Abstract
This chapter draws on archival and other sources to offer an exploration of the socio-political context of smuggling and of official responses towards it during the period of the Italian rule of the Dodecanese between 1912 and the beginning of the Second World War. An analysis is developed of how local socio-economic conditions and the wider geopolitical context underpinned the development of the response of the Italian administration. It is argued that the gradual transition from a largely tolerant to a stricter approach towards smuggling generally relates to changes in the socio-political context of the Italian rule and particularly the relations between Italy and the Ottoman Empire after the Italo-Turkish war of 1912. The account offered contributes to arguments against the dominant current tendency to approach illicit economic activity and ‘organised crime’ as devoid of historical context and separate from the ‘upperworld’ realities.
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Notes
- 1.
Work for this project is supported by a British Academy Small Research Grant (SG132031). We would also like to thank Ioannis Papageorgiou (Rhodes Centre for Historical and Social Research-Rhodes Project), and Irene Toliou, Director of the Greek General State Archives of the Dodecanese, for their generous support of our work. We would also like to extend our gratitude to the participants of the Rhodes Project SCE workshop ‘Aspects of fascist expansionism in the Aegean: Rhodes at the centrestage’, Rhodes, 28 June 2014, for the lasting inspiration and stimulating comments they have offered us on that wonderful day.
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Espinoza, F.M., Papanicolaou, G. (2016). Smuggling in the Dodecanese Under the Italian Administration. In: Antonopoulos, G. (eds) Illegal Entrepreneurship, Organized Crime and Social Control. Studies of Organized Crime, vol 14. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31608-6_11
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