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Turning the Horns: Cultural Metaphors, Material Conditions, and the Peasant Language of Resistance in Ionian Islands (Greece) during the Nineteenth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Thomas W. Gallant
Thomas W. Gallant
Affiliation:
University of Florida
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Extract

The bells tolled early on the morning of the 28th of January 1867, summoning the peasants from Agró and the surrounding areas on the island of Kerkyra. The bailiffs employed by the local landlords and the constables ordered to protect them were to arrive that day to collect the current year's rent. Most peasants in the area around Agró were sharecroppers cultivating the land of absentee landlords and bound to these plantation owners both by contracts and forms of quasi-feudal obligations. The annual collection of the rents was always a tense affair because under Ionian law and custom, if a sharecropper failed to pay his rent, he was subject to summary seizure and detention in prison until someone settled the debt. And from this law, there was no right of appeal.

Type
Cultural Readings of Culture
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 36 , Issue 4 , October 1994 , pp. 702 - 719
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1994

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References

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25 CO 136/12 PRO.

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30 The precise wording in Greek was:

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37 This practice was repeatedly noted and decried by colonial officers. The following from Andrew Stewart, the Resident on Kephallenia, to Arthur Stanley, the Resident on Lefkas, is typical: “The fixation of prices was entirely in the hands of the landlords and the merchants, they being in fact the only capitalists, and that power I have reason to believe was not always exercised with great moderation” (Stewart to Stanley, 16/9/1833, CO 136/66 PRO).

38 Ward to Grey, 7/9/1849. Dispatches. Ward bases his observations on patronage on the court testimony of Gerasimos Zapantis.

39 Testimony by Anastasios Lambinato Bomboti at his trial on 11 October 1849; A, and P., Dispatches from Sir H. G. Ward to Earl Grey Regarding the Recent Disturbances on the Island of Cephalonia (London: House of Parliament, 1850), 19/10/1849, enclosure no. 7, 29–35.Google Scholar

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44 Penal Code of the Ionian Islands, CO 136/1258–1269, section 12–18 PRO; emended in 1841, CO 136/76 PRO, CO 136/154 PRO. None of the changes to the debt laws altered the legal situation regarding seizure for default.

45 Moustoksidis, Ioannis, “Memorial to Her Majesty,” 12/31/1839Google Scholar; printed in A, and P, , Blue Book of the Colonial Office: Ionian Islands and Malta (London: House of Parliament, 1839). memorial no. 3, sections 53–59.Google Scholar

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47 The episode recounted here is derived from the correspondence of the chief of police preserved in a bound, unnumbered volume labelled “Petizioni, Suppliche, Demande, Requisizioni, 1853” (TIAK shelf 195, row 7). There are volumes for each year from 1821 to 1869 containing copies of all correspondence reviewed by or emanating from the office of the chief of police.

48 Thompson, (“Rough Music,” 483)Google Scholar, for example, recounts the case of a butcher on the Isle of Wight, who in 1782 gunned down three men after they had appeared in his wedding procession adorned with rams' horns on the sides of their heads. Elijah Anderson (A Place on the Corner, 18–27), as well, recorded episodes in which verbal clashes quickly turned nasty as steel replaced words as the demanded riposte.Google Scholar

49 Gilmore found that members of the upper class left their community during Carnival, the period when shaming, insults and other verbal assaults were most common, because they did not want to risk being caught up in the wars of words and because of their fear that physical violence might also occur (Aggression and Community, 121).Google Scholar