limassol, 22 November 1932. LRS1 25588/1932/5. CSA.

292 Eric Muspratt, Greek Seas (London: Duckworth, 1933), 179.

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Troodos resorts to explore other areas of the island. Though Cyprus did not suffer from

lack of potential tourist attractions, authorities feared certain cultural monuments could

emerge as symbols for anti-colonial movements. Recent excavations of archaeological

zones associated with the island’s Hellenic culture presented the most severe challenge in

the wake of the 1931 Greek nationalist revolt. The island’s lengthy list of historical

conquerors, including the Romans and Venetians also presented cause for concern as

Fascist Italy advanced claims to various Mediterranean territories, including Cyprus.293

Tourist itineraries beyond the Troodos resorts required ambitious de-politicization strategies in official efforts to promote imperial sovereignty in the aftermath of the 1931 revolt. Colonial officials used the post-1931 legislation to expand administrative control over their preferred canvas in the Troodos resorts. But with only a few sparsely populated

Cypriot villages in the vicinity, efforts to recreate a “Little Britain” met little local opposition. The island’s other tourist destinations prompted officials like Mogabgab to implement their acquired knowledge of tourism promotion models in the service of the administration’s de-politicization efforts. Here different districts and their tourist attractions would be pitted against one another to compete for tourist business in hopes of deterring unified mass movements against British rule. At the same time, officials sought to obscure cultural associations to Greek, Turkish, or Italian elements found in the island’s tourist attractions. Where British associations appeared tenuous, officials sought to link tourist attractions to friendly nations with prospective tour groups and other

293 Although this same argument applied to proponents of Britain’s enduring presence in Cyprus. Staunch defenders of British imperial rule in Cyprus believed that the island’s monuments and their associations with centuries of different rulers made Cyprus “remarkable for its propensity not merely to suffer conquest but positively to require it.” Quoted in Yiannis Papadakis, “Aphrodite Delights,” Postcolonial Studies, Vol. 9, No.3 (September 2006), 239.

162 commercial partnerships. Financial limitations, local opposition, and challenges from anti-colonial movements prevented the realization of a fully de-politicized tourist landscape to complement the range of similar policies in areas like education. However, the efforts of Mogabgab and other officials to establish tourist itineraries reflected the gradual maturation and expansion of the island’s tourism infrastructure.

Once a jewel of Venice’s Mediterranean empire before the Ottoman conquest of

Cyprus in 1571, the port city of Famagusta and its impressive albeit decaying fortifications appealed to Mogabgab as a potential tourist destination. Mogabgab thus set out to oversee the establishment of a tourist office for the city. He opened the Famagusta

Tourist Bureau on behalf of the Antiquities Department in early 1935. Already partial to the city due to his long period of residency, Mogabgab envisioned Famagusta as an ideal tourist base for visitors arriving on steamship or pleasure cruise itineraries. At the same time, he believed Famagusta’s crusader fortifications and monuments comprised the foundation of an attractive open-air museum. Mogabgab found a compelling model in the recently restored medieval walled city of Rhodes in the nearby Italian Aegean Islands.

Indeed, as discussed in the previous chapter, the Italian possession emerged as both widely admired and envied by regional tourism competitors. As Sir Charles Peers of the

Cyprus Committee for the Preservation of the Ancient and Medieval Monuments wrote in the organization’s inaugural report in 1935, “in Rhodes the Italian Government have transformed a city of dirt and ruin into one of the sights of the East.” Echoing the words of the “Special Correspondent” in The Times, the report lamented that “only in Cyprus, a center of antiquities not unworthy of its neighbors, have the British failed to do their

163

duty” in historic preservation.294 Unfortunately for Mogabgab and the Cyprus

Committee, colonial officials found the venture too costly for a city that had been

eclipsed by Larnaca as the island’s primary port. According to the Treasurer, “the

Government of Cyprus pursues a sound financial policy and cannot, therefore, afford as

the Italians have done to spend large sums on antiquities.”295

Mogabgab responded to this rejection with an effort to expand the sense of “Little

Britain” in Cyprus through a campaign to link Famagusta with Shakespeare. Famagusta

had indeed served as the setting for Shakespeare’s tragedy Othello. Thus, beyond the

island’s association with Richard the Lionheart, the Bard’s use of Famagusta constituted

one of the few enduring ties between England and Cyprus. Period guidebooks duly

emphasized this connection, denoting the so-called Othello’s Tower as the highlight of

any walking tour of Famagusta.296 However, Shakespeare’s characters like Othello and

Desdemona could not captivate many tourists in Famagusta for long, particularly those in

search of modern comforts and activities. By 1935, Rhodes Town boasted modern luxury

hotels, museums, golf courses, theaters, cinemas, nightclubs, and a casino in addition to

the skillfully restored medieval walls and monuments. Famagusta in 1935, according to

British travel writer Peter Stucley was “little more than a rather squalid village, and

although it contains Crusaders’ fortifications, which are as extensive as those at Rhodes,

their presence does not seem to be appreciated by the present regime, and its squalor,

294 Report of Cyprus Committee, First Annual Report, January 1935. P. 5-6. John Robert Hilton Papers, Box. 2 Item 5. K/PP94 KCLCA.

295 Memorandum suggesting a future policy regarding the Tourist Trade in Cyprus 9 July 1935, SA1/1173/33/2, 9, CSA.

296 Laughlin, So You’re Going to the Mediterranean!, 327.

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therefore, is likely to remain.”297 Without a significant budget, Mogabgab appeared

limited in efforts to make Famagusta more than “a poor imitation of Rhodes.”298

Mogabgab encountered multiple challenges in the urban space of Famagusta

through his effort to shape the city’s official tourist itinerary in the mold of a “Little

Britain” like the Troodos resorts. Not only were tourists generally disappointed in the city

when compared to Rhodes, but Mogabgab also faced opposition from the local

population. Mogabgab and the municipality angered the city’s Muslim population in the

proposed location for the Famagusta Tourist Bureau. Mogabgab received approval from

municipal authorities to establish the office in a “roofless” former mosque built during

Ottoman rule. This former mosque was one of a rare handful of surviving Ottoman-built

religious buildings in Famagusta, as most were converted from other structures, including

former Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox churches. Leading Muslim figures on the

island, including Munir Bey, found this decision both offensive to the community’s

cultural monuments and religious life. Munir Bey told J.R. Hilton that Famagusta’s

Muslims “hate him [Mogabgab] passionately and loathe his going into any of their

buildings.299 Unlike young Turkish nationalists who envisioned a future in the Turkish

Republic, Munir Bey was a leader from the old Ottoman elite. He had a reputation of working closely with British officials and had developed a friendship with Governor

Storrs. In the end, Munir Bey’s stature and Hilton’s unease prompted Mogabgab to “set up in a domed office in Famagusta for the present.”300 The site of the mosque was off-

297 Stucley, Two Months’ Grace, 117.

298 Report from Theo Mogabgab to Director of Antiquities, 17 March 1935. ANTQ1/33/12D. CSA.

299 Hilton, A Camel-Load of Woad, P. 83. K/PP94 KCLCA.

300 Ibid, p. 84.

165 limits, as was Mogabgab’s plans for remaking Famagusta from scratch to play to tourist imaginaries.

Discord around Mogabgab’s initiatives were not limited to the island’s Muslim communities. Inter-regional discord was also triggered, apparently to British imperial delight. According to J.R. Hilton, Pietro Mantovani resented the attention lavished on

Famagusta by Mogabgab and his benefactors on the municipal council and Cyprus

Committee. Mantovani feared that Famagusta’s municipal leaders and supporters from the Antiquities Department would convince Governor Palmer to direct more maritime traffic there instead of Larnaca. The arrival of a group of distinguished British classicists in March 1935 produced a conflict between Mantovani and Mogabgab. The official plan entrusted the group of scholars to a Mantovani guide in Larnaca to begin the tour of the island. Once in Famagusta, the group was briefly to be in Mogabgab’s charge. According to Mogabgab, despite appeals from the visiting tour group, the Mantovani agent abruptly called an end to the Famagusta visit hours before the scheduled departure for Larnaca with the explanation that the group would miss their ship. Though he sympathized with the Mantovani agent, Mogabgab railed against the agency, writing to Hilton that it was

“unacceptable that the Mantovani Office should have made such a mistake.”301 This schedule debacle coupled with an “anonymous” article in the Cypriot press about the benefits of directing tourist ships to Larnaca instead of Famagusta infuriated Mogabgab.

He believed that these were both deliberate attempts by Mantovani to undermine

Famagusta’s ability to develop as a tourist center. In a report to Hilton dated April 1935,

Mogabgab was quick to note that as a tourist base, “Larnaca possesses little attraction to

301 Report of Theo Mogabgab to Director of Antiquities, 7 March 1935. ANTQ1/33/3D, CSA.

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the tourist.”302 Only a stern warning from Hilton prevented Mogabgab from publicly

retaliating against Mantovani.303

While a dispute between a prominent Cypriot business and an official tourist

bureau was not ideal, this sort of civic competition involving a Larnaca travel agent and a

Famagusta municipality-funded tourism office reflected the success colonial officials had

at splintering potentially anti-colonial communities through tourism development plans.

In his memoirs written shortly after his ill-fated tenure in Cyprus, Sir Ronald Storrs noted

his approval of the strategy to divide different civic communities based on economic

interests. Storrs saw the origins of this competition within the former Cypriot legislative

bodies before 1931.304

Undeterred by limitations in Famagusta, Mogabgab identified Nicosia as an ideal

place to forge a politically neutral tourist itinerary packaged according to contemporary

tastes in tourism. Although it was the administrative capital (except for the summer

months when the government moved to Troodos), Nicosia possessed little to show

tourists beyond definitive symbols of Greek, Turkish, or Italian influence in Cyprus.

Even today, much of Nicosia resembles a well-preserved Venetian city with impressive

fortifications. However, it is also a city with associations to the island’s role in the

Crusades. Mogabgab’s passion for historic preservation and his eager study of tourism

development strategies identified the city’s Crusader heritage as a popular attraction to

foreign visitors. As evidenced by Italian official investment in the restoration of Crusader

302 A Report on the Present Tourist Traffic of Cyprus By Theo Mogabgab, 15 April 1935, SA1/1173/33/2/149, 2, CSA.

303 Hilton, A Camel-Load of Woad, 178. K/PP94 KCLCA.

304 Storrs, Orientations, 579.

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monuments in Rhodes Town, the Crusades fascinated travelers in the 1930s and

permeated numerous facets of interwar European and American culture. The First World

War experience, particularly in Britain, led many observers and combatants to link the

events of 1914-1918 with the Crusades. For some, a visit to monuments associated with the Crusades was a way to make sense of the tragedies of the First World War and the

subsequent uncertainty of the interwar years.305 As a result, Crusader monuments

featured prominently in Mediterranean travel itineraries, including cruise ports of call in

the Holy Land, Malta, Rhodes, and increasingly Cyprus.

Amid the Crusades, the French Lusignan dynasty ruled Cyprus and left an

extensive architectural legacy in some regions of the island, including monuments in

Nicosia.306 Lusignan churches and monuments across Cyprus had already attracted the attention of French Consul Jean Ricard. Despite a lengthy history of imperial rivalry,

Ricard believed French and British interests converged in the case of Lusignan monuments in Cyprus. Like many British officials, Ricard feared rising Italian influence in the Mediterranean and desired to restore monuments affiliated with French culture in the region to counteract Rome’s ambitions.307 Much like the negative press in The Times

articles, Ricard complained to the French Foreign Ministry that British authorities had

305 For more on the interest in the Crusades during the interwar period, see, Clara Laughlin, So You’re Going to the Mediterranean!, 442-444; Michael Horswell, The Rise and Fall of British Medievalism, c.1825-1945 (New York: Routledge, 2018), 210-216.

306 Guy de Lusignan took control of Cyprus in 1192 from the Knights Templar. Lusignan rulers controlled the island until 1473. By this point the Genoese and Venetians competed for control. Upon the death of the last Lusignan king, James II in 1473, his wife Venetian noblewoman Caterina Cornaro assumed the throne. She was the last queen of Cyprus before she ceded the island to Venice. The Venetians ruled Cyprus between 1489 and the Ottoman conquest of 1571, Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, 774.

307 Swenson, “Crusader Heritages and Imperial Preservation,” 12.

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neglected the island’s cultural treasures for too long. The French Consul found a kindred

spirit in Mogabgab, and the two soon collaborated in efforts to attract French tour groups

to Nicosia to explore the city’s Lusignan heritage. Their efforts were so well received that

a French academy desired to honor Mogabgab for his commitment to the historic

preservation of Lusignan monuments.308

Greek nationalists in Cyprus sought to insert their cause within the island’s tourist

itineraries. One group of Greek nationalists from the Famagusta District used the

occasion of Secretary of State for the Colonies Cunliffe-Lister’s 1933 visit to Cyprus as

an opportunity to lobby senior officials on the issues of repealing the “emergency decree”

measures and the aspirations of islanders to decide on the future of enosis. They desired

an audience with Cunliffe-Lister upon arrival at Famagusta before his departure for the

Troodos resorts. Under the laws in place after the 1931 revolt, such assembly and

discussion were illegal, and authorities quickly arrested several leaders named in a

petition circulated around the island and addressed to Cunliffe-Lister. The petition gained more than 60 signatures before it fell into the hands of colonial officials. A report on the petition from the Attorney-General to the Colonial Secretary revealed multiple denunciations of the colonial administration through the language of both labor strife and anti-colonial sentiment:

Your arrival in Cyprus gives us the opportunity of expressing to you from a close proximity our protest of the wild fascistic policy applied by the British government against the working classes of our Island, both financially and administratively and to demand the taking of such measures as would satisfy our immediate requirements. Behind the English administration, the imperialistic and capitalistic exploitation have taken here the brutalest and most hated form. Nearly two years have already lapsed since the revolutionary movement of October 1931; nevertheless, the fascistic defence orders continue to remain in full force.

308 Confidential letter from Director of Antiquities to Theo Mogabgab, 13 May 1935. ANTQ1/33/22, CSA.

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We report the Government for its fascistic policy and finally for the anti- educational law which affects the interests of schoolmaster and the education.309

Officials could not have been pleased with the multiple references in the petition to the

“fascistic” policies that depicted the British as little better than Mediterranean rival

Fascist Italy. Greek nationalists in Cyprus and the Dodecanese were quick to condemn

the British as “pupils” of Fascist Italy in the wake of policies like the emergency decrees

in 1931 Cyprus, Palestine (1937) and the suspension of the Maltese constitution (1936-

1939).310

Indeed, British policies toward Greek nationalists in the early 1930s drew from

Italian models, particularly from Rhodes and the Dodecanese. Evidence of these shared

strategies include strict residence privileges denied to suspected nationalists and

communists as well as interference in the affairs of the Orthodox Church. The Colonial

Office, which was usually hesitant to intervene in local religious matters, did so in

Cyprus after 1931 as the Archbishop and other high clergy were labeled as the primary

architects of nationalist sentiment. They justified the harsh response against the Orthodox

Church in the aftermath of 1931 with the observation that “the Italian Government have

also interfered in [Orthodox Church] affairs in the Dodecanese, where the church is kept

under rigid control.”311

309 Petition from Varosha Committee to Secretary of State, 19 April 1933, p. 1-2, SA1/612/1933/5, CSA.

310 Alexis Rappas, "The Transnational Formation of Imperial Rule on the Margins of Europe: British Cyprus and the Italian Dodecanese in the Interwar Period" European History Quarterly Vol. 45 No. 3 (2015), 485.

311 Arthur (A.J.) Dawe, head of Colonial Office Pacific and Mediterranean Department, minute of 30 July 1936, Cyprus Archiepiscopal Question, 1935-1937. CO 67/267/9, TNA.

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Greek nationalists pursued multiple approaches to Cunliffe-Lister visit the

criticism of British policies as fascist and yet optimistic appeal to get the senior official in

the Colonial Office to consider ceding Cyprus to Greece as Britain had done in the case

of the Ionian Islands in 1864.312 The petitioners continued by advocating for the

government to revisit enosis, an idea and movement that was directly challenged by both

the post-1931 “emergency decrees” and the intended education reforms they referred to

as the “anti-educational law.” The Attorney-General though, recommended to delay

prosecution of the detained petitioners until after Cunliffe-Lister’s visit to avoid attracting

the attention of the British press. In this instance, the intention was not just to avoid a

repeat of The Times articles from 1932-1933, but also potential political backlash in

Parliament.313 Significantly, colonial authorities considered both responses from the

Greek nationalists to be illegal under the emergency decree measures implemented after

1931.

Indeed, the most extensive cultural monuments packaged as tourist attractions, as

well as the most politically troubling for colonial authorities, were those from antiquity.

Greek nationalists like those from Famagusta District pointed to the numerous remains of

Hellenic civilization in Cyprus as evidence of the island’s right to be ceded to Greece.

312 A poet among the petitioners enclosed a flattering appeal to Cunliffe-Lister, comparing him to British Prime Minister William Gladstone, who ceded Corfu and the Ionian Islands to Greece in 1864 and was a prominent philhellene. The poet and other petitioners argued that this was precedent for the British to do the same with Cyprus. The poem and appeal to Anglo-Greek solidarity was every bit as illegal as the attack on colonial authorities as fascists in the climate of post-1931 Cyprus. See “Address of Welcome to Secretary of State of Powerful England to Our Most Greek Fatherland of Cyprus by Zacharias Georghiou Soteriou,” 21 April 1933. SA1/612/1933/18, CSA.

313 The Attorney-General warned, “if Maxton and Co. got hold of it, they would no doubt cite it as an example of the ‘brutal imperialism’ of the Cyprus Government.” James Maxton, Scottish MP, member of Labour until 1932 and after that leader of the Independent Labour Party (ILP) from 1932-1946. Letter from Attorney-General to Colonial Secretary, 5 May 1933, 3, SA1/612/1933/3, CSA.

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While such arguments had been quietly permitted before 1931, the colonial

administration’s sweeping crackdown on Greek nationalist agitation required a different

official approach to these important symbols of the island’s cultural heritage. Whereas

officials sought to substitute British for Venetian (Italian) and Ottoman influence in

Famagusta and French Crusader for Venetian associations in Nicosia, the island’s vast collection of archaeological remains received a different de-politicization strategy in

post-1931 Cyprus. While there were efforts after 1931 to establish an academic argument

for the existence of an ancient “Cypriot” civilization that was not associated with Ancient

Greece, tourism officials like Pietroni and Mogabgab sought a more palatable image for

tourists.314 The answer was found not in the archaeological monuments but the teams of

archaeologists responsible for their excavation. Thus, officials set out to celebrate the

activities of different teams of archaeologists and then package the archaeological zones

to their respective national publics. The most prolific archaeological missions in interwar

Cyprus came from Sweden.

Teams of Swedish archaeologists, funded in part by the Swedish royal family and

government, conducted excavations of several archaeological sites in Cyprus since the

early 1920s. Led by Dr. Einar Gjerstad (1897-1988), the Swedish archaeological mission gained notoriety in both Sweden and Cyprus for the excavations of archaeological zones, including Salamis and Stavrovouni. The Swedish Crown Prince himself joined several

excavations and enthusiastically toured the island.315 Gjerstad’s success in excavating

314 On the British colonial nature of archaeological studies of the “Eteocypriots,” see, Michael Given, “Inventing the Eteocypriots: Imperialist Archaeology and the Manipulation of Ethnic Identity,” Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology, Vol. 11 No. 1 (June 1998), 3-29.

315 Archaeology Reports to DLRS: Dr. Gjerstad’s Activities. 12 September 1932. LRS1/25397/8, CSA.

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impressive archaeological zones prompted the organization of successive educational

tours from Swedish cultural societies. On these occasions, Mogabgab ensured that the

Swedes visited archaeological sites excavated by Gjerstad’s team. The final stop on the

Swedish itineraries was to Nicosia’s Cyprus Museum, where at the recommendation of

Mantovani and Mogabgab, Hilton instructed staff to display as many artifacts affiliated

with Gjerstad’s work as possible.316 Visitors could even purchase select artifacts from

these sites under the terms of the 1935 Antiquities Law.317 Swedish tourists thus had

many opportunities in Cyprus to connect with their country’s role in preserving the

island’s antiquities. Moreover, for colonial authorities, this “Swedish” itinerary with its

focus on Swedish contributions to Cyprus suppressed politically charged associations

between these popular tourist attractions and anti-colonial movements like enosis. It

mattered not whether the people of Salamis in antiquity belonged to an ancient Greek or

“Cypriot” civilization so long as the focus in archaeological parks frequented by tourists

was on the work of archaeologists like Dr. Gjerstad.

On the surface, Swedish tour groups stood in sharp contrast to the throngs of

American tourists “disgorged” from visiting summer cruise ships.318 Americans were not

looked upon favorably unless they spent large sums of money on souvenirs in Cyprus.

316 Letter from JR Hilton, Director of Antiquities, to Joseph Bowler, Cyprus Museum, 18 April 1935. K/PP94 Box 1, Item 3. KCLCA; Letter from Mantovani Agency to Director of Cyprus Museum, 25 February 1935, ANTQ1/46/6, CSA.

317 These sales were controversial according to Hilton, but the Antiquities Department established rigid regulations for the sale and purchase of antiquities in the 1935 Antiquities Law. Hilton, A Camel-Load of Woad. P. 123 K/PP94 KCLCA; Warning to Visitors issued to hotels, monuments, museums from AHS Megaw, Director of Antiquities, 7 April 1937, ANTQ1/22/30, CSA.

318 The preferred term to mark the arrival of tourists from the Director of Antiquities JR Hilton. Letter from JR Hilton to Roger Hilton, 10 February 1935, reproduced in Hilton, A Camel-Load of Woad, 90. K/PP94 KCLCA.

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Mogabgab considered the lack of knowledge of destinations they visited on the part of

most American tourists to be an “atrocity.”319 His superior in the Antiquities Department

was equally dismissive. In a letter to his brother, Director of Antiquities J.R. Hilton,

described the American passengers of the P&O ship Viceroy of India in February 1935 as

looking like “they had got semi-embalmed and mummified in Egypt. One of them thought it was Crete. One of them had white trousers and a panama, though the day was grey and snow lay on Troodos.” Mogabgab and Hilton particularly denigrated this group of 240 American cruise passengers who spent only £3 (roughly £200 in 2020) on souvenirs at the Cyprus Museum.320

Nevertheless, for colonial officials, these American tourists accomplished the

same objective as the Swedish tour groups. Like the Swedes, the American tourists did

not seek out connections between ancient monuments or other attractions with Greece,

Turkey, or Fascist Italy. Despite the negligible revenue from the Viceroy of India cruise,

American tourists generally purchased more than £80 (roughly £5,600 in 2020 currency)

of souvenirs including local antiquities and lace. According to Mogabgab, this money

was crucial to the operations of the Famagusta Tourist Bureau and the Antiquities

Department.321 As in the case of French interests in Crusader Nicosia, colonial authorities

in Cyprus did not fear waking one morning to the guns of Swedish or American

battleships. Their anxieties were firmly trained on Mussolini’s next move in the

319 Letter from Theo Mogabgab to DC Nicosia. 22 February 1935. SA1 981/1935/4, CSA.

320 Hilton, A Camel-Load of Woad, 93. K/PP94 KCLCA.

321 Report on the Visit of the “Viceroy of India” to Director of Antiquities, 12 February 1935, ANTQ1/22/1935/3A, CSA.

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Mediterranean, the activities of Greek and Turkish nationalists, as well as suspected

communist agitators.

3.5 Cyprus Tourism Under Threat: Mediterranean Rivalry and Imperial Security

The situation in the British Mediterranean in the early 1930s appeared perilous, as

officials endured a series of internal and external crises, including the October-November

1931 Greek nationalist Cypriot revolt. From the threat posed to Gibraltar by the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 to the mounting instability in Mandatory Palestine,

British imperial interests appeared under threat across the Mediterranean. Besieged by social, political, and economic issues in colony and metropole alike, and with little hope of military reinforcement or budget increases, officials in peripheral areas of the British

Empire like Cyprus were acutely aware of such mounting threats.322 Tourism promotion

offered both an opportunity to generate modest revenues to offset deteriorating economic

conditions and establish a positive image of the colonial administration at home and

abroad. However, the island’s tourism industry and foreign visitors to Cyprus were not

without specific threats or areas of competition between the British colony and regional

rivals such as Fascist Italy. While some Colonial Office officials believed Palmer was

“living in a world of suspicion and fear,” particularly concerning any hint of foreign

influence in Cyprus, the Governor often had the final decision on matters that pertained

to the island’s security.323

Cyprus nearly featured in the global press for an international incident between

Britain and Fascist Italy roughly two months before the outbreak of the 1931 revolt. In

322 On the economic and political situation in Britain during the 1930s, see Robert Boyce, The Great Interwar Crisis and the Collapse of Globalization (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2012), 314-329.

323 Cyprus, 1937. Sir Cosmo Parkinson, Minute, 6 December 1937. CO 67/276/2 1937D, TNA.

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early August 1931, two Italian naval cruisers briefly stopped in the Cypriot port of

Larnaca for refueling. The visit allowed some Italian naval personnel to take shore leave

and explore the island. This was done in the company of the Italian Consul and leading

travel agent in Cyprus, Pietro Mantovani. The group explored Nicosia and Famagusta,

two cities with visible Venetian legacies, before they returned to Larnaca in the early

evening of August 2, 1931. That night, as some of the Italians enjoyed the atmosphere of

Larnaca’s waterfront promenade, the Strand and its bars and cafes, they were confronted

by a group of Cypriot communists. According to a police report filed on August 3, the

Cypriots in question began to sing “communistic songs” and shout anti-fascist insults at

the Italians.324 In a scathing private letter to Colonial Secretary Herbert Henniker-Heaton dated the same day, Pietro Mantovani accused the Cypriot communists of provoking the

Italians to incite violence. He praised the actions of the Italian officer present as well as an Italian national resident in Larnaca for restraining the enraged crew as they passed the communists on the way back to the vessel.325

The government’s response to this near fascist-communist brawl on the streets of

Larnaca was swift. The District Commissioner for Larnaca quickly ordered the arrest of

several alleged local communist agitators to “avoid the making of an international

incident.”326 The suspects were found guilty of charges related to the incident and

324 Police Report from Detective Mustafa Shekri, Larnaca District Police, 3 August 1931. SA1/1020/1931/1. CSA.

325 Confidential letter from Pietro Mantovani to Colonial Secretary, 3 August 1931. SA1/1020/1931/3. CSA.

326 Report of DC Larnaca to Colonial Secretary, 6 August 1931. SA1/1020/1931/7. CSA.

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sentenced to three months imprisonment with hard labor.327 Neither Larnaca’s district

commissioner nor more senior officials in the colonial administration desired to see the

incident became Fascist Italian anti-British propaganda or sour relations with a prominent

businessman like Mantovani. While major Italian press outlets, as well as The Messenger

of Rhodes did not appear to publish stories on the incident, the colonial government’s

anxiety speaks to the concern of appearing vulnerable in the British Mediterranean. Nor

were memories of this August 1931 incident easy to forget when coupled with escalating

tensions between Britain and Italy over the decade.

Lingering anxiety among colonial authorities about the Larnaca incident fed into

the lengthy debate over whether the government should permit an official series of visits

by the Fascist Youth Organization in the summer of 1935. The prospect of uniformed

representatives of Fascist Italy in Cyprus presented challenges beyond concerns of

potential Communist action, as Anglo-Italian relations had further deteriorated in the

Mediterranean. Mantovani assured the District Commissioner of Larnaca that the visitors

“would not carry flags or emblems of any sort, nor would they shout any provocative

cries.”328 After several months of intense debate, with various officials in Cyprus and

London offering an opinion on the matter, the Italian request was approved with certain

conditions. The Colonial Secretary informed Mantovani that the Italian visitors would be

permitted to wear their official uniforms so long as they carried no weapons or fascist

insignia. Furthermore, the Fascist Youth were not permitted to tour the island in the

327 Governors Stubbs and Palmer in the aftermath of the 1931 revolt implemented increasingly stringent anti-communist measures as part of the emergency decree actions. See Katsourides, History of the Communist Party in Cyprus, 117-120.

328 Confidential Report from DC Larnaca to Colonial Secretary, 26 June 1935, SA1/916/ 1935/3, CSA.

177 company of Mantovani alone, as they were to be escorted by Mogabgab on behalf of the government. Mogabgab reported that the visits of about 40 Fascist Youth members and a dozen tutors passed without incident.329 Whether military personnel or members of the

Fascist Youth, official trips organized by Italians to Cyprus stirred anxieties among

British officials. The response of British officials to both the potential brawl in Larnaca and the visits of Fascist Youth groups suggest Anglo-Italian relations were contentious well before the diplomatic crisis fueled by Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia in 1935.

Specifically, as it relates to state intervention in tourism, these incidents reveal the government’s use of the police and other forms of surveillance to guard against potential challenges to imperial sovereignty. Just as through legal measures like the Health Resort

Law, and efforts to construct official tourist itineraries, surveillance emerged as a central component of the colonial regime’s designs to develop a tourism industry as part of the response to the 1931 revolt.

Mediterranean rivalry with an increasingly belligerent Fascist Italy was not the only source of anxiety for colonial officials and Cypriots when it came to foreign visitors.

Jewish visitors came under scrutiny after Hitler’s seizure of power in Germany in 1933 and the rise of right-wing anti-Semitic dictatorships in Central and Eastern Europe drove

European Jews to seek refuge abroad. By the mid-1930s, groups of European Jewish tourists, mostly from Germany, Poland, and Romania, routinely visited Cyprus on their journey between Europe and Mandatory Palestine.330 While these visitors duly toured the

329 Report of Theo Mogabgab Antiquities Agent, February 1935-January 1936. ANTQ1/33/3F. CSA.

330 Mogabgab described the arrangements for one such visit of approximately 60 Romanian Jews from the S.S. Har Zion on their return from Palestine to Romania. Report of Theo Mogabgab to Director of Antiquities, 15 May 1935. ANTQ1/33/2P, CSA.

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island’s tourist attractions and spent time in the Troodos resorts, they were often in search

of potential settlement locations. Cyprus had been identified as a potential destination for

Jewish immigration as far back as the 1880s. Multiple Jewish organizations from several

countries sponsored visits to explore settlement prospects in Cyprus before the First

World War. Interwar Cyprus proved attractive to Jewish organizations because land,

labor, and water were all cheaper than in Palestine, and the island’s status as a British

colony meant that it had the economic advantage stemming from Imperial Preference.331

However, both colonial officials and Cypriots alike tended to view these Jewish

organizations with suspicion, as there was much opposition to settlement on economic

and social grounds.

At the same time, Jewish tourists from Mandatory Palestine constituted one of the

critical markets for the Troodos and seaside resorts. Advertisements for Cyprus and

Troodos hotels frequently appeared in editions of press outlets, including The Palestine

Post.332 The colonial administration eagerly sought to maintain the Palestinian tourist

market, particularly as Cyprus faced competition from nearby resorts in Lebanon and

Rhodes. Official responses mirrored the implementation of post-1931 legislation like the

Health Resort Law. Authorities were thus willing to deploy state resources to protect the

tourist experience in the name of government interest in post-1931 Cyprus. The most

331 Imperial Preference was the tariff policy from 1932-1937 at the heart of London’s economic response to the Depression. As a League of Nations mandate, Palestine did not fall under this agreement, which was guided by the principle of “home producers first, empire producers second, and foreign producers last.” Robert Boyce described this strategy as a clear repudiation of the tradition of free trade in Britain. Robert Boyce, The Great Interwar Crisis and the Collapse of Globalization, 328; Cyprus: Brochure for Visitors and Settlers. Government Printing Office, Nicosia, February 1934, p.3. FCO 141/2389, TNA.

332 See below Figure 3.3.

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common evidence of the state’s presence in this regard involved police activity and

surveillance.

Police forces in areas frequented by foreign tourists like the Troodos resorts

assumed multiple responsibilities in the name of maintaining the Crown’s law and order.

After the 1931 revolt, Cypriot police played a role in regulating the tourist experience. In

a letter to the editor of The Palestine Post, a Jewish tourist from Palestine to the Troodos

resort of Platres shared his experience of a Cyprus summer 1934 holiday. The author,

identified by the initials I.Z. from Tel Aviv, described a visit that reflected both local

hostilities to Jewish visitors as well as the importance of the regional tourist market from

Mandatory Palestine to the Cyprus tourism industry. I.Z. wrote not to discuss at length

the attractions of Cyprus or the natural beauty of the Troodos Mountains, but to express

his gratitude for the “outstanding courtesy of the police officers” of Platres. One morning

while strolling in the village, I.Z. heard “slighting anti-Semitic remarks made to me on

account of my beard.” Later that afternoon, I.Z. received a message in his hotel to report

to the local police station. There he met an officer named Sergeant Styliano, who said he

had heard of the incident from that morning and sought to gather more information.

Sergeant Styliano could not believe I.Z. “did not mind the insult in the least” and declared that he “did mind if an innocent passer-by is insulted in our town.” The two then proceeded in the company of the Mayor of Platres to the local marketplace, where the officer gathered a crowd and “addressed a warning to them that any person who should in future commit a similar offense would stand in danger of deportation.”333 Despite the

initial anti-Semitic incident, I.Z. assured the editor that he would continue to return to

333 “Cyprus Police Courtesy”, by I.Z. The Palestine Post, 25 October 1934, 4.

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Platres for his summer holidays. Local police and municipal government had done their

part to protect and promote tourism to the Troodos resort, at least in the case of this

particular tourist.

While deportation may have been an exaggeration, Sergeant Styliano’s threat of

punishment was well within the colonial administration’s authority because of legislation

from the Health Resort Law and the emergency decrees implemented after the 1931

revolt. Local authorities thus could punish not only alleged anti-colonial agitators, but

anyone deemed disruptive to the island’s economic development through industries like

tourism. As in the case of the Prodromos “unsightly huts” in the vicinity of the

Berengaria Hotel removed under the Health Resort Law, colonial authorities could not

allow prominent foreign tourists to have their impressions of the island soured by any

incidents. The island’s Chief Justice, B.J. O’Brien stressed the necessity of securing

positive impressions of Cyprus among tourists because of intense regional competition

for the lion’s share of regional tourists from Palestine and Egypt. With the rising

popularity of Rhodes as a Mediterranean tourist resort and the close proximity for

Palestinians to “the competing attractions of the Lebanon,” O’Brien warned that Cyprus

could ill-afford dissatisfied visitors from critical regional tourist markets like Mandatory

Palestine.334 Thus, decisive action on the part of local officials like Sergeant Styliano to

defend the island’s image as a tourist resort through the post-1931 legislation was

welcomed by the island’s senior administrators.

334 Confidential Letter from B. J. O’Brien to Colonial Secretary, 11 November 1934, SA1/981/1934/3, CSA. On the growth of Palestinian and Lebanese tourism in the interwar period, see, Andrea L. Stanton, “Locating Palestine’s Summer Residence: Mandate Tourism and National Identity,” Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 47 No. 2, (2018), 44-62.

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Sergeant Styliano’s indignation at the anti-Semitic incident nevertheless stood as

a rare example of official defense of Jewish tourists in interwar Cyprus. Unlike

Palestinian Jewish visitors courted by Cypriot tourism agencies, groups of European Jews

were rarely desirable tourists in the eyes of colonial officials. Indeed, several organized

visits of Jewish tourists from the Continent in the 1930s focused on the identification of

potential settlement prospects for those fleeing escalating persecution at the hands of the

Nazis and dictatorships across Central and Eastern Europe.

Dr. Karl Gustav Kindermann organized several Jewish settlement project trips

from Berlin to Cyprus between 1934 and 1935, allegedly with the promise of financial

backing from the German Reichs Bank.335 Dr. Kindermann was a German Jewish

philologist who lost his teaching position at the implementation of the Nuremberg Laws.

Despite this and his Jewish ancestry, German authorities admired Kindermann’s

vehement anti-communism and propaganda talents first recognized after his arrest and

imprisonment in the mid-1920s Soviet Union. The story of a young German student

arrested for “anti-Soviet activities” and initially sentenced to death caused a stir in the

Weimar-era German press. Kindermann was eventually exchanged and returned to

Germany. He was quick to publish his account of the perils of the Soviet prison system,

titled In the Toils of the OGPU.336

Kindermann’s October 1935 trip to Cyprus was not to promote his book but to

gain the approval of the colonial authorities for a Jewish settlement company. After a

335 Confidential Report from DC Larnaca to Colonial Secretary. 9 September 1935. FCO 141/2390/17, TNA.

336 Confidential Report from DC Larnaca to Colonial Secretary, 15 November 1935, FCO 141/2390/22/35, TNA.

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brief visit to the island, Kindermann established the Jewish Cyprus True Heart

Development Company along with a group of industrialists and technical experts in

Berlin in the fall of 1934. Kindermann and his associates returned to Cyprus in early

October 1935, arriving in Larnaca as the guest of the island’s Honorary German Consul,

Zenon Pierides. Despite this distinguished host, who, like the Mantovani family, operated

a prominent Cypriot shipping and travel agency firm, Kindermann and his associates had

their activities closely monitored by local authorities. Several of these reports from police

and district commissioners detail at length Kindermann’s movements in the company of

Pierides. Pierides escorted the party to the island’s primary tourist attractions, including

Troodos resorts and archaeological zones at Salamis and Vouni, as well as villages

identified as potential areas of settlement.

While authorities did not object to the party’s visit to the Troodos resorts and

other tourist areas, they feared the implications concerning Kindermann’s proposed

settlement ambitions. The Jewish Cyprus True Heart Development Company aimed to

settle 2,500 Jewish families over a five-year period across the island and establish this

community in a range of industries with agriculture at the forefront. A settlement plan of

this size generated much anxiety in the ranks of the colonial administration. Nicosia

Police Commandant, W.C.C. King, warned the local District Commissioner “in a small

and poor country like Cyprus such immigration even in the smallest degree will be a

great calamity.”337 Cypriot political and religious elites were equally concerned about the prospect of significant numbers of immigrants. Orthodox Archbishop Cyril III pleaded

337 Confidential Report from Local Commandant of Police Nicosia to District Commissioner Nicosia, 18 April 1933. SA1/612/1933/4 CSA.

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with the government to reject Jewish immigration projects for economic reasons as well

as potential demographic changes.338

Economic issues were not the only concern for local authorities in the case of

Kindermann’s proposed venture. The District Commissioner of Larnaca informed the

Colonial Secretary that he felt uneasy about Kindermann, who “was well in with Nazi leaders (possibly he may be an informer).”339 British officials feared that Kindermann

might have planned to establish an outpost for German intelligence, and perhaps aid

Fascist Italian interests in Cyprus and the eastern Mediterranean. Kindermann’s “very

useful knowledge of modern Greek” only heightened suspicions in post-1931 Cyprus that

the proposed settlement plan would prove detrimental to British interests.340

Cypriot leaders also shared political motives for their opposition to Jewish

settlement plans, though these were not related to foreign powers like Nazi Germany or

Fascist Italy. The concern voiced in the Cypriot press was that Jewish visitors were, in

fact, actively courted by British authorities to settle in Cyprus and thus advance

government efforts to neutralize enosis or other anti-colonial movements. Such

accusations took on a variety of tones, though they were mostly anti-Semitic. An editorial in the Greek-language newspaper Protevousa (Capital) expressed a particularly harsh

anti-Semitic assessment of the situation. The author resented accounts of Jewish visitors

exploring business opportunities in Cyprus, writing, “the Government have expressly

338 Alexis Rappas, “Jewish Refugees in Cyprus and British Imperial Sovereignty in the Eastern Mediterranean, 1933-1949,” The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, Vol. 47, No.1 (2018), 145.

339 Confidential Report from DC Larnaca to Colonial Secretary. 9 September 1935. FCO 141/2390/17, TNA.

340 Confidential Report from DC Larnaca to Colonial Secretary, 15 November 1935, FCO 141/2390/22/35, TNA.

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declared that they are determined to make us [Cypriots] understand that we are British

citizens. They have omitted though to tell us that they have also a plan for changing us

into serfs of the Jews.”341

Both colonial officials and anti-colonial Cypriot leaders thus believed Jewish settlement projects like Kindermann’s aimed to inhibit their respective ambitions.

Although the new Secretary of State for the Colonies Malcolm MacDonald officially expressed “sympathy” for the plight of European Jews, neither colonial authorities nor many Cypriots appeared to welcome Jewish visitors unless they planned to spend only the summer months in the Troodos resorts or at the seaside.342

In response to this range of economic and political concerns, British officials

desired to show Kindermann’s party a side of Cyprus that a travel agent like Pierides

could not. Instead of promoting modern luxury hotels in the scenic Troodos Mountains

and archaeological monuments, colonial officials countered Kindermann’s enthusiasm

for Cyprus with data on bleak economic conditions. The Colonial Secretary made

available recent economic reports and related statistics for the District Commissioner of

Larnaca to provide Pierides and Kindermann. On top of this information, which included

data on each type of occupation identified by Kindermann’s proposal, the District

Commissioner informed Pierides that Governor Palmer would reject any plan on

financial grounds.343 Thus, many of the same officials determined to present Cyprus as an

attractive tourist destination could alter such impressions towards “undesirable” visitors,

341 Editorial extract from the daily Nicosia Greek-language newspaper ‘Protevousa.’ 26 September 1933. FCO 141/2389, TNA.

342 “Palestine and German Jews: Mr. MacDonald Answers Col. Wedgewood,” The Palestine Post, 28 June 1935, 1.

343 Extract of Report from DC Larnaca to Colonial Secretary. 15 November 1935. FCO 141/2390/34. TNA.

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including Kindermann.344 While officials resented depictions of Cyprus as a neglected

and impoverished “Cinderella Colony” in the British press, they were prepared to

embrace this image in instances where it was felt that imperial interests were under

threat.

The colonial regime’s willingness to surveil and intervene against perceived

threats to the Cypriot tourism industry extended beyond the island’s borders. In 1934,

Pietroni commissioned the production of a TDO promotional film about Cyprus, with a

particular focus on Troodos hotels. Filmmaker Sofoklis Doucas from Alexandria, Egypt wrapped production on the film titled “A Voyage to Cyprus” in July 1934. However, within days Doucas claimed that he had not been adequately compensated for his promotion of several Troodos area hotels. In a series of letters addressed to Pietroni and the island’s Colonial Secretary, the disgruntled filmmaker threatened to accept an offer from a foreign tourism organization to negatively depict the Troodos hotels in an official promotional film marketed to Egypt and the Sudan. An increasingly exasperated Doucas warned Pietroni to plan to pay what he believed appropriate “because the disparaging propaganda will fatally and unfavorably reflect upon the tourism of Cyprus quite unjustly.”345 Between threats to work with a rival tourism organization to damage the

image of the Cypriot industry and jeopardize business from the critical regional market of

Egypt and the Sudan, Doucas ensured that the colonial administration would respond.

344 Kindermann moved to Tokyo with financial support from the German government in 1939 and advised Japanese officials on European affairs throughout WWII. He returned to live in Germany after the war, where he was tried for alleged ties to the Gestapo by West German authorities. Kindermann was acquitted and lived in Baden-Wurttemberg until his death in 1983. For a recent analysis of postwar Jewish settlement policy in Cyprus, see, Alexis Rappas, “Jewish Refugees in Cyprus and British Imperial Sovereignty in the Eastern Mediterranean, 1933-1949,”138-166.

345 Copy of Letter from Sofoklis Doucas to GM Pietroni, 10 July 1934. SA1/19/1934/845A no.1. CSA.

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Indeed, this threat of “blackmail,” in which Doucas vowed to “act against the

whole of Cyprus,” prompted Governor Palmer to become personally involved in this

incident.346 Within a matter of weeks, Egyptian police records sent to Palmer by the

British Consul-General revealed that Doucas had been detained in Alexandria. The final

document in the file of the Cyprus State Archives on this incident is a sworn declaration

signed by Doucas whereby he vowed that “I regret having threatened willfully to damage

the interests of the Government of Cyprus and I unconditionally retract all such threats. I

further undertake as to the future not to pursue any course of action prejudicial to the

interests of the island of Cyprus or its Government.”347 What the incident with the

disgruntled filmmaker shows is that threat of working with rival foreign tourist

organization to doctor the Cyprus film no matter the severity met with the full weight of

colonial administration, including the direct intervention of Governor Palmer.

The TDO annual report on tourist traffic for 1935 attributed the increase of

arrivals from Egypt that year “to the [Doucas] Cyprus film sent by this office to Egypt

and the Sudan for projection.”348 Despite the success of the Doucas film, Mediterranean

tourism declined sharply in 1935-1936 as tensions escalated between Britain and Fascist

Italy. Whether determined to respond to communist agitators, infiltration from Fascist

Italian provocateurs, alleged Nazi German-funded German Jewish migrants, or a possible

Greek nationalist act of sabotage to a promotional film, colonial officials sought to take

346 Confidential Letter from Governor of Cyprus to British Consul-General Alexandria, 21 July 1934. SA1/19/1934/845A no.3. CSA.

347 Copy of Written Declaration of Sofoklis Doucas of Alexandria, Alexandria City Police, The Governorate of Alexandria, 27 September 1934. SA1/19/1934/845A no. 13. CSA.

348 Trade Development Annual Report on Tourist Traffic to Colonial Secretary, 7 February 1936. SA1 1114/35. CSA.

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decisive action when faced with perceived threats to British imperial security in Cyprus.

By taking such actions, colonial officials ensured that the post-1931 legislation found further physical manifestation beyond the de-politicization of school curriculums and prohibitions on public assembly or displays of Greek flags. At the same time, this government response to perceived threats against the island’s nascent tourism industry reflected official commitment to the project of tourism development.

3.6 Chapter Conclusion

In the aspirations of officials like Mogabgab, comparisons from tourists, as well as through logistical connection because of Mediterranean cruise itineraries, the island’s tourism industry by the mid-1930s was closely linked to Italian initiatives in Rhodes.

Mogabgab’s reports saw opportunity in tourist concerns over political and economic instability in Greece, together with Cyprus the cheapest destinations in the interwar eastern Mediterranean. British tourist concerns about Anglo-Italian relations generated instability in the number of tourist arrivals in Rhodes by the mid-1930s. The zenith of interwar tourism in Cyprus came in the 1935-1936 seasons as the fallout of the Italian invasion of Ethiopia damaged the tourist season in Rhodes. However, British concerns over the possibility of war with Italy did not stop the recovery of Rhodian tourist arrivals in 1937-1938. As foreign tourists returned to Rhodes after 1936, many did not seek out the security of the British flag in Cyprus. Nevertheless, tourist statistics reveal a general decline of leisure travel in the Mediterranean on the eve of WWII.

General uncertainty stemming from the geopolitical situation in the

Mediterranean in 1935 and the decline in tourist numbers did not diminish the work of the civil servants involved in tourism development in the eyes of colonial officials. Nor

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was the tourism industry’s contribution to the government’s broader aims of reasserting

British authority in Cyprus while neutralizing anti-colonial movements after 1931

unacknowledged by officials like Governor Palmer. Crucial to this confirmation of

imperial sovereignty was the crafting of ever more precise delineations of the colonial bureaucracy’s authority over various facets of Cypriot society, as in the case of the 1932

Health Resort Law. In addition to the host of punitive acts designed to crush anti-colonial

movements, tourism development legislation invested colonial authorities with new tools

and confidence to reshape the British Crown Colony once described as “an island of

official misfits,” where administrators “were either tired or retired.”349

Despite the energies of civil servants like Mogabgab and Pietroni, the official

response to tourism development lacked the funding required to transform interwar

Cyprus into a preeminent leisure resort in the eastern Mediterranean. As Mogabgab and

other observers argued amid the disappointing efforts to develop Famagusta as a tourist

attraction, the perceived difference between British plans in Cyprus and popular

Mediterranean tourist resorts like Rhodes was a question of state funding. While funding

issues certainly dashed the loftiest aspirations for Cyprus tourism on the part of actors

like Pietroni and Mogabgab, shortcomings also came as a result of reversals in external

matters. As the advertisement for Cyprus pictured below reveals, the island remained a

functioning summer resort as late as May and early June of 1940—mere days before

Mussolini’s declaration of war on Britain and France brought the Mediterranean region

into WWII.

349 Kenneth Williams, Britain and the Mediterranean. (London: George Newnes, 1940). 46.

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Nevertheless, as in the case of Rhodes, the colonial state left a deep imprint on the

island’s interwar tourism development. British officials encouraged and aided primarily

pro-British Greek Orthodox Cypriot hoteliers and entrepreneurs in the construction of a

“Little Britain” in the Troodos hill station resorts and employed the civil servants tasked

with regulating and promoting the industry. However, the primary actors engaged in the

tourism industry from the onset in the 1930s through the early postwar years were neither

from Britain nor the majority Greek-speaking Greek Orthodox or Turkish-speaking

Muslim populations. Rather, the driving forces behind tourism development were a prominent former merchant-turned colonial civil servant from the Catholic “Latin” community, and an archaeology enthusiast/former railway clerk Arab Christian immigrant who was born in Ottoman Syria. Together, these unlikely tourism experts and their state and private commercial partners established the foundation of a modern tourism industry in Cyprus.

Colonial bureaucracies dedicated to tourism development in interwar Cyprus and

Rhodes sought to cement their respective imperial projects and sap anti-colonial

(particularly Greek nationalist) sentiment. At the same time, their counterparts in the

Greek nation-state embraced official intervention in tourism as a strategy to rebuild the country’s economic, social, and political fabric amid the aftermath of a decade of war, financial collapse, and a massive refugee crisis.

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Figure 3.3: Cyprus Tourist Advertisement (Published in The Palestine Post, May 20, 1940). Similar advertisements appeared throughout the 1930s in the press of Mandatory Palestine and Egypt in hopes of increasing the number of visitors from the region. This advertisement encouraged readers to imagine a carefree summer holiday in the healthy and relaxing air of the Troodos resorts, despite the ongoing Second World War. As in the European diplomatic crises of 1935-1936 and 1938-1939, hopes for a successful season in Cyprus were dashed, but this time by the onset of WWII in the eastern Mediterranean, which came less than a month after the appearance of this advertisement. (The Palestine Post May 20, 1940, 6).

Chapter 4 The Greek Nation-State Business Savvy Byrons: Foreign Intervention, Crisis, and Tourism Development

4.1 Chapter Introduction Crowds of jubilant Athenians thronged the streets of the Greek capital on a hot and dusty August day in 1928 to celebrate the return to power of Eleftherios Venizelos and the Liberal Party. The Greek electorate had just delivered Venizelos (1864-1936, elected eight times as prime minister between 1910 and 1932) the most complete victory in the country’s parliamentary history, taking 178 of the 250 seats. For those who gathered that day and voted for the Liberals, Venizelos was a messiah-like figure who would deliver the country from its economic, social, and political ills. The crafty and dapper Cretan revolutionary turned international statesman promised Greek citizens a swift resolution and more: his government’s four years in office would render the country

“unrecognizable” from its embattled state. The late 1920s marked the first time a Greek government had invested its political future in the country’s economic fortunes. What was at stake was a wholly new conception of the modern state and the national economy.

Venizelos himself declared that the main goal of his latest government was to create “a modern state that would secure the conditions by which it will continually increase its revenues, the latter distributed more justly so that all the more classes within the population will be given the means to live with greater ease and prosperity.”350

350 Eleftherios Venizelos, “Pos Tha lythi to ellinikon provlima,” [“How the Greek Problem Should Be Solved”] Ergasia, 1 November 1928, 3. Eleftherios Venizelos National Research Foundation, (Athens, Greece, hereafter EL VEN), EL VEN 078-45.

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The promise of attracting foreign tourist capital elevated tourism development to a central

role in the Venizelos government’s bold economic vision for interwar Greece.

Throughout the interwar years of increasing political chaos, the economy's management was in the hands of those who would now be called “technocrats” — officials of the National Bank of Greece, the recently-founded Agricultural Bank, senior civil servants, and policy advisers.351 Official recognition in the interwar years of tourism’s economic promise set the foundation for postwar growth. This chapter explores the efforts of the Greek state and private commercial partners in developing tourism as a response to the interwar period's crises. It argues that despite limited success in the interwar years, the relationship between state and private capital set the foundation for the tourism industry's postwar economic success. By rechanneling energies from the failed imperial project in Anatolia into industries like tourism, Venizelos, officials from state institutions, and private commercial actors hoped they could direct the country to a path of modernization and renewal.

In effect, the “Catastrophe” of 1922 embodied three interrelated crises in interwar

Greece. The first of these was political, as supporters of Venizelos (Venizelists) struggled against a broad coalition of royalists, agrarian populists, conservatives, and political organizations of the country’s minority populations that were collectively recognized as anti-Venizelists. The second of these crises was social, shaped by the influx of Anatolian refugees, the rise of communism, as well as concerns about the loyalty of remaining

351 The Agricultural Bank was founded by Venizelist government in 1929 the same year as the GNTO to promote low-interest loans to farmers to alleviate the debt crisis. The Venizelist government also saw the expansion of state involvement in public health. See, Kostis, History’s Spoiled Children, 187-191.

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minority populations in Greece. The third and final of these turbulent elements was

economic in nature, driven by the excessive cost of over a decade of warfare, refugee

resettlement, and outstanding debt to foreign creditors. Greece had emerged from WWI

on the side of the victors and determined to fulfill an empire-building project from

territory ceded by the Ottoman empire.

A Greek postcard from 1919-1920 of the map of “Greater Greece” (Figure 4.1)

captured widespread public enthusiasm for expansion. Shaded in red were Greek lands

that nearly encircled the Aegean Sea, including recently acquired territories—the ports of

Thessaloniki (Salonika) and Smyrna (Izmir), the golden wheat fields of Macedonia, and

the tobacco-rich province of Thrace. The only gaps present were the international zone

around Constantinople, British-held Cyprus, the southwest corner of Anatolia, and the

Italian-held Dodecanese Islands. It also depicted a personification of Greece as a flag-

carrying maiden, who held a placard that read, “Greece is destined to live and will live.”

Finally, in the top left corner, the postcard included a portrait of the man credited with

this triumphant territorial expansion: Greek Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos. This

map confirmed the realization of a “Greece of two continents and five seas,” a slogan

favored by Venizelos and his supporters. Building on this popular enthusiasm, the Greek

Parliament passed Law 1698 in 1919 to establish tourism development guidelines so that

foreign visitors could experience “Greater Greece” and send the postcard around the

world.352

352 The 1919 legislation bolstered the government’s 1914 establishment of a department of international exhibitions within the Ministry of Economic Development. On this legislation and early efforts to develop tourism, see, Margarita Dritsas, “Tourism during Economic and Political Crisis in Greece 19th-20th Centuries” in, Tourism and Crisis in Europe XIX-XXI centuries: Historical, National, and Business History Perspectives, edited by Margarita Dritsas, (Kerkeyra, Greece: Economia, 2013), 82-95.

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By 1920, the vision of an expanded Greek state modeled on Byzantium in

Anatolia attracted many who had previously dismissed the Venizelist project. Returning

from exile in 1920, arch anti-Venizelist King Constantine I and his fervent supporters

embraced the title of Constantine XII, an attempt to fuse the Greek royal family with the

Byzantine imperial dynastic line.353 Nearly two decades before Mussolini’s proclamation

of Fascist Italy’s Second Roman Empire in May 1936, a Greek king claimed to have

restored the Greco-Roman empire destroyed by the Ottomans in 1453. Ultimately, the

Anatolian territories incorporated into Greece on these postcards only survived on paper.

As previously discussed, the collapse of the short-lived Greek imperial project in

Anatolia fueled a vicious political situation encapsulated by the execution of the former

Greek prime minister in November 1922.

Refugee resettlement in Greece exacerbated the country’s political crisis and

tensions between Venizelists and anti-Venizelists. This influx of over a million refugees engendered a prolonged social crisis in the interwar period. On the ground in urban and provincial areas designated for refugee resettlement, local inhabitants resented the competition with the new arrivals from Anatolia for jobs and resources. As a result, refugees often had their “Greekness” called into question by their new neighbors. At the same time, refugees became enmeshed in the urban landscape and tourist attractions of

1920s Greece. Rows of tents populated areas beneath the Acropolis in Athens and surrounded other ancient monuments and major thoroughfares in the city. Similar scenes existed in Greek islands like Corfu, where refugees wandered the ramparts of the

353 The anti-Venizelist embrace of the imperial mission in Anatolia by late 1920 remains a contested question of Greek historiography. The most likely motivation according to scholars like Michael Llewyn Smith and Roderick Beaton is one of political expediency. See Smith, Ionian Vision, 173-176; Roderick Beaton, Greece: Biography of a Modern Nation (New York: Penguin, 2018) 222-223.

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Venetian-built fortress and narrow winding streets.354 On the political level in the

1920s, the refugee community’s devotion to Venizelos constituted

an insurmountable advantage at the ballot box according to disgruntled anti-

Venizelists.355

However, it was ultimately the country’s crippling debt which fanned the flames

of the “Catastrophe” across Greek territory and virtually any layer of society. Burdened

by cost of waging war for nearly a decade, the imminent crisis of clothing, feeding, and

housing the refugees as well as the omnipresent outstanding debt managed by the

International Financial Commission, the Greek state sought relief in the form of the

League of Nations. Geneva provided critical financial assistance to cash-strapped and

war-ravaged Greece between 1923 and 1932.

Figure 4.1: Greek Postcard, “Map of Greater Greece,” c. 1919-1920. (PE XX43.2 ELIA)

354 See, Nondas Stamatopoulos, Old Corfu: History and Culture (Corfu: 1993), 113-114; Karl Baedeker’s Southern Italy and Sicily with excursions to Sardinia, Malta, Tripoli, and Corfu, 17th revised edition. (New York: Charles C. Scribner’s Sons, 1930), 519.

355 On the refugee crisis see, Elisabeth Kontogiorgi, Population Exchange in Greek Macedonia: The Rural Settlement of Refugees (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006); Onur Yildirim, Diplomacy and Displacement: Reconsidering the Greco-Turkish Exchange of Populations 1922-1934 (New York: Routledge, 2006); Crossing the Aegean: An Appraisal of the Compulsory Population Exchange between Greece and Turkey edited by Renée Hirschon (New York: Berghahn Books, 2003).

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Greek historiography has been deeply engaged in the topic of the "Catastrophe"

and its failed war against Ataturk’s forces. The resulting refugee assimilation debacle

created from the Lausanne agreement, as well as foreign intervention in Greek affairs,

made sovereign governance a deeply fraught initiative. Of particular weight was the

country's dependence on external creditors. This chapter proposes to reevaluate and

connect these historiographies through the development of the country’s leading industry:

tourism. Rather than examine the "Catastrophe" of 1922 as a singular event concerning

military defeat and refugee resettlement, I situate it as a series of interrelated crises

exacerbated by the collapse of the imperial project in Anatolia. Few studies have

approached the legacy of the failed Greek imperial project in Anatolia during the interwar

period outside the confines of the refugee crisis. Former British Ambassador to Greece,

Michael Llewyn Smith’s Ionian Vision is an exception. Smith argued that the ultimately

disastrous expansion of Greek territory into Anatolia and the subsequent defeat at the

hands of Mustafa Kemal’s Turkish nationalists was the product of a miscalculation on the

part of domestic political actors and the machinations of the Great Powers.356 The reason

Smith gives is the role of foreign intervention in modern Greece. Foreign intervention in

the form of external credit has informed recent discussions of Greece because of the

country’s debt crisis. However, neither foreign intervention nor financial crisis can be

considered a contemporary development in the case of Greece.

A history of the independent Greek nation-state has been one plagued by state since its arrival on the international scene. The Greek government defaulted on foreign loans secured in London as early as 1826, several years before the country was

356 Michael Llewyn Smith, Ionian Vision, especially Chapter 3.

197 recognized as an independent state. Economic historians have identified three other moments of debt crisis before that of the Eurozone.357 Indebtedness to foreign creditors regardless of the states in question created an interpretation of modern Greece as a particular type of colonialism. This sort of intervention in Greek affairs since independence has been called the “foreign hand (or finger).”358 According to literary scholar Artemis Leontis, it "could be argued that modern Greece endured a

'colonialization of the mind,’ given that its system of education was imported directly from Germany.”359 However, Greek debt has remained the most enduring symbol of foreign involvement in the country. In total, modern Greece has been in a state of external default for about 50 percent of the years since independence.360 Rather than see the interwar crises as a pseudo-colonial moment, I look at foreign investors and activists' role in their effort to stop this cycle. In short, by controlling how the world could “come

357 Classicist Johanna Hanink has recently examined how long-standing ideas of Classical Greece as a foundation of the West and struggles financial and otherwise of modern Greek nation-state have colored the country’s interactions with foreign actors from the Ottoman era to the Eurozone crisis. See, Johanna Hanink, The Classical Debt: Greek Antiquity in an Era of Austerity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017).

358 On the role of foreign intervention in Greek affairs and debt crises, see Jamie Martin, "The Colonial Origins of the Greek Bailout," Imperial & Global Forum, July 2015, in https://imperialglobalexeter.com/2015/07/27/the-colonial-origins-of-the-greek-bailout; L.S. Stavrianos, Greece: American Dilemma and Opportunity (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1952); On American intervention in Greece during the Cold War see, Jon V. Kofas, Under the Eagle's Claw: Exceptionalism in U.S.-Greek Relations (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003); James Edward Miller, The United States and the Making of Modern Greece: History and Power, 1950-1974 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2009).

359 Artemis Leontis, Topographies of Hellenism, Mapping the Homeland (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995), 68; Greek historian Antonis Liakos described modern Greek history as a situation where “Greece, in other words, was something between an independent state and a colony, without having ever actually turned into a colony.” Antonis Liakos, "Greece: A Land Caught Between Ancient Glories and the Modern World," in, Histories of Nations: How Their Identities Were Forged Edited by Peter Furtado. (London: Thames & Hudson, 2018), 44.

360 Reinhart and Trebesch, “The Pitfalls of External Dependence,” 316.

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to enjoy Greece,” they hoped to find a method to keep the world out of running the

country.

Another tradition as longstanding as foreign interference in Greek affairs is

foreign aid in the form of philhellenism. Collectively known as Philhellenes, or “lovers of

Greece,” men and women from Britain, the Continent, and even the United States took up

arms during the Greek Revolution of the 1820s and donated substantial sums of money to

keep the fledgling Greek cause afloat until decisive Great Power intervention produced

the framework for a modern Greek state. As historical actors, this phenomenon has

mostly been confined to foreign volunteers in Greek conflict, including the 1820s War of

Independence. Another example of philhellenes in the Greek military is the Garibaldi

Legion, which volunteered for action in the war against the Ottoman Empire in 1897 and

the First Balkan War of 1912. However, Greek politicians and industry leaders continue

to celebrate foreign supporters as philhellenes for public relations purposes.361

Philhellenes were not solely a relic of the nineteenth century or wartime but deeply

involved throughout the country’s modern history. Critically, philhellenes answered the

call to aid Greece in the interwar crises. As I examine below, philhellenes in Byron's

tradition devoted themselves to the cause of rebuilding Greece and align with Greek

officials to develop a modern tourism infrastructure.

The Venizelos government's ambitious program from 1928 to 1932 responded to each of the crises folded into the "Catastrophe." Tourism emerged as a principal official

361 On foreign volunteers in Greek conflicts see, C.M. Woodhouse, The Philhellenes (Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1969); The most recent case does not involve a war, but the disaster relief response of Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson in the aftermath of the 2018 Mati wildfire. See, “Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson Officially Become Greek Citizens,” BBC News July 27, 2020. https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-53554002. Accessed August 15, 2020.

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response designed to address the social, political, and economic problems endured by

interwar Greece. The interwar Venizelos government bureaucratized the tourism sector.

Together with private commercial partners, it created a plethora of programs and

initiatives designed to attract foreign visitors to Greece in the aftermath of more than a

decade of conflict and social strife. While ultimately unsuccessful in the short-term, foreign philhellenic commercial actors and Greek state officials' efforts in developing a tourism infrastructure set the groundwork for the industry's postwar expansion. After

WWII, the trajectory of the Greek mass tourism industry was built not on contemporary proposals, but the debates and ambitions of state and private commercial actors brought together by support for Venizelos in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Specifically, the final section examines how the intervention of the Greek state in tourism prefigured the bonds between the country’s modern tourism industry and the postwar “informal” American intervention and influence in Greek politics, society, and the economy.

For Grand Tourists, Greece emerged as a destination on the Continental itinerary by the early nineteenth century. As a recent study of nation-branding in Greece has pointed out, Greeks were aware as early as the 1820s of the appeal of antiquity to foreign visitors. As a result, Greek rebels during the War of Independence called on foreign aid in the name of collecting a “debt” to Classical Greece and its influence on the development of Europe.362 The writing of these Grand Tourists including Byron

encouraged and informed visitors in the second half of the nineteenth century. These

tourists may have been inspired to visit Greece by reading Byron, but their trips were

362 Taso G. Lagos, Charanpreet Samra, Haley Anderson, Sydney Baker, Jasmine Leung, Arica Kincheloe, Brooke Manning, Dylan Olivia Tizon & Helena Gabrielle Franchino, "Narrating Hellas: tourism, news publicity and the refugee Crisis's impact on Greece's ‘Nation-Brand," Journal of Tourism History, Vol.4 (2020), 2.

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informed by the guidebooks of Baedeker and John Murray. The government of Prime

Minister Charilaos Trikoupis during the 1870s and 1880s sought to modernize the Greek

economy and open the country to foreign investment. The climate of modernization

fostered by the Greek government created a nascent hospitality

industry.363 Unfortunately, the outbreak of war in Europe in the summer of 1914 derailed

Greek tourism development efforts. As discussed in the first chapter with the Boissonnas

guidebook to Smyrna, Greek efforts to develop tourism in recently acquired Anatolia

between 1919 and 1922 collapsed with the defeat of Greek troops at the hands of Turkish

nationalists.

After more than five years of turmoil, the Greek electorate delivered what was at

that time the widest margin of victory for any party to Venizelos and the Liberal Party in

the election of 1928. Venizelos took the electoral result as a definitive mandate to

implement sweeping reforms designed to address the multiple crises. What Venizelos

initiated regarding tourism and other segments of the Greek economy meant that it was

truly the state—through institutions like the National Bank and autonomous offices like

the National Tourism Organization that drove policy making. As a result, for a few years

at least, the Greek state weathered the worst of the “Catastrophe.” While more than 20

different men served as prime minister of short-lived governments in the interwar years,

the state’s institutions largely persevered to shape the country’s modern institutions and

infrastructure.

363 The Hotel Grand Bretagne in central Athens dates from this period in the late nineteenth century. See, Margarita Dritsas, The Hotel Grande Bretagne in Athens (Athens, Greece: Kerkyra Publications, 2003).

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4.2 Philhellenism, Transnational Partnerships, and the Birth of an Industry

While many foreign figures have played a role in the evolution of the modern

Greek state, most have fallen prey to demonization by one segment of Greek society or

another. George Gordon, Lord Byron, is a rare exception. The British aristocrat and

renowned poet embodied the spirit of foreign volunteers and sympathizers of the Greek

cause of independence from the Ottoman Empire in the 1820s, giving his life for Greece

in 1824. For many Greeks, what distinguished Lord Byron from other philhellenes was

not the nature of his sacrifice or the scale of his financial assistance to the cause. Instead,

it was that while Lord Byron might have respected ancient Greece and admired the

remains of classical antiquity, his love was for the Greece of his day.364

At first glance, the circle of experts and investors behind the establishment of the

Greek National Tourism Organization in the late 1920s bear little resemblance to Lord

Byron and other early nineteenth-century philhellenes. Beyond personal wealth in some

instances, few of these figures would have been expected to leap at the prospect of taking

up arms in a romanticized notion of liberating Greece from foreign domination. However,

this group largely viewed the country’s social, political, and economic crises of the early

1920s as the contemporary version of Greece’s 1821 revolutionary moment and

subsequent turmoil in which Byron lost his life. Some like the American Brainerd P.

Salmon believed that the influx of Anatolian refugees held the promise of “national

renewal” and a “new era of progress” for Greece not seen since the achievement of

independence in the nineteenth century.365

364 André Gerolymatos, The British and the Greek Resistance, 1936–1944: Spies, Saboteurs, and Partisans (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2018), 2.

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The collection of Greek tourism development participants considered Greece in

the early 1920s to be amid a revolutionary moment for at least two reasons. Politically, a

revolution had indeed occurred in the country, as the Royalist government was deposed

in a coup by a Venizelist “Revolutionary Committee” in September 1922.366 As a result,

the country transitioned again from monarchy to republic. More broadly, the social change brought on by refugee resettlement and assimilation heightened the sense of revolutionary change in Greece.

Unlike Byron, there are no public memorials in Greece dedicated to the life and career of Brainerd P. Salmon, a New York-born journalist, businessman, and philanthropist. However, few foreign-born individuals can claim such extensive associations and years of service to the Greek state. Salmon’s passion for Greece and admiration for the country’s central political figure, Venizelos, began in his years as a war correspondent for The New York Times during the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913. After the Greek defeat in Anatolia and the subsequent challenge of resettling refugees in 1922-

1923, he became a special commissioner in the Greek Ministry of Public Assistance. In this position, Salmon grew close to Venizelos and other leading members of the Liberal

Party. Venizelos, in late 1923 wrote in English to Salmon to thank him for his “untiring advocacy of our cause.”367 Salmon returned to the United States in 1928 to serve as

President of the Hellenic-American Chamber of Commerce. In 1929, Venizelos

appointed Salmon as the first director of the Hellenic Tourist Information Bureau in

365 Brainerd P. Salmon, “Introductory,” in, Glimpses of Greece edited by Brainerd P. Salmon (Washington DC: Hellenic American Chamber of Commerce, 1929), 5-6. 366 The events of Goudi between September and November 1922 are vividly captured by André Gerolymatos. See André Gerolymatos, Red Acropolis, Black Terror: The Greek Civil War and the Origins of the Soviet-American Rivalry, 1943-1949 (New York: Basic Books, 2004), 4-12.

367 Private Letter from E. Venizelos to B.P. Salmon, 1923, EL VEN 040-79.

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Washington DC. This office aimed to promote Greece as a tourist destination to

Americans, maintain links to the country’s Greek diaspora, and assist prospective tourists

in holiday planning.368

In his capacity as President of the Hellenic-American Chamber of Commerce,

Salmon and later Hellenic Tourist Information Bureau promoted growing links between

American firms and the Greek government. American Express Co. (AMEX) recognized

an opportunity to expand its international presence in this revolutionary moment in

Greece.369 In fact, the company first identified Greece as a destination during the return

of exiled King Constantine I in 1920. The Greek royal family resided during their exile at

the Grand Hotel National in Lucerne, Switzerland. The hotel also housed the first AMEX

branch in Switzerland. A friendship between King Constantine and the AMEX branch

manager resulted in “a historic special movement” of the Greek royal family’s belongings

back to Greece. The royals were so pleased with the service provided by American

Express that they invited “several American Expressmen” to a reception at the palace and

urged the firm to open a branch in Athens.370

American Express established an Athens branch in the vicinity of Constitution

Square in 1923. Constitution Square was the Greek capital's social and political heart and

the center of the country’s nascent tourism industry. The square housed several luxury

368 Presidential Decree of 7/15 February 1929, EL VEN 062-48.

369 American Express was founded in 1850 and had a modest travel division between the 1890s and WWI. The interwar years marked the first boom in American tourists to Europe with American Express at the forefront of the industry through the popularity of the company’s traveler’s check. On American Express activities in Europe, see Alden Hatch, American Express: A Century of Service (New York: Doubleday, 1950); Christopher Endy, Cold War Holidays: American Tourism in France (Chapel Hill, NC: UNC Press, 2004), 35-36.

370 Hatch, American Express: A Century of Service, 142-143.

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hotels, including the Grande Bretagne, which opened in 1874. Surrounding streets were lined with other hotels, banks, travel agencies, shops, and restaurants eager to attract foreign visitors. American Express thus joined several travel firms, both foreign (like

Thomas Cook) and domestic, in establishing an office in central Athens.371 What

distinguished the firm from others was not name recognition but the background and

ambitions of the branch manager, Henry A. Hill.

Hill was a natural choice for the branch manager position in Athens. He was born

in the city during the Olympic year of 1896 to British parents and later married the

daughter of the American ambassador to Greece. Much like Brainerd Salmon, Hill’s

passion for Greek culture and antiquities led him to devote his career to the modern

Greek state's development. Hill had studied law at the University of Athens and served as

an American consular official in Greece. In this capacity, Hill formed relationships with

many Greek political and industrial leaders, including Venizelos. After a stint assisting in refugee relief, Hill accepted the position as branch manager of the new American Express office in Athens. Hill brought an intimate knowledge of the country’s social, political, and economic conditions to his new position at American Express. More importantly, he

had ready access to promote the company’s interests to leading Greek figures like

Venizelos. However, Venizelos and other prominent Greeks recognized that Hill, known

as “Archie,” shared in the enthusiasm of the country’s revolutionary moment for more

than his company’s financial interests.

371 On the growth of travel agencies in Greece during the interwar period, see, Papadoulaki, “Istoría ton Touristikón Epicheiríseon sto 19o kai 20ó aióna. O rólos kai i exélixi ton taxidiotikón grafeíon kai praktoreíon,” “History of the Tourism Business in the 19th and 20th centuries: The role and evolution of travel offices & agencies,” unpublished PhD dissertation, Hellenic Open University, 2011, 40-56.

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Hill indeed split his time developing the Athens branch of American Express

while personally advising Venizelos and other Greek officials on tourism development.

He oversaw the firm’s expansion in Greece, highlighted by the opening of another branch

in the port of Athens, Piraeus.372 In late 1927, Hill partnered with Athenian travel agent

Stamatis Polemis to develop an agenda for the foundation of a national tourism

organization with state funding. Hill and Polemis lobbied Venizelos, who at this point

hinted at his imminent return to political life.373

Tourism also attracted the attention of several new citizens of Greece, Anatolian

entrepreneurs who lost much of their wealth and trade networks in the former Ottoman

Empire now eagerly joined Venizelos to salvage personal fortunes and that of their new

country. The most well-known Anatolian investor was Prodromos Bodossakis

Athanasiades. Originally from central Anatolia, Athanasiades migrated to Istanbul after

the 1908 Young Turk Revolution, where he soon made a name for himself in the

armaments industry. During the First World War, his successes and deteriorating

conditions for the Ottoman Empire enabled Athanasiades to end the year 1918 as the

primary stakeholder in the city’s premier hotel, the Pera Palace. The Greek defeat in

Anatolia in 1922 led to the loss of his investments in the area. However, his fortunes

quickly turned following a meeting with Venizelos on the sidelines of Greco-Turkish

negotiations at Lausanne in 1923. Venizelos made a profound impression on

Athanasiades, who pledged to invest in Greece. Among his many interests in Greece,

372 Salmon, Glimpses of Greece, Advertisement for American Express Offices in Greece, 19.

373 Memorandum from H.A. Hill and S. Polemis on the necessity of a national tourism organization, 12 December 1927. EL VEN 014-78.

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Athanasiades desired to invest in luxury hotels, Hellenic State Railways, textiles,

armaments while also donating to refugee relief programs in Macedonia and Thrace.374

By 1932, a GNTO representative ensured that the blending of the ancient and traditional aspects and modernization projects in Greece expanded beyond the realm of promotional literature and artwork. In that year, Iraklis Ioannides, director of the Greek firm Neptos Shipping Company accepted the appointment as official GNTO representative in the new Paris office. Ioannides, born Petros Afthoniatis, was like

Prodromos Athanasiades, a Venizelist Anatolian searching for a fresh start and career

opportunities in interwar Greece. He found this in the country’s prominent shipping

industry with Neptos and the nascent tourism industry through the GNTO. Both

Ioannides and the company’s owner, Leonidas Empeirikos, took an early interest in the

concept of Greece as a major Mediterranean tourist destination.375 Empeirikos invested in

the promising Mediterranean pleasure cruise industry with a Neptos cruise ship, the

Patris II. The ship adopted an itinerary from Marseille to Piraeus via Egypt.

Ioannides added to the growing body of promotional literature on Greece by the

publication of a tourist magazine designed for Patris II passengers titled Le Voyage en

Grèce. The magazine detailed recent developments produced by the Venizelist-created

GNTO in Athens, Corfu, and Delphi, and other areas of Greece. The publication soon

attracted a wider audience of intellectuals and list of contributors, including Le Corbusier,

Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and Georges Braque. Ioannides encouraged engagement

374 For more information on the career of Athanasiades and business networks in interwar Greece, see Margarita Dritsas, “Business and Politics: The State and Networks in Greece” in, Business and Politics in Europe, 1900-1970: Essays in Honour of Alice Teichova edited by Terry Gourvish (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 293-294.

375 Leonidas Empeirikos served in a ministerial capacity in a Venizelist government and was deeply committed to refugee resettlement and the cause of Venizelos.

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from these distinguished figures, who offered perspectives on Greece's legacy and Athens to their respective intellectual and artistic pursuits. Neptos owner Empeirikos hailed the new “link between Greece and its travelers through writers, artists, and contemporary scholars."376

In 1933 Ioannides aided in the organization of a cruise to Greece from Marseille

for a distinguished group of architects, including Le Corbusier aboard the Patris II. This was not merely a pleasure cruise to Greece as the Patris II served as both the transportation and the venue of several sessions of the Fourth Congrés Internationaux d’

Architecture Moderne (CIAM IV).377 The GNTO campaign highlighting the country’s

antiquity and ambitious modernization projects impressed distinguished architects.

Between their contributions to the publication Le Voyage en Grèce, and visits to the

country, the intellectuals and Greek officials engaged in this transnational linkage helped

shape the tourism branding of Greece. Such interactions ensured that Greece would retain

or reenter intellectual and tourist maps of Europe and the Mediterranean.

Leading members of Greek political life represented the state in tourism

development initiatives. Appointed the inaugural director of the GNTO in 1929,

Konstantine (Koko) Melas followed in his family’s long tradition of leadership in the

advancement of Greek national interests. Several generations of the Melas clan were

prominent politicians and generals in the nineteenth century. However, Koko’s older

376 On the history of the publication, see Sophie Basch and Alexandre Farnoux, Le Voyage en Grèce, The Journey to Greece (1934-1946), French School in Athens, 2004.

377 Le Corbusier published the well-known manifesto of modern urbanism, The Charter of Athens in 1943 from the proceedings aboard the Patris II and Athens in 1933. For more on the role of Greece in these debates on modern urbanism, see Emilia Athanassiou, Vasiliki Dima, Konstantinia Karali and Panayotis Tournikiotis, “The Modern Gaze of Foreign Architects Travelling to Interwar Greece: Urban Planning, Archaeology, Aegean Culture, and Tourism,” Heritage, Vol. 2: (April 2019), 1117–1135.

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brother Pavlos had emerged as the family’s most influential and enduring representative

of the Greek nationalist cause.378 For his part, Koko Melas had a distinguished record of

public service as both a naval officer and parliamentarian.

In what proved a rarity in Greek society during the interwar period, Melas seemed uniquely positioned to navigate the bitterly polarized political landscape contested by

Venizelists and the largely royalist-sympathizing anti-Venizelists. For example, Melas owed much of his naval career to royal patronage. Royal connections earned Melas a commission in the Imperial Russian Navy during the Russo-Japanese War of 1905-1906.

Greek victories in the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913 under the country’s dynamic new prime minister, Eleftherios Venizelos, captivated Melas and led him to join the governing

Liberal Party. He soon forged a close friendship with Venizelos. Melas won a seat as a member of the Liberal Party in the parliamentary elections of 1915. Though defeated in his bid for re-election in 1920, Melas remained a prominent figure in public life, taking an enthusiastic interest in hiking associations and the scout movement, in which he played a leadership role.379 With years of political experience, loyalty and friendship with

Venizelos, leadership in social organizations, and his family connection to national hero

378 A dashing young army officer, Pavlos Melas was tasked by the Greek government with a clandestine mission in 1904 designed to counter Bulgarian irregular forces in the Ottoman province of Macedonia, then a site of contestation between clandestine Greek forces, Bulgarians, and Ottomans among others in the so- called “Macedonian Struggle.” However, shortly after his arrival, Ottoman troops surrounded Melas and his force. Melas was killed in the ensuing skirmish outside the village of Statista near Kastoria in present- day Greece. Today the village bears the name Pavlos Melas, one of many public reminders beginning in the early twentieth century of the man considered a national hero and martyr in the struggle to realize a critical element of the Megali Idea, namely the incorporation of Macedonia into Greece. On Pavlos Melas and the “Macedonian Struggle,” see, Koliopoulos & Veremis, Greece: The Modern Sequel, 212-213.

379 Vlachos, Tourismos kai Dimosies politikes sti Synchroni Ellada [Tourism and Public Policies in Contemporary Greece], 178.

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Pavlos Melas, Konstantine Melas was well positioned to advance Greek national interests through the nascent GNTO.

The GNTO was bolstered by support from Venizelos himself. Despite the range of backgrounds in terms of professional experience and nationality, each of these prominent figures in creating the GNTO counted Venizelos as a friend. However, the correspondence between Venizelos and these GNTO officials and advisers suggests that the prime minister’s interest in tourism development and promotion extended well beyond a desire to maintain personal relationships. Venizelos, for instance, reviewed and commented on GNTO annual budget proposals and reports authored by Melas. By 1928 when Venizelos returned to power, his government had attracted a broad coalition of financiers and experts from Greece and abroad to reform its battered economy and society.

4.3 The Guidebook to Save Greece: Brainerd Salmon and Glimpses of Greece

The tourism industry would play an essential role in salvaging Greek national interests in the wake of the "Catastrophe." Brainerd Salmon sought to play a role in this through the Hellenic Information Bureau office in Washington. His edited volume,

Glimpses of Greece, printed through the office's budget, was distributed for free to travel agencies and shipping firms.

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Figure 4.2: Cover of Glimpses of Greece (Washington, DC: Hellenic Information Bureau, 1929)

Salmon’s Glimpses of Greece was at once a guidebook to Greece for foreign (mainly

American and British) tourists, as well as an appeal to philhellenic traditions of rendering aid to a beleaguered Greek nation. Several chapters of the book echoed Salmon’s

Venizelist outlook that tourism and other targeted economic projects envisioned by the

Venizelos government had placed Greece on a path to navigate the lingering impact of the “Catastrophe.”

Through topics ranging from “The Economic Improvement of Greece,” “The

Refugees and Their Establishment,” and articles on specific industries like tobacco and currants, prominent Greek politicians, industrialists, and financiers along with foreign investors and philhellenes sought to articulate to readers the dynamic actions of the

Venizelos government. Although many of the contributors to Glimpses of Greece stressed the positive developments already underway because of Venizelist initiatives, the heart of

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Salmon’s guidebook was its appeal for aid in refugee relief.

Indeed, refugee relief and assimilation were the common thread that linked each

of the business savvy Byrons in Greek tourism development. Refugee resettlement

appears to be an unusual selling point for tourism promotion, particularly in light of the

contemporary Mediterranean refugee crisis since 2015.380 In discussions of tourism,

migrants and refugees often appear to be negative, as politicians are eager to assure prospective tourists that their holidays would not be interrupted by unsightly networks of refugee processing camps or mostly unfounded fears of petty crime.381 The sight of

refugees on the streets of Athens and other urban centers in interwar Greece generated

similar anxieties for government officials and locals.

Despite the narrative in Greek historiography that refugees constituted “the deus

ex machina that led Greece to industrialization and economic growth,” relatively few people in the interwar years outside of philhellenes like Salmon would have agreed.382

For many contemporary observers, refugees only constituted a drain on the Greek

economy and amplified divisions between Venizelists and anti-Venizelists. Nor were

refugees readily assimilated into this polarized Greek society. Indeed, multiple

generations of those with ancestral ties to Anatolia and the 1923 Greco-Turkish

380 Scholars, policymakers, journalists, artists, politicians, economists, and others have engaged in debates on recent developments involving refugees in the Mediterranean and across the European Union. For more on recent studies and accounts of the intersection of Mediterranean tourism and refugees, see Marxiano Melotti, “The Mediterranean Refugee Crisis: Heritage, Tourism, and Migration,” New England Journal of Public Policy, Vol. 30: No.2, (September 2018), Article 11; Nikolaos Pappas and Andreas Papatheodorou, “Tourism and the Refugee Crisis in Greece: Perceptions and Decision-making of Accommodation Providers,” Tourism Management, 63: No.2 (June 2017), 31-41.

381 See, Joan Carles Cirer-Costa, “Turbulence in Mediterranean Tourism,” Tourism Management Perspectives, Vol. 22 (April 2017), 28-29; Florian Schmitz, “Huge Migrant Influx Scares Off Greek Island Tourists,” DW, June 23, 2019. Accessed July 15, 2020.

382 Kostis, History's Spoiled Children, 279.

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population exchange endured insults such as “Turkish-seed” and “baptized in

yoghurt.”383 Brainerd Salmon and other philhellenes did not allow these divisions and

prejudices to deter their efforts to aid refugee relief and develop a Greek tourism

industry. The key to Salmon’s project was the promotional guidebook Glimpses of

Greece.

The common thread found in Salmon’s work and tourist experiences involved a

desire to celebrate and defend “Western civilization.” Greece was not just any “wrecked

nation,” it was for one contributor to Glimpses of Greece, the “torchbearer of [Western]

civilization.”384 Many philhellenes and American travel writers linked the United States

and European countries like Greece by embracing the idea of a noble civilization shared

by European hosts and American guests. Like most Americans, Salmon and travel writers

used the term “civilization” in varied, imprecise ways, often referring to artistic

achievements, Christianity, historical greatness, or respect for democratic traditions.

Given the concept’s vagueness, travel experiences and writing played a significant role in

defining Americans' nature and linking that civilization to Greece. Such an exercise was

also critical in the context of interwar disillusionment with society and democracy. Like

Lord Byron and the philhellenes of the 1820s, business savvy Byrons, including Salmon

and many foreign tourists, considered their world to be indebted to Greece.

As a center and “torchbearer” of civilization, Greece, especially Athens and other areas

with notable monuments, appeared to travel writers and tourism promoters as the

383 According to scholarship, true assimilation did not really occur until the 1980s. For a detailed account of the refugee experience in twentieth century Greece, see Renée Hirschon, Heirs of the Greek Catastrophe; Bruce Clark, Twice a Stranger: The Mass Expulsions that Forged Modern Greece and Turkey, Especially Chapters 4 and 5.

384 P.N. Caridia, “Economic Improvement in Greece, in Glimpses of Greece edited by B.P. Salmon (Washington DC: Hellenic Information Bureau, 1929), 40.

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property of all the world and therefore as something to be defended by Americans and

Britons.

Glimpses of Greece emerged as the country’s primary guidebook for American

and British tourists between 1929 and 1936. At first glance, Salmon’s volume appeared

to be a generic promotional guidebook to Greece. The front cover featured a sketch of the

Parthenon. Despite this image of an iconic tourist attraction, the initial pages made clear

to readers that this was not solely a guide to “what ought to be seen,” rather it was

devoted to the Greece of the 1920s and thus the refugee crisis. Salmon even included an

itinerary of locations affiliated with refugee resettlement and assimilation that he

considered to be of interest to American tourists.385 An American tourist and university

president, Eldo Hendricks, summed up the appeal of such an itinerary: “a wrecked nation

evokes more human interest than a wrecked building even though that building is the

Parthenon.”386

Hendricks and other tourists to Greece in the interwar period would have

encountered refugees through multiple experiences. From their taxi trip or tram ride from

the port of Piraeus to the hotels of central Athens, tourists passed through several

neighborhoods recently constructed to house refugees. They may have crossed paths with

Armenian or Anatolian Greek Orthodox refugees on their excursions to notable

monuments in the capital like the Acropolis or elsewhere. Guidebooks, travelogues, and

local guides encouraged tourists to purchase souvenirs ranging from carpets to traditional

clothing from refugees through organizations like the Near East Relief. Even the former

385 Salmon, “American Interests in Greece,” in Glimpses of Greece, 39.

386 Eldo Lewis (E.L.) Hendricks, Rimming the Mediterranean (Kansas City, MO: Brown-White Company, 1935), 53. Hendricks was the President of Central Missouri State Teachers College.

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royal palace in Constitution Square, which became the Greek parliament's home in 1935,

housed hundreds of refugees until 1930. Hendricks described a visit to the old royal

palace and the refugee orphanage.387 Thus, foreign tourists had multiple opportunities to express their concern and support for the waves of refugees who settled in the “wrecked nation.”

Tourist accounts of interwar Greece like that of Hendricks were not rare throughout the interwar period. Foreign tourists, particularly Americans, were targeted by

Salmon and other philhellenes to embrace the “old-young and resilient country” of

Greece through a combination of excursions to ancient monuments and refugee communities.388 Desired itineraries in Athens and other areas of Greece with substantial refugee populations explicitly encouraged interactions like that described by Hendricks.

Salmon’s American-tailored tour of Athens read like an instruction in helping refugees

and witnessing the work of U.S. and Greek state relief effort in person. Pictured below,

the itinerary listed more than a dozen locations where American visitors could see the

progress of foreign relief in assisting the refugees. In arguing for foreign aid to Greece

amid the refugee crisis, Salmon implored British and American tourists to contribute to

the civilization they desired to visit. American and British tourists to Greece could see

their donations to refugee relief first-hand upon visiting the country. Salmon was confident “tourists, who are contributing to any American institution in Greece, should, by all means, pay a visit to it and in every case, they will come away feeling that their

387 Ibid., 56-57.

388 Henry B. Dewing, “Travels in Greece,” in Glimpses of Greece edited by B.P. Salmon (Washington DC: Hellenic Information Bureau, 1929), 7.

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money has been invested wisely and well.”389 Refugees in guidebooks were not just part

of the background information on conditions in interwar Greece; they were an obligatory

component of tourist itineraries through visits to resettlement villages and suburbs and

other related locations.

Part tourist promotional material, part pro-government propaganda, part appeal to

foreign philhellenic tendencies, Salmon’s Glimpses of Greece was a Venizelist rallying

cry for the rebuilding of the Greek nation-state through improved institutions and

industries like tourism. Few initiatives from the interwar period captured tourism's role as

an official response to the “Catastrophe” as Glimpses of Greece. Salmon’s volume,

though, was but one part of the Greek state’s tourism development strategy. In time, a

tourist who read Glimpses of Greece while visiting the country would witness concrete

transformations in Greek tourism. Much of the impetus for these developments came

from other prominent philhellenes and the nascent GNTO.

4.4 Envisioning the Greek Nation in the GNTO Action Plan, 1929-1932

Brainerd Salmon’s Glimpses of Greece articulated a sense of purpose to attract foreign tourists to tour interwar Greece. By early 1929, other business savvy Byrons like

Henry Hill and Greek officials had sketched out the initial apparatus and projects of the

GNTO to complement Salmon’s guidebook. Contemplating Greece—a country ravaged by nearly a decade of incessant warfare, financial collapse, and bitter social and political divisions—as a tourist destination offered an opportunity to inventory national elements and symbols untainted or salvageable from the scars of defeat and internal cleavages. The

GNTO embraced this as their initial project to highlight a series of destinations in Greece

389 Salmon, “American Interests in Greece,” in Glimpses of Greece, 38.

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in 1930-1931 to redefine the country as an attractive tourist destination. The GNTO

action plan laid out expectations, regulations, and approaches to tourism development for

Greece in 1930. Projects included new tourist roads across various provincial areas,

tourist information kiosks at archaeological parks, rest houses near potential tourist

attractions, a magazine dedicated to tourism, promotional posters, and a tourist police to

assist visitors. It also set out the expectation that professional schools dedicated to tour

guides and hotel management would be established in the future.390

The intended changes for Greek tourism promotion prompted debates about the

ideal type of tourist experience. Would this Greece and its tourism industry appear as a

modern miracle or be sold on its timeless traditions with roots in antiquity? The opinions

of GNTO officials and advisers diverged on this messaging. P.N. Caridia, one of the

country’s leading financiers, saw the country’s rapid modernization as the key to creating

a modern luxury tourist destination.391 Henry Hill, on the other hand, advocated for the

promotion of tradition and natural beauty. According to Hill, there was a tendency

exhibited by some figures like Caridia to “modernize the country, to do away with the old

customs,” and to make destinations like Athens “into a small, second-rate Paris.”392

Nevertheless, both approaches included elements that could be distinguished from the chaos of the “Catastrophe” and its social and political cleavages.

390 Memorandum from H.A. Hill and S. Polemis to E. Venizelos on function of National Tourism Organization, 5 March 1930. EL VEN 012-26.

391 P.N. Caridia was the President of the Ionian Bank, one of the country’s largest financial institutions in the interwar period.

392 H.A. Hill, The Economy of Greece, Vol. V, Appendix IV (New York: Greek War Relief Association, 1944), 1.

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Swiss photographer and travel writer Frédéric (Fred) Boissonnas’ 1930 volume

Touring in Greece reflected the convergence of Greece's image as an ancient nation and

yet still a young resilient country. Touring in Greece was like his 1919 publication

discussed earlier the product of a contract between Boissonnas and the GNTO in

conjunction with the Hellenic State Railways. The book had an inaugural print run of

40,000 copies in French, English, German, and Spanish. Touring in Greece consisted of

two parts that combined the ancient or traditional and modern approaches to Greek

tourism involved in the GNTO campaign. In the first part, the Genevan photographer

described his multiple journeys to Greece between the 1890s and 1930.393 The objective

of the first half of the book was to share both his personal passion for travel in Greece as

well as the country’s sights, traditional customs, and natural beauty. Boissonnas turned to

modern developments and company profiles in the second half of Touring in Greece.

Eager to stress the country’s rapid progress since WWI, Boissonnas wrote “the returning

visitor who knew his Greece before 1922 will think that an Aladdin’s transformation has occurred.” As evidence, Boissonnas cited the “suburbs of refugee Ionian [Anatolian]

Greeks” around Athens and Thessaloniki, that were “teeming with industry.”394

Boissonnas also pointed to the improvement in travel conditions since his early trips to

Greece. By the time of the book’s publication, the Venizelos government added more

than 1,200 miles of new roads and expanded transport links to Europe and the Middle

East by air and sea.395

393 A climbing enthusiast, Boissonnas gained notoriety in Greece and Switzerland for his role in the team behind the first modern ascent of Mount Olympus in 1913. Frédéric Boissonnas, Touring in Greece (Geneva: Editions Paul Trembley, 1930). 6.

394 Ibid., 73.

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The GNTO enlisted the help of some of the country’s most popular artists and writers, including painter Michalis Papageorgiou among others, to create images of the

selected sites (Athens, Corfu, Delphi, Corinth, Crete, Santorini, Thessaloniki, Loutraki)

to share with tourist markets across Europe, the Middle East, and North America. For

many, including Papageorgiou and Henry Hill, the Greek landscape represented an

element of the country that survived the darkest moments of the early 1920s. The posters

captured the emphasis on the country’s natural beauty as well as timeless characteristics

like humble fishing boats and donkeys with their shepherds. At the same time, the

artwork revealed signs of modern developments, like the ambitious urban development

projects and road construction in the spa resort of Loutraki conducted by the British-

owned Loutraki Development Company.396

Although many of these areas and landscapes were deeply tied to crises like

Anatolian refugee assimilation or international disputes, the depictions nevertheless show

how an emphasis on continuity in Greek tourist attractions provided a way for some

Greek observers to move beyond the impact of these internal and external pressures and

focus on utilizing sites for ambitious economic and social reconstruction purposes.

Papageorgiou’s artwork was joined in print by the first magazine publication

dedicated to Greek tourism: Touristiki Ellas/La Grèce Touristique (Touristic Greece).

The magazine’s editors came from the GNTO executive board, including Konstantine

Melas, and received state funding. From the inaugural edition in November 1930,

395 Kostis, History's Spoiled Children, 285.

396 The Loutraki development project was coordinated in part by another loyal Venizelist, the country’s ambassador to the UK. Letter from Greek Ambassador in London, D. Kaklamanos to Venizelos Regarding Loutraki Development Company, 18 August 1931. EL VEN 15-200.

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Touristiki Ellas featured articles from international contributors in languages ranging

from Greek, French, English, German, Italian, and Spanish to Romanian, Russian, and

Turkish. Regardless of the language, articles sent a clear message that Greece had a

promising future as a Mediterranean tourist destination. British contributor W. Bently

Capper praised Venizelist initiatives, including the founding of the GNTO, hotel

regulation reform, and the construction of an extensive road network. For Capper, all

these initiatives suggested that Greece was “a modern country in the making…in the

future destined to be one of the great touring countries in the world.”397 The monthly

publication's ambitious scope earned the editorial board the respect of Venizelos and

several cabinet members. But more importantly for the country’s tourism industry, the

magazine served as a venue for the exchange of ideas and promotion of Greece as a

destination across many states and languages.

In part through Hill’s lobbying and related GNTO activities like the magazine, the

Greek Parliament passed laws to pave the way to modernization (like hotel standards, road construction etc.) and preserve cultural traditions and monuments. According to

Hill, at times, the GNTO strayed too far in the modernizing direction at the expense of critical elements of Greece’s tourist appeal. Hill recalled in his detailed study of the

Greek economy and its tourism industry that the interwar GNTO occasionally "went off the wrong track, as, for instance, when it insisted on putting peddlers of crackers into white coats, thus spoiling the picturesque appeal of their native costumes."398 Debates

about the country’s desired image for tourism consumption did not emerge as the most

397 W. Bently Capper, “Greece To-day: A Modern Country in the Making,” Touristiki Ellas, Vol.1 Issue 2, (December 1930), 21.

398 Hill, The Economy of Greece, Vol. V, Appendix IV, 4.

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pressing challenge before the GNTO. Wracked by financial problems in 1930-1931, the

organization felt the strain of budget cuts. Moreover, the organization and the Greek state

sought a program that could respond to mounting concerns about internal and external

threats, economic, social, and political.

Officials from the beleaguered Greek National Tourism Organization believed they had a readymade solution to financial limitations in Corfu. But this was not without its challenges. Indeed, the island of Corfu had been a tourist destination for decades before WWI. The island appeared to many to be more “modern European” than characteristically “Greek,” in that attractions were not so much classical monuments as they were palaces built by Austrian, German, and British royalty, and aristocracy. More pressing challenges came from the island’s substantial minority communities, their alleged ties to rival powers like Fascist Italy, and the population’s overwhelming rejection of Venizelos from a political standpoint. While more ambitious projects discussed by GNTO officials and contributors in magazines like Touristiki Ellas remained in a conceptual phase due to lack of funds, Corfu experienced a significant official tourism project in the 1930s.

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Figure 4.3: Cover of Bi-lingual Guidebook for Automobiles and Tourism, Athens, July 1939. The traditionally clad Greek highlander looking out at the modern car and ancient ruins reflected the growing convergence of traditional and modern imagery in interwar Greek tourism promotion. (PE.XX.670.1939, ELIA)

4.5 Paradise Contested: Fears of Greek Undoing, Tourism, and Mediterranean

Rivalry

Corfu (Kerkira in Greek) is the northernmost of the Ionian Islands, located off the

western coast of Greece near the Albanian coast.399 A series of imperial conquerors left

their mark on Corfu and the other islands, ranging from Imperial Rome to Napoleonic

399 The other inhabited islands are Paxos, Kefalonia, Ithaki, Lefkada, Zakynthos, and Kythera. Together, Corfu and the other Ionian Islands are often referred to as the Eptanisia or the “Seven Islands.”

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France. However, modern Corfu mainly emerged as a product of Venetian and later

British rule. Venice ruled Corfu and the Ionian Islands between 1386 and 1797.

Following Napoleon’s conquest of the Venetian Republic, the Ionian Islands experienced

French, Russian, and finally British rule between 1797 and 1814. In 1815, Lieutenant

General Sir Thomas Maitland accepted the newly established post of British Lord High

Commissioner of the Ionian Islands. British rule in Corfu lasted until 1864, when the

Ionian Islands were ceded to the Kingdom of Greece as a gesture of goodwill towards the

country’s new monarch, George I (a nephew of British Queen Victoria).

From its first annexation to Greece, tourism has functioned as a provocative

means to further new bonds between the island and metropole. Greek King George I

joined many European aristocrats and royals in visiting Corfu for leisure in the late nineteenth century. Unlike many areas of interwar Greece, Corfu had the distinction of long being one of the most popular tourist resorts in the Mediterranean. Habsburg

Empress Elizabeth (Sissi) sought refuge from the scandal of her son’s murder-suicide by

constructing a palace in a Corfiot village. After her death at the hands of an anarchist

assassin in Geneva, German Kaiser Wilhelm II purchased Sissi’s Achilleion Palace. The

First World War severed the link between Corfu and the Central European royals and

aristocrats behind the neoclassical villas and palaces on the island.400 The palace trail of

outrageous late-nineteenth-century Central European palaces on a Mediterranean island

surrounded by early modern Venetian-influenced urban constructions firmly placed

Corfu as a go-to getaway, unlike any other Greek island. And even after WWI,

400 On the development of European palaces and villas in nineteenth-century Corfu, see Michael Pratt, Britain’s Greek Empire: Reflections on the History of the Ionian Islands from the Fall of Byzantium (London: Rex Collings, 1978), 185-190.

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international tourists deboarded their ships to enjoy this refined and very “modern

European” Greece.

Most famous of Corfu’s interwar European visitors was the same Lawrence

Durrell and family, who arrived in Rhodes with the provisional British administration in

the closing days of WWII. The Durrells found Corfu to be an unspoiled Eden and escape

from the dreary realities of 1930s England.401 The Durrells though, were neither the first

nor the last foreign visitors to establish at least temporary roots in Corfu. British author

Evelyn Waugh was as effusive in his praise for Corfu as any visitor in describing the

island in 1929:

It [Corfu] is full of lovely villas, many of them for sale. Before the war, the harbour was much frequented by private yachts, and during the season the shores were peopled by a very gay cosmopolitan society. It has become less fashionable since the collapse of the Central Powers, but all the more habitable. Do let me urge you, gentle reader, if you have only borrowed this book from a library, to buy two or three copies instantly so that I can leave London and go and live peacefully on this island.402

Waugh’s account suggested that Corfu was a peaceful, remote tourist paradise on the

verge of reviving the thriving tourism industry that was lost because of WWI. His

assessment was only partially correct. Indeed, many locals, foreign investors, and the

GNTO desired Corfu to regain its status as a prominent Mediterranean tourist resort in

the 1930s. However, the vision of Corfu as a remote and unspoiled Eden would have

401 Lawrence and his younger brother, Gerald (1925-1995) each wrote a series of celebrated books on Corfu and their family’s experiences there. Lawrence’s friend, American author Henry Miller also included his time spent visiting the Durrells in his classic, The Colossus of Maroussi. Collectively, these books inspired waves of tourists to visit Corfu and other Mediterranean locales associated with the great writers. The Durrells have recently become the subject of a popular ITV series. See, Michael Haag, The Durrells of Corfu (London: Profile, 2017).

402 Evelyn Waugh, Labels: A Mediterranean Journal (London: Duckworth, 1930), 156.

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surprised all but those living within an interwar version of a “tourist bubble” like the

Durrells. On one level, the “Catastrophe” broadly speaking complicated this portrayal of

Corfu. Specifically, tensions between the Greek government and minority populations

and deteriorating relations with Fascist Italy posed challenges to Corfu’s development as

an interwar tourist resort.

The “Catastrophe” stoked more than internal dissension in interwar Greek society.

From a foreign policy standpoint, the country’s economic, social, and political conditions

in the early 1920s frayed relations with neighboring states and Great Powers. For

example, Britain briefly severed diplomatic ties with the Greek government after the

Revolutionary Committee seized power in September 1922.403 Tension with regional

actors like Britain and Italy posed an obstacle to Greece’s diplomatic ties and generated

unease in government circles about the remaining minority communities after the 1923

population exchange.

Although faced with staggering challenges in the resettlement of refugees,

financial crisis, and political upheaval, Greece by the early 1920s had largely achieved

the incorporation of most “Greeks” into the modern state's territory. Many minority

communities, particularly those deemed “Turkish” or “Bulgarian” had been compelled by

1925 to relocate to Turkey and Bulgaria's respective nation-states through League of

Nations-supervised population exchange agreements. Brainerd Salmon, in the

introduction to the guidebook Glimpses of Greece, suggested that the country’s

“homogenous population” post-Lausanne “granted an assurance of stability not to be

403 On the fractured relationship between Britain and Greece in the 1920s see, Smith, Ionian Vision, 334- 340; Giannis Koliopoulos, Greece and the British Connection, 1935-1941 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), 15-17.

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found in some other countries that have emerged from the war [WWI].”404

While the Greek state was now home to far fewer potentially disloyal citizens

than before 1923, the arrival of so many refugees with questionable “Greek” credentials

combined with the remaining minority communities generated anxiety among officials.

Protected under the 1923 population exchange conditions, the Muslims of western Thrace

remain the only formally recognized ethnic minority in Greece. The other Muslim

communities exempted from the population exchange of 1923 were the Albanian Chams

from Epirus. The same areas also included communities of Vlachs, Christians whose

language is like Romanian. Greek-speaking Romaniot Jews primarily resided in urban

centers of central and northwestern Greece.

On the other hand, the Jewish community of Thessaloniki still maintained a

unique identity around their medieval Spanish-derived Ladino language and religion.

Thessaloniki in the 1920s still possessed a Jewish community of roughly 50,000, which

was mostly wary of Venizelos. Many areas of Macedonia in the 1920s and 1930s still had

large communities of Slavic-speakers. Known in the interwar period as “Slavophone

Greeks,” Greek authorities suspected this community of Slavic-speaking adherents of the

Bulgarian Orthodox Church of ties to Macedonian or Bulgarian nationalist groups.405

While minority communities consisted of various ethnicities, religions, and languages, they shared distrust for the nationalizing, homogenizing, and increasingly

404 B.P. Salmon, “Introductory,” in Glimpses of Greece, 6.

405 On the Jewish community of Thessaloniki in the interwar period, see Devin Naar, Jewish Salonica, 114- 126; On the interwar minorities including the Jewish community of Thessaloniki and so-called “Slavo- Macedonians” see, Paris Papamichos Chronakis, "Between Liberalism and Slavophobia: Anti-Zionism, Antisemitism, and the (Re)making of the Interwar Greek State" Jewish Social Studies, Vol. 25, No. 1 (Fall 2019), 20-44.

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authoritarian Venizelist Greek state. Although these populations did not necessarily claim

allegiance to a rival power, Venizelists sought to quash their participation in elections. As

a result, many members of minority communities fell afoul of the Venizelist

government’s controversial national security legislation. Initially designed as a measure

to combat the rising tide of communist mobilization in critical areas of the Venizelist

voter base in urban centers, the Idionymon (Greek legalese for Special) Law made it a

“criminal offense to agitate for an overthrow of the existing socio-political order.” The law went as far as to make illegal even the propagation of ideas that could be construed as threatening the social order as defined by the government in power.406

Minority relations in Greece's western area, particularly in the Ionian Islands,

presented a different challenge to the Venizelist Greek state. With sizeable Italian,

Maltese, and Italian-speaking Jewish communities, Corfu possessed one of the highest

concentrations of minorities in interwar Greece. The island’s capital, Corfu Town,

boasted a population of roughly 40,000, of which 10 percent fell into a minority category.

Corfu Town’s diverse population made it, in the words of one of its leading historians,

“the multicultural urban center in interwar Greece.”407 Unlike many other minority

406 Thomas W. Gallant, Modern Greece: From the War of Independence to the Present Second Edition (New York: Bloomsbury, 2016), 215-216; On the Metaxas-era use of the law against minorities in the Greek province of Macedonia see, Stephen J. Lee, European Dictatorships, 1918-1945 Third Edition (New York: Routledge, 2008), 333-335. Allegations of subversive activity on behalf of foreign states often led minority groups in interwar Greece to face charges under the Idionymon legislation. While this legislation ultimately cast a dark shadow over much of twentieth-century Greece as successive governments through the Cold War targeted the Greek Left, the Idionymon Law backfired during the interwar period because it drove many minorities and Greek workers to join the nascent Communist Party of Greece (KKE). On the legacy of the Idionymon legislation in twentieth century Greece see, André Gerolymatos, Red Acropolis, Black Terror: The Greek Civil War and the Origins of the Soviet-American Rivalry, 1943-1949 (New York: Basic Books, 2004), especially Chapters 1-2; Neni Panourgia, Dangerous Citizens: The Greek Left and the Terror of the State (New York: Fordham University Press, 2009).

407 Original Italics, Diana Siebert, Aller Herren Außenposten-Korfu von 1797 bis 1944 (Köln: Eudora- Verlag, 2016), 171.

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communities, Corfu's non-Greek populations presented the potential to be loyal to a

foreign rival and Mediterranean power: Fascist Italy.408 Mussolini had already staked a claim to the island in August-September 1923. Roughly six weeks after the Greco-

Turkish population exchange had been finalized at Lausanne, an Italian fleet arrived off the coast of Corfu with an ultimatum to Greek officials.

Italian forces bombarded and occupied Corfu between August 27 and September

27, 1923 to force the Greek government to accept responsibility for the murder of an

Italian general on a diplomatic mission for the Conference of Ministers designed to formally establish the border between Greece and Albania after the First World War.

Greek officials denied any involvement and appealed to the League of Nations.

Following diplomatic pressure and the Greek payment of an indemnity, Italian forces evacuated the island.409 Corfu remained part of Greece, but its vulnerability to Italian

imperialism was clear to all.

The outcome of the Corfu Incident for some reflected an encouraging sign that the

League of Nations could successfully forestall another Sarajevo 1914. However, most

observers had taken a more pessimistic view of the League and Italian intentions in the

Mediterranean by the time Mussolini’s forces invaded Ethiopia in 1935. Popular interwar

British journalist George Slocombe wrote in 1935 that the Corfu Incident was

“Mussolini’s first essay in imperialism.” The Italian attack and outcome confirmed to

Slocombe that Corfu was one of the “strategic islands” of the Mediterranean.410 While

408 On interwar population numbers and experiences of Italian-speaking Corfiotes, see Giulio Esposito, Esuli in patria: il caso degli italo-greci in Puglia, in G. Esposito, V. A. Leuzzi (a cura di), La Puglia dell'accoglienza. Profughi, rifugiati e rimpatriati nel Novecento (Bari, Italy: Progedit, 2005).

409 The classic study of the Corfu Incident is James Barros, The Corfu Incident (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965).

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expatriates and foreigners holidaying or living in Corfu during the interwar years may

have chosen to ignore recent troubles and volatile conditions, officials and observers like

Slocombe considered the island to be a contested paradise.

The traumatic experience of bombardment and occupation in the immediate aftermath of nearly a decade of war made Corfiotes weary of possible foreign aggression and subversion among minority communities. As a result, most foreign arrivals met suspicion and unease. However, anxieties about the potential display of force by Italian naval forces in Corfu also crossed into the grossly exaggerated realm. In a June 1932

report to his superior, the British Consul in Patras, British Vice-Consul Pericles

Papadakis described several tense days in Corfu following the arrival of a Yugoslav ship carrying a large monument dedicated to the Serbian war dead of the First World War.411

This monument was to be erected at the Serbian military cemetery on the tiny island of

Vido in the Bay of Corfu. Corfiotes feared reports from the Yugoslav press with the

claim that the government in Belgrade planned to negotiate with Athens to annex Vido to

the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.412 The news generated enough anxiety that villagers

mobilized to march to Corfu Town and joined fellow demonstrators to express Corfiot

concerns about a potential Yugoslav annexation. According to Papadakis, although the

article caused a stir, it was absolutely without foundation, as “the Yugoslavs take no

interest in the place, so much so, that their Consul was withdrawn some years ago and no

410 Slocombe, The Dangerous Sea, 92.

411 Pericles Papadakis (1872-1956) was the British Vice-Consul in Corfu during much of the interwar period. Papadakis was an Anglo-Greek of Corfiot extraction, born in Manchester and son of cotton merchant John P. Papadakis. In January 1935, Papadakis was made a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE). See, Supplement to the London Gazette, January 1, 1935.

412 Indeed, Corfu had deep associations to Yugoslavia beyond the connection to the Serbian experience of WWI. Corfu was the site of the Yugoslav state’s creation through the Corfu Declaration of July 1917.

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new one has been appointed since then.”413 For many Corfiotes then, the Italian attack in

1923 was no mere “incident,” rather it constituted a persistent and pervasive trauma

easily triggered by rumors of foreign ships in Corfu Town’s harbor.

The arrival of Italian tour groups reinforced this lingering concern about Italy’s

future intentions in Corfu on the part of Corfiotes. Upon the visit of one Touring Club

Italiano trip to Corfu in the spring of 1933, Greek nationalist agitators distributed anti-

Italian leaflets and organized outside Corfu Town’s Italian Consulate, where the group

had paid a visit. According to the British Vice-Consul Papadakis, the Greek nationalist

demonstrators sought to intimidate the tour group and the Italian Consul. While there was

much shouting of insults, there was no violence, as local police arrived quickly to

disperse the crowd.414 Papadakis enclosed one of the anti-Italian leaflets in a report to his

superior in Patras. Pictured below, it featured the Greek text “Long Live the Dodecanese”

against the national flag's backdrop. Despite this incident, there is no evidence that Italian

tour companies omitted Corfu from itineraries. Events like this likely factored into

motivations for some Italian shipping firms to increase their ships' frequency calling at

Greek ports, including Corfu. According to the British Vice-Consul in Samos, Italian

shipping lines by the mid-1930s wasted no opportunity to “show the flag” of Fascist Italy

in the Aegean and Ionian seas regardless of passenger demand. The arrival of additional

Italian ships in Samos and other Greek islands was “for sport” rather than commercial

activity.415

413 Report from HBM Vice-Consul Corfu, P. Papadakis to HBM Consul Patras, 1 June 1932, FO 286/1132/223, TNA.

414 Report from HBM Vice-Consul Corfu, P. Papadakis to HBM Consul Patras, 14 May, 1933, FO 286/136/310, TNA.

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Figure 4.4: Example of Anti-Italian Propaganda Leaflet in Support of Greek Nationalists in the Dodecanese, Corfu, 1933. (FO 286/136/310/54, TNA).

Beyond the unease generated from alleged external threats, Corfu presented

domestic political challenges for the Venizelos government. Corfu’s long association

with the Greek royal family also concerned anti-royalist Venizelist officials. The island

was home to one of the royal family’s favorite villas, Mon Repos, located just beyond

Corfu Town's limits.416 As a result, several royal family members sponsored well- received projects designed to benefit living conditions in several villages and Corfu

Town. Corfiotes of all communities tended to sympathize with the monarchy amid the

Venizelist-anti-Venizelist conflict. The island’s government thus had to contend with both persistent local concerns of foreign invasion as well as the population’s royalist and generally anti-Venizelist disposition.

415 Report of British Vice-Consulate in Samos to H.B.M. Legation, Athens, 2 Feburary 1935. FO 286/1132/426. TNA.

416 Mon Repos was the birthplace of the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Philip in June 1921. Shortly after the prince’s birth, the villa became the scene of a bitter and protracted dispute between the Greek royal family, the Venizelist Greek government, and the British Foreign Office. The Greek government claimed the villa as state property and desired it to be housing for refugees and later a house museum. Greek officials failed to secure control of Mon Repos due to heavy pressure from the British Foreign Office and its former royal occupant, Prince Andrew of Greece’s decision to loan the villa to a British national, Lord Louis Mountbatten. See, “Mon Repos” February 1923-January 1927. P. 1-5. FO/286/1000 no. 27, TNA.

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Corfu’s Prefect in the early 1930s was Michael Melas (1894-1950), son of the

legendary guerrilla leader Pavlos, nephew of the GNTO director, and a rising official in

the Venizelist ranks. The younger Melas reported to superiors in Athens that the island’s

“national consciousness” was “asleep.”417 Local fears of certain foreigners like those

reported by Papadakis further diminished the Greek government's confidence to defend

the island. According to the British Vice-Consul, “Every Corfiot has his nerves on end.

The more educated people consider the fate of Corfu, sooner or later sealed, especially if

Italy’s coveting of Albania is materialized.”418 Furthermore, confirmed and alleged

subversive activities linked to Italian agitators concerned both Greek and British officials.

Papadakis railed against the Italian Consul’s “less than reputable practice of granting

Italian passports to the island’s Maltese,” among other examples designed to “keep

Corfiot memories of 1923 alive.”419 Thus, interwar Corfu did not appear as a bastion of

Greek identity in the desired Venizelist mold and seemed vulnerable to Italian intrigue.

But much work was going on in Corfu to promote renewed tourist interest while

also serving Venizelist political interests and national interests in the face of potential

Italian aggression. Although tourist numbers dwindled because of WWI and the

subsequent crises of the early 1920s, Corfu’s natural beauty, existing accommodation

infrastructure, and transportation network enabled a new wave of official tourism

417 Prefect of Corfu, Confidential Report No. 70, 1 July 1930, 1930/BA107/70/1 Central Office File. Diplomatic and Historical Archives of the Hellenic Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Athens, Greece hereafter YPEX).

418 Confidential Report Pericles Papadakis to EA Walker, HM Charge d’Affaires, Athens, 11 May 1935, FO 286/1132/135, TNA.

419 Report No. 3 British Vice-Consul, Corfu to HBM Minister, Athens 4 April 1931. FO 286/1000/541 TNA.

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promotion. The GNTO project for Corfu in 1931-1933 created a space where state- organized tourism development, empire, and Mediterranean rivalry intersected.

As a state-organized tourism initiative, Corfu presented an opportunity for the

GNTO to produce a cheap and well-publicized project to stave off budgetary concerns.

Such projects would be budget-friendly in that a number of potential tourist attractions were either state property or already under GNTO management. The GNTO Corfu project was at its core, imperial in nature. Greek initiatives were also connected to the legacy of British imperial rule in nineteenth-century Corfu. GNTO officials sought to incorporate British associations into the island’s tourism industry, in part to appeal to

British tourists. An emphasis on this legacy also invited the possibility of enhanced commercial links with British firms. The desired British connections in Corfu’s tourist itinerary might also have had to do with the island’s historical legacy of Venice. Venetian imperial presence in Corfu proved more troubling to Greek officials, particularly in light of Fascist Italy’s claim to the island since 1923. Thus, the imperial aspirations of regional actors were not consigned to the past in the case of Corfu. Mediterranean rivalry stemmed from lingering Greek concerns about Fascist Italy’s imperial ambitions and potential designs on Corfu after 1923. More broadly this also involved the growing

Anglo-Italian rivalry in the Mediterranean in an area claimed as a sphere of influence by both Britain and Italy.

Britain’s ties to Corfu persisted long after the Greek flag first flew over public buildings in Corfu Town in 1864. Moreover, decades of British rule left a pervasive physical and cultural legacy across the island.420 Several buildings and monuments dating

420 Indeed, British visitors from the Victorian era through the present have marveled at the popularity of the game of cricket on the island, a sport that is entirely foreign to Greeks beyond Corfu and the Ionian Islands.

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from the British Protectorate period had already attracted historic preservation

enthusiasts' attention. A group led by Papadakis, Corfiot librarian G.M. Soldatos, and

English chaplain and scholar H.E.H. Probyn, lobbied British authorities to promote the restoration of British monuments in Corfu in conjunction with local Greek authorities.

However, by the early 1930s, this group had been unsuccessful in convincing British officials to donate any restoration funds.421 While British officials lacked interest in this

group’s restoration plans, they found a sympathetic audience in GNTO representatives.

Greek authorities desired a public display of Anglo-Greek goodwill as a measure of

defense against possible Italian subversive activities in Corfu. This GNTO project was

connected to the broader effort of rebuilding Anglo-Greek ties in the aftermath of the

volatile early 1920s.

Commissioned by Sir Thomas Maitland in 1819 to serve as the residence for the

British Lord High Commissioner of the Ionian Islands, the neoclassical Palace of St.

Michael and St. George was situated at the entrance of Corfu Town and the Venetian-era

Old Fortress in the harbor. Maitland’s palace was primarily a limestone construction with

material from Malta and was built by Maltese laborers and artisans. The palace sustained

damage from the Italian bombardment in 1923. In 1927, it housed the Museum of Sino-

Japanese Art (today the Museum of Asian Art) due to donations from former Greek

diplomat Gregorios Manos.422 Despite occasionally serving as the backdrop for private

functions and royal tours, the palace had largely fallen into disuse by the interwar period.

421 Report of H.B.M. Vice-Consul P. Papadakis to J.F.R. Vaughan-Russell, 23 April 1930. FO 286/1000/23, TNA.

422 Gregorios Manos (1850-1928) had been the Greek ambassador in Vienna and collected these pieces over his career. British Ambassador to Athens, Sir Sydney Waterlow, was not impressed upon his visit to the collection in 1935, describing the collection donated by Manos as “worthless.” FO 286/1132 no. 255

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In 1928, the Greek Ministry of Education transferred management of the palace and museum to the nascent GNTO. The palace included an elaborate throne room where the Lord High Commissioner had conducted formal ceremonies during British rule.

However, by the early 1930s, there was little to suggest that the room possessed such an elegant legacy. It sustained years of water damage and suffered damage from the 1923

Italian bombardment. Melas, Hill, and other members of the GNTO set to work on a budget-friendly plan to make use of the museum and the throne room. By late 1931, these

GNTO officials determined to add the palace and its throne room to its action plan for tourism development in Corfu. The GNTO Corfu project at the Palace of St. Michael and

St. George offered the broadest response to the "Catastrophe" through tourism envisioned by the Venizelist government.

The GNTO project to renovate the throne room of the Palace of St. Michael and

St. George found enthusiastic support among the ranks of the British Colonial Office, the

Order of St. Michael and St. George, and Greek officials. The Venizelos government

prioritized rebuilding relations with Britain in the aftermath of the defeat in Anatolia and

Greece's subsequent political disorder. Athens had recently negotiated contracts with

Britain to purchase planes and various military materiel.423 However, the government desired a public display of Anglo-Greek solidarity, particularly in a symbolic space for both countries in Corfu. The GNTO project complemented an Anglo-Greek joint naval review scheduled for October 1933 in Corfu.424 Thus, the Anglo-Greek display of

Waterlow Report to Sir John Simon, Foreign Secretary, 29 May 1935, 8. TNA. The museum remains the only dedicated collection of art from across Asia located in Greece.

423 Mogens Pelt, Tobacco, Arms, and Politics: Greece and Germany from World Crisis to World War (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, University of Cophagen, 1998), 48-49.

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solidarity would demonstrate military strength to anxious locals and potential

subversives, celebrate the island’s heritage through the GNTO throne room project, as

well as promote an initiative whereby British and Greek officials would collaborate on

creating a mutual aid fund to assist poor minority groups including those from the

Maltese and Armenian communities.425 Greek officials hoped these initiatives would

improve Venizelists' standing in staunchly anti-Venizelist Corfu from a domestic political standpoint. From a foreign policy standpoint, the Greek government desired this display of Anglo-Greek solidarity to cement ties between the two countries while projecting an image of strength to Fascist Italy.

A letter addressed to Melas from the Officers of the Order of St. Michael and St.

George dated April 5, 1933, confirmed the initial details of a permanent museum honoring the Order in the Palace of St. Michael and St. George in Corfu Town. Melas had initially written to the Order’s secretary in December 1931 with the original proposal to offer the so-called Throne Room as a repository of relics to put on public display. In the letter to Melas, the Corresponding Secretary described being “deeply gratified” at the offer to display objects related to the Order in the Throne Room.426 The Order of St.

Michael and St. George had been founded in the palace of that name in Corfu Town in

1818 with the patronage of the Prince Regent (the future British King George IV).

424 British Pathé Film, “Greece...Buys British” (October 1933) FILM ID:765.04. The reel comments on British surprise at Greek peacetime fleet strength during the review of the Anglo-Greek fleet assembled in Corfu.

425 On the development of a mutual aid fund, particularly to assist poor Maltese, see Report from Pericles Papadakis, 23 May 1933, FO 286/1146/37, TNA.

426 Letter from Sir Robert Vansittart, Permanent Under-Secretary at Foreign Office to Ambassador to Greece, Patrick Ramsay, 4 April 1932, FO 286/1132/43, TNA. The Order of St. Michael and St. George was administered by the Colonial Office in the interwar period.

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Initially created to honor the services of Ionian Greeks and Maltese to the British Empire,

the Order’s ranks opened after the Ionian Islands were ceded to Greece in 1864. Melas

and the GNTO believed that offering the use of several of the palace’s halls to the Order

for the creation of a small museum would be a cost-efficient project in uncertain financial

times. Of course, this project also possessed the added benefit of providing a public

manifestation of close Anglo-Greek ties in the face of mounting tensions with Fascist

Italy.

The GNTO received a new wave of attention within the Greek government

because of the news that the Order of St. Michael and St. George and the Colonial Office

approved of the museum project. For the GNTO, the project ultimately did come with a

favorable price tag. The Order of St Michael and St George and Colonial Office agreed to

assume the cost of renovating the throne room, as well as the preparation and

transportation of the items to be displayed in the museum. The primary expense for the

GNTO were the costs associated with the display of the items. The total bill for the

project came to an estimated £200 (£14,000, $19,000 in 2020) of which the majority was

shouldered by the Order of St. Michael and St. George as well as the Colonial Office.427

Official excitement escalated when the Colonial Office informed both the Greek

government and the GNTO that the British delegation would be led by the Commander-

in-Chief of the Royal Navy’s Mediterranean Fleet, Sir William Wordsworth Fisher.428

For their part, British authorities welcomed the GNTO decision to schedule the

427 Letter from Corresponding Secretary, Order of St. Michael and St. George to J. Russell, Colonial Office, 8 April 1932, CO 448/24/6, TNA.

428 Admiral Sir William Wordsworth Fisher (1875-1937) served as captain of a Royal Navy battleship at the 1916 Battle of Jutland and later became the Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean Fleet. See, W.M. James, Admiral Sir William Fisher (London: MacMillan, 1943).

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dedication for October 21, 1933, commemorated in Britain as Trafalgar Day. On that

October morning, British and Greek military bands led the procession of local and

visiting dignitaries through Corfu Town’s narrow winding Venetian alleyways to the

Palace of St. Michael and St. George.

In case the timing and visitors did not make these diplomatic goals of state-

sponsored tourism clear enough, Admiral Fisher put the entire initiative’s objectives into

words. To distinguished Greek and British guests within the palace’s Throne Room, he

evoked a romanticized notion of the Anglo-Greek relationship since Byron’s participation

in the Greek Revolution in the 1820s that continued through the cessation of the British-

held Ionian Islands to Greece in 1864. The admiral concluded:

I rejoice to think that this day’s ceremony will serve to perpetuate the close relations of friendship subsisting between our two countries, and I hope that this museum and the Memorials of the Order which it will enshrine may be regarded as one of the outward and visible tokens of that friendship. The motto of the Order for St. Michael and St. George is ‘Auspicium melioris sevi’ ‘token of a better age.’ May we take these words as words of happy augury for both our countries today.429

While “visible tokens” of Anglo-Greek friendship through such projects met with Greek

officials' approval, the presence of a British admiral and Royal Navy ships in Corfu

Town’s harbor were the more desirable symbol. A Greek state-organized tourism development project designed to appeal to British imperial nostalgia for Corfu produced a well-publicized image of Anglo-Greek solidarity on the volatile margins of Anglo-Greek-

Italian area of the Mediterranean.

Despite the lingering financial uncertainty and mounting political instability in

Greece, the GNTO project in Corfu reflected the scope of government ambitions for

429 Copy of Commander-in-Chief’s Speech, Corfu, 21 October 1933, CO448/39/171, TNA.

238 tourism development. As an economic response to the “Catastrophe,” the GNTO project captured the desire to rebuild what was once a flourishing tourism industry in Corfu before WWI. Moreover, the project's budget-friendly nature, which saw British organizations and institutions cover most of the expenses, reflected the reality that Greece remained mired in a financial crisis that threatened the very existence of organizations like the GNTO. As a response to social issues in Greece, the project suggested state interest in engaging with disaffected populations, albeit perhaps not always in a constructive manner, as evidenced by the introduction of the Idionymon legislation.

Politically, from both an internal and external standpoint, the GNTO throne room project enabled the government to project its authority in Corfu to domestic and foreign rivals, even though they did not have enough financial or political muscle actually to do it on their own.

Figure 4.5: Throne Room Dedication, Corfu, October 21, 1933. The Times, October 23, 1933. (CO 447/128/9, TNA).

The GNTO campaign faced multiple obstacles from the early 1930s. Most concerning for those invested in the organization’s success were issues of a political or financial nature. Politically, Venizelos came under renewed attack from anti-Venizelists

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within Greece and among the Greek diaspora in the United States for his government’s

handling of tourism.

As early as April 1929, the AHEPA (American Hellenic Educational and

Progressive Association) appealed to Venizelos to reconsider Salmon’s appointment to such a prominent position.430 The petitioners led by AHEPA President Booras J. Harris

and Nikos Kassavetis, a Greek American tourist entrepreneur, expressed doubts about

Salmon’s fitness to hold the position. They opened this initial petition with the words,

“we members of the AHEPA do not understand the decision of this government to

appoint Mr. Salmon to the position of manager of the Hellenic Information Bureau.”

Although initially neutral in tone, the petition continues by describing Salmon as “little-

known,” and the government’s decision as “misguided.”431 According to the petitioners,

the most glaring criticism was the fact that Salmon was not himself of Greek descent.

Despite his diverse professional career involving Greece, Salmon also had no direct

experience in the tourism industry. Greek American entrepreneurs, on the surface, argued

that job experience was more important than experiences of party loyalty in the Venizelos

government.

Here Salmon encountered the eventual demonization by at least one segment of

Greek society that has befallen most philhellenes with the notable exception of Byron.

What is striking about the criticism faced by Salmon is the contradictory nature of the

430 The AHEPA had been founded in Atlanta, GA in 1922 following threats made against Greek immigrants by the Ku Klux Klan and several anti-immigrant associations. It soon emerged as the primary social and educational organization of the Greek American community in the United States. The official history of the organization is George J. Leber, The History of the Order of AHEPA (The American Hellenic Educational Progressive Association) 1922-1972 (Washington, DC: The Order of AHEPA, 1972).

431 Petition from the AHEPA to E. Venizelos on the subject of the Hellenic Tourist Information Bureau, 14 April 1929. EL VEN 072-32.

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charges directed towards the American. As mentioned in the AHEPA petition, Salmon

was a “little-known foreigner” who should have been removed from his post in

Washington in favor of a native Greek. Yet, Salmon had been praised by Greek American

organizations for his refugee relief aid in the early 1920s and even received the Order of

the Savior in 1923 from Greek King George II. The actual motivation for the attack on

Salmon by anti-Venizelist Greek Americans in the AHEPA was revealed in the way in

which the petitioners addressed Venizelos. According to the members of the AHEPA, by

first appointing and then retaining a foreigner like Salmon as an official representative of

the country’s tourism industry in the United States, Venizelos had confirmed his

“xenomania” (slavishness) to the Great Powers.432 Thus, for the petitioners, rather than

aim to free Greece of its external dependence on foreign creditors and influence, the

Venizelos government was merely ceding even more of the country’s assets to foreign

interests.

Economic challenges augmented the bitterly divisive political moment for

Venizelos. Galvanized anti-Venizelists utilized economic issues and expanded their

challenges to the Venizelos government into the realm of tourism development. This

political challenge brought Salmon’s job as director of the Hellenic Information Bureau

in Washington under threat. Even more damaging for the Greek tourism industry, the

budgets of offices like the Hellenic Information Bureau came under threat due to

dramatic budget cuts.433

432 Petition from the AHEPA Chapter of Grand Rapids, Michigan to E. Venizelos on the subject of Mr. Salmon’s position as Director of the Hellenic Information Bureau. EL VEN 184-72.

433 Salmon’s career never recovered following his removal in 1932. After a failed attempt to edit a Greek American newspaper, by early 1934 Salmon was financially bankrupt and had few career prospects in Athens. Marginalized because of his close associations with Venizelos and perhaps cognizant of the likelihood that his preferred political party appeared on the permanent decline to the advantage of anti-

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The financial crisis in Greece brought on by the Great Depression prompted

extensive budget cuts. By early April 1932, the GNTO budget was slashed in half, and

there were rumors that the organization could be scrapped altogether by the end of the

year. Melas received this news within days of sending Venizelos a detailed overview of

the organization’s planned activities for the coming year, including projects in Corfu like

establishing a new luxury hotel with financial backing from the Anatolian industrialist

Bodossakis.434

1932 marked the low point of the country’s interwar economic rebuild as the

Great Depression’s effects wracked the drachma's value. Specifically, Britain’s departure

from the gold standard in late 1931 produced a ripple effect that sunk Venizelist

ambitions and the Greek economy's chance to avoid another default. The Hellenic

Information Bureau in Washington and the entire GNTO nearly fell victim to widespread

budget cuts in 1932. The Treasury slashed the GNTO budget by 50% and lobbied

Venizelos to disband the office altogether. Blindsided by the recommendation to cut

GNTO funding, Melas appealed to Venizelos to allow the organization to continue,

writing, “your government after the horrific and unexpected catastrophe that fell on our

heads as a nightmare after the golden dream that you have been showing us for three

years, has cut the Tourism Grant.” Melas offered to work for no salary to save the GNTO

operating budget. Short of this, Melas offered his resignation.435 While he retained his

Venizelists, Salmon took his own life in August 1934. A brief obituary in The New York Times is one of the few reminders of this influential interwar figure’s engagement with Greece and the Greek diaspora. See, “Journalist a Suicide: B.P. Salmon Had Written from Athens for American Papers,” The New York Times, August 11, 1934, 11.

434 Corfu Grand Hotel Proposal. EL VEN 018-64.

435 Private Letter from K. Melas to E. Venizelos 4 April 1932. EL VEN 572-09.

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position for the moment, Melas’s struggle to maintain the GNTO budget in 1932

emblematized the country’s dire situation.

Financially, this meant that Greece experienced its third default and exited the

gold standard. As a result, the country experienced some of the most extensive organized

labor strikes and demonstrations to date. Furthermore, the Greek Communist Party’s

ranks swelled with resettled refugees who became disillusioned with Venizelos because

of deteriorating economic conditions and his government’s earlier rapprochement with

the Turkish Republic in 1930.436 The Greek electorate voiced displeasure with Venizelos

in the 1932 parliamentary elections. After delivering Venizelos and the Liberals a historic

victory and parliamentary majority four years earlier, traditionally reliable Venizelist

voters deserted the party in droves. 1932 proved to be a catastrophe for Venizelos and his

supporters.

After four years of political stability under Venizelos, the return to power of

conservative, royalist, and broadly anti-Venizelist forces plunged the country into another

deep crisis. Following a series of coup attempts by Venizelist and anti-Venizelist

elements, prominent royalist General Ioannis Metaxas declared a dictatorship with royal

backing in August 1936. The Metaxas regime abolished the GNTO within weeks of

assuming power. However, Metaxas did not entirely ignore the economic and political

potential of state intervention in tourism. In place of the GNTO, Theologos Nikoloudis,

one of the regime’s most senior figures, assumed the Office of Press and Tourism

directorship. Despite creating this office and its association with a central figure of the

436 On the wider political developments in 1930s Greece see, George Th. Mavrogordatos, Stillborn Republic: Social Conditions and Party Strategies, 1922-1936 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983).

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dictatorship, tourism took a secondary role to the “press” aspect for Metaxas.437 The

GNTO of the interwar years had thus ceased to exist. Yet, the bureaucrats and external

advisers associated with the GNTO remained optimistic and engaged in preparing new

tourism development projects in Greece.

4.6 Chapter Conclusion: Continuity and Rupture in Greek Tourism

By the late 1930s, with the anti-Venizelos Metaxas dictatorship entrenched in power and the onset of WWII, the cycle of external debt dependence and the accompanying economic, social, and political instability the Venizelos government and its private commercial partners struggled to overcome remained unbroken. The tourism industry deployed by the Venizelos government as part of reform efforts to “solve” these issues was in an equally sorry state. In many ways, the industry appeared to cease operations because of the Greek National Tourism Organization's dissolution shortly after

Metaxas assumed power in 1936. More pressing for the state of Greek tourism were the increasingly dried-up tourist markets as fears of conflict, and soon the outbreak of WWII squelched demand and shut down transportation networks. For all this evidence of rupture, early postwar developments signal significant continuities and legacies from the interwar period. I will conclude this chapter with three examples from the case of the

Greek nation-state.

The first such example is the nature of the Greek government’s attitude toward tourism development in the aftermath of WWII. Early postwar Greek governments were

437 The most comprehensive account of this office in the Metaxas regime is Marina Petrakis, The Metaxas Myth: Dictatorship and Propaganda in Greece (New York: I.B. Tauris, 2011); The regime did maintain some elements of the interwar GNTO. For example, the Metaxas regime sponsored an annual summer visit of a group of Greek American students funded by the state. See, Apofasi Ellinikou Kratous Gia Tin Episkepsi Kathe Kalokairi 100 Ellinopaidon Apo Tin Ameriki Me Exoda Tou Kratous. [Hellenic state decision to fund the visit every summer of 100 Hellenic persons from America] BA/B7/1937 YPEX.

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dominated by representatives of institutions like the National Bank of Greece and others

empowered or created by the interwar Venizelos government. One of these officials was

Emmanouil Tsouderos, who, as Governor of the Bank of Greece and Minister of Finance

at various moments in the interwar years, emerged as a staunch advocate for state

intervention in tourism development. As early as August 1945, then Prime Minister

Tsouderos had already lobbied the British Foreign Office for funds earmarked to rebuild

its tourism infrastructure.438 Tsouderos also prioritized the Greek National Tourism

Organization's reconstitution along the lines of the office established under the Venizelos

government in 1929.439 Early attention to tourism development on the part of Tsouderos

suggested that the Greek government would again turn to the industry as a cornerstone of

economic recovery. Such funding from London, however, was not forthcoming for two

reasons. The first was the renewed fighting in Greece's civil war between the government

and the Greek Communist Party-led Democratic Army of Greece. The other reflected a shift in Anglo-Greek relations. By 1947, it would be the United States, rather than

Britain, which assumed the mantle of Great Power patron in Greek affairs.

As evidenced by the British response to the Greek government’s request for funds, the second example is the durability of Great Power intervention in the country’s affairs. The arrival of American financial and technical support proved decisive in the

Greek Civil War's final phase, which secured the government's victory. It also marked the onset of a new type of informal imperial arrangement in Greece from that which had

438 Problems of tourism in post-war Greece. FO 371/58919: Code 19, File 10809, TNA.

439 The Tsouderos government embraced proposals from Henry Hill and his multi-volume US-government funded work, The Economy of Greece. Henry Hill, The Economy of Greece, Vol. V, Appendix IV-4. The GNTO was formally reestablished in 1950. In 2017, the GNTO and the Association of Greek Women in Tourism partnered to open the country’s first Museum of Greek Tourism in Athens. Greek Travel Pages (GTP) “Greece’s Tourism Museum Opens its Doors in Athens,” June 19, 2017.

245 existed with Britain and the International Financial Commission before WWII. On the one hand, the United States secured a foothold in Greece by establishing military installations during the Cold War. But more broadly, American economic aid and consumer empire bolstered the fragile Greek economy and rapidly accelerated the growth of tourism across the country. However, this postwar initiative was developed and managed by familiar figures with technical expertise and knowledge of the country from the interwar period, like Henry “Archie” Hill from American Express.

Finally, as discussed in Chapter 2, postwar Greece gained an asset in one of the interwar period’s popular Mediterranean tourist resorts: Rhodes. As part of the international agreements to conclude the war, Italy ceded Rhodes and the remaining

Dodecanese Islands to Greece in 1947. The integration of a readymade tourism infrastructure that had impressed thousands of tourists only a decade earlier significantly accelerated the country’s return to the postwar Mediterranean tourist map. Rhodes was of particular importance in the early 1950s when the island’s attractions were open for business at a time when many areas of Greece were still under reconstruction from the scars of both WWII and the Greek Civil War through Marshall Plan initiatives. Indeed,

American funding through the Marshall Plan revived tourism development in postwar

Greece. But as this chapter has illuminated, postwar tourism projects often rested on interwar foundations.

Conclusion At the onset of the Second World War in September 1939, the state-organized tourism industries of the Greek-speaking world had reached a breaking point.

Governments in Rhodes, Cyprus, and the Greek nation-state increasingly diverted the scarce available state resources to military preparations. Rather than promote their respective spaces as tourist destinations to an increasingly unstable international tourist market, officials instead focused on bolstering defenses and stockpiling resources in the event of attack. Many businessowners, including hoteliers and transportation firms, offered their properties, services, and other assets to war effort preparations of their respective governments in British-controlled Cyprus, Italian-controlled Rhodes, and

Greece. However, it was not just the reconfiguration of businesses to government management that signaled a mounting crisis for the tourism industry. By the time WWII engulfed the Greek-speaking world in 1940, both private and state tourism offices like the

Greek National Tourism Organization were dissolved or faced bankruptcy. Furthermore, private commercial actors curtailed business activities or had their assets requisitioned by the state. Interwar tourist pleasurescapes— from the restored medieval walled city and modern beachfront luxury hotels of Italian colonial Rhodes to the quaint fishing villages and narrow winding alleyways of the Greek island of Corfu— appeared lost in the whirlwind that was the initial military preparations and later devastation of WWII.

By the war's end in 1945, this was no longer the case. Physical destruction from bombardments and in some instances intense ground combat certainly posed an obstacle to actors engaged in tourism across these spaces during the late 1940s. Yet, even as the conflict waged, networks of civil servants and entrepreneurs that had been engaged in

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interwar tourism exchanged views and developed plans for the reconstruction of tourism

industries in the Greek-speaking world. By the early postwar years, economic

reconstruction efforts included funding earmarked for tourism across the Greek-speaking world, from Marshall Plan projects in Greece (including Rhodes after 1947) to a British colonial Ten-Year Development Plan for Cyprus. The tourism industries that these networks of state and private actors lobbied for in postwar reconstruction plans adhered

in many ways to the desired path of the interwar iterations discussed here.

This dissertation has analyzed the growing presence of the state in tourism

development across the eastern Mediterranean in the interwar period and how networks

of state officials and private commercial actors shared a pursuit of profit and political

capital in the creation of tourist pleasurescapes. These same networks continued, though

the states that helped developed them disappeared. They are some of the lead protagonists

that prepared the foundations of the region’s post-1945 tourism boom. The case study approach to three spaces where state-organized tourism industries took shape in the interwar period -- British colonial Cyprus, Italian colonial Rhodes, and the Greek nation- state -- has offered a reconsideration on the evolution of modern Mediterranean tourism.

Recentering the history of eastern Mediterranean tourism collectively in the interwar reveals a shared foundation of postwar tourism growth that predates the

Marshall Plan origin story usually told. As Chapter 1 demonstrated, state-organized tourism efforts in the interwar Greek-speaking world emerged from several sources: from the recalibration of the Mediterranean as an imperial space following WWI to the legacy of the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, evolution of consumer tastes, and innovations in

248 mobility and private tourism firms. Together, these elements informed the increasing intervention on the part of the state in tourism development.

In all three cases investigated the interwar years witnessed considerable change in various facets of tourism that gave the region the modern tourist face with which we are familiar today. Governments between the wars emphasized establishing and funding local or national tourism organizations and related international bodies to attract tourists.

Under Italian rule, Rhodes Town transformed from a place where medieval gates still locked each night on the eve of WWI as they had for nearly four hundred years to a tourist destination where pleasure seekers enjoyed the latest in luxury accommodation and amenities as they danced the "Charleston" until the wee hours of the morning.

Similar changes occurred to varying degrees in Cyprus, Greece, and across much of the

Mediterranean in the interwar period. At the same time, commercial actors like travel and transport firms expanded the scope of their business activities while harnessing new technologies to cater to the needs of leisure travelers. Thus, the tourism industries shaped by interwar state initiatives contained evidence of dramatic modernization. Yet, at the same time, tourist destinations were celebrated for their “timeless” rural landscapes and recently restored historical cityscapes like that of Rhodes Town.

Above all, what these three case studies shared was a common thread of transnational networks. Ambitious capitalists both local and foreign, journalists, novelists, poets, pleasure cruise tourists, civil servants, archaeologists, soldiers, and politicians crossed borders, exchanged ideas, goods, and services, advised governments officially or unofficially, and invested in projects ranging from luxury hotels to historic preservation and promotional materials. While openly competing against the other

249 regional tourism industries, within the Greek speaking-world and other areas of the

Mediterranean, these interwar transnational networks engaged in tourism development in a shared pursuit of profit, national, and/or imperial interests.

From colonial Rhodes and Cyprus to the Greek nation-state, interwar tourism projects were also imperial in nature. State policies in designated tourist areas revealed official efforts to control populations in order to integrate them against and beyond imperial predecessors and imperial competitors. The initiation or expansion of state involvement in tourism development generated new social hierarchies, particularly among colonial populations or minority communities in the case of the Greek nation- state. At the same time, the imperial nature of these tourism projects contributed to

Mediterranean rivalries. As evidenced in each of the three case studies, government officials expressed concern and suspicion of certain minority groups deemed subversive and supportive of a rival foreign power.

In other instances, tourist-oriented officials were exasperated by how to handle visits of tourists from rival powers, particularly as diplomatic relations deteriorated in the mid-1930s. Rivalry -- particularly between Britain and Italy – emblematized

Mediterranean relations for many contemporary observers of the interwar period. Titles published by popular authors and journalists of the period, including British journalists

George Slocombe and George Martelli, cast the Mediterranean of the 1930s as a paradox of pleasure, at once an ideal place for a holiday and yet a dangerous site of imperial rivalries that would ultimately threaten the peace of Europe and perhaps the world.

Martelli and others in related publications fused descriptions of Mediterranean tourist attractions with political commentary that focused on Fascist Italy’s mounting

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belligerence.440 The warnings and fears of war these authors expressed in the 1930s were

eventually validated in 1939. However, WWII began not in the tourist resorts of the

Mediterranean but in Poland, the product of Nazi German imperial ambitions rather than

those of Fascist Italy or its Mediterranean rivals.

But not all was a story of continuity from the interwar to the postwar. Political

shifts, especially, have overshadowed the interwar realities discussed in this dissertation.

Of the three case studies analyzed in this dissertation, Rhodes experienced the most

dramatic immediate postwar shift. Within the Greek-speaking world, Rhodes and the

Dodecanese Islands were the only territories to change hands through the treaties that settled WWII. This meant that Rhodes and the Dodecanese, once considered “jewels, gems, and pearls” of Fascist Italy’s Mediterranean Empire were joined to the Greek nation-state in 1947 after a two-year period of provisional British military occupation.

For Greek nationalists in Rhodes and the Dodecanese, this meant the objective of enosis

(union) with Greece was finally to be realized. Despite transformations brought about by

WWII in Rhodes, one constant was that the island’s tourism infrastructure developed during the interwar period remained at the center of economic activity. Yet, this point coupled with the island’s diplomatic fate after WWII fueled debates about who built modern Rhodes, its increasingly profitable tourism industry, and thus the claim to derive revenue from this sector.

Not everyone was happy that Rhodes was joined to Greece and they used the island’s tourist boom to resist too much absorption into the Greek nation-state. Despite the cooperation of Italian officials in facilitating the transition to Greek rule in Rhodes in

440 See George Slocombe, The Dangerous Sea: The Mediterranean and its Future (London: Hutchinson, 1936); George Martelli, Whose Sea? A Mediterranean Journey (London: Chatto & Windus, 1938).

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1946-1947, some Italians protested the loss of the island through postwar agreements.

Rather than overtly projecting a claim to retain Rhodes based on Italian imperial associations as in the interwar period, these Italian officials chose to dwell on the extensive infrastructure projects from the 1920s and early 1930s. In a 1946 publication titled Italy in Rhodes, Italian proponents of retaining the island offered an eleventh-hour appeal in three languages (Italian, English, and French).441 Like an official guidebook to

Rhodes published by the Italian state in the interwar years, this book’s trilingual composition suggested that the intended audience was international. Interwar guidebooks had enticed foreign visitors to spend money in the “Italian” Mediterranean tourist paradise that was 1930s Rhodes. Through the publication of Italy in Rhodes, these Italian officials urged the international community to reject the treaty’s terms to cede Rhodes to

Greece so a battered Italian economy could retain the fruits of considerable state investment in the island’s tourism infrastructure.

While there was little chance such an effort would succeed in reversing international agreements about the island’s future, the book sheds light on continuity in the tourism infrastructure in the case of postwar Rhodes. Motivated by anger and fear of losing Rhodes as well as other imperial possessions in the aftermath of WWII the formal rupture of Italian rule was imminent. However, Italy in Rhodes was about continuities, though not quite those intended by the Italian authors. The book was designed to showcase urban development initiatives including the New Town buildings and Grand

Hotel of the Roses, as well as the restored monuments that the authors associated with

Italy. Italian efforts to definitively brand these buildings and monuments as uniquely

441 L'Italia a Rodi = Italy in Rhodes = L'Italie a Rhodes (Roma: Istituto poligrafico dello stato, 1946).

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‘Italian’ not only failed to reverse the postwar settlement on Rhodes, but also invited a

response from the incoming Greek authorities. Once again, empires clashed within the

walls of the city of the Knights. But this time rupture narratives from the interwar were in

the driver’s seat.

Greek officials essentially promoted the inverse of interwar Italian imperial

hierarchies in Rhodes. Rather than focus on the exploits of Imperial Rome or the Knights

of St. John, the official Greek narrative stressed the legacies of classical Greece and

Byzantium in Rhodes. As discussed in Chapter 2, whereas the Italians concentrated on

their historical association with the Knights of St. John and the Order’s role in building

Rhodes Town, the postwar Greek narrative emphasized the earlier presence of the

Byzantines. At the same time, the postwar depiction stressed the role of local Greek

Orthodox Greek-speaking Rhodians in the construction of the walled city including the legendary Avenue of the Knights.442 Imperial symbols remained a fixture of the tourist

landscape in the aftermath of Italian rule, just different ones.

The erasure of Rhodes’ interwar development is perhaps most apparent in an

episode of the popular history television series, Michaní tou Chrónou (Time Machine),

which offered a succinct account of Rhodes’ postcolonial development and the island’s

tourism industry from the Greek perspective:

442 For an analysis of postwar Greek efforts to shape a nationalist narrative about the walled city see, Georgios Karatzas, “Representing Historical Narratives in the Urban Space: The Making of the Heritage Space of Rhodes (1912-1950),” The Mediated City Conference, Woodbury University, (London: April 2014).

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Before the war [WWII] the Italians had envisioned the island as a tourist destination for wealthy foreign travelers, which resulted in the construction of emblematic buildings including the famous Grand Hotel of the Roses. The big jump in the island’s tourism fortunes however, began when Rhodes joined Greece in 1947. Through a series of government measures, the island became a flagship of tourism for Greece. A tourism school was established in Rhodes Town and loans were given for new hotel construction. The island enjoyed tax exemptions on many products. Charter flights brought hundreds of tourists from Scandinavia, and the American dollar became the second currency because the US Navy stationed thousands of sailors on the island.443

This emphasis on the role of Greek state intervention and the influence of the United

States as the source of the “big jump” in the island’s tourism infrastructure after WWII has little space for interwar initiatives undertaken by the Italians. The island's diverse imperial legacies, particularly evident within the walled city – a UNESCO World

Cultural Heritage from 1983 – has been reified and repurposed into a timeless

Mediterranean cosmopolitanism designed to attract international tourists by both the

Italian colonial regime and the subsequent Greek administration. Nowhere is the importance of the Italian lira evident, everywhere it is the American dollar that explains the boom.

In the case of Cyprus, the British experience during WWII prompted an about- face from the repressive and expansive “emergency decree” measures implemented after the 1931 Greek nationalist revolt. Early postwar colonial administrations favored a

“hearts and minds” development campaign to demonstrate both to Cypriots and foreign observers that colonial rule was worth maintaining in the aftermath of the war. Tourism infrastructure figured prominently in the 1946 Ten-Year Development Plan, with civil

443 “To touristikó thávma tis Ródou” (The Tourist Miracle of Rhodes) Michaní tou Chrónou (Time Machine) June 11, 2018 https:// https://archive.ert.gr/77482/ File 0000077482. Accessed June 25, 2019.

254 servants such as those tracked in Chapter 3 serving as consultants.444 Historian Robert

Holland has studied Britain’s quietly pervasive legacy in Cyprus, the intensity of the connection between the two countries, and the distinctive Anglo-Cypriot character that emerged from a shared experience of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. While throngs of British holidaymakers visit Cyprus each summer, the Anglo-Cypriot connection is most evident in the Republic’s administrative makeup. As Holland has noted, five of the first six Presidents of the Republic of Cyprus were London-trained lawyers. The same can be said of the island’s tourism infrastructure before 2018 when the

President of Cyprus announced the creation of a Deputy Ministry of Tourism.445 The

Cyprus Tourism Organization (CTO), which came into existence with the island’s independence in 1960, was built on the foundation forged by the interactions between civil servants and Cypriot capitalists in the 1930s. In the establishment of a formal ministry for tourism, the Cypriot government signaled the increasing presence of the state in the industry.446

444 For his dedication to the preservation of antiquities and tourism promotion of the Crown Colony of Cyprus, Theo Mogabgab was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1947. Mogabgab died in Famagusta in 1965, with further plans of promoting his beloved city as a tourist destination left unfinished. G.M. Pietroni’s linguistic skills and career as a civil servant earned him a place in the formal transition of the island to independence during the late 1950s. In this capacity, he translated the text of the constitution of the nascent Republic of Cyprus into several languages in 1960. He lived in Limassol until he death in 1967. The projects included the construction of more roads and modern luxury hotels outside the Troodos resorts. The most famous example of these is the former Ledra Palace Hotel in Nicosia. Between 1963 and June 2019 the former luxury hotel housed UN peacekeeping forces. For a recent and detailed analysis of the 1946 plan, see George Kazamias and Maria Panayiotou, “‘An Ideal to be Attained:’ The 1946 Ten Year Development Plan for Cyprus,” in Cyprus from Colonialism to the Present: Essays in Honor of Robert Holland edited by Anastasia Yiangou and Antigone Heraclidou (New York: Routledge, 2018), 54-67.

445 Robert Holland, Blue-Water Empire: The British in the Mediterranean since 1800 (London: Allen Lane, 2012), 347; The Deputy Ministry of Tourism, Republic of Cyprus. https://www.visitcyprus.com/index.php/en/about-us Accessed June 18, 2020.

446 See Epaminondas Epaminonda, “The Hybrid Model of Mediterranean Capitalism with British Influences: The Case of Cyprus” Management & Organizational History, Vol. 11, No. 3 (2016), 318-343.

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Despite longstanding Anglo-Cypriot postcolonial ties, the Troodos hill station

resorts discussed in Chapter 3 have experienced a more contentious postwar trajectory.

The hotels witnessed a transition in clientele after the end of British rule in 1960.

Whereas before 1960 Troodos hotels relied on the business of colonial officials and

foreign visitors, after independence these spaces became the preserve of wealthy

Cypriots. This development came at the gradual expense of foreign tourists who

increasingly opted for beachfront hotels rather than mountain retreats. Furthermore, the

conflict between Greek and Turkish nationalists in Cyprus between the 1960s and early

1970s shattered the security of the Troodos resorts, as some areas became involved in the

fighting. A United Nations-brokered ceasefire that resulted in the island’s partition in

1974 and peacekeeping mission that remains in Cyprus could not restore the sense of

security and appeal of luxury hotels in the Troodos. Most of these still predominately

family-run hotels, constructed with encouragement and aid of the British colonial

administration in the 1930s, have since sunk into decline and even closure in some

instances. Today, the popular interwar-era luxury hotels in the Troodos have been

eclipsed by both the scars of postcolonial ethno-nationalist conflict and the allure of all-

inclusive Club Med-style beachfront resorts and casinos.447 Even within the tranquil

foothills of the Troodos Mountains, the dark legacies of decolonization, conflict, and

partition remain visible.

447 Sadly, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the trend of sales and closures of Troodos hotels. It was an issue that had gained attention in Cyprus several years before the pandemic’s outbreak. Both governments in Cyprus today on either side of the U.N. Green Line foster tourism development, though this is largely concentrated along the coastline. See, Jean Christou, “Mountain Resorts in Deep Recession,” The Cyprus Mail, March 4, 2018.

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In Cyprus subsequent postwar crises ruptured what had been major components

of the island’s tourism infrastructure from the interwar period. The postwar Greek state

on the other hand, utilized interwar experiences and developments in tourism as a central

component of economic reconstruction efforts. Indeed, as the country reeled from the

horrors and hardships of Axis occupation and lurched towards the bloody climax of an

intermittent civil war that began during WWII, Greek authorities and observers both

within and outside of Greece prepared the groundwork for the tourism industry’s

reconstruction. Few worked as tirelessly in mapping out the future of a postwar Greek

tourism industry than Henry Hill.

Hill's career in many ways epitomized the transformation of state private

partnerships in modern Mediterranean tourism. Having escaped Greece on the eve of

Axis occupation, Hill spent the war years in New York on leave from American Express

to work for the U.S. government. His efforts to study economic conditions in Greece

coupled with his intimate knowledge of the country’s interwar infrastructure and

leadership produced a multi-volume work titled The Economy of Greece.448 By the

summer of 1945, Hill served as a special assistant to the U.S. Ambassador to Greece and

was tasked with reconnecting his extensive network of Greek political and financial elites

including members of the National Bank of Greece and Ministry of Finance.449 Hill’s

448 Published with funds from the US government and the Greek War Relief Committee, the massive almost encyclopedic study of Greece served as a roadmap to postwar economic initiatives. Henry Hill, The Economy of Greece, 5 Volumes (New York: Greek War Relief Committee, 1944). His central observation and recommendation called for “an autonomous tourist organization subsidized by the Greek government, something along the lines of the organization that did such excellent work between 1929 and 1936.” While he was certainly partial to the Greek National Tourism Organization that he had helped design and bring into existence in the late 1920s, Hill’s point resonated with Greek officials and foreign investors alike. Ibid., Vol. V, Appendix IV-4.

449 By the early 1950s, the newly founded Organization of Financing Economic Development (OXOA) started to provide credit whereas a few state loans were also advanced through the National Bank of Greece

257 efforts to engage with both American and Greek officials contributed to the economic reconstruction of postwar Greece as well as the role of the state in the country’s tourism industry.450

Hill’s interwar and early postwar experience in Greek state-organized tourism development initiatives marks the onset of state investment in this sector of the economy in response to economic, social, and political crisis. Over the period between 1925-1995, the number of foreign visitors rose from a mere 29,000 to 10.7 million, at an average annual growth excepting the war years of 13%.451 State intervention coupled with injections of foreign capital shaped evolving conditions of the tourism industry since the interwar period. As discussed in the previous chapter, Greek governments have embraced state intervention in tourism as a response to the country’s economic woes from the Great

Depression to the Eurozone debt crisis.452

to select tourism enterprises. At the same time, the Center for Tourist Studies was founded to develop an educational agenda for tourism studies in Greece. For an analysis of these postwar tourism developments see, Margarita Dritsas, "The Advent of the Tourist Industry in Greece during the Twentieth Century," in Deindustrialization and Reindustrialization in 20th Century Europe, edited by Franco Amatori, G. Jones, and A. Colli, (Milano: Franco Angeli, 1998), 181-201; Although Hill would remain a valuable source of information for postwar planners in Greece, he returned to American Express in 1949 to manage the company’s most important office in Europe, Paris, see Hatch, American Express, 254.

450 Indeed, the Greek state that had increasingly played an active part in economic matters during the interwar years continued to expand its role in the country’s economic organization in the decades following WWII. For example, as recently as 1990, the Greek state controlled nearly 75% of all business assets in the country while tightly regulating various sectors of the economy. Moreover, Greek government expenditures in 2009 accounted for 50% of GDP. See, Epaminonda, “The hybrid model of Mediterranean capitalism with British influences,” 326-327.

451 Within 25 years from the last year of that data in 2019, annual tourist arrivals would exceed 34 million. The National Bank of Greece, Ta Prota Penenta Chronia thw Trapezes tes Ellados (The First Fifty Years of the National Bank of Greece) (Athens: The National Bank of Greece, 1978), 467; Kostis, History’s Spoiled Children, 232.

452 S. Kousounis, "Tourismós, i elpída gia kratiká ésoda" (“Tourism, the hope for state revenue”) Kathimerini, April 1, 2013.

258

The importance of state investment and state initiatives showcased in this dissertation still is of utmost importance. Despite the array of pressing challenges in the twenty-first century, the COVID-19 pandemic generated the most sustained and severe obstacle to global tourism since the end of WWII. The terrorist attacks of September 11,

2001 resulted in a sudden and dramatic reduction in international travel, but this downturn was mostly temporary for popular tourist destinations.453 The global financial crisis that began in 2008 also dealt a severe blow to leisure travel, with severe damage sustained by the Greek and Cypriot tourism industries. However, a recent report from the

United Nations World Tourism Organization found that the global tourism industry's losses in the first half of 2020 were five times greater than amid the financial crisis in

2009. Southern Mediterranean Europe, including all three destinations discussed in this dissertation, collectively witnessed a 72% decline in international tourist arrivals between

January and June 2020. Greece, Cyprus, and other Mediterranean countries thus experienced the second-largest drop in tourist arrivals of any region in the world behind the pandemic's original epicenter in Northeast Asia.454 The varied and uneven landscape

453 There are of course, notable exceptions like Egypt. The country’s foreign tourist arrivals plummeted in the crucial winter season during 2001-2002. Tourist arrivals steadily recovered and reached a peak in 2010 at 14.7 million. Following the Arab Spring uprising and subsequent political turmoil between 2011 and 2013, tourist numbers again declined. Mired in the negative perception from this instability and several terrorist attacks, by 2016, tourist arrivals hit a low point of just 5.4 million, a number even lower than that of 2000. Bolstered by increasing numbers of Russian tourists, international tourist arrivals recovered by 2019 to reach 13.6 million visitors. The forecast for 2020 before the COVID-19 pandemic was estimated at 15 million tourist arrivals. Despite massive financial losses endured because of the pandemic, the country’s tourism ministry remains optimistic that tourist arrivals will revive with the planned opening of the long- delayed Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza at some point in 2021. For more on the ebbs and flows of tourism and its role in Egyptian politics and society, see Tarek Osman, Egypt on the Brink: From Nasser to the Muslim Brotherhood (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013), 267-269; Yolande Knell, “Egypt desperate to revive coronavirus-hit tourism industry” BBC News, July 14, 2020. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-53402983 Accessed October 22, 2020.

454 United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), UNWTO World Tourism Barometer, Vol. 18, Issue 5 (August/September 2020), 3; Forecasts for the tourism industry's cumulative losses for the year are even bleaker. Such reports and the pandemic's impact have renewed focus on the role of national tourism industries, particularly in Greece and Cyprus.

259

of travel restrictions, lockdowns, quarantine requirements impacting non-essential travel

has only increased the state’s footprint in tourism industries. Thus, just as had been the

case in the 1930s, state bureaucracies are the only hope to make these Mediterranean

settings the money makers populations hoped they would be.455

Interwar state-organized Mediterranean tourism development projects reveal the

scale and scope of state intervention over the twentieth century. Events like the global

pandemic remind us that the security and profitability of tourism industries in periods of

uncertainty and volatility largely rests upon the state’s relative stability and relationship

with reliable partners from the private sector. As this dissertation has illuminated, the

relative financial success of tourism development projects in the interwar period were not

always dependent upon the level of the state’s financial investment. As the case of

interwar Rhodes illustrated in Chapter 2, the island’s tourism business flourished in

moments where the state sought closer ties with private commercial actors from the

island and abroad. When state policies shifted towards belligerence and intolerance in

Fascist Italy, the island’s tourism infrastructure declined until after WWII and initiated its

transition to joining the Greek nation-state. In this instance, no amount of state

investment in the island’s tourism industry could preserve Italian imperial rule in the face

of political instability and descent into war.

455 Greek and Cypriot tourism officials have garnered international attention for their innovative and ambitious strategies to mitigate the pandemic's short-term effects on their respective tourism industries and economies. This includes considerable investment in virtual tourism. The Greek National Tourism Organization launched an interactive website in April 2020 to showcase Greek tourist attractions virtually and keep the country’s tourism brand afloat “until we can all be together in person again.” The Cypriot government went as far as to offer to cover all expenses for tourists requiring treatment for COVID-19 if they contracted the virus while on holiday in Cyprus. See, https://www.greecefromhome.com/ Accessed May 7, 2020; Coronavirus: Cyprus to pay holiday costs of infected tourists” BBC News, 28 May 2020. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52818749 Accessed October 14, 2020.

260

As discussed in Chapter 1, many interwar tourism promoters and proponents of tourism development emphasized the industry’s potential role in fostering goodwill between states and peoples in the aftermath of WWI. Economists like F.W. Ogilvie hailed the twin benefits of taking a holiday for tourists and host nations alike. For

Ogilvie, leisure travel bolstered the state’s financial balance of trade, a critical development in the volatile economic period of the 1930s. No less important to the

British economist, though, was the instructive nature of tourism and its role specifically in fostering understanding and respect between different people, and by extension, their governments. As he said in July 1935, mere months before Europe became embroiled in a series of diplomatic crises preceding the outbreak of WWII, “a world which travels is likely to be a world at peace.”456 At present, state officials engaged in tourism and private commercial actors articulate tourism’s benefits for states, private business, and tourists in much the same vein as Ogilvie did in the 1930s. What challenges like the global pandemic and sporadic armed conflicts should remind us is that leisure travel remains as vulnerable to sudden rupture as it was in much of Europe in 1939 and the Mediterranean by the summer of 1940. Tourism cannot secure peace, but prosperity through tourism is definitely dependent on it.

456 F.W. Ogilvie, “Trade and the Tourist. A paying traffic. Benefits given,” The Times, July 12, 1935, 5.

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