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Land allocation and social transformation in inter-war Athens: a study in peripheral urbanization

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 February 2009

Extract

The inter-war years represented a turning point in Greek urban history as a capitalist mode of production rose to dominance. Yet despite its European location, Greece should be seen as forming part of a capitalist periphery: for a long period of its history, from the late nineteenth century to the mid-1960s, structural features of its economy and social development differed in important respects from those of most other European countries, and in regard to urban development, the history of Athens – the capital city of Greece – provided a pattern that was the reverse of the European experience. The basis of this article, in fact, is the claim that developments affecting inter-war Athens had features in common with a Latin American pattern of ‘peripheral’ urbanization. Amongst the features that will be illustrated in this review of Greek urbanization – based on a study of the history of Athens – will be economic ‘dualism’, the polarization of social classes, and at greater length, the nature of ‘popular’ land allocation.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1985

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References

Notes

1 In the sense Wallerstein, I. uses the term in The Capitalist World-Economy (Cambridge, 1979)Google Scholar. Spain and Italy passed from core to semiperipheral status: Greece has never belonged to the capitalist core. Wallerstein includes postwar Greece among semiperipheries, along with Italy and Spain (p. 100).

2 The process is extensively discussed in Hilton, R. et al. , The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism (1976).Google Scholar

3 See Lewis, W. A., ‘Economic development with unlimited supplies of labour’, Manchester School, XXII, (1954), 139–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for the earliest non-Marxist analysis using the Harrod-Domar model of economic development.

4 Furtado, C., Economic Development of Latin America: a Survey from Colonial Times to the Cuban Revolution (1970)Google Scholar provides a relevant history. For a summary treatment of this process, see Cardoso, F. H., ‘Dependent capitalist development in Latin America’, New Left Rev., lxxiv (1972), 8395.Google Scholar

5 Some historians claim that the Greek economic ‘take-off’ was realized in those centres. For a concise bibliography of various views on the transition to capitalism in Greece, see Emmanuel, L. Leontidou, ‘Working class and land allocation: the urban history of Athens, 1880–1980’ (Ph.D. thesis, London School of Economics, 1981), 1, 67–9.Google Scholar

6 I have followed Tsoucalas, C. (in Greek), Dependence and Reproduction: the Social Role of Education Mechanisms in Greece 1830–1922 (Athens, 1977Google Scholar) in locating the period of the Greek take-off.

7 Descriptions by travellers are collected in Andrews, K., Athens Alive (Athens, 1979)Google Scholar, and summarized in Biris, K. (in Greek), Athens-From the 19th to the 20th century (Athens, 1966), 910.Google Scholar Examples of the provision of false continuity to the history of Athens are Travlos, I. (in Greek), Urban Development of Athens (Athens, 1960)Google Scholar, Stassinopoulos, E. K. (in Greek), History of Athens from Ancient Times till Today (Athens, 1973).Google Scholar See also About, E., Greece and the Greeks of thePresent Day (1855), 6.Google Scholar

8 Cardoso, F. H., ‘The City and politics’, in Hardoy, J. E. (ed.), Urbanization in Latin America: Approaches and Issues (New York, 1975), 157–90: 168.Google Scholar Tsoucalas, op. cit., especially 210–40, provides an extensive discussion of class structure in Greece at the time; and I have contributed some measurements of the size of social classes in Athens and Greece in L. Leontidou Emmanuel, op. cit., 1, 80–7).

9 For the Balkan countries see Stavrianos, L. S., The Balkans 1815–1914 (New York, 1963)Google Scholar and for Latin America, Morse, R. M., ‘Trends and patterns in Latin American urbanization 1750–1920’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, XVI. 4 (1974), 416–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and J. E. Hardoy, ‘Two thousand years of Latin American urbanization’ in Hardoy (ed.), op. cit., 3–55.

10 This class originated from the Greek merchants who, during Ottoman rule, accumulated capital in the trade between the Balkans and Central Europe. See Tsircas, S. (in Greek), Cavafy and his Period (Athens, 1958)Google Scholar for one of the best social histories of the comprador bourgeoisie; Tsoucalas, op. cit., also emphasizes their role and impact, as does Psyroukis, N. (in Greek), Greek ‘Settlers’ in Modern Times (Athens, 1974).Google Scholar For the process of their return in the 1880s, see Tsoucalas, op. cit., especially 251–8, who distinguishes between a phase of ‘unspeculative’ transfer of capital (1875–80) and one of ‘speculative’ transfer.

11 Mansolas, A. (in Greek), Information on the Steam-powered Industrial Establishments of Greece (Athens, 1876);Google Scholar see also Charitakis, G. (in Greek), Greek Industry (Manufacturing, Mines, Labour) (Athens, 1927).Google Scholar E. About, op. cit, describes how Greece could not show manufactured goods at international exhibitions.

12 The impact of the crisis on the industrial towns is discussed in Charitakis and Tsoucalas, op. cit.

13 Greek historians have much focused on the 1909 Goudi revolt and the consequent reforms, on the Balkan wars, and the First World War. For the impact of these changes on industry, see especially Charitakis, op. cit.; Ch.Evelpides, (in Greek), Economic and Social History of Greece (Athens, 1950);Google Scholar Andreades, et al. , Les Effets Economiques et Sociaux de la Guerre en Grèce (Paris, 1928);Google Scholar Dertilis, G. (in Greek), Social Transformation and Military Intervention, 1880–1909 (Athens, 1977)Google Scholar, Anastassopoulos, G. (in Greek), History of Greek Industry 1840–1940, (3 vols, Athens, 1947).Google Scholar

14 Sarsentis, V. N. (in Greek), ‘The first steps of economic development in Greece’, part 1, Economic Post, VIII, 11 (1973).Google Scholar

15 For such a definition of productive sectors, see Gough, I., ‘Marx's theory of productive and unproductive labour’, New Left Rev., lxxvi (1972), 4772.Google Scholar

16 Information from various primary and secondary sources, as adapted by L. Emmanuel, op. cit, II, 23, 30 especially, also indicates that despite the persistence of cottage industry in 1909–10, 243 factories with 37,000 workers had grown in the two cities.

17 For these early years of the Greek labour movement and the emergence of working-class institutions, see Benaroya, A. (in Greek), The First Career of the Greek Proletariat (Athens, 1975Google Scholar, ed. Elefantis, A.), and Kordhatos, J. (in Greek), Introduction to the history of Greek capitalism (Athens, 1931/1972).Google Scholar

18 Polyzos, N. J., Essai sur l'Emigration Grecque (Paris, 1947)Google Scholar, Dertilis, op. cit., 205.

19 For a thorough treatment of the refugee inflow and its aftermath, see Pentzopoulos, D., The Balkan Exchange of Minorities and its Impact upon Greece (Athens and Paris, 1962).Google Scholar Political aspects are discussed in Psyroukis, N. (in Greek), The Asia Minor Disaster 1918–1923: Middle East after World War 1 (Athens, 1964).Google Scholar

20 The expression is borrowed from Braudel, F., ‘Time, history and the social sciences’, reproduced in Stern, F. (ed.), The Varieties of History (New York, 1973).Google Scholar

21 All information for population and employment in 1920–40 is from primary sources — the censuses by the General Statistical Service of Greece as presented in L. Emmanuel, op. cit., I, ch. 4.

22 Mears, E. G., Greece Today: the Aftermath of the Refugee Impact (Stanford, 1929), 112.Google Scholar

23 League of Nations, Greek refugee Settlement (Translation) (Geneva, 1926), 179.Google Scholar

24 The process is described in George, M. D., London Life in the Eighteenth Century (Penguin, 1966).Google Scholar See also the concise presentation by Vancejr., J. E., ‘Land assignment in the precapitalist, capitalist, and postcapitalist city’, Economic Geography, xlvii, 2 (1971), 101–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

25 This ‘rage for building’ is vividly described in About, op. cit., 157–9. The first reference to petty developers can be found in Bickford-Smith, P. A. M., Greece under King George (1893), 229.Google Scholar

26 Information from various sources as adapted in L. Emmanuel, op. cit., 1, 78–9; see also pp. 98, 116 for the process of urban expansion.

27 Except three consecutive efforts at rent control (enikiostassio) in 1912, 1916–18, and 1919. This series of laws, which meant to benefit the military during the wars, was only marginally useful for poor tenants and seems to have averted capital from construction: See Malainos, E. I. (in Greek), ‘Rent Control’, entry in the Great Greek Encyclopedia (1929), II, 182–4.Google Scholar

28 Several of Agapitos', S. articles on housing which appeared in newspapers and magazines in 1918, 1923, 1925, 1928 are reprinted in his book (in Greek), TheCity (Athens, 1928).Google Scholar For the housing shortage, see especially p. 165, and Biris, op. cit., 282–3.

29 For population densities, see L. Emmanuel, op. cit., I, 79; for the number of inhabitants per house, see Ministry of National Economy (in Greek), A Survey of the Conditions of Working-Class Housing in the Cities of Athens and Piraeus (Athens, 1922), table on p. 7;Google Scholar see also estimates for 1918 and 1924 in Pentzopoulos, op. cit., 113, and for 1916 in Agapitos, op. cit., 165.

30 According to Agapitos, op. cit., 99–100, who presents an estimate of cost of living and housing in 1920, average monthly wages were about 100 drs and a three-room house rent cost 50–60 drs monthly: the workers could not afford a ‘regular’ residence.

31 As recorded in a rare document by the Ministry of National Economy, op. cit., and systematized and mapped in L. Emmanuel, op. cit., I, ch. 3.

32 The expression is borrowed from Kayser, B. and Thompson, K., Economic and Social Atlas of Greece (Athens, 1964)Google Scholar, text for map 2.07. My research of the Greater Athens population by community, as presented in table 4, on the basis of primary sources, reveals some minor differences from their estimates.

33 A diachronic comparison is presented in L. Emmanuel, op. cit., 1, 130, 220.

34 Technical Chamber of Greece, Housing in Greece: Government Activity (Athens, 1975), 152.Google Scholar

35 For a description of ‘garden cities’, see Agapitos, op. cit. A study of co-operatives is presented in Polyzos, Y., Processus d'Urbanisation en Grèce 1920–1940 (doctoral thesis, University of Toulouse, 1978), 404–23.Google Scholar Legislation and the provision of housing loans is also discussed in Vassiliou, I. (in Greek), Popular Housing (Athens, 1944), 91–2.Google Scholar

36 Contemptuous descriptions of the petty bourgeois areas are included in a pamphlet advertising the first exclusive elite garden city, Psychico: see ‘Kekrops’ Company (in Greek), Psychico (Athens, 1927).Google Scholar

37 Dimitrakopoulos, A. (in Greek), ‘The crisis of building in Athens’, Technical Chronicles (Athens, 1937), 1076–81.Google Scholar For the subsequent growth of this ‘speculative’ sector to dominance in post-war Athens, see Emmanuel, D., ‘The growth of speculative building in Greece: modes of housing production and socioeconomic change 1950–1974 (Ph.D. thesis, London School of Economics, 1981).Google Scholar

38 This expression and contrast was first used in Schnore, L. F., ‘On the spatial structure of cities in the two Americas’, in Hauser, and Schnore, (eds.), The Study of Urbanization (New York, 1965), 347402.Google Scholar

39 This mode of housing production was the largest part of one of the sectors of a ‘dual’ economy of housing in post-war Greek cities, as argued in D. Emmanuel, op. cit, especially ch. 2. Comparisons with other European cities are problematic, but A. Sutcliffe has pointed out to me the parallel phenomenon of the Paris lotissements: see Bastié, J., La Croissance de la Banlieue Parisienne (Paris, 1964).Google Scholar

40 Legislation is presented in Dimitrakopoulos, A. (in Greek), ‘City plans — town planning in Greece’, Technical Yearbook of Greece, 1.2 (1937), 359449; 384.Google Scholar

41 Biris, op. cit., expands on this process and criticizes it. For the large number of planning laws produced in the 1920s, and the fundamental law of 1923, which has been used until 1979, see Dimitrakopoulos, op. cit.

42 The case of Venezuela is discussed in Ray, T., The Politics of Barrios in Venezuela (California, 1969)Google Scholar, and many more cases are reported in Abrams, C., Man's Struggle for Shelter in an Urbanizing World (Cambridge, Mass., 1964).Google Scholar

43 Reported in Y. Polyzos, op. cit., 146, who concludes that capital became interested in construction; according to our analysis, however, this did not happen on any large scale, and different conclusions should be drawn from the particular incidence.

44 Reported in Eddy, C. B., Greece and the Greek Refugees (1931), 262.Google Scholar Eddy was Chairman of the R.S.C. from Oct. 1926 to Dec. 1930.

45 The large sums which the Greek government owed these Banks are given in Pentzopoulos, op. cit., 89–91, 146; Aegides, A. I. (in Greek), Greece without the Refugees, Historical, Fiscal, Economic, and Social Study of the Refugee Issue (Athens, 1934), 37Google Scholar; Linardhatos, S. (in Greek), The 4th of August (Athens, 1966), 130.Google Scholar According to Tsoucalas, C., The Greek Tragedy (Penguin, 1969), 47Google Scholar, the Greek debt to foreign governments in 1932, when partial bankruptcy was declared, amounted to $100 per capita, i.e. more than per capita income!

46 Vergopoulos, K. (in Greek), The Agrarian Question in Greece (Athens, 1975), 140Google Scholar, and Nationalism and Economic Development (Athens, 1978), 4551;Google Scholar Mouzelis, N. P., Modern Greece: Facets of Underdevelopment (1978), 77–9, 96.Google Scholar

47 For the two basic Greek parties and the schism between Venizelists (Liberals) and anti-Venizelists during the inter-war period, see especially Dafnis, G. (in Greek), Greece Between Two Wars 1923–1940 (Athens, 1955);Google Scholar Meynaud, J., Les Forces Politiques en Grèce (Greek translation, Athens, 1966);Google Scholar and Elefantis, A. G. (in Greek), The Message of the Impossible Revolution: CPG and Bourgeoisie in the Interwar Period (Athens, 1970).Google Scholar

48 The different costs for the settlement of the urban and the rural refugees are given in Pentzopoulos, op. cit., 116, and Aegides, op. cit., 76. For the long disputes over the constitutionality of expropriation, see Aegides, op. cit., 129. Vassiliou, op. cit., 71, refers to a great number of expropriations which reached 30 million m2 of urban land by 1932. According to Eddy, op. cit. 128, ‘Constitutional provisions authorising the expropriation of urban properties were not entirely clear and the result sometimes was that, when land had been expropriated, the expropriations were revoked at the instigation of the previous owner, or, even, on occasion, of the governmental authorities themselves.’

49 Agapitos seems to have been among the few planners arguing in favour of building in height for urban refugees in 1928 (op. cit., 245–8). According to Eddy, by contrast, ‘Each refugee wishes a separate house of his own, and no attempt was made to build workmen's dwellings of many storeys to house many families’ (op. cit., 163).

50 From April until August 1924, 846 houses and shops were rented in the whole country by the R.S.C: R.S.C., Troisième Rapport Trimestriel (Athens, 08 1924), 5.Google Scholar After 1925 sales of houses began.

51 Aegides, op. cit., 176–7, translated from the Greek. It is worthwhile here to quote two more passages:

What kind of social stability would you expect when the popular strata, economically exhausted from high rents, dying or undermined from a multitude of diseases in miserable shacks, became very easy victims of the attractive revolutionary teaching? (Agapitos, op. cit, 196, translated from the Greek)

It is not coincidental that the better-housed refugees in the suburbs of Nea Smyrne and Kallithea proved to be more loyal citizens than some native Greeks who embraced communism. (Pentzopoulos, op. cit., 195)

52 Procedures of allocation of agricultural land are described in Pentzopoulos, op. cit., 107–8, and of urban land in Vassiliou, op. cit, 74.

53 Reported in Eddy, op. cit, 127, 130. The rhetoric was the opposite: the League of Nations wished to form each urban settlement into a self-governing community. (Pentzopoulos, op. cit, 103)

54 Pentzopoulos, op. cit, 182, emphasis added. See also G. Dafnis, op. cit, ii, 97, and Meynaud, op. cit, 46, Elefantis, op. cit, 316 and Y. Polyzos, op. cit, 146 also refer to the process but are unjustified in projecting it to the rest of the inter-war period, since this lasted only for 1923–5.

55 League of Nations quoted by Eddy, op. cit, 119.

56 For detailed estimates of refugees settled by region see Eddy. op. cit, 169, and L. Emmanuel, op. cit, I, 155 where estimates from various sources are summarized.

57 Dafnis, op. cit., ii, 97, translated from the Greek. The ‘disurbanization’ policy was also supported by the League of Nations (quoted by Eddy, op. cit., 119), H. F. Armstrong (quoted by Pentzopoulos, op. cit., 105), and other writers and agencies.

58 Extensively documented in Vassiliou, op. cit.

59 The controversy this created is reported in Gerondas, D. (in Greek), History of the Municipality of Athens 1835–1971 (Athens, 1972), 339Google Scholar, as well as Labikis, D. (in Greek), The Hundred years of the Municipality of Athens (Athens, 1938), 161–2.Google Scholar

60 Aegides, op. cit., 128–31. ‘It is well known (…) that many landowners of areas on the fringe of cities insistently besieged the housing authorities of the state, offering their plots free for the building of estates, only specifying that a part of the whole area, however small, be left to them, free from the danger of expropriation; they were sure that this would abundantly repay them for their donation.’ (ibid., 130, translated from the Greek).

61 Biris, op. cit., 324. For the role of this class in post-war Athens unauthorized settlements, see Romanos, A., ‘Illegal settlements in Athens’, in Oliver, P. (ed.), Shelter and Society (1969), 137–55.Google Scholar

62 League of Nations, op. cit., 171.

63 Quoted by Eddy, op. cit., 129.

64 For a summary of such mobilizing against foreign companies, see L. Emmanuel, op. cit., I, 133. The Power and Traction Company installing electricity in the late 1920s was especially unpopular (Mears, op. cit., 123), while the U.L.E.N. company for the water supply ‘managed to live down its unpopularity’ (loc. cit.,); see also Biris, op. cit., 301–4.

65 E.C.L.A. report quoted by Frank, A. G., ‘Urban poverty in Latin America’, reproduced in Horowitz, I. L. (ed.), Masses in Latin America (New York, 1970), 215–34.Google Scholar For an analysis of the significance of land allocation in popular culture in the Third World, see L. Emmanuel, op. cit., I, 268–85.

66 The Greek, C.P. was gradually estranged from popular culture as it acquired a bureaucratic structure: see Elefantis, op. cit. Analysis here is bound to be conjectural because of the lack of documents on popular culture, but there are relevant indications, like the negative attitute of the C.P. toward the rebetica, the songs of the urban subproletariat: Damianakos, S. (in Greek), Sociology of the Rebetica (Athens, 1975).Google Scholar The refugees and native populations influenced by the rebetica were often working-class. For the exceptional solidarity of refugee communities in post-war Athens, see Hir-schon, R. et al. , ‘Society, culture and spatial organization: an Athens community’, Ekistics, CLXXVIII (1970), 187–96;Google Scholar Malthy, J. et al. , Ilissos: a Village Community in Athens (mimeo, Athens, 1966), 510, 36–8;Google Scholar Sandis, E. E., Refugees and Economic Migrants in Greater Athens: a Social Survey (N.C.S.R., Athens, 1973), ch. VII.Google Scholar

67 McGee, T. G., The Southeast Asian City: a Social Geography of the Primate Cities of Southeast Asia (1967), 157–9Google Scholar, describes how squatters in the bombed centre of Manila emerged after defeats in wars and consequent political instability. According to T. Ray, op. cit., squatters in Caracas also appeared during the upheaval after a coup.

68 Santos, M., The Shared Space: the Two Circuits of the Urban Economy in Undeveloped Countries (1979), 33.Google Scholar

69 Evers, H. D., ‘Urban expansion and landownership in underdeveloped countries’, Urban Affairs Q., XI, 1 (1975), 117–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

70 For the case of Lima, see Mangin, W. P., ‘Latin American squatter settlements: a problem and a solution’, Latin American Research Rev., II. 3, (1967), 6598: 91Google Scholar, note 4. For the case of Rio, see Morse, R. M., ‘Latin American cities: aspects of function and structure’, in Friedman, J. and Alonso, W. (eds.), Regional Development and Planning (1964), 361–81Google Scholar, as well as Pearse, A., ‘Some characteristics of urbanization in the city of Rio de Janeiro’ in Hauser, P. M. (ed.), Urbanization in Latin America (UNESCO 1961), 191205: 191–3.Google Scholar

71 According to Sargent, C. S., The Spatial Evolution of Greater Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1870–1930 (Tempe, 1974).Google Scholar

72 The few instances of squatting at the time are recorded in Biris, op. cit, 80, 172, and A. Dimitrakopoulos ‘City Plans…’, op. cit., 400. The most notorious such community was Anaflotica under the Acropolis. For a more general discussion of early working-class housing outside the dominant market, which consisted of squatting and a few industrial estates, see L. Emmanuel, op. cit., I, 109–13.

73 Morse (1964), op. cit, 371.

74 Pearse, op. cit., 191–3; Perlman, J. E., The Myth of Marginality: Urban Poverty and Politics in Rio de Janeiro (1979), 199.Google Scholar

75 Sargent, op. cit, 115, compares the two cities.

76 Hardoy, op. cit., 53, emphasis added.

77 O. Yujnovsky, ‘Urban spatial structure in Latin America’ in Hardoy (ed.), op. cit., 191–219: 191.

78 The connection is lucidly presented in Schnore, L. F. (ed.), The New Urban History; Quantitative Explorations by American Historians (Princeton, New Jersey, 1975).Google Scholar Before this, Lampard, E., ‘American historians and the study of urbanization’, American Historical Rev., lxvii (1961), 4961CrossRefGoogle Scholar, viewed urban history not as a distinct field, but as a part of social history drawing upon human ecology. See also the essays by Lubove and by Thernstrom in Callow, A. N. Jr (ed.), American Urban History: an Interpretive Reader with Commentaries (New York, 1973).Google Scholar