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A Mediterranean insular port-city in transition: economic transformations, spatial antagonism and the metamorphosis of landscape in nineteenth-century Hermoupolis on the island of Syros

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 November 2014

APOSTOLOS DELIS
APOSTOLOS DELIS*
Affiliation:
Institute for Mediterranean Studies, Foundation of Research and Technology – Hellas Melissinou & Nikiforou Foka 130, PO Box 119, Rethymno 74100, Crete, Greece
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Abstract:

Port-cities provide excellent examples of the socio-economic transformations that occurred during the transition from merchant to industrial capitalism in the second half of the nineteenth century. Hermoupolis on the island of Syros was a major economic centre in Greece and a hub of international trade during the nineteenth century. However, economic transformations that commenced in the 1860s affected long-established port-based activities such as wooden shipbuilding and its related industries due to the decline of sailing ships and the expansion of factories. This factor led to an increase in tension and antagonism between manufacturers and shipbuilders over the use of land and altered the physical and the socio-economic landscape of the port-city. However, new types of economic activities flourished, like the tramp steamship business and factories, which enabled Hermoupolis to maintain its economic importance until World War II.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History , Volume 42 , Issue 2 , May 2015 , pp. 225 - 245
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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61 Newspaper Πατρίς (Patris), n. 663, 17 Feb. 1879.

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