The present doctoral thesis examines aspects of the social and economic history of Thessalonica during German Occupation in order to become comprehensible the social and political processes of period (interruption of making homogeneous the population by the genocide of the Jews, a process that had begun from 1912, configuration of new social hierarchies, politicization of young persons etc.). The study is supported by written sources, metrics and oral testimonies.

Despite the high number of poor and refugees from East Macedonia and Thrace, in Thessalonica the food crisis didn’t result in serious increases in mortality, as in Athens and the islands. The citizens dealt with the lack of products by taking trips to the near productive areas, by organizing commons and associations, by working in public work and services for Germans, but also by dealing in the black market. The space of provisioning elected new collective forms of claim (associations, E.E.A.M.- Labour National Liberation Front, E.A.M. - National Liberation Front and their civil organizations), it became a field of convergence (organisations of city E.A.M. and Church), a field of society oppositions (traditional institutions of aid - new institutions, Jews - Greeks), of recklessness (government, Germans and collaborators), of exercising propaganda and control on behalf of the Greek and German beginnings to the population.

While the unemployed, the destitute but also the salaried sought solutions of survival, the industries of foodstuffs, clothing, medicines and chemists functioned under bearable conditions as ordained from the Germans or even favourable conditions either as main executants of their orders. The economic inequalities that the inflation caused, led to the massivity of resistance in the city on the one hand, but also to the most important social coiling against it on the other. The crowd of «new riches» and the enterprising circles, in combination with an anticommunist, antibulgarian and anti - Semitic ideology didn’t want things to change.

As far as it concerns speculation during occupation, Thessalonica has a particularity. After the displacement of the Jews, the exploitation of Jewish fortunes constituted a new source of enrichment, legalised and official. In the study it is proved that the Jews of Thessalonica were in the majority members of middle and low class, although it was believed the opposite. A small part of the population was wealthy and economically powerful. With regard to the opinion that the mobile fortune of Jews and concretely the gold covered the occupation’s cost, the study shows that the mobile fortune was not enough to do so. However the Jewish fortune was the most expedient solution. It is essential that historical research explores what happened with the real estate property, to clarify the frame in which it was exploited and how are involved in this German and Greek government, their collaborators and enterprising circles.

This doctoral thesis is the result of a research project titled “Greek Maritime Centres: Identification and Administration of Maritime Heritage of the Ionian and Aegean Seas”, under the Program PENED 2003. The research project was financed by the E.U., and the Greek Ministry of Development, and was completed under the supervision of Professor Gelina Harlaftis (Ionian University, Department of History).

The present thesis studies the integration of the British-protected United States of the Ionian Islands (Ionian State), into the economic and commercial structures of the North Atlantic Ocean and, especially, into the economic and commercial structures of the Mediterranean Sea, during the 19^th century. Furthermore, it attempts to examine the development of the merchant marine of the Ionian State (merchant marine under the Ionian flag), and the participation of the latter into the Mediterranean division of commercial and maritime labor of the 19^th century. Our main archival resource was the Formal Governmental Newspaper of the Ionian State, a newspaper published under the supervision of the British protectorate.

The aim of the thesis is to highlight the dynamic presence of the Ionian Islands and their merchant marine in the trade world of the Mediterranean; an important development, which allowed the ports of the Ionian Islands to leave behind them, once and for all, the period of their central-Mediterranean, or perhaps more accurately Adriatic isolation, and to become important stops on the main trade routes of the Mediterranean, connecting the ports of the ‘agricultural’ east Mediterranean Seas with the large ports of the ‘industialised’ west and central Europe and with North America. This development has led the Ionian merchant marine to become a remarkable hyper-local - regional transport service provider to third countries, specialized in grain cargoes. Furthermore, the Ionian State, and, especially, the island of Cephalonia, has managed to become one of the most important maritime centres of the European Seas of the mid-19th century.

The present thesis The Greek machine-making sector in 1920-1950 and the documentation of historic machinery focuses on machinery which, as physical remains of a productive activity, form documents as such of economic, technological and social history.

Nowadays there exists no scientifically documented procedure of choosing and preserving the machine “monument”. Documentation is an essential prerequisite of preservation and re-valuation of machinery both as labour products and technological applications and as tools for (new) production.

Research followed the paths of bibliographical research, archival study and thorough study of the technical press for the period 1920-1950, as well as in situ recording of machinery.

The first chapter sets the theoretical context through a bibliographical survey of philosophy and history of technology, as well as of industrial archaeology.

The second chapter surveys the machine making sector in Greece. Machine shops all over the country are recorded during the period 1920-1950. These three decades have been of crucial importance to the modern Greek industry. Some machine-making industries in the main cities and in the periphery are more analytically presented, providing a more representative view of the sector during the period.

The study and presentation of international standards and models of management and documentation of museum objects and collections is the precondition for the identification of the data to be recorded for historic machinery. Recording examples from Greek museums and industrial heritage organizations complete the presentation, revealing the lack in specialist treatment of the machine as a monument.

A Card for Recording Machinery is developed accumulating the experience of many years in the recording and documentation of machinery. The card has been developed in such a form as to accommodate both in situ recording and subsequent archival research. Examples and samples of completed cards of several machinery are included and used in some cases as the source for the reconstruction of the history of both machinery and production sites. Moreover, archival or other sources for the documentation of historic machinery in Greece are presented.

The index includes a database of the machine-making factories recorded all over Greece in the period 1920-1950. This database forms an important, previously inexistent, source for the further development in the research into the generally unknown history of the machine-making industry in Greece.

Therefore, the present thesis forms an integrated proposal for the documentation of historic machinery in order to be implemented in the Industrial Museum of Hermoupolis, the recipient of the results of the present thesis. It can also be applied in the study of industrial heritage in the country. The history of Greek machine-making factories in the decades of 1920-1950 comprise the historical background and source to the documentation of machinery made in Greece.

British maritime presence in the Mediterranean at the end of the ‘long 18^th century’ has long suffered from neglect, as historians have merely assumed that the French and Napoleonic Wars disrupted trade and curtailed British shipping. This thesis challenges these assumptions by providing quantitative and qualitative evidence of the successful adaptation of British shipping to the precarious conditions in the Mediterranean. The study is based on a combination of underutilised British and Mediterranean archives to construct a multi-faceted picture of British activity by covering all sea routes across the Mediterranean and examining free traders alongside the members of the monopolistic Levant Company.

The analysis of the data provides a detail description of British activity, which grew despite the upheaval. A number of indicators corroborate this finding: the volume of traffic, the size of the fleet engaged in the Mediterranean and its deployment, all increased substantially during wartime. Rather than an impediment, war acted as a catalyst. Two main reasons for this are discussed. Firstly, the need of the Royal Navy to transport victuals, stores and troops created a new, lucrative shipping market for British shipowners. Secondly, the changes brought about by war had a dynamic effect on the organisation of shipping. In response to the conditions of wartime, the British adopted flexible business strategies to mitigate economic warfare and ensure their profitability, a process which had far reaching consequences paving the way for the modernization of shipping in the 19th century.

By employing a socio-cultural theoretical approach this dissertation traces the ethnic and class transformation of the upper merchant stratum of Thessaloniki during the late Ottoman and post-Ottoman periods. Spanning the years between the establishment of the Ottoman Chamber of Commerce in 1882 and its dissolution in 1919, and employing a thematic narrative strategy, it analyses: the distinctive ethnic and class identities of the Greek-Orthodox, Muslim, Donme and Jewish merchants in the late Ottoman period; the forms, limits and meanings of coexistence in the marketplace and the formation of a Jewish hegemony; the ethnic conflicts during the Second Constitutional Period; the overturnings the Balkan Wars brought and the merchants’ first attempts to adapt to the new political realities; the consequences of the First Word War on the local economy, the business strategies, the symbolic representations of social hierarchy, the social collectivities and class conflict; and finally, the replacement of Jewish hegemony by a Greek one through a restructuring of the market institutions, the emergence of new forms of formal sociality and the resignification of the merchants’ middle class identity. The dissertation argues that the hellenization of Thessaloniki was a process intricately linked to the transformation of the ethnic and class identities, deeply involving the city’s upper entrepreneurial stratum and crystallizing already before the Asia Minor War, the advent of the refugees and the commencement of systematic state assimilationist policies.