Grand History in Small Places: Social Protest on Castellorizo (1934)

Abstract

Early in 1934 there took place on the island of Castellorizo, then occupied by Italy, a series of social protests that locals remember as the [inline-graphic xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="01i" /]. Expatriates reported these protests as Greek resistance to Italian rule, but compelling evidence shows that nationalism was of marginal importance in them; indeed, the muzáhres seem minimally relevant to the concerns of traditional historiography (i.e., nationalism, resistance, foreign occupation). Nevertheless, historians can exploit this apparently inconsequential microhistory in the same way that ethnographers can draw significant insights from studying contemporary everyday life. Apart from providing insight into the nature of social protest in Greek island communities, the muzáhres reflect both the politics of memory and conflicting perceptions of history in Greek society.

Introduction

The Dodecanese islands were transferred from Ottoman to Italian rule in 1912; it was not until 1947 that these ethnically Greek islands were ceded to Greece. The Italian takeover in 1912 was really a sideshow in the Italo-Turkish war over Libya, and Dodecanesian leaders were initially promised by their new occupiers that their homeland would be granted autonomy; hence the Italians were welcomed as liberators. But it soon transpired that the Italians were much more concerned about augmenting their small empire. After the first world war, having very little to show for their part in that Pyrrhic victory, they sought permanent possession of the islands. In 1923, Italy won this minor struggle, prevailing against vigorous lobbying from Greek leaders and exiled Dodecanesian notables, who waged a propaganda offensive highlighting the "Greekness" of the islands and alleged Italian atrocities. The Dodecanese patriots in exile maintained their rage from various vantage points—Athens, Piraeus, Alexandria, Port Said, and New York—monitoring every conceivable form of abuse, real or imagined. Early in 1934, they reported a number of disturbances that took place on the islands of Simi and Castellorizo, where locals had demonstrated against significant increases in the duties on food and fuel. These protests were dominated by women of all ages, although many children and adult males also participated. Any objective observer might have interpreted these disturbances as social protests, but expatriate nationalists, seeing them as evidence of patriotic resistance, confidently predicted a nationalist reawakening among the "enslaved" islanders.¹ These confident assumptions form part of our inquiry.

From the middle of 1912 to the present day, Greek writers have characterized Italian rule in the Dodecanese as exploitative, brutal, and "anti-Hellenic." The model for interpreting foreign rule has been the "mythicized" Tourkokratia that can be found in Greek schoolbooks today. This version maintains that the Greek people experienced four hundred years of enslavement and unremitting brutality, including a child levy, a head tax, and frequent massacres.² Literature on the Italian Dodecanese is full of allusions to this classic period of . Thus an Italian assimilation policy that prohibited the use of Greek in schools from 1937 onward fostered clandestine Greek classes during the evenings. Dodecanesian writers appropriately labeled these the "secret school" movement, a direct allusion to the of the Tourkokratia. The protests on Castellorizo early in 1934 were also dominated by comparisons with the national awakening of 1821. The following is typical: (Syllogos n.d.:54). The unnamed author claims that this same spirit saw stolid defiance against the Saracens and Suleiman's Turks (one assumes he means Suleiman the Magnificent), and had also determined Castellorizian participation in the Greek War of Independence. The author refers to two more instances:

(Syllogos n.d.:54)

Normally, there are very few details concerning the events in such writings. The author assumes that his readers already know the essential meaning of the story: that Greeks are by nature "resisters" of foreign rule, that in due course they "awaken" into resistance, and that Greek history for much of the millennium has been about foreign rule and resistance. Castellorizo was clearly part of that experience—or, rather, Castellorizo gallantly played its part in history. The protests of 1934 were simply the last examples of resistance in the dying days of...