Between Privilege and Prospect for National Unification: the 'City of the Aegean' under Italian Occupation, 1912-24

• In Event: Conflicts and Conversations in the Late Ottoman Aegean

Abstract

This paper examines the tensions between the population of the post-Ottoman Dodecanese islands under Italian rule from 1912 to 1924. The bulk of the historiography of this period, written from a Greek nationalist perspective, typically describes the local community as fiercely resistant to Italian rule. This paper seeks instead to give a more nuanced picture by showing how the Italians negotiated a much more complex situation which involved overlapping demands based on different socio-economic classes and ethnic cleavages.

Author

• Valerie Mcguire, New York U