Colonial Office record - Sir John Maitland

democracystreet.blogspot.com/search?q=Karousos

 

Up at 5.30 for a day in London; cycle to Digbeth for a coach to Victoria (£9.40 return, and my folding bike in its bag accepted as luggage) then a District Line Underground to Kew, with a packed lunch from Lin.

 

The British Protectorate of the Ionian Islands, including Corfu, was headed by thirteen governors or rather a 'Commissioner' changed to 'Lord High Commissioners' - Sir James Campbell in 1814; half a century and twelve commissioners later, Sir Henry Storks, and overseeing the transition to union - enosis, Ένωσις - in 1864 with the Hellenic monarchy, the Greek Count Dimitrios Nikolaou Karousos. The formal and informal writings, official reports, petitions, newspaper extracts, copies of letters sent and received (those in French, Greek and Italian translated into English) along with marginal comments are bound in heavy volumes bearing the impress of the Colonial Office can be studied in the Reading Room of The National Archives at Kew, which I visited for the first time yesterday, in pursuit of unsatisfied curiosity about what Robert Holland and Diana Markides call The Abandonment of the Ionian Protectorate 1859-1864 in their fascinating history - The British and the Hellenes.

I'm also on a long delayed errand following the letter I got from Thanassis Spingos and Kostas Apergis in Ano Korakiana in December 2007:

 

Dear Simon. It is said that before the Union of the Ionian Islands with Greece (1864), inhabitants of Ano Korakiana signed a 'paper' asking the British Government to keep the islands under Britain...We have been looking for this paper for years at the Greek archives without result. We wonder if you can help us by searching this paper in British archives (Parliament, Colonies archives, Foreign Office etc). We are sure that one of the names that signed the paper is Panos, Panayiotis or Panagiotis Metallinos (Μετταλινος). He was the 'leader'. A similar paper has been signed by inhabitants of Kinopiastes (another village in Corfu) and one village in Zakynthos island...

 

When I see Kostas or Thannassis I feel embarrassed at my delay. I think I've feared not finding the document they asked me about - through lack of diligence; through not being able to read the language in which it may be couched. After five hours hefting requested books from the locker allocated me in the Reading Room to my allocated desk I'd had a fascinating dip into original sources, gaining confidence as I went along, especially as all documents in Greek or Italian have an English translation attached. Only some of the handwriting is hard to follow.

I'd arrived as an ingénue. The staff at the National Archives are pros - bright, unpatronising. The place teems with people who know their way - veteran researchers - and others, like me, there for the first time.

First step was leaving my folding bicycle and bag in a cloakroom chained 'keep your key...put your laptop and pencils - no pens - in a transparent plastic bag.' Then came the daily briefing for newbies on how to get started - 20 minutes helpful guidance; then to 'The Learning Zone', a few yards away on the same floor where a bank of helpers, screens on-line to the archives, gave hints on catalogue searching. To see Ionian Protectorate documents I'd need a reader's card. That involved five minutes being photographed and showing ID - driving licence and a utility bill.

I haven't done original text research for so long, it was like going back to school without the trepidation. Finally I strolled through a polite security check, swiped my new card and came to the Reading Room where I asked for the documents suggested by Eleni Calligas, the young scholar who knows her way around these sources as well as anyone, an expert in Ionian politics and Hellenic nationalism:

 

I would suggest that the best place to look is the High Commissioner's Correspondence at the Colonial Office archive of the Protection, housed in the Public Record Office, now re-named National Archives but still held at the Kew. I would look at the last couple of years, from 1862 onwards - probably starting from CO136/177 to /184. If such a petition does exist and is signed by inhabitants of the village, it would be interesting to identify the local figure of importance, as the initiative probably emanated from there.

 

I found no petition from Ano Korakiana nor any of the senior names of the village - Savvanis, Vradis, Mandilas, Ionas, Markos, Metallinos, Laskaris, Kaloudis, Linosporis, Reggis, Balatsinos, Kendarchos or Kefallonitis - nor from Kinopiastes - about 6 miles south of Corfu Town - nor, indeed, from any village on the island.

This does not really surprise me. I understand from Kostas and Thannassis that the two villages on Corfu, and another whose name I don't know on Zakinthos, were opposed to enosis, and even today, of the island's eighteen bands, the philharmonic orchestras of Korakiana and Kinopiastes do not play at the celebrations of Unification Day held in Corfu each 21 May.

It's possible the petition, if it was a petition on paper rather than a representation delivered orally to Sir Henry, has disappeared from the record, or was never allowed to appear on it. Given the profile of enthusiasm displayed for enosis and the denigration of pro-English sentiments reported by Sir Henry Stork, it's possible that opposition was expressed a lot more privately than support.

I shall search the Storks files again, and look also at Foreign Office files, but it may be that I need to go back to the extraordinary tenure of the High Commissioner's Palace, William Gladstone, over seven weeks between the 24 November 1858 and the 19 February 1859. Perhaps it was during those weeks, before enosis seemed quite so foregone a conclusion, that the elders of Ano Korakiana and others delivered petitions against the ending of the Protectorate.

Such opinions may be unrealistic; they are still expressed, thus Harry Tsoukalas, a business man on the island, planning to stand in the 2009 EU elections in a week: "These things are anathema to say but the truth is that unification with Greece was the darkest day in our history. It was a huge mistake that we have regretted ever since." In Chapter two of their book, Holland and Markides, report Gladstone visiting Athens as part of his Ionian mission. While there he sounded out Ionian and Greek politician on the idea of unification:

This analysis stressed 'a divided sentiment' in Greek thinking on the matter, so that union was 'feared as well as desired'.The desire sprang from a natural inclination to cohabit with fellow Hellenes; the fear from the prospect of incorporating a branch of their race whose competitive abilities and education were so finely honed. In sum, the Greeks of the kingdom were fearful that union would turn out to be 'an annexation of Greece to the Islands, not of the Island's to Greece. (p.32)

In a letter to the Duke of Newcastle, Colonial Office Minister, dated 23.12.1862, received in London, Sir Henry Storks includes a translation of an unsigned note in Greek found in Corfu Town:

 

May the curses of St Spixidion(?)* light on him, who cries long live union with Greece.

 

 

*Almost certainly St.Spyridon, the island's protective patron saint.

Done