Italian Islands of the Aegean explained

Conventional Long Name:Italian Islands of the Aegean
Native Name:

Common Name:Aegean Islands
Status:Possedimento
Status Text:Italian colony
P1:Sanjak of Rhodes
Flag P1:Flag of the Ottoman Empire.svg
P2:Sanjak of Sakız
Flag P2:Flag of the Ottoman Empire.svg
S1:Kingdom of Greece
Flag S1:State Flag of Greece (1863-1924 and 1935-1973).svg
Flag:Flag of Italy
National Motto:Per l'onore d'Italia
National Anthem:Giovinezza[1]
Capital:Rhodes
Official Languages:Italian
Common Languages:Greek (Aegean Greek), Turkish (Aegean Turkish)
Religion:Catholic (State)
Greek Orthodox, Islam
Title Leader:King
Leader1:Victor Emmanuel III
Year Leader1:1912–1945
Title Representative:Governor
Representative1:Giovanni Ameglio
Year Representative1:1912–1913
Year Representative2:1943–1945
Deputy1:Mario Lago
Deputy2:Inigo Campioni
Era:Interwar / WWII
Event Start:Italian occupation
Date Start:27 April
Year Start:1912
Event1:Italian annexation
Date Event1:24 July 1923
Date Event2:8 September 1943
Event3:German occupation
Date Event3:11 September 1943
Event End:German surrender
Year End:1945
Date End:8 May
Event Post:Ceded to Greece
Date Post:10 February 1947
Currency:Italian lira

The Italian Islands of the Aegean (Italian: Isole italiane dell'Egeo; Greek, Modern (1453-);: Ἰταλικαὶ Νῆσοι Αἰγαίου Πελάγους; Turkish: Ege'deki İtalyan Adaları) were an archipelago of fourteen islands (the Dodecanese, except Kastellorizo) in the southeastern Aegean Sea, that—together with the surrounding islets—were ruled by the Kingdom of Italy from 1912 to 1943 and the Italian Social Republic (under German occupation) from 1943 to 1945. When the Kingdom of Italy was restored, they remained under formal Italian possession (under British occupation) until they were ceded to Greece in 1947 under the Treaty of Paris.

Background

The Dodecanese, except Kastellorizo, were occupied by Italy during the Italo-Turkish War of 1912. Italy had agreed to return the islands to the Ottoman Empire according to the Treaty of Ouchy in 1912;[2] however the vagueness of the text allowed a provisional Italian administration of the islands, and Turkey eventually renounced all claims on the Dodecanese with Article 15 of the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923.[3]

The provisional Italian regime on the islands, titled "Rhodes and the Dodecanese" (Rodi e Dodecaneso), was originally in the hands of military governors, until the appointment on 7 August 1920 of Count Carlo Senni as the Viceroy of the Dodecanese (Reggente del Dodecaneso).[4] Following the end of World War I, Italy agreed twice, in the Venizelos–Tittoni agreement of 1919 and the Treaty of Sèvres in 1920, to cede the islands to Greece except for Rhodes, which would enjoy extensive autonomy.[4] Due to the Greek embroilment and defeat in the Greco-Turkish War of 1919–22, these agreements were never implemented.

Kastellorizo was temporarily occupied by France in 1915 and came under Italian control in 1921.[4] The Dodecanese islands were formally annexed by Fascist Italy, as the Possedimenti Italiani dell'Egeo in 1923.[5]

Italian interest in the Dodecanese was rooted in strategic purposes, and the islands were intended to further the Empire's long range imperial policy.[6] The islands of Leros and Patmos were used as bases for the Royal Italian Navy.[6]

In 1932 the Convention between Italy and Turkey was signed for some smaller islets around Kastellorizo.

Administrative policies

Starting in 1923, civil governors replaced the military commanders. The Italian politics towards the native population had two phases: while governor Mario Lago, a liberal diplomat, favoured peaceful coexistence among the different ethnic groups and the Italians, choosing a soft strategy of integration, his successor, Cesare Maria De Vecchi, embarked on a forced Italianization campaign of the islands. Lago delegated land for Italian settlers and encouraged intermarriage with local Greeks.[5] In 1929, scholarships at the University of Pisa for Dodecanesian students were promoted to disseminate Italian culture and language among the local professional class.[7]

The only sector where Lago was unaccommodating was religion: The Italian authorities also tried to limit the power of the Greek Orthodox Church without success by trying to set up an autocephalous Dodecanesian church.[7] Fascist youth organizations such as Opera Nazionale Balilla were introduced on the islands, and the Italianization of names was encouraged by the Italian authorities.[7] The juridic state of the islands was an intermediate one (possedimento) between a colony and a part of the motherland: due to that, local islanders did not receive full citizenship and were not required to serve in the Italian armed forces.[5]

Under the governorship of De Vecchi (1936–40), a staunch and hard line Fascist, the Italianization efforts became very strong.[7] The Italian language became compulsory in education and public life, with Greek being only an optional subject in schools.[5] [7] While under Lago the inhabitants were allowed to elect their own mayors, in 1937 the fascist system was set up to the islands, with a newly appointed podestà for each municipality (comune)[7] in 1938, Italian Racial Laws were introduced to the islands along with a series of decrees equalizing local legislation with Italian law.[7]

De Vecchi also linked Rhodes to Italy with a regular air service from the late 1930s.[8] The "Aero Espresso Italiana" (AEI) had flights from Brindisi to Athens and Rhodes with flying boats (AEI used mainly the "Savoia 55", but also the "Macchi 24bis".)[9]

Italian settlement efforts

Efforts to bring Italian settlers to the islands were not notably successful. By 1936, Italians in the Dodecanese numbered 16,711, most of them living on Rhodes and Leros.[7] Italians of Rhodes and Kos were farmers involved in setting up new agricultural settlements, while Italians of Leros were generally employed by the army and lived at its facilities in the new Italian-built model town of Portolago (modern Lakki).[7]

Public works

Mussolini wanted to transform the islands into showcases of the Italian colonial empire, and undertook a series of massive public works in the archipelago.[10] New roads, monumental buildings in accordance with fascist architecture and waterworks were constructed, sometimes using forced Greek labor.[10]

Many examples of Italian architecture can still be found on the islands:[11] A few among them are:

The Italians also surveyed the islands for the first time in history, and began to introduce mass-scale tourism to Rhodes and Kos.[10] The smaller islands were mostly neglected by the improvement efforts and were left underdeveloped.[10]

Archeology

Mussolini stated that Rhodes had merely returned to its ancestral home after being annexed by Italy, as the Dodecanese had been an important part of the Roman Empire.[6] Major Italian archaeological efforts from the 1930s onward were intended to discover Roman antiquities and thus strengthen the Italian claim on the islands.[6] [10]

Administrative division

Island (Italian name in parentheses)class=unsortableArea !Population
Rhodes (Rodi) and dependent islets 1412km2 61,886
Patmos (Patmo), Agathonisi (Gaidaro) and dependent islets 57.1km2 3,184
Leros (Lero) 52.9km2 13,657
Leipsoi (Lisso) 17.4km2 977
Kalymnos (Calino) and dependent islets 128.2km2 15,247
Kos (Coo) 296km2 19,731
Astypalaia (Stampalia) and dependent islets 113.6km2 2,006
Nisyros (Nisiro) and dependent islets 48km2 3,391
Symi (Simi) and dependent islets 63.6km2 6,195
Tilos (Piscopi) and dependent islets 64.3km2 1,215
Halki (Calchi) and dependent islets 30.3km2 1,461
Karpathos (Scarpanto) and dependent islets 306km2 7,770
Kasos (Caso) and dependent islets 69.4km2 1,890
Megisti (Castelrosso) and dependent islets 11.5km2 2,238
Totals for Italian Aegean Islands 2721.2km2 140,848

Sources: Census of 1936; Annuario Generale, Consociazione Turistica Italiana, Roma, 1938

Planned expansion

After the Battle of Greece, Fascist authorities pushed for the incorporation of the Cyclades and Sporades into Italy's Aegean possessions, but the Germans were opposed to any territorial reduction of the puppet Hellenic State.[12] As the Cyclades were already under Italian occupation, the preparation for outright annexation was continued despite German opposition.[12]

Conventional Long Name:Military Administration in the Aegean
Common Name:Aegean Islands
Largest Settlement:Rhodes
Life Span:1945–1947
Title Leader:Chief Administrator
Year Leader2:1946–1947
Leader1:Charles Henry Gormley
Year Leader1:1945–1946
Leader2:Arthur Stanley Parker
P1:Italian Islands of the Aegean
S1:Kingdom of Greece
Flag P1:Flag of Italy (1861-1946) crowned.svg
Flag S1:State Flag of Greece (1863-1924 and 1935-1973).svg

End of Italian influence

After the Italian capitulation of September 1943, the islands briefly became a battleground between the Germans, the British and the Italians (the Dodecanese campaign).[13] The Germans prevailed, and although they were driven out of mainland Greece in 1944, the Dodecanese remained occupied until the end of the war in 1945.[13] During the German occupation, the Dodecanese remained under the nominal sovereignty of the Italian Social Republic, but were de facto subject to the German military command.[14] After the end of World War II, the islands came under provisional British administration.

In the Treaty of Paris in 1947, the islands were ceded to Greece.[13]

List of governors

See main article: List of governors of the Italian Islands of the Aegean.

See also

Sources

Italian

Notes and References

  1. Giacomo De Marzi, I canti di Salò, Fratelli Frilli, 2005.
  2. Web site: Treaty of Ouchy (1912), also known as the First Treaty of Lausanne . 2010-08-17 . 2021-10-25 . https://web.archive.org/web/20211025183004/https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/boshtml/bos142.htm . dead .
  3. James Barros, The Corfu Incident of 1923: Mussolini and The League of Nations, Princeton University Press, 1965 (reprinted 2015),, p. 69
  4. Giannopoulos . Giannis . Δωδεκάνησος, η γένεση ενός ονόματος και η αντιμετώπισή του από τους Ιταλούς . Dodecanese, the genesis of a name and the Italian approach . 275–296 . Ἑῶα καὶ Ἑσπέρια . 6 . 2006 . Greek . 2241-7540 . 10.12681/eoaesperia.78. free .
  5. Book: Rough Guide to the Dodecanese & East Aegean islands. Marc Dubin. Rough Guides. 1-85828-883-5. 2002. 436.
  6. Book: Rebels and radicals: Icaria 1600–2000. Anthony J. Papalas. Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers. 0-86516-605-6. 2005. 101.
  7. http://www2.egeonet.gr/aigaio/forms/filePage.aspx?lemmaId=10486 Aegeannet, The Dodecanese under Italian Rule
  8. http://www.funzioniobiettivo.it/medie_file/aeronautica/immagini/sez2/2-15f.jpg Map of the AEI flight to Rodi
  9. Taylor, Michael J. H. (1989). Jane's Encyclopedia of Aviation. London: Studio Editions
  10. Dubin (2002), p. 437
  11. http://www.dodecaneso.org/arch.htm
  12. Book: Fascism's European empire: Italian occupation during the Second World War. Davide Rodogno. Cambridge University Press. 0-521-84515-7. 2006. 85.
  13. Dubin (2002), p. 438
  14. Book: Salò-Berlino: l'alleanza difficile. La Repubblica Sociale Italiana nei documenti segreti del Terzo Reich. Nicola Cospito. Hans Werner Neulen. Mursia. 88-425-1285-0. 1992. 128.