This is a growing field in Aegean historical research (Ministry of Culture 1989; Monumenta electronic journal). Published studies include the changing fates and functions of commercial and manufacturing premises and public transport facilities (e. g.,
Papanicolaou-Christensen 1986), and analysis of specific installations (e. g., for water - and wind-mills, Mouzakis 2008). Much rich material survives from the last 150 years, since Greece developed large-scale complexes for these purposes. Real industrialization only properly arose in Greece from the end of the nineteenth century and was largely confined to Athens and small pockets at the other major urban centers, a situation still observable at the end of the twentieth century (Katochianou 1992). In the provincial Boeotian town of Livadheia for example (Sigalos 2004) a local dispersed proto-industrial tradition of textile manufacture (see Chapter 21), encouraged the subsequent establishment of a series of factories in the town, chiefly for cotton, utilizing the strong water-power from the river Herkyna. Today some of these installations have been refurbished to provide the modern town in the public areas of its old quarter (now largely a leisure zone) with cultural halls, restaurants, and a pleasant place to promenade. Dating back to such industrializing suburbs, small homes for non-farming workers occasionally survive in the rapidly-modernizing urban fabric in cities like Livadheia.
The late nineteenth-century expansion of the Greek economy and its international commercialization can also be followed in the rural agricultural sector through new forms of building construction. In this period a British venture, the Lake Copais Company, succeeded in draining a perennial body of freshwater and marshland in Boeotia (Slaughter and Kasimis 1986, Papadopoulos 1993), some 200 km2 of reclamation. The Company was poorly managed, and made no significant dividends for its international shareholders. The drained land was let out on shortterm contracts to the surrounding villagers, who were treated badly. There were riots and conditions were sufficiently unattractive to leave much of the reclaimed “polders” uncultivated. The Company was finally forced to hand over its rights to the Greek government in the 1950s. Life for the “colonial” managers and foreign staff of the Company had nonetheless been rather luxurious. We hear about this from time to time in outside accounts (e. g., Levi 1971 concerning Haliartos).
For an archaeologist the surviving complex is still vast and impressive. Beside the lake at Haliartos, an
Early Ottoman village was in ruins by the nineteenth century, when the Lake Copais Company established its base there. With a large staff of expatriate managerial and clerical officials, supported by numerous Greek service personnel, a veritable town was called into existence. Being in a natural half-way location between the two major towns of East and West Boeotia, Thebes and Livadheia, and far enough to attract its own clientele for small businesses, shops, and professions, the “colonial” enterprise gradually grew into a local market town. When the Company was expropriated in the early 1950s it was converted into a nationalized company commissioned to maintain the drainage system, although the land was shared out amongst 16 local villages, which have prospered as a result ever since.
What remains of the “Company Village” is a very extensive and striking heritage. A minor part of the offices and barns for the produce of the drained lake has been converted into a cultural center (Figure 22.4a), whereas most of these facilities are locked ruins. Set back from the former main road can still be found the “bungalow villas” for the clerical-s upervisor class of expatriates (Figure 22.4b). They were clearly designed to recall the suburban villas of outer London, with neat front and back gardens and many ornamental trees and shrubs. For the top management, substantial mansions in extensive woodland continue to excite visions of garden parties and the associated games of cricket and tennis that we know were popular with this expatriate community.
World History
