Immanouil Benakis

 

 

Emmanouil  Benakis                                ΕΜΜΑΝΟΥΗΛ  ΜΠΕΝΑΚΗΣ

 Born 1843 in Syros.                                Died June 20, 1929 in Kifisia.

 

Emmanouil  Benakis: the Egyptiotis who thrived when Cotton was King

 

Plaza, Number 64

Greek people have lived in Egypt since the ancient era, but their numbers and circumstances have varied over time. The period between the 1860s to 1952 would see the Greeks population in Egypt swell to 100,000, first under the umbrella of Muhammad Ali, an Albanian who owed nominal allegiance to the Ottoman Sultan and later under the aegis of the British who were willing to take whatever steps necessary (including bombardment in 1882) to protect Egyptian cotton, vital for their mills in Liverpool and Manchester. (1) Under these conditions a Greek merchant culture thrived, especially in Alexandria, only to virtually disappear in the years after 1952 when Gamal Abdel Nasser ended colonial rule once and for all.

You might think that all that is left of that era would be crumbling mansions, a cemetery or two, and the lingering nostalgia of those forced to leave as their companies were nationalized and their influence in the government marginalized. But you would be wrong. Egyptian Greeks had a profound influence on their homeland. Wealthy merchant families like that of Immanouil  Benakis in Alexandria, had their feet firmly planted in Greece, - and their footprints have been immense.

 

Benakis, as elder statesman and benefactor

By the 1870s, Immanouil Benakis was well on the way to becoming one of the richest men in Egypt. He became a member of the Greek government in 1910, mayor of Athens in 1914, and one of the country’s many fabled benefactors. Today, when you enter the Benakis Museum on Vas Sophias Avenue you are entering the vestibule of a house that in the decade after 1910 was the social and political hub of Athens.

His Life.

Immanouil was born in Ermopolis Syros in 1843. His family had roots in Chios but were forced to flee after a vengeful Sultan massacred most of the inhabitants in 1822. The family moved to the aptly named Ermopolis, a significant economic centre in the Cycladic islands even before it joined the new nation in 1829. There, Immanouil’s father had a textile company which imported goods from England. Immanouil attended high school in Syros and continued his education in England.

His is not exactly a rags to riches story although his family did suffer economic setbacks. But by the time Immanouil was a young man, the expanding Greek merchant community, (many of whom were from Chios) had established an economic and social safety net big enough to encompass ambitious and clever young men.

Wealthy Greek merchants had been a feature of Ottoman society long before his era. Under the Ottoman system, merchants were privileged because their wealth generated taxes which ensured the wealth of their Ottoman overlords.  And Greeks from the Phanar district of Constantinople, the Phanariots, had become an indispensible part of the Ottoman bureaucracy as time went on. Under this system, a merchant class with some influence and capable of accumulating capital became an inherent part of the system.

 

The Phanariot quarter in 1900. The Ottomans liked to keep their foreign communities separated in enclaves

A myriad of small Greek owned ships had been handling the local trade long before the 19^th century, but the Italians, French and British had controlled the big sea routes in the Mediterranean until the balance of power in Europe altered as a result of geopolitical shifts including the American civil war, the increasing power of Russia, and the French revolution. A 1774 treaty between the Porte and Russia allowed Greek owned ships to fly British or Russian flags and under very favourable economic conditions. Because of pirates, these Greek carriers could also carry cannons.  

 

The Agamemnon of famous ship owner Bouboulinas. These armed ships were easily converted to war ships at the start of  the War of Independence.

 

By the 1790s French shipping had virtually disappeared. The established Greek merchant class within the empire invested in shipping, and Greek owned (often Greek built) ships began to fill the gap left by the Europeans.

 

By 1798 one third of the ships landing in Marseilles were Greek owned, in Alexandria over 50 percent, and in Odessa over 60.

 

All this activity led to the spectacular expansion of Greek merchant houses dealing with the cargoes these ships contained. Treaties between the Ottomans and England in 1838 and 1843 ensured continuing economic successes and not ones necessarily favouring the Ottomans. Between 1839 and 1877, Constantinople saw an influx of over 100,000 European would be entrepreneurs and Smyrna became an important economic hub. By 1810 Greek commercial houses had taken over a large part of Smyrna’s trade and by 1870, the Greek population outnumbered the Turks in Smyrna.

 

Of course, not all of those taking advantage of this situation were Greek but the Greek merchant class inside the empire as well as Greeks like Immanouil Benakis who gravitated to it during this period excelled because of natural talent, social cohesion, a long time familiarity with the Ottoman regime, and that corollary of social cohesion - close family ties. Wherever Greek merchant princes prospered a thriving Greek community of doctors, lawyers, bankers, builders, and technicians grew up to support them.

Greek merchant houses branched out wherever trade was profitable: Livorno, Marseilles, London, and Egypt.  And that brings us back to Immanouil Benakis and the Greeks of Alexandria.

Cotton and Egypt

Cotton came to Egypt in 1822. It was introduced by Muhammad Ali (1769-1849) who focused on the production of cotton to raise the financial resources to modernise the Egyptian economy and realise his own imperial ambitions. He was an interesting character: a wily Albanian from Kavala who, like Ali Pasha of Ioannina, had, by 1805, managed to carve out a dynasty for himself in Egypt and coerce the Porte into accepting the arrangement. Ali gained control of the economy of the country by the simple expedient of nationalizing all of the land.

 

Ali looking like everyone’s favourite uncle

 

Greek merchants were present in Ali’s Egypt early on. Epirot Michael Tositsas  (1787-1856), in particular, had forged a close working relationship with Ali  who rewarded him with money and land for managing his holdings. It is strange to realise that Tositsas was working hard for Muhammad Ali at the same time Muhammad’s son Ibrahim was wreaking havoc in the Peloponnese during the War of Independence. Ali had been promised Crete if he was successful.

 

                               

 

 Athens has its equestrian statue of war hero Theodoros Kolokotronis and Cairo has one of Ibrahim Pasha in Opera Square. They are eerily alike and most certainly represent a very different historical perspective.

Tositsas  was not the only Greek to prosper in Egypt under Ali nor were the Greeks the only beneficiaries of Ali’s modernizing policies. But it was Greeks like Tositsas who paved the way for future entrepreneurs like Ioannis Choremis and  Immanouil Benakis. 

By 1839 Greek merchant houses controlled 38% of the Egyptian cotton trade and by 1872, more than 200 million pounds of raw cotton were being shipped to Europe.  The civil war in America made Egyptian cotton even more valuable in the 1860s when the American civil war closed off that source of raw materials.  

Benakis in Egypt

Benakis arrived in Alexandria in 1863 and had a few lean years. Apparently He and his brother, Loukas, established a small cotton trading company in 1868.

 

                                                Benakis, the young entrepreneur

He was then offered a position with the Choremis-Davis company, the largest in Egypt, to run the firm’s business in Liverpool.  In 1870 Immanouil married Virginia, Ioannis Choremis’ daughter, and arrived back in Egypt in 1876 to become an equal partner in the new firm of  Choremis- Benakis.

                                                          Virginia Choremi (1848-1928)

 

Women were traded within the Greek community with regularity and an eye to practicality that might make even royalty gasp. Fully 90 percent of Greek marriages in this era were Greek to Greek. Such marriages promised a comfortingly similar outlook and social cohesion within the community.  As in the case of Virginia Choremi, marriage was one way to bring in promising young men who would then became part of the family enterprise.

Many Greek entrepreneurs, including Benakis, hired only Greeks in their business and it is easy to understand how a nucleus of business, technical, and social interests reached critical mass by 1900. Other Greek industries such as tobacco and textiles entered the welcoming Egyptian scene and Greek owned theatres and nightclubs began catering to the Greek community.  In terms of theatre and concerts, Alexandria became part of the circuit of Greek artists from the mainland to the Greek diaspora.

Egyptian born Constantinos Cavafy, Greece’s great poet, was a child of this culture.  His father Petros had had a thriving cotton exporting business in Alexandria with branches all over Europe until it ran into financial difficulties.  But, their sons could be absorbed into the system. Work was found in other Greek businesses or with the British who were running the Egyptian civil service at the time.

 

Alexandria in the 1880s looking very European indeed

 

Wealthy Alexandrian Greeks formed their own quarter in the eastern part of the city, and hired French, English and Italian servants and nannies. Their quarter had a cosmopolitan vibe which had nothing to do with the native Egyptians whose work was generating their wealth.

In her memoires, Benakis’ daughter Penelope wrote:

We had the greatest contempt for the fellahs and regarded them almost as cattle; not only was it permitted to hit an Arab, it was almost required.

The Benakis family, moved to a mansion on the Rue Rosette in 1884 and quickly became an integral part of the city’s Greek aristocracy. Immanouil Benakis who spoke French and English well, still preferred to speak Greek and to socialize with Greeks. He believed passionately in the civilizing influence of Greek culture and the importance of education for all Greeks.  The very cohesiveness of this colonial culture engendered a sense of Greek nationalism that sometimes bordered on the extreme.

 

Penelope wrote:

Anything Greek was considered holy and sacred

It seems to be an ingrained part of the colonial mindset that people benefitting at the expense of others, could still believe that fair play and democracy should prevail in their own home country (at least to the extent that it did not harm their own class). But, to be fair, the Greeks had been exploited by the Ottomans for 400 years, so had no apparent qualms about benefitting from a system that had, in fact, been exploiting them. Still it was hard on the native Egyptians who did not manage their own revolution until 1952.

By 1902 the Greek community could boast 9 primary schools, 2 hospitals, 2 orphanages, a sports club, and their own Chamber of Commerce. Immanouil Benakis became the president of the Greek Community of Alexandria between 1901 and 1911. 

Benakis and Greece

Benakis never lost sight of his homeland. During the 1882 troubles when the British were quashing an Egyptian led rebellion, he had travelled home with his family and bought a villa outside of the capital. With the pinnacle of financial success having been reached in Egypt, a 1909 coup in Athens resulted in Cretan Eleftherios Venizelos becoming prime minister, an event that caused Benakis to consider returning to Greece to actively participate in the reforms which Venizelos had promised. He had investigated Venizelos and liked what he had learned. The two corresponded about reforms in Greece beginning in February  1910. Benakis would also have approved of Venizelos embracing the ‘great idea’ of Greek expansionism. He and his family were great supporters of the effort to add Macedonia to Greece and the effort to continue expanding the country until all ethnic Greeks were included in the nation.(2)

Benakis bought an imposing neoclassical mansion on Vasilissis Sofias Avenue opposite the royal palace, became a member Greek parliament and an advisor to Venizelos. In a flurry of reforms during that heady period (including 53 constitutional amendments) a new Ministry of National Economy was initiated by Venezelos especially for him.

                    The Benakis mansion, built in 1967 and bought by Benakis in 1910

In 1914, Benakis changed course and became mayor of Athens, a position he would hold until 1919. He remained, however, a staunch Venizelist and supported Venizelos when he set up a rival government in northern Greece against the King. Venizelos had wanted to join the Entente during the First World War and the king wanted to remain neutral.  Passions ran high and, in 1916, Benakis came very close to being lynched by a royalist mob who beat him and looted his mansion. After spending 41 days in prison, he was released.

Venizelos returned to Athens in triumph in May of 1917 and it was the turn of royalists to be exiled or imprisoned. When Venizelos lost the elections in 1920 and royalists brought back the exiled king, Benakis left for Nice and then Paris. He did not return until 1924, well after the Asia Minor catastrophe had ended Greek expansionism.

The Last Years

For the last five years of his life Immanouil Benakis continued to support Greece and his will ensured that his generosity would continue after his death. The family supported Asia Minor refugees, funded hospitals and orphanages and were instrumental in the founding of Athens College (still going strong). The Benaki Phytopathological Institute established in 1929 enabled Greek farmers to make the most of their land. It is respected worldwide and is now under the supervision of the Hellenic Ministry of Rural Development and Food.

 

The Benakis Children

Virginia and Immanouil Benakis had six children, five of whom survived childhood: Alexandra (1871-1941), Antonis (1873-1954), Penelope (1874-1941), Alexandros(1878-1922) and Argine (1883-1973). (Αλεξάνδρα Αντώνιος, Πηνελόπη, Αλέξανδρος, και Αργίνη)

Argine

Argine  led a life very similar to her mother’s in that she married Michael Salvagos, a wealthy Greek Alexandrian whose family also hailed from Chios and became the so called  ‘uncrowned queen’ of the Alexandrian aristocracy until the era ended.  Her palace in Alexandria was so grand that, when the Greek king in exile visited during the Second World War, he was so dazzled by its sumptuousness he wrote that, after seeing it, he would hesitate to entertain her in his own Palace.  Argine collected Egyptian and Arabic art and some of her vast collection can be seen in the Benaki Islamic Museum at Ag. Asomaton 22 and Dipilou  streets near  Kerameikos, the ancient cemetery of Athens. She died in Alexandria in 1973 at the age of 90.

                                            Argine ‘at home’, very much the grand dame.

Antonis

Antonis Benakis fought for Greece during the war with the Ottomans in 1897 and in the Balkan wars. Because of his father’s wealth he lived an advantaged and cosmopolitan life. As an avid antiquarian and collector, he donated the family home for the now famous Benakis Museum which opened to the public in 1931 and contains many of the family treasures. When he died in 1954, the museum could boast over 26,000 artifacts and over 10,000 books and manuscripts. Its library is open to the public and well worth a visit if research is on your mind.

 

Antonis Benakis

Penelope

Penelope was the third child, imaginative, highly sensitive, and not at all suited emotionally for a life like her mother’s. Nonetheless, she reluctantly did the ‘right thing’ at the age of 21 and married Stephanos Delta, a man who seems to have been more suited to her parents than to her. Almost immediately she produced three daughters and seemed destined to lead a life like her two sisters until she met Ion Dragoumis, a diplomat at the Greek consulate in Alexandria and fell in love.

 

                                                     Penelope and Dragoumis

 The family interfered (then again, perhaps her own sense of what was required of a Benakis daughter was a big factor) and the relationship ended at great psychological cost. As she later wrote: My happiness did not last long, goodbye my Paradise, goodbye sweet dreams that flew away like cigarette smoke blown by the wind. Penelope spent some time in an Austrian sanitarium in 1908 trying to adjust to life without Dragoumis. Apparently she met with him for three short days before she returned to her husband, a man whom she clearly respected and honoured but did not love in the way she had loved Dragoumis.

When Dragoumis was shot and killed in 1920, she wore black for the rest of her life and became the keeper of his writings.  She herself was a wonderful writer of well researched children’s books which both entertained and educated young children about their country. All her life she took a lively interest in Greek politics, education, and culture.

 

Penelope Delta

Penelope was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1925, a disease which caused a slow deterioration of her health. Nonetheless, she continued writing until in 1941 when, on the day the Germans invaded, she took poison and died a few days later. At her own written request, she was buried in the garden of her villa and the single word on her tombstone is silence. (3)

 

Stephanos Delta and two of his daughter’s at Penelope’s grave

Her life with all its contradictions, still fascinates. Penelope Delta is considered one of Greece’s most popular writers. In 1930 she was honoured by the Athens Academy. Her daughter Alexandria Papadopoulou donated her home to the Benaki museum in 1977 and it now houses the Benakis museum’s archives.

The Benakis Family Grave

 

Plaza, Number 64

Perhaps those palms are a nod to Alexandria

The Map

 

Footnotes

(1)  The British invaded Egypt to put down a nationalist revolution in 1882 in order to protect their financial interests. They restored the Muhammid Ali dynasty but were really establishing a kind of veiled protectorate  which became an actual one in 1914 when they chose another biddable member of the ruling family to rule. At the same time, they took over  the political structure and the economy until the revolution of 1952.

(2)  Ironically, the Smyrna catastrophe which resulted in the population exchange between Turkey and Greece after 1922 did mean that most ethnic Greeks had become citizens of Greece, but in a smaller territory. This caused Greeks and their benefactors to look inward and turn their efforts towards making what they did have a better place. Benakis and his family became part of this effort.

(3)  Penelope’s story is a poignant one because of her intelligence and her divided loyalties. She did not fit the mould of Alexandrian aristocracy and paid the price. It may have been this very issue that prompted her to write books that are still delighting generations of young Greeks.

Some Sources:

A Presence without a Narrative: The Greeks in Egypt, 1961-1976 Une présence sans récit : la communauté grecque en Égypte, 1961-1976. Eftychia Mylona

http://www.andro.gr/empneusi/to-paradeigma-tou-antwni-mpenaki/:

Greek Dominance in the Levantine Boom from A Brief History of Commercial Capitalism by Jairius Banaji

 

 

Alexandros Papanastasiou

 

 

Alexandros Papanastasiou                  ΑΛΕΞΑΝΔΟΣ ΠΑΠΑΝΑΣΤΑΣΙΟΥ

Born July 8, 1876                                                  Died November 17, 1936

 

 

Plaza Number 39

 

Democracy consists of a whole system of political forces... in order to ensure freedom and egalitarianism the state must try to elevate the many -  meaning the whole governing organization - in the political, economical and social and in general in all our relations with other countries.

Alexandros Papanastasiou was a politician, thinker, and, above all, an idealist. This is a quotation from a speech he delivered when he became Greece’s Prime Minister in 1924.  His career spanned the years from 1907 until his death in 1936, a period of incredible turmoil in Greece. He introduced something new to Greek political life, - a school of political thought. By regarding politics as a science compatible with scientific research, he believed that sound policies could emerge. He did not believe that a monarchy could or should be the basis of the modern Greek state; he did believe that it was the proper role of government to intervene, fine tune, and improve the society it was leading as well as ensuring as friendly relations with neighbouring states as possible in order to ensure the well being of the region.

In the early 1900s there were many intractable issues facing Greece. It had declared bankruptcy in 1893, had suffered a crushing and humiliating defeat in the Greek Turkish war of 1897, and the governments in power lacked any coherent long term strategy for the betterment of citizens, especially for its poorest citizens, the workers and farmers.  How to enhance the all important agricultural sector especially in the newly acquired  bread-basket of  Thessaly, what role the king should play in political life, and how to improve the economy were all issues in search of solutions that Papanastasiou and his followers believed were within their grasp. He published his views tirelessly in the newspapers of the day. Two articles: What Has to Happen written in 1909 at the time of the military coup at Goudi and, the Democratic Manifesto written in 1922 just before the Smyrna debacle still resonate in Greece. 

 

 

His Life

Alexandros was born on July 8, 1876 in Tripoli in the Peloponnese.  His father was a department head in the Ministry of Education, and a member of parliament for Mantineia.  One grandfather was the mayor of Levidi in Arkadia. Public service in the family was a way of life.

 

With his sister Aristovouli in public school

He studied Law at the University of Athens, earned his doctorate in 1889 at the age of 23, and his licence to practice law in 1901.  Still, he did not feel his education was complete. He continued his studies in Berlin and Heidelberg from 1901 to 1905 where he studied Sociology, Philology and Economics, and later studied for a time in England and France.  

 

As a student in Germany (on the left)

The Return

At the age of 31, he returned to Greece with the aim of helping the country to modernize and develop a more solid democratic character along social democratic lines. This included his championship of demotic Greek, the language of the people. When the poet Costis Palamas was criticized for publishing his poems in demotic rather than Katharevousa, the pure language favoured by the social and political elite, Papanastasiou sprang to his defence in an article entitled Freedom of the Word, (Ελευθερία του Λόγου).

Then, In 1908, together with like-minded colleagues, (1) he founded the Sociological society  (Κοινωνιολογική Εταιρεία) with the aim of creating a political party for workers and farmers, groups which  were sorely under- represented in parliament.  The Society produced two regular publications: a weekly Newspaper called The Future (Το Μέλλον)  and The  Review of Social and Law Sciences (Επιθεώρηση των Κοινωνικών και Νομικών της επιμέλειας).

 

 

On the occasion of the coup d’état at Goudi in 1909, (a coup led by a group of officers disgruntled at the interference of the Monarchy in the choice of officers, fed up with the politicians in charge, and wanting changes in the constitution) he wrote What has to Happen (Τι πρέπει να γίνει) concerning how the Greek state, its administration, and the justice system in particular, should be run – and presented it to Colonel Nikolaos Zorba, the coup leader! It was this coup that led to the election of Eleftherios Venizelos in 1910.

 

Coup leaders always saw themselves as saviours of the state. In this case, democracy was restored quickly

Papanastasiou’s views had not gone unnoticed by the great man himself. Venizelos was a subscriber to the Review of Social and Law Sciences and well versed in the contents of  What Has to Happen. Their fundamental outlooks were similar, especially at the beginning of their careers in politics.  Venizelos remarked on one occasion: You will be the steam engine which will pull ahead and open the road, and I will follow. And he once presented him to the people waiting outside of his office with these words: “Behold the Future of Greece! «Ιδού το μέλλον της Ελλάδας».

 

 

 

Alexandros standing shoulder to shoulder with Eleftherios Venizlos

 

Venizelos was very much under the influence of  ‘’What Has to Happen” when he presented his party’s platform in June 5, 1910, the year he became Prime Minister of Greece for the first time.

 

In 1910, Papanastasiou had formed the People’s Party  (Λαϊκό Κόμμα), Greece’s first socialist party, and he was elected to parliament. His faction in parliament acted as a kind of left wing for Venizelos’ Liberal Party and, from that position, constantly encouraged him to make reforms.  Land reform, especially in Thessaly was very much on the mind of the People’s Party, and with good reason.  After Thessaly had joined Greece in 1881, fully 75 percent of the land was in the hands of Greek land owners in the form of vast estates. The people who worked this newly acquired land were being exploited in a quasi - feudal system in which making any kind of living wage was impossible. There had been a farmers’ rebellion at Kileler in 1910 in protest.

 

It looks idyllic, but it was not for these Thessalian farmers.

Papanastasiou’s group  wanted this land expropriated by the government and given to the workers. Agriculture constituted a large part of the Greek economy then and modernization was necessary to develop the sector’s potential. Giving farmers their own land would increase production as well as end the situation of share-cropper servitude.  Although actual land distribution did not happen until the 1920s, Papanastasiou had shown the way. (2)

Papanastasiou’s  People’s Party’s efforts contributed to many of the reforms made by the government of Venizelos: Sunday as a day of rest, the protection of working women and children, prohibition (except in certain cases) of children under twelve working, inspection of work environments, and efforts at social welfare and wage protection.

He did not win re-election in 1912 and that year saw him volunteering as a fighter in the First Balkan War.  

In 1916, the People’s Party joined the Liberal Party of Venizelos and supported him during his break with the king over the entrance of Greece on the side of the Entente during the First World War. As a reward for his loyalty, Venizelos made him governor of the Ionian Islands. (3)  Then, after 1917, Venizelos put Papanastasiou in charge of several ministries: Transportation, the Ministry of Health and the Interior Ministry. He accomplished a great deal including the rapid rebuilding of Thessaloniki after the fire of 1917.

The Committee for the renewal of Thessaloniki with the English architect Mawason, the French civil engineer Pleyberm and the architect-town planner Hebrard with Γκίνης, Ζάχος Κιτσίκης κand the mayor Αγγελάκης.

He also created three new schools at the Athens University: architecture, chemical engineering, and land surveying and ensured that the University would be become an independent Institution. Nor was culture ignored. Papanastasiou  became involved with putting the holdings of the National Gallery in order and made artist and poet Zacharias Papantoniou its director.

It was all going so well.

But Greek involvement in Asia Minor with its hopes to create a larger Greece, was about to lead to disaster.  Venizelos had lost the election of 1920 but the army leaders and the new leaders, backed by the monarchy recklessly decided to continue their push into Turkey although the international climate had changed, and not in Greece’s favour.

Papanastasiou  and several colleagues foresaw the catastrophe and on February 12, 1922, just months before the Smyna debacle, published (in the two Greek newspapers -  Πατρίδα  and Ελεύθερος Τύπος) the Democratic Manifesto.

The Democratic Manifesto

Its position was bitterly anti-royalist. He blamed the king and the princes for Greece’s ills, claiming that they were treating the country like a piece of private property:

Greece is a spiritual creation of the hardship and struggle of its children. It is not a Royal preserve. It can never tolerate sacrificing even the smallest part of itself for the personal satisfaction of the Royal House.

As for the Great Powers, he pointed out that their earlier supportive policies had undergone a change and again he blamed the royal house:  

They do not wish to intervene in Greece’s internal affairs but they are forced to declare publically that the restitution to the throne of Greece of a ruler whose non law-abiding attitude and behaviour towards the Allies during the war became, for them, nothing but a sanction by Greece of the hostile acts of King Constantine.

His manifesto enraged the monarchy and the Royalists in the country. Papanastasiou and the other signees were arrested and charged with high treason and insulting the king.  Andreas Kavafakis the chief of the newspaper Eleftheros Typos was assassinated nine days after the Manifesto appeared. The climate was electric. Their trial took place in Lamia in June 1922. His defence was undertaken by social democrat and future Greek prime minister, GiorgiosPapandreau. They were sentenced to three years in jail.

 

Papanastasiou (second from the left) at his trial with the other arrested signees of the Democratic Manifesto.

Papanastasiou was sent to the island of Aigina. His dire prediction of defeat did come true in Smyrna. He was released from prison after the revolution on September 11, 1922 initiated by Nikolaos Plastiras.

 

On March 12, 1922, King Constantine was banished but King George was brought back to the throne on September 27, 1922 amid a great deal of anti-monarchical sentiment.

Papanastasiou, always concerned to spread his message, started a newspaper on 1923 called Demokratia.

 

It’s headline reads, The King Must Go

Prime Minister for 135 Days

In 1924, Papanastasiou ran for parliament as an independent with the support of the Liberal Party, and formed a government in March of that year. (4)

On March 25 he proclaimed Greece a republic. It must have been a moment of great personal satisfaction for Papanastasiou. He was finally at the head of what he believed was an ideal form of government for the country. Less than a month later the voters approved by plebiscite the abolition of the Monarchy by a margin of almost 70 percent.  (The party of Panayis Tsaldaris which was royalist, found cause to refuse the results of this plebiscite – something that did not bode well for the future.)

As prime minister, Papanastasiou officially recognized the demotic form of the Greek language and founded the University of Thessaloniki. He also cancelled all medals and decorations which had previously been bestowed willy nilly and without merit.

His statue, executed by Ioannis Pappas and erected on the grounds of the University of Thessaloniki in 1976, commemorates the establishment of the university.  He holds the Democratic Manifesto in his left hand.

In 1926, Papanastasiou founded another political party, The Democratic Union which was really the People’s Party under a new name. From 1926 to 1928 he was Minister of Agriculture and, in that role, was instrumental in the founding of The Agricultural Bank of Greece an organization that would provide credit to the agricultural sector and enhance rural development.

The Balkans for the People of the Balkans:

In the late twenties, he was able to concentrate on an issue dear to his heart –the improvement of relations among Balkan countries. The Balkan Wars and the Smyrna catastrophe had shown what could happen when amicable relationships did not exist.  Papanastasiou was so enthusiastic about his Balkan proposals that in one speech he termed his concept the new “Big Idea” (megali idea) a reference to the old Big Idea of a Greater Greece which had died in the flames of Smyrna in 1922.  He argument was sound: if nothing changed, the Balkans would remain subject to the  conflicting political aims of each country’s leadership and subject to the whims and machinations of the European powers who had been interfering in the Balkans on a regular basis ever since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.  He formally proposed his Balkan plan at the World Congress of Peace in Athens and Delphi in 1929.

The First Balkan Conference was held in Athens from October 5^th to 12^th  1930 under the aegis of the International Peace Bureau. Its express aim was to identify and eliminate any casus belli that might arise. Regular yearly meetings of each country’s foreign ministers were proposed as was the resolution of disputes by conciliation, arbitration, or reference to the court at The Hague and, lastly, the consideration of the situation of ethnic minorities in each member state was also placed on the agenda.  This last was insisted upon by Bulgaria but agreed to by all.

More conferences were held, in Constantinople in 1931, in Bucharest in 1932, Thessaly in 1933, and many issues of common interest were discussed. All this led to a Balkan Pact being signed on February 8, 1934 in Athens, although only four Balkan countries actually signed: Turkey, Romania, Greece, and Yugoslavia. Two of the issues agreed upon were to respect existing borders, to respect international law, and to avoid hostile military activity.  Ominously, Bulgaria and Albania abstained.

 

Bulgaria and Albania abstained...

Why did nothing come of it?

There were many reasons. Each Balkan State had come to the table with a different perspective on what could or should be achieved. Newly created Yugoslavia was apparently most interested in economic possibilities including a negotiated corridor to the Mediterranean via Thessaloniki, Romania was concerned with the importance of cultural ties, and Bulgaria was concerned about protecting its minorities in Romania and western Thrace – and wanted a corridor to the Aegean.  Then, the resolutions made at these conferences did not bind their governments to accept them. Venizelos ever the pragmatist, was not against the conferences but, unlike Papanastasiou was cautious as to what could be achieved. He was critical of the 1934 pact and thought it might even be both dangerous and not in Greece’s interests. He preferred bi-lateral agreements with other heads of state. Papanastasiou, on the other hand,  favoured agreements  of a  pan - Balkan character.  Regardless of who was right or wrong, the Balkan Pact never really got off the ground although Romania did commemorate it with a stamp.

 

In the thirties, each Balkan State retreated into its own brand of political chaos. Greece became a battleground between the royalists and Venizelists which was temporarily resolved by the coup d’ état of March 1^st 1935.  Papanastasiou had tried to mediate but failed. His proposal had been a government of national unity to avoid a civil war similar to the civil wars that had destroyed Hellenism in ancient times. He reiterated his belief that above all the parties and any person is Greece; its future and the life of its people.

Brave words, futile in the climate of 1936, and horribly prophetic too.

The Elections which followed the revolution on Oct 10 1935 resulted in the return of the king on Nov 25 of the same year. Then on August 4, 1936, the king invited Ioannis Metaxas to be prime minister although he had won only a small percentage of the vote. The dictatorship of Metaxas began. (5)

Papanastasiou was placed under house arrest because he refused to accept the Metaxas dictatorship with these words: 

The freedom that was given to us by our fathers, shedding rivers of blood, must not tolerate now Metaxas and the king who have deprived us of our freedom making us slaves and we shall sit calmly by and not fight against this tyranny?  I cannot. I cannot bear it. With every ounce of strength I will not stop fighting them.

 

The Metaxas Dictatorship had distinct German overtones...

Papathanasiou died of a heart attack on November 16, 1936 while still under house arrest and irony of ironies, Metaxas, wanted to have him buried with the honours of a Prime Minister and at public expense. The very people who had betrayed his ideals were prepared to bury him (and his ideas) with honours! His sister refused at first - until Metaxas threatened that if she did not accept, she would be the only person allowed at his burial.

Summary

Papanastasiou could be forgiven if he died, like Keats, believing that his name was ‘writ in water’. He did not live to see his ideal state or Balkan solidarity and it is hard to imagine what he would have made of the Greek civil war, the cold war, and the present relationships between Balkan states. Perhaps it is better that he did not know. Greece has not been kind to its political idealists. I am thinking of Giorgios Lambrakis, for example, but their courage, and liberal principles have remained a beacon for many. He never gave up and, in my opinion, died a hero, a martyr to his cause of creating a better way of life for his people.

Afterword: There is a museum dedicated to Papanastasiou in Levidia in Arcadia. Among other exhibits, his brain is exhibited floating in some sort of preservative. I am not sure why that was considered a good idea, but the same fate awaited Einstein so he is in good company.  The exhibit below is more edifying than the brain...

 

                                                          Plaza Number 39

 

The Map

 

Footnotes

 

 (1)    His colleagues were Constantinos Triantafyllopoulos, Alexandras Mylonas and Panagiotis Aravantinos.

 

(2) Ironically, after the land was redistributed. Many of the new owners became conservatives!

(3)   The struggle between royalists and republicans was a hallmark of the era and destabilized so many efforts. It was always bubbling under the surface.

(4) He also served as prime minister for a few days in 1932. Many of his colleagues, like himself, were educated in Germany and imbued with the ideas of social democracy.

 (5) It was this power of the king that had been a bone of contention throughout the monarchy – that he could choose a prime minister who had received very little public support but who could be counted on to support the monarchy.

Sources in English

For Balkan Pact: https://www.istorikathemata.com/2018/08/conferences-for-creation-of-federation.html