From observatory to dominion: geopolitics, colonial knowledge and the origins of the British Protectorate of the Ionian Islands, 1797-1822
Zarokostas, Evangelos
University of Bristol, 2018
Abstract
The thesis explores official information-gathering and colonial rule during the transition which led to the British Protectorate of the Ionian Islands, between 1797 and 1822. It studies more closely the official anxieties that played a crucial role in the protectorate’s early development, placing these in the framework of British official concerns after the Napoleonic Wars related to retrenchment and security associated with a militarist ethos. Overwhelmingly, previous historiography on the islands has focused on the controversies which brought the end of the protectorate. It has also, to some extent, exaggerated the transformative characteristics of imperial rule. Unlike previous studies of British rule in the islands (Anglokratia in Greek) which focus on its end and the ultimate cession of the islands to Greece in 1864, this thesis focuses on the early period of British rule, analysing the origins of the protectorate in a Mediterranean, as well as an imperial, context....