Ionian Islands

• 1. Introduction

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  The Ionian Islands sit at the western edge of Greece, separated from the mainland by a stretch of sea that legend says was once crossed by Io herself. That mythological swim gave the sea its name. The islands go by another name too: the Heptanese, meaning the Seven Islands. But the name is somewhat misleading, because the group contains many smaller islands beyond the seven principal ones.

  What sets these islands apart from every other part of the Greek-speaking world is a single historical fact: during the centuries when the Ottomans controlled Greece, the Ionian Islands were never conquered. That distinction shaped everything. It gave the islands a distinct culture, a deep Italian influence, and eventually made them a refuge for Greek intellectuals and freedom fighters dreaming of independence.

  How did seven islands in the western Mediterranean resist the Ottoman Empire? Why did a Russian admiral, a French general, and a British naval force all claim them in quick succession? And what happened to the centuries-old Jewish community of Corfu during the Second World War? Those are the threads this documentary follows.

• 2. Name and Myth

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  Io, the figure at the origin of the sea's name, was said to have swum across the waters between Epirus and Italy. The Greeks named that body of water after her, and the islands within it followed. The name carries a subtle trap for the unwary: the Ionian Sea and the Ionian Islands are spelled with an omicron in Greek, while Ionia, the Anatolian coastal region, is spelled with an omega. The two words reflect a classical difference in pronunciation that persists in modern stress patterns.

  Venetian rule added another layer of naming. During the centuries when Venice controlled the islands, each acquired an Italian name. Kerkyra became Corfù. Ithaki was called Val di Compare. Lefkada was known as Santa Maura. Kythera went by Cerigo. Zakynthos kept a recognisable variant, Zante, still used in English and Italian today.

  The island of Ithaki carries a particularly heavy layer of mythological association. Homer placed the home of Odysseus on an island called Ithaca, and attempts have been made ever since to prove the identification. Archaeological investigations have turned up relevant findings in both Kefalonia and Ithaca, but the geography of the real island has never been made to fit Homer's description cleanly.

• 3. Keeping Venice's Shadow

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  Corfu and other northern islands fell to Venice as early as 1204, following the dissolution of the Byzantine Empire during the Fourth Crusade. For the Republic of Venice, these were not merely beautiful places. They functioned as way-stations for maritime trade with the Levant, a chain of useful ports along a profitable route.

  The rest of the islands followed one by one. Zakynthos passed permanently to Venice in 1482. Kefalonia and Ithaki followed in 1483. Lefkada came in 1502. Kythera had been in Venetian hands since 1238. As the Ottomans swept through mainland Greece in the 15th century, the islands absorbed large numbers of Greek refugees. Smaller numbers of Albanian, Aromanian, and Slavic-speaking Christians also fled there, though they assimilated quickly into the Greek-speaking majority.

  Venetian became the official language of the islands, and many Greeks adopted it for social advancement. Thousands of settlers from other parts of the Venetian Republic arrived, forming what became the Corfiot Italian community. Most of the population, however, remained Greek in language, ethnicity, and religion. Some Corfiot Italians eventually Hellenised entirely, adopting Greek language and religion. One of the most prominent examples is Ioannis Kapodistrias, who would later become a key figure in Greek independence.

• 4. Revolution at the Doorstep

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  By the 18th century, a Greek national independence movement was gathering force, and the Ionian Islands, still outside Ottoman reach, became its natural staging ground. Exiled Greek intellectuals, freedom fighters, and foreign sympathisers made the islands their base. As the 19th century and its tide of romantic nationalism approached, the islands grew more consciously Greek in identity.

  In 1797, Napoleon Bonaparte conquered Venice, and by the Treaty of Campo Formio in October of that year, the islanders found themselves suddenly French. France reorganised the islands as three departments: Mer-Egee, Ithaque, and Corcyre. The arrangement did not last. In 1798-1799, a joint Russian-Ottoman fleet commanded by Russian Admiral Ushakov expelled the French.

  The victors then did something unprecedented. They established the Septinsular Republic, which lasted from 1800 to 1807 under joint Russo-Ottoman protection. It was the first time Greeks had held even limited self-government since the fall of Constantinople in 1453. The experiment ended when the Treaty of Tilsit between France and Russia ceded the islands back to the French Empire in 1807.

• 5. Under the Union Jack

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  On the 2nd of October 1809, the British Royal Navy defeated the French fleet at Zakynthos and captured Kefalonia, Kythera, and Zakynthos in the same sweep. Lefkada fell the following year, in 1810. The French managed to hold Corfu until 1814.

  The Treaty of Paris in 1815 formalised British control, designating the islands the "United States of the Ionian Islands" under British protection, effective the 5th of November 1815. In January 1817, Britain granted the islands a new constitution. The islanders elected an Assembly of 40 members who advised the British High Commissioner. Britain improved roads and communications, introduced modern education systems, and reformed the justice system. The islanders absorbed some of the new habits willingly: afternoon tea and cricket both took hold.

  The British also brought thousands of Maltese workers to the islands to serve as builders and artisans, creating the foundation of the Corfiot Maltese community. Once Greek independence was established after 1830, however, enthusiasm for British rule cooled sharply. The islanders began pressing for Enosis, meaning union with Greece. The British statesman William Ewart Gladstone toured the islands and concluded that giving them to Greece would not damage British imperial interests, given that Britain already held Malta. The British government resisted for years, partly because they valued the islands as naval bases, and partly because they distrusted King Otto of Greece, a Bavarian-born monarch they considered unfriendly. In 1862, Otto was deposed by the Great National Assembly, and a new king, George I from Denmark, was elected.

• 6. Union and Its Aftermath

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  The change of king in Athens gave Britain its opening. In 1862, the decision was taken to transfer the islands to Greece, partly as a gesture to bolster the new king's standing and partly as a counterbalance to the newly unified Italian state.

  On the 2nd of May 1864, the British departed. The islands became three provinces of the Kingdom of Greece, though Britain retained use of the port of Corfu. On the 21st of May 1864, the Ionian Islands officially reunited with Greece. The 400-year-old chapter of foreign rule was closed.

  A notable postscript to the Corfu connection came in 1921, when Prince Philippos of Greece and Denmark was born there. He grew up to become Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. In 1923, Italian forces briefly occupied Corfu following orders from Mussolini, a preview of the Italian ambitions that would become devastating two decades later.

• 7. War, Earthquake, Recovery

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  In 1941, Axis forces occupied Greece. The Ionian Islands, except Kythera, were handed to Italy, which had long targeted them for annexation. Greek civil authorities were replaced by Italian administrators as preparation for permanent incorporation into Italy after the expected German victory.

  In 1943, Germany replaced Italy as the occupying power. The Germans deported the centuries-old Jewish community of Corfu to their deaths. By 1944, most of the islands had fallen under the control of the EAM/ELAS resistance movement, and the islands have since remained a stronghold of left-wing political sentiment.

  On the 12th of August 1953, a different kind of catastrophe struck. The 1953 Ionian islands earthquake hit with a surface wave magnitude of 7.2 and a maximum Mercalli intensity of X, rated Extreme. The southern islands of Kefalonia and Zakynthos were practically levelled. Reconstruction followed under a strict new building code, and the code proved its worth: many earthquakes in the decades since caused no damage to the buildings constructed under it.

  Today, the 2011 official population of the Ionian Islands region, excluding Kythera, stood at 207,855. Corfu is the most populous island with 104,371 residents, followed by Zakynthos at 40,759 and Kefalonia at 35,801. Tourism has become the dominant industry, with the airports of Corfu, Zante, and Kefalonia ranking among Greece's top ten for international arrivals. British tourists in particular are drawn by Gerald Durrell's memoir My Family and Other Animals, published in 1956, which describes his childhood on Kerkyra in the 1930s.