Entrepreneurs and Businessmen in Greece during the Long Nineteenth Century

Abstract

Businessmen were widely admired for their commercial talents in later nineteenth century Greece. Yet simultaneously they were blamed for being footloose capitalists, shunning investment in industry.¹ They could draw upon a range of commercial contacts throughout the Mediterranean world, stretching even to north-western England. They were heirs to trading networks that flourished under the empires of the Mediterranean and Middle East that rose and fell over the millennia. The nineteenth century was no exception; Greeks continued to develop profit opportunities, especially in the Mediterranean basin and Greek settlement outside Greece; the Diaspora was vital to this process (Stoianovich, 1960, 1992; Baghdiantz-McCabe et al., 2005). Outside Greece, Greek entrepreneurial vigour appeared to be given full rein; in the United States of 1910, migrants originating from Greece showed among the highest propensities to be entrepreneurs of any migrant group (Foreman-Peck and Zhou, 2010, 2011).