HDOISTO Sites
The deep-sea going merchant fleet of the Seven Islands during the time of British conquest and protection and the Cephalonian prominence (1809/15-1864). Fleet and ports, cargoes and sea-routes, maritime centres and seamen, entrepreneurship and networks, c
Kapetanakis Panayiotis
Ionian University
Type: Dissertations
This doctoral thesis is the result of a research project titled “Greek Maritime Centres: Identification and Administration of Maritime Heritage of the Ionian and Aegean Seas”, under the Program PENED 2003. The research project was financed by the E.U., and the Greek Ministry of Development, and was completed under the supervision of Professor Gelina Harlaftis (Ionian University, Department of History).
The present thesis studies the integration of the British-protected United States of the Ionian Islands (Ionian State), into the economic and commercial structures of the North Atlantic Ocean and, especially, into the economic and commercial structures of the Mediterranean Sea, during the 19th century. Furthermore, it attempts to examine the development of the merchant marine of the Ionian State (merchant marine under the Ionian flag), and the participation of the latter into the Mediterranean division of commercial and maritime labor of the 19th century. Our main archival resource was the Formal Governmental Newspaper of the Ionian State, a newspaper published under the supervision of the British protectorate.
The aim of the thesis is to highlight the dynamic presence of the Ionian Islands and their merchant marine in the trade world of the Mediterranean; an important development, which allowed the ports of the Ionian Islands to leave behind them, once and for all, the period of their central-Mediterranean, or perhaps more accurately Adriatic isolation, and to become important stops on the main trade routes of the Mediterranean, connecting the ports of the ‘agricultural’ east Mediterranean Seas with the large ports of the ‘industialised’ west and central Europe and with North America. This development has led the Ionian merchant marine to become a remarkable hyper-local - regional transport service provider to third countries, specialized in grain cargoes. Furthermore, the Ionian State, and, especially, the island of Cephalonia, has managed to become one of the most important maritime centres of the European Seas of the mid-19th century.
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