Une longue tradition historique insiste sur la défiance des entrepreneurs méditerranéens vis-à-vis des immobilisations de capitaux – hormis dans la terre, le bâti ou les emprunts d’Etat – et, a contrario, sur leur prédilection marquée pour les activités commerciales favorisant une rotation rapide du capital et la multiplicité des opportunités de profits. Dans les conclusions du colloque Banque et investissement en Méditerranée à l’époque contemporaine (Courdurié, Temime, 1985, p. 209-211), l’historien Maurice Lévy-Leboyer opposait ainsi le « goût pour l’engagement capitaliste » des investisseurs du Nord à l’attitude rentière du Méditerranéen, « à son refus du placement à risque », sous-entendu, dans des immobilisations industrielles de longue durée au rendement incertain et modeste. Les représentations de ce type ont longtemps été confortées par la perception même du fait industriel autour du bassin méditerranéen, souvent relié aux seuls investissements des milieux économiques de l’Europe du Nord-Ouest, sauf à être réduit à un processus de développement régional, bien délimité dans l’espace et dans le temps, et avant tout fondé sur l’emploi d’une main-d’œuvre abondante et bon marché. Lorsqu’il existe, l’investissement industriel méditerranéen est généralement considéré comme peu innovant, très localisé et de courte durée, comme si « le caractère hautement spéculatif du milieu » et ses fragilités politiques ne permettaient pas un engagement de grande ampleur et un suivi à long terme.  

Dans cette toile de fond toujours très prégnante, la diaspora grecque tient une place particulière. Très implantée à Constantinople, Odessa, Livourne, Marseille, Londres et Alexandrie, prépondérante dans les échanges entre l’Empire ottoman et l’Europe occidentale depuis la fin du XVIIIe siècle (Grenet, 2016), elle apparaît comme l’archétype de l’entrepreneuriat transméditerranéen du XIXe siècle (Dertilis, 1995). Les études sociologiques ont ainsi rappelé quelques-unes des catégorisations externes employées pour définir l’homo oeconomicus graecus de Marseille (Calopodis, 2010, 15 et 238). Les entrepreneurs grecs sont régulièrement dépeints – et d’une certaine manière enfermés – sous les traits du négociant. On évoque, à leur sujet, les « firmes helléniques », les « maisons grecques », une « aristocratie commerciale » ou des « chefs de maisons de commerce puissants et riches » ayant réussi à constituer des fortunes par leur opportunisme, la hardiesse de leurs conceptions commerciales ou par des moyens plus ou moins recommandables. Les entrepreneurs grecs de Marseille sont aussi réputés pour leur engagement dans la préservation de leur identité culturelle et pour leur cohésion. Ils donnent le sentiment de former un groupe professionnel et confessionnel uni, avec des liens de parenté et d’amitié qui finissent par constituer des réseaux dans l’ensemble du bassin méditerranéen et, parfois même, au-delà (Mandilara, 1998). Bref, un milieu d’envergure internationale, fortuné, soudé par des liens familiaux et des relations personnelles fortes, partiellement responsable aussi – du fait même de sa dominante commerciale et de ses capacités d’investissement – du faible développement industriel du bassin méditerranéen.

Notre proposition vise à analyser le rôle des Grecs dans l’industrialisation du bassin méditerranéen à partir des archives inédites des Zarifi et Zafiropulo, deux des plus grandes familles grecques de Marseille au tournant des XIXe et XXe siècles. Tout en restant attachées aux activités commerciales et bancaires, ces familles investissent dans l’industrie en Ukraine, dans l’Empire ottoman, en Espagne, en  Grèce et surtout à Marseille où elles financent l’essor de plusieurs branches innovantes comme le pétrole et l’électricité. Elles possèdent aussi des actifs industriels dans le reste de la France, en Russie du Nord, en Grande-Bretagne, aux Etats-Unis et en Afrique du Sud. Le parcours entrepreneurial des Zarifi et des Zafiropulo permet donc d’enrichir les interprétations du processus d’industrialisation du bassin méditerranéen. Entre l’image d’une industrialisation méditerranéenne très dépendante des stratégies d’investissement des groupes industriels de l’Europe du Nord-Ouest, et celle d’une industrialisation portée par des investisseurs méditerranéens mais limitée dans un espace/temps bien précis et cantonnées aux industries de consommation courante, les investissements des Zarifi et des Zafiropulo illustrent une troisième voie : celle des entrepreneurs méditerranéens impliqués dans l’industrialisation de plusieurs espaces méditerranéens et capables de se projeter au-delà pour participer à l’industrialisation - y compris dans l'industrie lourde - du reste de l’Europe.  

Mots clés : Grecs, Marseille, Méditerranée, deuxième industrialisation, Zarifi, Zafiropulo 

La construction du chemin de fer du Pirée à la frontière gréco-ottomane, achevée par la Société de Constructions des Batignolles 40 and après sa concession initiale, nous permet d’examiner les rapports de l’Etat avec l’initiative privée dans le domaine des travaux publics. Cette communication se propose de retracer l’histoire de cette ligne ferroviaire en tant que produit du croisement des différentes logiques –la logique économique/entrepreneuriale et la logique politique/géostratégique- des années 1870 à la veille de la Première Guerre Mondiale.

Après avoir examiné de près, au cours d’un voyage en 1845, le lac de Copaïs, le polytechnicien et ingénieur du corps de mines François-Clément Sauvage (1814-1872) dresse un projet de desséchement complet. En 1867 le lac est concédé par le gouvernement grec de l’époque à des français, qui n’arrivent pas à réaliser les travaux nécessaires et perdent la concession en 1873. Un peu plus tard, en 1876, l’ingénieur du corps des ponts et chaussées Scipion-François Revol (1840-), sollicité par un groupe de banquiers grecs, se rend en Grèce afin d’étudier les plans de Sauvage et arrêter un projet définitif. En 1879, c’est à l’ingénieur civil des Mines A. Moulle, accompagné par l’ancien officier de la marine Louis-Auguste Jehenne (1828-1894), de se diriger à son tour vers le pays et de proposer un nouveau projet. L’année suivante, un nouveau contrat de concessions est signé entre l’Etat Grec et Ioannis Vouros. Durant la même année, la Compagnie Française pour le Desséchement et l’Exploitation du Lac Copais, une société anonyme au capital de 15 millions, est formée à Paris pour exploiter la nouvelle concession. La compagnie fait alors appel à l’expertise de plusieurs ingénieurs du corps des ponts et chaussées. Ainsi Ferdinard Taratte (1835-1882) visite les lieux et rédige l’avant-projet (définitif), son camarade de corps Hilarion Pascal (né en 1815) assure des fonctions de conseil à Paris, Eugène-Hyacinthe Larousse (1832-1896), un polytechnicien ayant travaillé au canal de Suez, est chargé du service de la direction, alors que les travaux sur place seront dirigés par un autre ingénieur des ponts et chaussées, Léon-Aunet Pochet (1841-1910), qui s’installe à cet effet à Thèbes. Alors que les opérations sur le terrain avaient été confiées initialement à des entrepreneurs français et grecs, suite à plusieurs conflits la Compagnie commence à exécuter tous les travaux directement à partir de l’année 1884. Mais en 1886 elle cède ses droits et obligations à la Société anglaise Lake Copaïs Company, qui se charge d’achever le projet de desséchement et d’assurer l’exploitation, et ce jusqu’en 1954, du lac.

C’est aux projets et travaux de desséchement du lac Copaïs durant la période « française » (1845-1886) qu’est consacrée cette communication, qui insistera en particulier sur les rapports cultivés entre l’Etat français de l’époque, pourvoyeur d’expertise technique notamment par l’intermédiaire de ses corps d’ingénieurs et d’autres techniciens-fonctionnaires, et des compagnies privées en quête de profits à l’intérieur du pourtour méditerranéen et qui se chargent du financement des études et des travaux.

Dès 1869 et l’ouverture à la navigation du canal de Suez, l’intégration de Salonique dans l’économie internationale s’intensifie. Elle se retrouve en concurrence avec Marseille et Brindisi revendiquant le rôle de porte d’entrée et de sortie du continent sur le grand axe de transport menant vers l’Egypte, tout en restant la principale voie d’entrée de l’arrière pays balkanique. Dans l’essor économique de la ville, les capitaux français tiennent un rôle central par leur implication aux infrastructures portuaires (Société anonyme ottomane d’Édmond Bartissol) et urbaines (Société ottomane du gaz de Salonique, filiale de la Compagnie du gaz pour la France et l’étranger), aux lignes maritimes (notamment Messageries Maritimes), à la liaison ferroviaire (Réné Baudouy: Compagnie Jonction Salonique-Constantinople), et à la banque (Banque ottomane, Banque de Salonique) et l’industrie (Société anonyme ottomane, industrielle et commerciale de familles Allatini, Morpurgo et Misrachi, avec la participation de la Société Marseillaise de Crédit). Quel est le rapport de forces entre ces différents acteurs économiques français? Quelles sont les considérations françaises pour la mise en place d'une ligne de jonction entre le réseau balkanique et celui de la monarchie hellène? Quel est l’emprise de la concurrence étrangère sur la place de Salonique? Quels sont les relations de la compagnie française du port avec les intérêts allemands, présents sur la quasi-totalité des compagnies ferroviaires du terrain balkanique, et notamment avec la Deutsche Bank qui contrôle la majorité des actions de la Société du chemin de fer ottoman de Salonique à Monastir et la station ferroviaire de la ville? Nous essayerons d’esquisser des réponses en confrontant ce contexte à l’articulation banque, industrie, diplomatie, triptyque impérialiste décrit par Jacques Thobie. 

The banking system is a core element to capitalist development, closely operating to state or formed by it. In order to contribute to the identification of economic traits in finance and the development of local institutions, we are referring to the creation of banks and their impact to the transformation and modernization of the Greek regional economy in the interwar period. We focus on four banking houses created in specific historic juncture, initiated by various founding groups or state organizations and focusing on different kinds of banking services, potential customers and investors. 
The end of WWI inaugurated a period of high optimism and capital flow. The banking world, in accordance with the general euphoria in the social and economic spheres, implemented an active financing policy with long and short term credits for commerce. Besides shipowners, various groups proceed to carve for themselves a position among existing banking houses, in an effort to emancipate themselves from the existing banking scheme. From 1916 to 1929, the country witnessed the creation of a number of seventeen new banking houses, seven of which in Athens and Piraeus. 
Piraeus Bank of Commerce, Industry & Shipping was established in 1916. Owing to the accumulation of capital and high risks at sea, enterprising shipowners chose to branch out in the banking sector. In the push to gain greater regional autonomy the city of Piraeus seek to acquire its own banking house, based on the belief that an ounce of decentralization and freedom of decision was essential to induce progress. During the following decades, the Bank’s portfolio was reduced and the Bank went through several changes of status in the post-war period. 
Bank of Chios (establ. 1919) was a project undertaken by a merchant bankers group. For its entire life cycle it was managed by the Paspati brothers, active members of a commercial family of the island of Chios, with strong business interests abroad. By 1930, a regional branch was operating in Chios. The Bank was actively involved in the financing sector in the Levant, but was severely affected in the interwar period due to slowing trade growth and capital flow restrictions. Receiving the final blow during the German occupation of the country and the subsequent plundering of resources, the Bank was forced to shut down its operations and was placed in liquidation in the early post-war years.   
Starting from July 1929 the results of the international financial crisis began to gradually manifest in the Greek context. A proposed plan to set up a special bank to coordinate the management of the Greek agricultural sector was received enthusiastically and voted as state law, in the mid of an economy plagued by soaring prices of agricultural products combined with failing crops, suffering by what was described as the worst blight to hit the country in the mid-war period. As a result, the Agricultural Bank of Greece was created as a public benefit organization (to remain one up to 1991). Initial capital was advanced by the Greek State in the form of agricultural credit local institutions that merged with the nascent Bank, as well as credit offered by the National Bank of Greece that also provided bank personnel. As the principal partner of the State in the implementation of policies related to the rural sector, a plethora of initiatives were placed in the Bank’s care. Granting of short-term loans for farmers as well as to cooperative movements to promote of public benefit works, introducing and disseminating of innovative farming methods, encouraging of personal savings habits in the rural population, agricultural insurance and reinsurance schemes, facilitating the collection, storage, processing and marketing of agricultural products, encouraging of cottage industry allowing rural families to secure an extra income and supporting the fishing industry and the forestry business are listed amongst its undertaken tasks. 
Another kind of initiative in the banking sector constitutes the establishment of the Army Pension Fund Bank, in 1937, following a mandatory law by the Metaxas administration. Its predecessor was the Greek Army Officers’ Widow and Orphanage Fund established in 1853 with the statutory aim to grant financial and material aid, also through loans, to the Greek Army Officers and their families, deriving funds from the army officers’ salaries. It was in the ‘60s when it was renamed to Geniki Bank of Greece to survive for several decades.

The Greek banking system was devastated during the Axis occupation, as the hyperinflation nullified the pre-war deposits and loans. The Bank of Greece was initially the only source of official funding. The Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan allowed the American Mission in Greece (AMAG) and the Central Loan Committee (CLC) to finance the Greek economy with long-term credit. 
During the first years of the 1950s, a series of changes in the Greek economy, such as the implementation of a tight fiscal program, the decline in the volume of new loans, the saturation of the market due to the satisfaction of the immediate post-war consumer needs, the partial liberalization of imports, and the misconception of a portion of the funded companies, that the post war loans were a form of post war compensation from the Greek State, led to significant delays in their repayment. The devaluation of the drachma in April 1953 exacerbated the problem, as it doubled the amount businesses were required to repay.
In 1954 the new financial institution EDFO (OXOA) was founded which undertook all the loan claims of CLC and AMAG. Despite the repeated loan modifications applied by the formers and continued by EDFO, the situation did not appear to improve, as many companies, due to their debts, suspended or ceased their operations, resulting in a seasonal or permanent, dismissal of thousands of industrial workers.
 The paper will focus on the legislative and administrative attempts by the post war governments, to manage these Greek Non Performing Loans, known as ""frozen credits"", as part of the general direction of greater state control over the Greek economy. There’ll be an introduction of these legislative measures, a presentation of the main industrial sectors affected, and an attempt will be made to detect the possible effects that the implementation of this legislation had on the viability of the companies that were subject to these provisions, during the immediate following years of the 1960s

It is the aim of the paper to give a synopsis of the development of the bill of exchange based cashless payment system in the Mediterranean area from the 18th century to World War I. In the scope of the entire European cashless payment system, the Mediterranean exchange markets played a very special role. In the Middle Ages the Mediterranean was the core area of the system with the most dense interconnections between the various exchange markets. After the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople the Eastern part of the Mediterranean broke away, and in the 16th century the core area shifted from the Mediterranean to North Western Europe, where Amsterdam and later London became world financial centres. While the Western part of the Mediterranean played a peripheral role in the international cashless payment system in the Early Modern era, the Eastern part was newly connected to the Western European exchange markets from the late 17th and early 18th centuries onwards by Dutch, French and English merchant-bankers. This is the base for the development, taking place in the 19th century. Leghorn, Marseille and Genoa, later on Naples and Trieste became the most important exchange markets in the Western Mediterranean, Smyrna, Constantinople, later on Patras or Athens respectively, Alexandria and Beirut in its Eastern part, supplemented by Odessa in the Black Sea area. The major and increasing importance of the Mediterranean exchange markets in the 19th century was a result of (1) the growing sea trade from the 1830s onwards (after the elimination of the Barbary’s pirates), (2) the increasing grain trade from Southern Russia to Italy, (3) the financial engagement of the Western powers in the Ottoman Empire, and (4) the enormous relevance of the sea route through the Suez Canal after 1869. So, it can be shown that the cashless payment system in the Mediterranean underwent a very successful development in the last decades of the 19th and the first of the 20th centuries, until World War I interrupted this trend. – The contribution will show (1) the development of the exchange markets in the Mediterranean from the late 17th century onwards, (2) prepare a comparison between the trade flows and the cashless payments, and (3) discuss the re-increasing growth of the importance of the Mediterranean exchange markets within the entire European cashless payment system. 

Avec la société Hilarion Roux & Cie et la Société des usines métallurgiques du Laurium, la Compagnie française des mines du Laurium fait partie du groupe restreint des grandes sociétés qui ont lancé, en Grèce, l’activité minière et métallurgique des non-ferreux à grande échelle durant le dernier tiers du XIXe siècle. Fondée à Paris en septembre 1875 sur la base d’une société anonyme dotée d’un fonds social de 13 500 000 francs, elle comptait pour principaux actionnaires Jean-Baptiste Serpieri, Léonard Mercati et Christos Antonopoulo, tous trois détenteurs de concessions minières et de puits d’extraction dans la région du Laurium. La Compagnie française des mines du Laurium bénéficiait de l’appui de capitaux français, dont ceux d’Hilarion Roux, président du conseil d’administration de l’entreprise entre 1881 et 1883. Son objet initial était l’exploitation de mines de plomb et de zinc de la région du Laurium et tout ce qui se rapportait au commerce de leurs produits et à leur traitement métallurgique. 

La Compagnie française des mines du Laurium a eu un impact important sur l’économie et la société grecques, notamment durant ses premières décennies d’activités. Plus grosse entreprise industrielle et minière du pays avec autour de 1 400 ouvriers dès 1880, elle a alimenté des transferts de techniques étrangères, initié des mobilités ouvrières et d’ingénieurs, principalement depuis la France, l’Espagne et l’Italie et participé à la formation d’une main-d’œuvre locale dans le secteur de la minéro-métallurgie. Elle s’est également montrée pionnière en termes d’infrastructures, avec des chemins de fer et des installations portuaires modernes. 

L’objectif de cette communication est d’analyser dans le détail les premières années d’activités de cette entreprise, entre sa création en 1875 et le retrait d’un de ses principaux animateurs, Hilarion Roux, à la suite de sa faillite personnelle en 1883. L’étude s’appuie sur le dépouillement de sources manuscrites et imprimées variées, notamment les rapports consulaires de la période, des articles de revues techniques, les annuaires d’écoles d’ingénieurs et surtout sur la documentation publiée par la société (procès-verbaux des assemblées générales et rapports des conseils d’administration).

Ainsi que l’a montré la recherche historique, les entreprises minières ont déployé une activité importante dans la Méditerranée au cours du xix^e et du xx^e siècle. La présente étude, dans le cadre de la recherche sur les entreprises françaises en Grèce, entreprend une première approche de l’activité et des principaux objectifs des entreprises minières représentant les intérêts français en Grèce après 1875, à savoir durant la période de développement du capitalisme industriel. Parallèlement, l’analyse tente d’établir une périodisation de cette activité entrepreneuriale.

Diverses sources éparses, manuscrites et imprimées, ont été utilisées à l’élaboration de la présente communication, notamment les rapports consulaires de la période, des articles de revues techniques, les annuaires des écoles d’ingénieurs, la documentation publiée par les sociétés minières (procès-verbaux des assemblées générales et rapports des conseils d’administration).

L’entreprise française Pechiney, producteur historique d’aluminium, s’est installée en Grèce en au début des années 1960, durant une période d’internationalisation de ses activités. Pechiney développa des projets industriels hors de ses terres traditionnelles, les Alpes et les Pyrénées françaises notamment, où elle possédait de nombreuses usines de production d’aluminium ; ces dernières étaient devenues obsolètes avec les évolutions économiques et techniques de l’après-guerre (hausse de la demande en métal et, en conséquence, des besoins en matières premières, développement des transports, nouvelles sources d’approvisionnement en énergie, etc.) En Grèce, alors que le pays préparait la signature d’un traité d’association avec la CEE favorisant les échanges et les relations économiques, Pechiney a porté son choix sur le golfe de Corinthe et la région rurale d’Antikyra – Distomo, aux pieds du mont Parnasse. Pechiney a non seulement créé ex nihilo une usine intégrée (alumine-aluminium) et les équipements nécessaires à son fonctionnement (port), mais également une ville et de nombreuses infrastructures. Durant les premières décennies d’Aluminium de Grèce (ADG), les ingénieurs et techniciens français étaient très présents, faisant fonctionner l’usine avec des ouvriers, eux, majoritairement grecs. Progressivement, ADG s’est hellénisée : des techniciens grecs ont été formés pour faire fonctionner une série d’électrolyse pour produire de l’aluminium ou mettre en œuvre « l’usine Bayer » pour fabriquer l’alumine, deux activités nouvelles en Grèce au moment de l’arrivée de Pechiney. En 2003, Pechiney est absorbée lors d’une OPA par l’entreprise canadienne Alcan, qui revend une partie de ses activités industrielles européennes. En 2005, ADG, acquise par le groupe Mytilineos, passe sous pavillon grec.
De l’omniprésence de Pechiney et de son personnel français, à la disparition de l’entreprise mère et l’hellénisation d’ADG en moins de cinquante ans, quelles sont les traces visibles de cette présence, encore dans toutes les mémoires locales ? L’organisation de l’espace est la première de ces marques : l’usine elle-même, la ville – cité ouvrière d’Aspra Spitia construite sur le modèle social en vigueur chez Pechiney, hiérarchisée comme l’était celle de Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne en Savoie (habitat ouvrier collectif, villas individuelles des ingénieurs) – et ses infrastructures : terrains de football – « le premier en herbe de Grèce » – et de tennis, piscine, hôpital, routes nouvelles, etc. Dans les pratiques culturelles ensuite, et les enquêtes de terrain le démontrent, l’influence de la communauté française fut importante. On la retrouve toujours, même atténuée, dans les années 2010 : pratiques sportives (développement de ce qui était une identité Pechiney, le ski, dans le Parnasse), linguistiques (apprentissage de la langue française à l’école, utilisation du français localement), sociales (mélanges de populations, mobilités). Enfin, et c’est l’un des aspects les plus contestés de cette « présence française », Pechiney a utilisé le même système de déversement en mer des boues rouges issues du traitement de la bauxite pour produire l’alumine. La canalisation de plusieurs kilomètres qui a rejeté jusqu’en 2011 ces résidus dans le Golfe de Corinthe a été construite sur le modèle de celle de l’usine Pechiney de Gardanne, aujourd’hui Alteo. Mais si Alteo déverse toujours des eaux de traitement de la bauxite en Méditerranée, ce n’est plus le cas d’ADG.

Our basic objective in this paper is to examine the impact of the agricultural co-operatives on the development of capitalist relations in the Greek rural space. The last decades of the nineteenth century, when the first organisations of co-operative character had been established, will be the starting point of our study. The voting of the Law on co-operatives in December 1914 represents a decisive turn of our analysis. Over the subsequent decades agricultural co-operatives were established throughout the country. They exercised a number of different, and often divergent, functions. They acted as intermediaries between the banking institutions and the producers for the granting of the cultivation loans, contributed to the joint purchase of seeds, machinery and equipment, and set-up their own co-operative facilities aiming at the improvement of production. On the other hand, their action as exponents of peasant protest, agents of mobilisation and levers of politicisation constituted a distinct aspect of their operation. 
The extent to which their presence was related with the formation of a monetary rural economy will be the first basic axis of our study. Within this context, we will examine their relations with the banking institutions – the National Bank of Greece until 1929 and the Agricultural Bank of Greece thereafter – and the functions they developed through the financing. The contribution of the co-operatives to the endurance and resilience of the landless native and refugee cultivators who had been settled in the rural space after the land reform of 1923 represents an additional pillar of our analysis. Moreover, we will delve into the role of the co-operatives as vehicles of the technical transformation of the agriculture. To what extent these forms of collective organisation led to the introduction of technological innovations and new crops and the improvement of the production process? This paper will also look into how the co-operative presence was connected with a more intense commercialisation of the agricultural production. Trying to examine the interconnection between the co-operative action and the development of the capitalist relations, we will not be confined to the presentation of the evolution of the agricultural co-operatives from below. We will also explore the initiatives taken by the Greek governments, for the encouragement of the creation of co-operatives, their control and the promotion of specific functions trying, at the same time, to register the associative policy in the context of the wider agricultural policy.
Keywords: agricultural co-operatives, capitalism, rural space, Greece, early twentieth century.

Introduction and diffusion of technology are central processes to the evolution and transformation of capitalist societies. The social barriers to technological “innovation” and mainly the social resistance to it, is another crucial factor we need to take into account to understand the ways of modernization in the countries of the periphery. Mechanization and technological change, intensify the anxiety of some occupations that will become obsolete, thus leading to the formation of anti–machinery alliances and putting the superiority of new technology into question.
Social resistance to mechanization seems to be commonplace in the Eastern Mediterranean of the early 20th century. Greece experienced massive demonstrations of cigarette rollers, coachmen, and boatmen. Their collective action affected the formation of state policy both in the short run and in the long run. From 1919 onwards, cigarette rollers and many other “traditional trades” petitioned and received compensation for their replacement by the machines.
In this presentation, I claim that the implementation of a severance policy was not a self-evident way of managing technological change and appeasing the consequences of «technological unemployment». It seems to be an idiom of capitalism in Greece, rather than the general rule (both in the Eastern Mediterranean and the core countries of the capitalist World-system). After an analysis of the theoretical and historical underpinnings of “compensation policy”, I will focus on its moral connotations and their proximity to a system of “Moral Economy”. Such connotations can be traced back to the preceding collective action of various trades which led to the adoption of compensation policies, as well as in the formation of a tradition for severance, which legitimized the social demand for counterweights to technological unemployment. Secondly, I will examine the impact that these policies had on mechanization and technological change and how they affected the process of creative destruction in Interwar Greece. Indeed, during the Interwar economic crisis, when the compensation policy was abandoned, new incidents of resistance to technological change emerged. The third topic of discussion is that of the severance policies’ benefit for the public treasury. Money was usually collected in the form of additional taxes on byproducts of technology and was always redistributed sparingly, thus leaving a surplus. 

This paper is a product of the ongoing research programme “the Cost of Living in Colonial Cyprus 1878-1960”. In this we have collected all available information on the prices of goods and services from official publications as well as other sources (eg newspaper reports).
Our paper attempts to move between three dimensions: the level of prices, the level of public sector salaries and the purchasing power these salaries commanded in the period chosen. The level of purchasing power attained indicates the standard of living of the public servants of the Colonial Administration of Cyprus, in the social setting of the colony. We navigate between the prices of goods in Cyprus and the salaries of the public sector employees and map out a scenario of possible expenses during the early part of the colonial period of Cyprus, when such information is relatively scarce.
To flesh-out our example and confront our analysis, we have chosen four colonial public service employees: one a high-ranking British person (as a rule, most of the top public servants during this period were British) and three ‘natives’ of different salary levels, from different communities. We look at the chosen subjects and map out their progress in salary and superimpose this data on the cost of living.
This approach is innovative on two levels. A) we attempt to engage with the disposable income of this group, in the absence of a calculated GDP for colonial Cyprus for the period 1880-1920[1] and B) we try to verify our findings using data based on the earnings of four real life instances of public employees. Could the divide between the remuneration of the public service employees and the wider public, go some way in explaining the popularity of the ENOSIS movement among the Greeks in the colony of Cyprus?

[1] Apostolides (PhD 2010) has calculated the GDP for 1920-1938

The origins of the Great Recession fit very well with the hypothesis of financial instability of capitalism anticipated by authors such as Keynes, Minsky, or Kindleberger. However, the contraction turned into a long-lasting depression in the economies of Mediterranean capitalism which adopted the euro. Comparative analysis suggests that, in fact, European monetary unification constituted the main cause for the significant intensity and duration of the slump in the latter economies because it encouraged their over-indebtedness before 2007 and blocked national demand-management afterward.

The Great Depression of the 1930s was a worldwide phenomenon. Between 1929 and 1932, GDP, price levels, employment and international trade dropped around the world. Taking the international market for olive oil as a case study, this paper analyses export performance for a large sample of olive oil producers during the 1930s. It shows that the impact of the crisis and the subsequent recovery widely diverged across countries. Finally, it explores the potential determinants of export performance. The international olive oil market analysis in the 1930s is a relevant issue. Olive oil was (and still is) a major export item in the Mediterranean basin. For example, by the late 1920s, it had become the third-largest export commodity in Spain and Tunisia, and it ranked fourth in total Greek exports.

Barcelona, the capital of Catalonia, as an early follower of the British Industrial Revolution in the Mediterranean, experienced a significant demographic growth during the period 1832-1935, when both the first and second industrial revolutions took place in this corner of the Mediterranean. Industrialization required an increasing migration flow which arrived at a city with a booming labour market. Between the late 19th century and 1930s, the female immigration flow was greater than the masculine one. However, the growth of labour demand in the city and the arrival of the immigrant population tend to be presented as a process starring exclusively by men. Thus, the urbanization of the city and the construction of large Public Works, such as the Metro or the celebration of the universal exhibitions of 1898 and 1925, are seen as the most relevant elements of the economic development of the city.
Even when referring to the deployment of certain services, such as telephony, this development is not related to the increase in female labour. However, it’s known that the adoption of the new systems of work and technological modernization during the 1920s, were based on the feminization of some jobs in the Telephone Company. Similarly, industrial diversification is not seen as connected to the increase in female hiring. But, for example, in small metal manufactures, the diversification of production, the introduction of new technologies and the restructuring of production systems were also accompanied by feminization processes. 
The paper will analyse the evolution of the position of men and women in Barcelona’s industrial labour market. In particular, it will be focused on changes in the structure of the workforce and the evolution of wages in the different industrial branches, having into account sex and age. For this purpose, all available macro statistical sources about the number and wages of the working-class population (Worker Censuses, National Population Census, and Statistics of wages) will be used. The latter sources have not been yet examined as deep as possible.

The role of the shadow economy in shaping the formation of real wages and household budgets is key to understanding the labour market, business performance and household budgets in past and present Spain (Pickhardt and Sardà, 2015). In this paper, we study ratios of wages paid to factory and home workers by the textile and footwear industry during the last stage of industrialization in Spain, 1955-1973. This constitutes an exceptional case study to analyse the impact of the shadow economy on the formation of wages and household budgets. These management practices consisted of non-tax declared payments made in exchange for work done at home, usually by married women out of the ambit of any labour regulations. To study this, we combine two main data sources. Firstly, unique data on total payments disaggregated by workplace (factory and home), sector and province between 1963 and 1973. Secondly, we use the Spanish household survey of 1973 to study the impact on living standards. Our preliminary results suggest that these forms of payment comprised a substantial share of total real wages and household budgets - notwithstanding considerable differences by subsector and province - and were key to firm management strategies and levels of household expenditure.

The People’s Republic of China has been gaining increasing global relevance in terms of outward foreign direct investments (OFDI) in the last decade, particularly since the global economic setback of 2008. There is an ongoing debate on the need for a new model to explain the international expansion of Chinese enterprises. The aim of this research is to establish a comprehensive vision of the dynamism of Chinese multinationals’ acquisitions in the European Automotive Industry. This phenomenon is not only relevant because of its impact on regional industrial organization and therefore on economic policy reactions, but also for its effects on technological transfers in the long run. This paper attempts to answer how and why the European automobile industry attracts Chinese OFDI. Furthermore, it proposes to study the Spanish and Italian automotive industries in comparative terms. Are these countries rivals or partners in attracting Chinese investment in the auto sector? Our initial hypothesis is that Chinese multinationals invest in consolidated European automotive companies in order to pursue specific assets (technology, expertise and design capacity) that allow them to supply the lack of competitiveness in the international market, and thereby continue moving up in the global value chain. To test this hypothesis, I use data from MOFCOM and secondary resources. Preliminary results confirm the hypothesis and show that Western Europe stands out as one of the favorite host destinations due to its accumulation of expertise and innovation capacity. Furthermore, the Italian industry has captured more Chinese OFDI than the Spanish industry even though the latter seems to have consolidated a better position in the world ranking as an automobile producer.

We study the history of human capital in the regions of Ottoman Anatolia (today’s Turkey) and Greece during the 19th and 20th century. We investigate literacy and numeracy skills of the population from a comparative perspective both on country and provincial level. The history of border areas and multi-cultural regions, where many ethnicities and religions co-existed, are particularly fascinating. Furthermore, we test the effect of geographic, demographic and socio-economic factors such as agricultural specialisation (i.e. cash crops, livestock keeping), trade and industry development as well as urbanization and migration on human capital formation and gender equality. We retrieve quantitative and qualitative information from population censuses, agricultural statistical yearbooks and administrative reports of Greece and Turkey. We use the age heaping method to estimate regional numeracy levels (ABCC index) and we identify correlations between the numeracy levels and gender (in)equality as well as other potential explanatory variables. We find that in both cases gender gap is highly correlated with numeracy. In Greece, gender gap fades out around 1910, while in Turkey it does not disappear until the birth decade of the 1950s. The underinvestment of the Ottoman Empire into secular education mattered, and it affected regions that left the Empire. However, there are several other influential factors beyond cultural and religious dichotomies: Within the Ottoman Imperial core, trading and industrial centres developed more advanced human capital and higher gender equality. In the case of the new-born Greek state, we observe high regional differentiation in literacy and numeracy levels as well as important shifts over time. Among the Greek regions, cultural traditions initiated by contact with Venetian and British settlers and merchants mattered. Moreover, the maritime economies of Cyclades and Ionian islands exhibited early numerical human capital and increasing gender equality. In frequent absence of males (working often for the shipping industry or outmigrating), the household and labour activity of women was stimulated. Finally, the mass influx of refugees from Asia Minor into Greece during the first half of the 20th century as well as urbanisation had a controversial effect on human capital development.
Keywords: numeracy, gender equality, Turkey, Greece, 19th and 20th century

During the second half of the nineteenth century, the port of La Ciotat, situated between Marseille and Toulon, became one of the most important modern shipbuilding centres in Mediterranean. In 1851, the French shipping company of Messageries Nationales (later Compagnie des Messageries Maritimes) purchased the shipyards of La Ciotat, focusing on the construction of a competitive fleet. Even though the history of the company has been thoroughly researched, the evolution and growth of the shipyards of the company remains understudied. 
The aim of this paper is to present the development of the industrial shipbuilding center of Messageries Maritimes in La Ciotat through three main aspects. In a first step, the shipbuilding production and its fluctuations will be analysed. Secondly, we will focus on the workforce employed in the shipyards, its formation and fluctuations. Thirdly, the role of the Company in formulation a new industrial character in the town will be examined.
This analysis will be focused mainly on the archival material of the Compagnie de Messageries Maritimes. Firstly, the records of workforce entries in the shipyards of Messageries Maritimes, taken from the archive of the Musée Ciotaden in La Ciotat. Secondly, the proceedings and the annual reports of the company taken from the Chambre de Commerce et d’Industrie Marseille-Provence (CCIMP). This paper may contribute to an analysis of the shipbuilding activity of a industrial naval construction centre and of the strategies of one of the main navigation companies in the Mediterranean in the second half of the nineteenth century.

It is well known that the great development of the Greek-owned merchant fleet took place since the second half of the 18th century and culminated in the period of the Napoleonic Wars and the Continental Blockade. During the years 1780-1812 the fleet of Aegean Islands such as Spetses, Psara and especially of Hydra emerged as one of the most dynamic carriers of the eastern Mediterranean trade. 
It is estimated that during the last decade before the Greek Revolution of 1821 Hydra’s fleet constituted the 12% of the Greek-owned fleet, a percentage that might have been higher. On the eve of the Greek Revolution Hydra had a remarkable merchant fleet of about 120 ships, which were owned by a group of powerful ship-owners who were, also, the ruling heads of the island.
However, this announcement, based on documents from the Local Archives of Hydra and the post-revolutionary Notarial Archive of the island, seeks to highlight aspects of the Hydriot ship-owners economic strategies the decades following the end of the Revolution, especially the years 1832-1862. In particular, I will try to answer the question if the ship-owning families attempted a ""turn"" from their merchant and shipping activities into land-acquisition and appropriation and if they became involved in long-term land investments. Also, if they tried to combine land exploitation with an effort to give a ‘new’ boost to their shipping by supplying their ships with agricultural commodities destined for the internal and external trade.
In conclusion, I will try to see how powerful Hydriot ship-owning families attempted to suit the new conditions formed after the Greek Revolution and whether they were transformed to agents of rural and, in general, economic transformation in the Greek state during the ""long 19th century"".

The global expansion of capitalism in the decades around the turn of twentieth century included growing investment in all kinds of enterprises that required technical expertise. Railways were built crossing the territories of several countries, canals opened up new routes for ships by separating isthmuses and continents, and irrigation systems enabled agricultural production on previously barren soil. The companies that carried out these works were often linked to particular “national interests”. At the same time, however, joint ventures abounded and the staff employed to carry out these project was often a multiethnic and multinational one. In this world, engineers carved out for themselves an expanding field of professional opportunities. They did so as independent specialists selling their services, as private and public employees, or as business owners and partners. While some engineers accessed this global arena via nation-based companies or public institutions, others were required to mobilize their transnational networks and provide internationally recognizable credentials, such as a degree from an engineering school in a country that scored well on the international hierarchy of prestige. 

This paper focuses on the careers of the graduates from the prestigious Parisian engineering school, École centrale des arts et manufactures, and their involvement in businesses that were active in the Eastern Mediterranean. These men were of different nationalities and ethno-religious origins and included local-born individuals as well. Their life trajectories varied greatly. Reconstructing their biographies allows one to determine the differential importance of the diverse factors that marked their professional activities, such as the prestige attached to their nationality, the ethno-religious networks they were able to mobilize, the links of friendship and expertise created during one’s studies at the École centrale, and, not least, the crucial but complex connections between the school, its graduates and specific French companies operating abroad. The main primary sources for this paper are school registers, documents produced by alumni associations and the professional press.

In February 1910, the Ministry of Public Works in Istanbul invited proposals from service providers for the electrification of the city, and tenders were filed by eight foreign companies. The Ministry of Public Works evaluated the proposals and considered the Austrian-Hungarian Société Anonyme d’Électricité Ganz de Budapest as the most suitable bidder. After negotiating the offer, the concession for the electrification of the European side of Istanbul and the operation of trams with electric power was granted to the Ganz Company for 50 years, and a contract was signed on November 1, 1910, between the Ministry of Public Works and the company’s representatives. A few months later, in 1911, the Ganz Company established the Société Anonyme Ottomane d’Électricité (Ottoman Electricity Company), which was subject to Ottoman law and regulations. Just after its foundation, the Electricity Company became a component of the ""Istanbul Consortium"" (Union Ottoman Société d'Entreprises Electriques à Constantinople), established in September 1911. The purpose of this multinational trust, composed of German, French, Belgian, and Swiss companies and financial institutions, was to operate tramways and underground railways, as well as gas and electricity lighting in the capital city of the Ottoman Empire. 

 This paper focuses on the barely studied tender processes of the city's electrification and the foundation and operation of an urban scale power plant in Silahtarağa in late Ottoman Istanbul. It examines how the organization of the power plant and the provision of electricity triggered a range of encounters, dialogues, and conflicts among the Ottoman and foreign bureaucrats, city authorities, international investors, and engineers. I argue that infrastructural companies in Istanbul as transnational agents of global capitalism coordinated their efforts in ways that shaped not only the infrastructural systems but the city as a whole. I rely primarily on the records of the Directorate of State Archives in Turkey (Istanbul and Ankara), the French Diplomatic Archives in Nantes, and the archives of SOFINA in Brussels, a holding company created by Belgian and German banks in 1898.

What is the relation between market relations and philanthropy in the Eastern Mediterranean in the late Ottoman Empire? In this presentation I seek to answer this question by examining the role of capitalism in the projects of recovery and reconstruction of the violence stricken Armenian communities in the late Ottoman Empire. By focusing on the Armenian community’s philanthropic activities among the women in Cilicia region after the Massacres in 1909, I will examine the different ways in which Armenian women and children in post-violence communities were incorporated into the regional and global markets of textile making and carpet-weaving as a vulnerable, organizationally weak, and cost-efficient work-force. Based on the examination of Armenian, Ottoman Turkish and visual sources, I will demonstrative that during the process various economic actors—local merchant-entrepreneurs and multi-national companies—proposed efficient market relations as the only solution for recovery in the disaster-hit regions. This proposed recovery indeed proposed a different labor regime and capitalist ethics which included a greater exploitation of women and children’s labor, firm rules of efficiency and condemnation of refusal to work. Thus, I will argue that the often-blurring boundaries between philanthropy and exploitative market relations have been one of the many ways in which capitalism made its inroads into the Eastern Mediterranean in the late Ottoman Empire and the female labor was at the center of this phenomenon. I also argue that the Adana case also illustrates the transnational character of this broader phenomenon which transcended religious, ethnic and social boundaries. Similar practices and discourses were proposed and promoted by various community leaders, business elite, Protestants missionaries and state officials throughout the Eastern Mediterranean from Adana to Corfu.

My research aims to provide insights into the economic and political foundations of the single-party rule that prevailed in the Ottoman Empire during the First World War. To this end, I deal with the character of relations among the Ottoman War Ministry, the Ministry of Finance, and the National Credit Bank. I will trace the origins of this relationship to the early years of the Second Constitutional Period (1908-1918), and discuss how a power bloc was gradually formed by the Ottoman military and financial circles involved in the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP). Gradually dominating the key institutions of the Ottoman economy in the war years, this military-financial bloc pursued a politics of capital accumulation that promoted the rise of a class of Muslim-Turkish businessmen through the selective allocation of certain economic privileges. My main argument is that this bloc became an important locus of power on which the CUP rule was built. In addition to its importance for the overall structure of the Unionist single-party regime, I aim to examine this power bloc’s international financial and economic ties.  In my paper, I will also refer to the rise of a corporatist alternative based on a different model of capital accumulation.

According to the news published in the Journal Ruzname-i Ceride-i Havadis in 1870, a young man found fainted in Izmir, he was taken to the hospital and a letter written to his father was found in his pocket. We understand from the letter that he was a Greek from Lesbos and had arrived in Izmir short while ago. He was asking his father to sell all of their belongings and come to Izmir, since it was possible to earn more money by working less compared to the conditions in Lesbos. Researchers analyze the development of Izmir as a port-city from the 17th century onwards especially from the perspective of non-Muslims and Levantines, in other words within the context of commercial and industrial activities of an emerging bourgeoisie. This is one side of medallion, if we look at the other side, we can observe Izmir as a city of working classes: peasants tilling the land, sharecroppers, agricultural laborers; fishermen; ship crew and ship boys; workers of mines and saline; apprentices and foremen working with artisans and craftsmen; workers of workshops and factories; port laborers and porters; railroad workers; bellboys and waiters working in hotels and restaurants; home servants; officers working in local administration, commercial houses and banks… As observed from the case of young man from Lesbos, Izmir had become not only the most important exporting port in the Eastern Mediterranean in the 19th century but also a place of attraction for the laborers. Nevertheless, as opportunities to earn became more amplified, hardship in the life of working classes increased accordingly. For example, journalist Hüseyin Rıfat underlined in 1914 that in case of transferring the harbor from Gümrük to Punta, laborers inhabiting in the periphery of Izmir, in search for a few more gurush, would be forced to accept sufferance and gradual, if not sudden, killing toil in their already tiresome poor life. In this article, we will analyze economic and social dynamics of Izmir at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries from the perspective of conditions of working classes. To do this, we will use archival documents found in Turkey and in other countries (i.e. consular reports), contemporary journals and books. We will first discuss conditions of working classes through quantitative data concerning wages and life standards. Then, we will focus on the qualitative data concerning their working and life conditions. This analysis will cover two long waves of capitalism, the Great Depression of 1873-1896 and its expansionary phase that followed until 1914, of the world capitalism with which Izmir was breathing.  

The National Schism, the conflict that brought Greece in the brink of Civil War, is a very well-known and studied episode of the country’s modern history. Still, aspects of this conflict have yet to be examined. 
While the political events of this era have been examined thoroughly, little attention has been drawn to the social unrest which accompanied the political conflict. Studies that appeared in Greece in the few last decades, and especially after the fall of the Military Junta (1967-1974), came to offer some new perspectives over the subject, suggesting new concepts concerning the Schism, providing narrations that considered social and economic factors. Those narrations, pointed the fact that the first decades of the 20th century, marked a wider transformation of the Greek society and economy.
The case of Epirus is no different in that matter. While events concerning the political history of the area’s capital city of Yannena and the region of Epirus at general, are very well studied, the events concerning the difficulties that the First World War and the National Schism caused for the population, have been sidelined. 
The region of Epirus was one of the areas that suffered the most during the Schism. The defective provisioning of a region where low productivity of the agrarian sector was already a known issue, brought Epirus at the brink of famine. Even if that was avoided, the exhaustion of the population became obvious in 1918, when more than 300 people, in the city of Yannena alone, succumbed to the Spanish flu, the epidemic that swept Europe after the Great War. 
The shortages of goods and extremely high prices provoked public unrest that was translated into forms of collective action, which at some cases resembled Food Riots. In this project, the aim is a further examination of those actions, not just by reconstructing the events, but also by putting them into context. This context is the transition from the Ottoman era into that of the modern Greek State with all the contradictions that this procedure provoked. The main issue that concerned the agrarian society of Epirus, at least since the 19th century, was that of land: the formation of large land properties (Çiflik) during the late Ottoman period and mainly, the conditions under which this was possible, created a perpetual unrest in the countryside. The Balkan Wars (1912-1913) and the integration of Epirus into the Greek State grew the expectations of the mainly Cristian sharecroppers, while at the same time widened the gap between them and the land-owners. The swift intervention of the Greek authorities prevented changes in the property status quo, creating even more resentment in the ranks of the peasants. The out of the First World War and the National Schism and the collapse of the provisioning of Epirus, forced the peasantry into drastic measures, with the seizures of food supplies becoming the more popular. In this article I will attempt to examine the strategies of the Epirus’ peasantry during the era of the National Schism, through the lenses of the concept of “Moral Economy” as it was introduced by the British historian E. P. Thompson and was refined by the American anthropologist James Scott. 

The proposed paper aims at advancing the discussion on the role locality played in the accumulation of capital as a result of trade entrepreneurship among Greeks between the late 18th and the 19th century, and its role in the development of trans-national capitalism. During this period, maritime trade opened business horizons for most members of the Greek diaspora and created links to global capitalism, contrary to the corresponding overland transit trade. Starting from an analysis of the business organization and agency of several merchant houses we may understand better the varieties of capitalism through one diaspora, originating from the island of Chios. The Scaramanga and Ralli families are used as case studies to show how Chios entrepreneurs created through their wide network advanced economic links between the Ottoman, Russian and British Empires.
In the case of overland migration, parts of the highlands in western Macedonia benefited from the north-Balkan and central-European connections and routes through roads, across rivers and lakes, the routes of overland trade. Non-economic factors, such as Ottoman military attacks and national rivalries threatened economic practices and upset business traditions in most of the small overland markets and the hubs of Greek merchants in the Balkans and central Europe. Within the wider context of trans-Balkan commercial exchange, the paper examines the accumulation of economic surplus mainly from stockbreeding, agriculture and local manufacture in these towns, which supported economic migrations and trade activity leading up to Budapest and Vienna and some merchants benefited from this early and primitive accumulation of capital, which was mainly retained within the Habsburg – and subsequent Austro-Hungarian – Empire. 
Only recently social and economic historians have explored local aspects that determined the accumulation of wealth through trade, claiming that territory, geographic distance, and the environment should be part of the debate on the development of capitalism. It is necessary for the study of merchant capitalism to specify what is significantly different between particular localities, and to understand how these differences arise. This will also enable us to understand the similarities and differences between local and trans-national forms of capitalism. Merchant entrepreneurs migrated via land or sea towards territories and markets with resources. What this paper examines, in conjunction to the history of merchant networks, is the history of the regional origins of Greek land and maritime commercial networks.

Thessaloniki was the biggest port in the Ottoman Balkans and one of the biggest in the Empire. The foundation of the French consulate in 1686 was of extremely importance for the economic growth of the city and the international profile of the port. Eighteenth century external trade in Thessaloniki was monopolized by French and Western (English, Dutch, Venetian, Danish) merchants in general. The last quarter of the century and the beginning of the 19th century was the culmination of it, before the revival in the 19th century in more extensive form, after a decade of stagnation due to the Greek revolt in Halkidiki (1821-1830). It was at that period of fifty years before the revolt (1770-1820) that one observes a kind of proto-capitalistic forms of trade in the city.  

The Christians of the city, mainly Greeks, followed the Muslims and the Jews inhabitants in both the demographic strength and the economic growth. Since there are no extant Greek sources, we have to rely on Western and Ottoman sources in order to delineate the economic strength and capital formation of city’s Christians. Western sources, mainly French, have been adequately studied and have contributed in the matter, although the Ottoman sources have not been studied yet. In the present paper I use an ‘indirect’ source in order to draw information about Christian merchants of the city and their economic profile. Due to the Greek revolt in Halkidiki and as a measure of retaliation, city’s Ottoman authorities arrested some rich Christian merchants of the city and confiscated their fortunes. Based my research on the catalogues of the confiscated fortunes of three well-to-do persons, I aspire to shed light on the dynamics of the Christian merchants of the city and therefore to present their almost unknown economic profile.

The paper approaches the conference call through the prism of new consumption trends in southeastern Europe during the long eighteenth century and focuses on two relevant examples.
The first one refers to wine jugs manufactured in Pesaro, Italy, by the firm of Casali and Callegari and its successors. These ceramic jugs follow a pre-existing formal typology and bear painted decoration; their particularity is that they are inscribed with verses written in Greek; most of these objects were intended for Greek buyers from Epirus. This region boasted centers of commerce, wealth and education of an emerging middle class; the economic power of this rising Greek bourgeoisie was combined with deepening ties with Europe, intellectual growth, and the strengthening of a distinct identity. Novel and pleasurable objects like these jugs expressed on a material level the rise of new mentalities. Following the classification formulated by Giorgio Riello, we argue that these artefacts are examples of popular luxury. The commissioning individuals were knowledgeable and proactive consumers, exhibiting a growing confidence and indeed a new awareness with political connotations. 
Pocket watches with Ottoman numerals constitute the second example. During the long eighteenth century, English and continental firms produced large numbers of these products for the markets of the Ottoman Empire. These watches, both technical novelties and fashionable accessories, were highly popular among the local multi-ethnic and multi-confessional populations and may also be classified as examples of popular luxury, expressing the rise of the individual and the growing significance of pleasurable consumption. At a time of increasing mobility, a portable technical object was a sign of innovation and distinction embedded in new forms of socialisation through product use in the public sphere. These phenomena were present or emerging among the Ottoman populations, as they were among the Western European ones, reflecting the internal dynamics of societies in flux and constituting “common threads in the worldwide experience”. 

Certain segments of the Greek populations that enjoyed a better standard of living during the pre-revolutionary period used and enjoyed artefacts like the two aforementioned examples. Nevertheless, these people remained subjects of an authoritarian master and were deprived of basic rights. Arguably, the consumption of beautiful and innovative objects opened up new horizons for them and enabled them to imagine a better life.

Research interest and studies on economic history of the Balkan peninsula during the period of Ottoman political domination focus almost exclusively on the Christian or the Jewish contribution to the emergence and establishment of capitalism in urban settings. On the contrary, the role of Muslim urban elites in capital accumulation has yet to be studied. Ottoman documentation points out to the active and energetic participation of a Muslim urban stratum in the economic context of urban milieus and their countryside environs. This Muslim group pursued, within the conceptual framework of an early capitalistic agenda, wealth accumulation and its investment in production.

In this vein, this paper will attempt to describe the most significant characteristics of the Muslim entrepreneurial mobilization in Thessaloniki in the period between 1750-1800, as it is recorded in the probate inventories (muhallefat defterleri) kept by the Muslim judge (kadi) and his assistants. The size and composition of Muslim entrepreneurs’ properties, along with their primary capital sources and investment methodology will be displayed. Moreover, important occupational, social and demographic aspects of this population faction will be analyzed. Finally, some indicative examples of Muslim magnates, as distinct versions and approaches to the emergence of a new proto-capitalistic reality in the Ottoman eighteenth century, will be presented.

In the paper we investigate, through a comparative dimension, the way in which various factors –economic but also cultural ones- influenced business choices and decisions, the form, the characteristics and the division of labour in the sector of tobacco product production in countries of the Mediterranean basin in the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. In end of the 19th century, since tobacco industry was a sector of labour intensity and monopoly –where applicable- required production concentration in a single site in order to avoid tax fraud, the work of women was preferred. This is observed not only in the Ottoman Empire during this period, but also in European countries, such as France, Spain, and Italy, where tobacco industry was based on monopolies. Therefore, the “French model” was adopted there, i.e. production concentration and female work. In these cases, production was centralised for budgetary reasons, since no technological change justifies production concentration in large factories. On the contrary, in countries where the tax system did not impose a monopoly, such as in Egypt, cigarette production in the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century came mainly from small and medium-sized businesses, -some of which later evolved into large tobacco industries- where specialised cigarette makers were men, who were considered to be sought after because of their craft. However, why is the production of handmade tobacco products carried out by women cigarette makers considered to be specialised in some countries, such as France and Spain, while at the same time elsewhere, such as in the Ottoman Empire, it is seen as unspecialised? We argue that this fact could be interpreted up to a certain point based on the particular characteristics observed in each country concerning the labour market structure, the consumption patterns, the tobacco sector organisation and the taxation but also the dominant perceptions and mentalities in each society regarding the female work. 

The recruitment of foreign technicians and engineers in factories was already a global phenomenon since the mid-nineteenth century. Technicians and engineers were highly qualified experts, who were hired by industries in order to assemble, install and set the newly purchased machinery in motion. These technicians were not always temporary collaborators of the firms that recruited them. They were sometimes hired as chief engineers or heads of the production line, in exchange for a high remuneration that could tempt them to leave their country and work abroad. Greek historiography has discussed the presence of foreign technicians in the local factories, not only regarding their role in transferring their knowledge and experience to their Greek apprentices, but also highlighting their contribution to the modernization of production techniques. In an attempt to enrich the discussion, this paper will approach foreign skilled labour by examining the case of the Aspioti-ELKA graphic arts factory in Corfu. The factory, operating from 1875 to 1940, was producing monopoly goods for the Greek state, such as playing cards and cigarette paper in a large scale, combining mass production with highly skilled artistic labour. Therefore, the quality of lithographic and typographic prints was critical for the existence of the firm itself, especially since the Greek state was its biggest client. This reality led the company to form a tradition of hiring foreign technicians and engineers from Italy, Britain, Germany and Austria in key positions of factory hierarchy. By looking into the case of Aspioti-ELKA, the paper will argue that the main strategy applied for the recruitment of foreign technicians was the use of personal networks. It will also focus on the remuneration of foreign technicians, compared to the salaries of local skilled personnel. Ultimately, it will discuss their position in the workplace and their relationship with the directors and the Greek workers. Apart from bibliography, a variety of primary sources will be used: the Aspioti-ELKA Archive, the Corfu Labour Center Archive, the archive of the Prefecture of Corfu and the press, both local and national.

In our paper, we deal with the Bata Company enterprise in the Mediterranean area in the interwar period. The beginnings of the company date back to 1894, when Tomáš Baťa and his siblings founded a small shoemaking workshop in Zlín in the former Austro-Hungarian Empire, today the Czech Republic. Already before the First World War, the company was exporting its products beyond the broad market of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, including to the Mediterranean. However, a significant expansion into that region occurred only after the end of the First World War and the establishment of independent Czechoslovakia, as Tomáš Baťa needed to find other markets in the new conditions of post-war Europe and following the loss of the internal Austro-Hungarian market. The wholesalers who distributed Bata shoes to the individual countries then facilitated export. During the 1920s, however, the company had to overcome ever-increasing tariff barriers, foreign exchange restrictions and insufficient contingents on footwear import, so it had to adapt its business strategies to the changing local conditions. In response to these obstacles, Tomáš Baťa began to open stores, which he organised under the established Zlín types. A groundbreaking event was the air travel of company director Dominik Čipera in 1934 to individual Mediterranean countries, during which he reorganised the hitherto unfavourable business development. In individual countries sister companies were established, and in several countries Bata founded factories to supply the local markets. 

The Mediterranean area was crucial for the company, since it was through this region that the company’s goods and raw materials flowed for the Zlín base. From the early 1930s, Bata’s business activities abroad (export, buying and selling network, affiliates, factories and company towns) operated on all inhabited continents and, except for Japan, in almost all countries of the world. 

In our paper, which is based on public and private archival sources, periodicals, literature and academic studies, we focus on the reasons for the success of the Bata enterprise in some countries (Yugoslavia, France, Italy, Egypt, Lebanon and Algeria) as well as on unsuccessful attempts to penetrate other markets such as Albania, Greece or Turkey. An irreplaceable role in Bata’s business was played by business diplomacy, embodied in the position of company director Hugo Vavrečka. This former Czechoslovak diplomat and consul in Budapest and Vienna maintained friendly relations with several Czechoslovak consuls based in the region, which had a significant impact on facilitating Bata business in Mediterranean countries.

The 1833 land and property survey of Cyprus (Cezire-i Kıbrıs emlak ve arazi defteri; BOA, ML.VRD.TMT.d. 16152-16155) constitutes an interesting part of the history of Ottoman scribal culture. Incorrectly catalogued at the Ottoman Prime Ministry Archives as a temettüat defteri, it is actually not part of this typology of Ottoman registers. This is because it was compiled much earlier than the first temettüat defterleri in the 1840s, while the information contained is different in that no taxation is recorded. While there is a typological genealogy between the temettüat defterleri and the 1833 Cyprus land and property survey, the latter is almost unique in that it focuses exclusively on the recording of property. The survey was apparently sanctioned by the Ottoman state in order to enquire into the dire socio-economic conditions of Cyprus at the time and the wave of migration out of the island. To take this as an exception, however, is misleading. Situating the survey within a broader trajectory of Ottoman scribal culture provides a context that allows not only a better understanding of the survey itself, but also the categories and units that Ottoman scribes understood and recorded for fiscal or other purposes. The present paper is an initial attempt to present, analyze, and interpret the register. The result of an ongoing collective research project hosted at Harokopio University and employing digital humanities methods to correlate cartographic and fiscal historical sources, the paper will discuss the methodological challenges of building a custom-made relational database. This process opened important windows into understanding the logic and structure of the register, and the ontologies generated went against the grain of standard assumptions considered as received wisdom in the study of Ottoman fiscal sources. The paper will then move on to present some preliminary thoughts about how to approach and interpret the data at hand, focusing on the question of property and the position this had in the Ottoman bureaucratic mind.

This paper examines the massive wave of enclosures of land and forest commons in Western Anatolia at the end of the 19th century. The commodification of land and forests, and the consequent increase in the economic value attached to them in the epoch of mounting global and regional markets, prompted local, regional, imperial, and global capitalists to establish direct and exclusive control over these resources. The landed estate (çiftlik)-owning capitalists along Western Anatolia's major river basins enclosed surrounding pasture lands, and çiftlik owners in southwestern Anatolia enclosed mountain forests into their çiftliks. These waves of enclosures generated environments of dispossession where farmers in the çiftliks and surrounding villagers were deprived of their free access to, and control over, what they saw as pasture and forest commons. Both these waves of enclosures and dispossession in the lowlands and highlands concentrated in the last quarter of the 19th century, and the appropriation of land and forests, are examined in this paper as a form of primitive accumulation of nature and capital. The capitalist land and forest entrepreneurs' availability and capacity to organize their power and material interests in the state via local administrative councils, access to state and non-state means of violence, pre-existing modes of hierarchies, and fraud, this paper demonstrates, all played a role in the process of primitive accumulation of capital. This paper argues that the enclosures and the consequent production of the environments of dispossession in this particular epoch of history in Western Anatolia was an Ottoman phase of primitive accumulation of capital, the character of which was shaped by its institutions, existing hierarchies, and the trajectory of how agrarian capitalism evolved in its geography.

According to the news published in the Journal Ruzname-i Ceride-i Havadis in 1870, a young man found fainted in Izmir, he was taken to the hospital and a letter written to his father was found in his pocket. We understand from the letter that he was a Greek from Lesbos and had arrived in Izmir short while ago. He was asking his father to sell all of their belongings and come to Izmir, since it was possible to earn more money by working less compared to the conditions in Lesbos. Researchers analyze the development of Izmir as a port-city from the 17th century onwards especially from the perspective of non-Muslims and Levantines, in other words within the context of commercial and industrial activities of an emerging bourgeoisie. This is one side of medallion, if we look at the other side, we can observe Izmir as a city of working classes: peasants tilling the land, sharecroppers, agricultural laborers; fishermen; ship crew and ship boys; workers of mines and saline; apprentices and foremen working with artisans and craftsmen; workers of workshops and factories; port laborers and porters; railroad workers; bellboys and waiters working in hotels and restaurants; home servants; officers working in local administration, commercial houses and banks… As observed from the case of young man from Lesbos, Izmir had become not only the most important exporting port in the Eastern Mediterranean in the 19th century but also a place of attraction for the laborers. Nevertheless, as opportunities to earn became more amplified, hardship in the life of working classes increased accordingly. For example, journalist Hüseyin Rıfat underlined in 1914 that in case of transferring the harbor from Gümrük to Punta, laborers inhabiting in the periphery of Izmir, in search for a few more gurush, would be forced to accept sufferance and gradual, if not sudden, killing toil in their already tiresome poor life. In this article, we will analyze economic and social dynamics of Izmir at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries from the perspective of conditions of working classes. To do this, we will use archival documents found in Turkey and in other countries (i.e. consular reports), contemporary journals and books. We will first discuss conditions of working classes through quantitative data concerning wages and life standards. Then, we will focus on the qualitative data concerning their working and life conditions. This analysis will cover two long waves of capitalism, the Great Depression of 1873-1896 and its expansionary phase that followed until 1914, of the world capitalism with which Izmir was breathing.  

While Livorno had replaced Venice in economic activity in the 17th century, and its Jews flourished in economic activity as a port city, commerce, and trade with the Ottoman Empire, by the 18th century its transatlantic trade increased. Livorno Jewish merchants played a central role in the coral and diamond markets, and created important trading partnerships with North Africa. As the economy of Livorno declined and its Mediterranean trade began to decline, the Jewish community and its merchants began to decline, and they began to migrate to the eastern Mediterranean and North Africa.  

These Sephardic Jews, including those of the Portuguese Nacion and its Jewish global trade network, began to migrate at the end of the 18th century to Salonika, Izmir, and Aleppo, where they enjoyed foreign patronage under the Ottoman capitulations, and enjoyed tax exemption, but also strengthened local Jewish communities through their philanthropy.in 1848, with the first Italian War of Independence, Italian Jews were emancipated, and the Livornina was dissolved. With the unification of Italy in 1861, Livorno lost its free port status. The Jews of Livorno left in increased numbers for economic embitterment  In the 19th centuries, they also migrated to Tunis in stages where they joined the local Portuguese Jewish Grana independent community, and they also laid a base in Alexandria, Egypt; where these Italian Jews excelled in Mediterranean and local trade as well as finance They also moved to Cairo and were wealthy Jewish community leaders and merchants. Such families like Mosseri, and Menashe helped modernize Alexandria and Cairo.. From the beginning of the 19th century to its end the population of the Jews of Livorno dropped from 10,000 to 3,000 due to migration to Tunis, and the Eastern Mediterranean.   

These Livornese Jews were coined “Francos” and they made great urban and economic contributions to their new cities and Jewish communities. In Salonika (Thessaloniki) the Allatini family developed local industries in the 19th century, led to urban development, and advanced modern European education for the local Sephardic community. The Modiano, Mosseri, and Fernandez families also established factories and were important financiers and bankers. The Betzalel Ashkenazi Levy attained great importance in publishing and journalism.  In Aleppo and Damascus, affluent Francos like the Ergas, Silvera, Lisbona, and Peixotto families financed local communal needs, built synagogues, yeshivot, schools, and other communal institutions. 

The city of Salonica lived through a profound social and economic differentiation throughout the second half of the nineteenth century. Commercial expansion due to its integration of the capitalist world system and several other factors played a significant role on the social and economic differentiation between urban factory workers and the emerging bourgeoisie: the agricultural transformation of its hinterland, capital accumulation thanks to commercial wealth and its investment in industry, etc.
The secondary literature contains various studies on the emerging commercial bourgeoisie in the Ottoman port cities during the nineteenth century. These studies argue that this bourgeoisie was comprised of the Ottoman non-Muslims and foreigners living in the Empire. According to this approach, when dealing with the Muslim bourgeoisie, there is a need to refer to the bureaucracy and/or administration. However, recent studies on the subject criticized these theoretical frameworks demonstrating that such divisions along ethnic and/or religious lines fall short to analyze the much more complex social structure of the Ottoman society. Though still limited in number, there are increasingly more studies focusing on the characteristics of the bourgeoisie, its lifestyle, etc. 
This presentation aims to analyze the making of bourgeoisie in an Ottoman Salonica through the trajectories of three generations of several Donme families from the mid-nineteenth until the first decades of the twentieth century. Thus, it will reveal the different paths of becoming bourgeois within the same ethnic/religious group. It argues that the underlying elements of the social change as well as the complex nature of the Ottoman social structure in the nineteenth century makes it impossible to match one ethnic/religious group with a certain type of bourgeoisie and that we need to consider individual trajectories to reveal multifaceted character of Ottoman economy and society of that period. This analysis will be carried out through the archival material preserved in the Ottoman archives in Istanbul and the Historical Macedonian Archives in Thessaloniki as well as the journals of the period.
Keywords: Salonica, bourgeoisie, Donmes, microanalysis, socio-economic transformation.

It is widely accepted that Greece in the period 1860-1880 had been on a path of economic reconstruction. One of the least investigated aspects of that period is the geography of professions. The purpose of this study is to compare professions in a number of Greek cities (e.g. Corfu, Aigio, Nafplio, Ermoupoli, etc.) based on three criteria: a) the subject of the professions, b) their variety (degree of differentiation, division of  labour) and c) the mapping of the markets in which the professions were belonged. The choice of the cities is based on the availability of data and on a variety of other criteria (city with or without port, island or mainland, intertwined or not with some specialization, etc.).
We therefore propose an introductory investigation of the professions of the aforementioned period, which have not been the subject of historiographical analysis. Starting from the professions we will also deal with: (a) the cities as areas of the development of market and capitalist relations, and (b) the relevance of findings to the question of social-class structure. These aspects will be posed taking into account the main relevant ideas and limitations proposed by the Greek historiography.
 The main source, in which we have based our analysis, is the electoral rolls of the 1860-1880 period, that have not been extensively used by the Greek historiography. The use of electoral rolls is not free of restrictions, like any historical resource indeed: (a) they confined to adult men and (b) they do not readily determine whether the profession concerns an employer or an employee. However, the electoral rolls consists a useful starting point, as they contain the profession per voter. The official statistics (censuses) provide the data in aggregated tables. On the contrary, the electoral rolls provide detailed data and not aggregated tables, offering greater degree of freedom in classification of the data according to the criteria we set.

Keywords: social-class structure, capitalist relations, market development, city typologies, city-market-hinterland

My paper aims to examine the entrepreneurial trajectory of Saul D. Modiano, an Italian industrialist born in Salonica in 1840 to a notable Jewish family. After leaving Macedonia in the 1860s, Modiano came to Trieste, where he was first employed as an agent for the Allatini and Modiano brothers’ merchant company. Following the dissolution of the enterprise, provoked by the collapse of cotton prices after 1865, he was compelled to diversify the range of his enterprises. Modiano quitted trade to commit himself to the production of cigarette paper, an industrial sector which seemed to offer a larger rentability to entrepreneurs without extensive investment capital. After a precarious beginning, he encountered a sudden success between the 1870s and 1880s; this provided him with the economic and social assets to engage in a wide range of industrial initiatives throughout the Eastern Mediterranean, and ascend amidst the milieu of the Italian bourgeoisie in Trieste. 

By retracing Modiano’s spatial and social dislocations, my paper intents to take into account the means by which he created his own entrepreneurial paradigm. It aims particularly to connect the turning points of this biographical path to the establishment of his industrial culture, which was visibly influenced by his previous trade involvement. By orienting his managerial and organisational decisions, the structure of production and supply processes and work relations reflected his professional background. Moreover, considering the process of formation of an individual model of entrepreneurial rationality will engage with the Weberian conception of the merchant’s transition, to the ideal type of the 19th century industrialist, who would invest his resources in implementing technological innovations and employing a concentrated workforce in modern factories. The adoption of a micro-historical approach compels historians to question the essentialist idea of Sephardi diaspora as composed of individuals who, by naturally conserving their enduring bonds of cooperation, enjoyed a comparative advantage in transnational investments. My paper considers, on the contrary, Modiano’s strategies as the outcomes of interactions with the evolving conditions and constraints of Mediterranean economy, dramatically altered by the increasing mobility of capitals, goods and technologies.

This paper, based on an ongoing four-year social history project about intra-Yugoslav Albanian migration during socialism (1953-1989) explores the case of ethnic Albanian Yugoslav citizens who migrated from the southeast of the country (Kosovo, Macedonia) to the Adriatic coast in Croatia. Responding to the theme of the conference (varieties of capitalism in the Mediterranean) it examines the logic of ethnic minority, small business owners and their families, in the northern Adriatic. The presence of Albanians who owned small businesses was ubiquitous across Yugoslavia and was particularly pronounced in touristed areas of the Adriatic coast. Yet despite this ubiquity we know very little about this demographic and their experience of intra-Yugoslav migration in conditions of socialist modernisation. How and why did Yugoslav Albanians migrate in this pattern? How did the local socialist authorities react to an influx of cultural outsiders who engaged in private businesses within the system of self-managing socialism? How were Albanians received by the inhabitants of coastal towns? How and why did family networks and migration patterns to Western Europe facilitate their migration and the expansion of their businesses? This paper explores the development of crafts and small businesses (bakeries, patisseries, jewellers) in the Yugoslav southeast (Kosovo, Macedonia) and the ways in which these businesses were transplanted to, and often managed to thrive on the Adriatic coast during socialism. Methodologically, the paper relies on oral history interviews with business owners and their families, local historical archives, the analysis of documents from Yugoslav/Croatian security services (who observed Albanian migrants closely) and a synthesis of research conducted by scholars in Kosovo who attempted to account for social change in the province and Yugoslavia’s Albanians more broadly during the 1970s and 1980s.

The paper seeks to provide an empirical approach to the recruitment of the business elite in a colonial setting by examining the role of social networks in entrepreneurship. The paper draws evidence from the individuals who spearheaded incorporation as a new form of business organization in British Cyprus in a time span between 1878 and 1959. 

The island experienced the transition from the Ottoman to the British rule in 1878, but western institutions were introduced in the 1920s when Cyprus was officially declared a Crown Colony. In 1878, the business elite of a purely rural economy was represented by merchants and commission agents who originated mainly from the upper strata and benefited largely from the growth of commercial agriculture, trans-Mediterranean migration and tax farming. By the 1940s, Cyprus experienced a wave of economic growth and a development of the business spirit (Apostolides, 2010; Matthopoulou and Pepelasis, 2021). It was only after WWII that a group of “newly prosperous entrepreneurs” appeared (Crouzet, 2011; Meyer and Vassiliou, 1962). Between 1878 and 1950s substantial social changes occurred that transformed the profile of the key economic players and motivated entrepreneurship. The paper will interpret the social parameters which nurtured changes in entrepreneurial behavior, unfolding the role of social networks and mobility in the creation of new firms.

The methodology is based on a new dataset that maps out the social and entrepreneurial characteristics of 100 individuals who incorporated new companies during the colonial era. Following practices at international level (i.e. Erickson, 1959; Crouzet, 1985; Toninelli and Vasta, 2009; Pepelasis, 2010), we employ a wide range of variables from the social background of the individuals to provide a multivariate analysis (Foreman-Peck, 2005, p. 101). Data are derived from diverse sources such as biographical lexicons, published biographies, interviews with descendants and archival sources, such as the State Archives of Cyprus and the archive of the Registrar of Companies and Official Receiver. This work was co-funded by the European Regional Development Fund and the Republic of Cyprus through the Research and Innovation Foundation (Project: POST-DOC/0916/0231).

Retracing closely the events of the life of George Frederic, king of the Miskitu (in present Honduras and Nicaragua) between 1805 and 1824, this article describes how this Miskitu actor sought to set up, by hiring British agents, the concrete realization of a Central American commercial and political independence project – understood here as a utopia. Although his project ended in failure, the actions of this little-known Miskitu King had repercussions in the Caribbean and beyond, even in the heart of the City of London. Concentrating on a marginal actor seldom considered by historians reveals how particular American Indigenous peoples sought to actively position themselves in the important commercial and political transformations affecting the Atlantic world in the first decades of the 19th century.

During the recent economic crisis in Greece, sovereign debt has been restructured substantially on two occasions. The first was in March 2012 when private investors in Greek public debt experienced a reduction in the face value of their bond holdings by more than fifty per cent – a reduction which stands as the world’s biggest debt readjustment deal. Then in June 2018, sovereign debt relief was granted by its Eurozone counterparts.
This is not the first episode of Greek public debt restructuring. In 1898, five years after a Greek government default, a debt compromise was achieved providing for the restructuring of both internal and external sovereign debt. The most innovative provision of this debt readjustment plan was that interest rate payments to bondholders of Greek external loans issued before the 1893 default were linked to specific public revenue streams earmarked exclusively for the service of these loans. Consequently, the yield paid to bondholders fluctuated from year to year within a band depending on the volume of those revenues; its floor being the minimum rate defined by the debt restructuring agreement and its ceiling the original coupon rate of the loan.
This paper aims to shed light on why the 1898 debt restructuring episode is thought to have been successful whilst by contrast, the debate on the burden and sustainability of the current Greek public debt continued even after the most recent sovereign debt relief granted by its Eurozone partners. In addition, it asks questions about the effects that debt readjustment had on sovereign risk and on the banking sector in the late nineteenth century as opposed to the recent economic crisis.
High frequency time series of market yields of the loans floated on the international markets before the 1893 default are constructed taking, however, into account for the first time ever, the stipulations enacted by the 1898 sovereign debt agreement. It is argued that the provisions of the debt readjustment of 1898 – which it should be stressed have been completely ignored by research until now – should be taken into account in order to comprehend fully the improvement in the creditworthiness of the Greek government and consequently the terms of borrowing before the outbreak of the First World War. It is also shown that special attention was paid during the preparation of this debt readjustment plan to protect and indeed strengthen the National Bank, the central bank at the time. Domestic public debt denominated both in gold and drachmae and mainly held by the National Bank, was restructured so as to strengthen its financial position.

In 1833 the freshly founded Greek nation state issued an international loan of 60 million francs (or at least the two first tranches of that loan). Due to the intermediation and clever negotiations of its Hoffaktor Simon von Eichthal, the absolutist Greek kingdom was able to win the well-respected house of Rothschild as issuing house. The paper investigates the question why the Rothschilds decided to step in and even take the lead in this high risky issuing process. By examining the internal correspondence between the Rothschild branches in London, Paris and Frankfurt the paper considers financial as well as political and cultural reasons for the bankers´ investment decisions. The loan was the first commonly guaranteed by Great Britain, France and Russia to allow a “peripheral” country in the Mediterranean to get better loan conditions on the international money markets. Of special interest is the question in how far the exited philhellenism amongst European intellectuals played a role in the decision of the banking house. Philhellenism is considered both as part of the liberal movement of the time, that identified Greece as the only successful revolution in the period of restoration in Europe, and as expression of the humanistic admiration for the splendid Greek ancient past, widely spread amongst the European elite of the time.

The establishment of the Seamen’s Pension Fund (in Greek Naftiko Apomachiko Tameio or N.A.T.) in 1861 is of particular interest as it coincides with the changes caused by the further use of the steamer in transport in the Eastern Mediterranean and the demographic changes caused in the island area by the gradual decline of sailing ships. 
The main purpose of the fund, according to the founding law (ΧΛΘ') was to provide pensions to elderly maritime workers with long-term career on board and their families, widows and orphans. The fund also provided emergency financial assistance (a small amount in the form of charity, often awarded every Easter and Christmas). In particular, until the 1880s, it allocated 20% of all income to destitute maritime workers and those who were not entitled to a pension and had no other resources. The operation of the fund completely reformed the inventory system of maritime workers, as for the first time all those who served in the merchant navy, in the Greek Navy but also in sea-related professions, e.g. fishermen, divers, boatmen were recorded in a systematic way. In fact, it exercised considerable control over the labor market and the terms of employment. 
The purpose of this presentation is firstly to shed light to the reasons that led the Greek state to establish the N.A.T. in 1861. Then, the analysis focuses its financial operation, the limits of its policies regarding the provision of pensions, as well as its relationship with the state. Finally, we examine the impact that the transition from sail to steam of the Greek-owned fleet had on the fund in the last two decades of the 19th century, as well as the formation of the first unions of maritime workers at the turn of the century.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, the Russian Black Sea ports developed as grain-exporting gateways to the Mediterranean and Northern Europe. Bulk tramp shipping, carrying mainly grain cargoes, was in the hands of foreigners, such as Greeks, English, Austrians, etc., who also provided foreign crews. The period of transition from sail to steam in the Russian Empire and specifically in the northern Black Sea coast began gradually after the Crimean War (1853-1856). Russia followed the example of the European countries by creating state-subsidized liner companies such as the Russian Steam Navigation and Trade Company (known in Russian as ROPIT) formed in 1856. The ROPIT transported passengers, mail as well as cargoes to the Mediterranean, Baltic Sea and Persian Gulf port-cities. The southern ports of Russian Empire have always been deprived of domestic maritime labour forces, as the bulk tramp shipping remained in the hands of foreigners. In this framework, the imperial authorities decided to adopt a strategy of formation of a new Russian (by nationality) maritime labour force and seafaring communities attracting people manly from peasants and other estates by providing them incentives and privileges. Furthermore, the main booster of the new policy became the ROPIT, as the biggest state-subsidized steam shipping company. ROPIT developed multiple system of creation and retention of the workforce through flexible methods of recruitment, payment, prizes, awards and benefits or even by upgrading their social status. Although the company did not establish any pension and insurance fund, it always responded to requests from the crews or from their family members to cover their needs in case of an accident or death. Thus, the aim of this paper is to present the formation and retention of Russian maritime labour market in Southern Russia through the welfare policies of ROPIT. The analysis develops in the context of different patterns of welfare capitalism in combination with public welfare at its inception in the Russian Empire. The paper is based on primary archival materials from Russian and Ukrainian archives.

The Austrian Lloyd, based in the port of Trieste, is one of the main protagonists in the long process of rising and developing Mediterranean steam navigation during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Thanks to the rapid creation of a considerable fleet of steamers, the Lloyd quickly became a pivotal European actor for the mobilization of passengers, goods and mails on the sea. One of the remarkable aspects of its growth is constituted by the leading role of the company in the creation of a new industrial maritime workforce destined to serve on the empire’s steamers.

The aim of this paper is to shed the light on the effects of Lloyd’s quasi-monopsony in the Austrian maritime labour market until the eve of the First World War. In particular, the contribution will focus on the careers of Lloyd’s seamen, analysing their service onboard and their progression through ranks compared with that of other Austrian seafarers before approaching the remuneration conditions of the company's seagoing personnel.
The analysis will be based on the study of primary sources collected in the State Archive of Trieste and in the Italia Marittima Archive, and especially on Lloyd’s seamen service books and the company’s regulations for maritime service.

The paper focuses on the business group of the shipowner, banker and University professor Stratis Andreadis in the second half of the 20th century. Originally engaged in shipping and being the offspring of a traditional ship-owning family from Chios, Andreadis, after the end of World War II and the destruction of almost all of the Greek merchant fleet, acquired two Liberty ships with the guarantee of the Greek State. This was the beginning of his merchant fleet that during the 1950s grew significantly, as he came to own 12 cargo vessels and tankers, with a total capacity of 220,000 dwt. He held a highly important position among Greek shipowners as he had a leading role for two decades in the Union of Greek Shipowners as its President and hence held special connections with all Greek governments during the period under examination. 

From the 1950s to the 1970s he expanded his investment on land business, diversifying in banking, industry and tourism in Greece forming a vast and powerful business group. In the 1950s, he took over the control of Commercial Bank of Greece and then the Ionian and Popular Bank, with government’s support. He invested in the chemicals and food industries, as well as in tourism (acquiring the Hilton Hotel) during the 1960s, while his fleet continued to grow, reaching 18 ships in 1970, with a total capacity of 600,000 dwt. His close involvement with the Greek dictatorship during 1967 – 1974, was probably related to the decision, in 1975, of the Karamanlis government to nationalize the Commercial Bank and, consequently, all the companies of the business group that were dependent on it.  

The aim of this paper is to study Andreadis’ business strategy and to show that through a network of shipping and offshore companies he managed to control most of his Greek land-based operations, placing his group in a prominent position within the Greek economy and Greek shipping. The paper is based on primary archival material on Bank records, ships and shipping companies databases, the Press, as well as the available secondary bibliography.

What is the stock market’s actual place in the economic movement? Did it really contribute to the post-war “great transformation of the world”? The purpose of this paper, focused on industry because of its major place both in the economy and on the stock markets, is first to draw up a summary of the historical studies on the evolution of main stock markets and then to compare their conclusions to my analysis of the Athens stock market.  

The interest of comparative studies on long time histories of London, Paris and New York stock markets, of their listed companies, of the evolution of their number, of their capitalization and their yield, and of their distribution by branch, is precisely to establish this place and to explain their evolution compared to that of the economy. Big events more than governments policies, economic rationality of the agents and secondary stock markets institutions are three key explanations. 

The purpose of this paper is to compare to these studies a first analysis of the Athens Stock Exchange. It concludes by the proximity between western various markets, natural in a global free economy, nevertheless making room to some differences due not to the main influence of big events, but to specificities of the Greek politics and of the deficient regulatory institutions, which have limited the place reserved for the stock market in the industrial development. However, the sensitivity of private investors to the relationship between yield and risk has allowed the Athens Stock Exchange to provide a useful support to the transformation of the industry, with its branch specificities.

When the Ottoman state declared default in the fall of 1875, none of the main banking institutions were caught by surprise. Since the end of the Crimean War, High Porte had borrowed money extensively from the capital markets of Paris and London while its revenues had not followed suit. Since the 1840s, the High Porte had also relied on a much smaller and more expensive domestic capital market in order to finance its short-term needs. These Ottoman bankers cashed orders of payment issued by the state in order to pay its employees, absorbed a certain amount of paper currency (kaime), and secured extra loans from abroad on account of the High Porte. This domestic capital market came to help the High Porte after its default in 1875 by continuing to provide such loans and accepting orders of payment. Although these services had been a constant feature of the Ottoman life, new meanings were attached to them in the 1870s. At the same time with the economic and international crisis, a new war with Russia looked imminent, a circle of reformist bureaucrats forced Abdul Hamid II to be enthroned in September 1876. A new constitution was proclaimed in December, and the 1st Ottoman parliament had its opening session in March 1877. These were the days when Ottomanism, with a heavy emphasis on dynastic loyalty and liberal ideas, dominated the public sphere. The bankers of Galata embraced this ideology and presented their business as an example of patriotic duty. In my paper, I will present how this class embraced the Ottomanist ideal while the discussions about Ottomanism in the Ottoman Greek community revealed its internal divisions. So far, Ottomanism has been seen as a purely intellectual and political movement without any economic meanings. However, the ideas and actions of these bankers were as important in its popularity.