Greek Migrations – Phanariot & Chiot Families

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Greek MigrationsGreek MigrationsGreek MigrationsGreek MigrationsGreek MigrationsGreek MigrationsPhanariot & Chian FamiliesPhanariot & Chian FamiliesPhanariot & Chian FamiliesPhanariot & Chian FamiliesPhanariot & Chian FamiliesPhanariot & Chian Families

The London Hellenic SocietyThe London Hellenic SocietyThe London Hellenic SocietyThe London Hellenic SocietyThe London Hellenic SocietyThe London Hellenic SocietyThe following is a transcript of a talk given by Christopher Long to the London Hellenic Society at theHellenic Centre in London on 19 May 2005. It was illustrated with about 130 images and was basedon some 30 years of research into the histories and genealogies of approximately 20,000 Greeks,

mostly of Phanariot or Chian origin. The author acknowledges a huge debt to his wife Sarah withoutwhose help this talk would not have been possible and to George Vassiadis for his generous advice.

BY CHRISTOPHER LONG

See Family History Pages

See The Massacres of Chios

See The Houses of Chios

See Genealogies of Chios and Phanar Families

See Main Index

t's sometimes said that Greeks are the most inveterate and successful migrants ofmodern times. They have a genius for making themselves at home wherever theyhappen to be; they cause minimum inconvenience to their hosts; and they're

generally successful in their careers and businesses. They look after their families, theircommunities and themselves.

My talk may or may not confirm this simplistic caricature of 'the expatriate Greek' but what I wouldlike to demonstrate is that if Greeks are talented migrants, they've learned the hard way from theharsh realities of a sometimes spectacular but often desperate history.

Migration (voluntary or involuntary) is the great motor that drives humandevelopment. Societies that don't experience inward or outward migration evolvevery little - the Bushmen of the Kalahari come to mind. And most great historicalevents trigger - or are the consequence of - migration. . . the invasions. . . the empirebuilding. . . the technical developments that accompany war, occupation, colonisationand long distance trade.

We Greeks have lived alongside more migration than most. For 5,000 years our ancestors were therulers or the ruled at the greatest crossroads mankind has ever known: the collision point betweentwo tectonic plates, between the Occident and the Orient, between Christianity and Islam, betweenthe two halves of the old Roman Empire - West and East - between Catholicism and Orthodoxy,between Europe and Asia. . . on the bridge-head of the great pan-Asian trade routes.

But Constantinople also stood on that hard-trod path which led untold millions of tribesmen out ofAsia, around the coasts of the Black Sea and into the lush pastures of Europe. . . a process whichbegan at the end of the last Ice Age and which continues to this day. Most of us here tonight - Greekor not - are the descendants of these Indo-European migrants - wave after wave of incomers over themillennia. Each new tribe from the east had to fight and jostle and compete for land, security andprosperity. And it goes on to this day. So, tonight we're going to look at the consequences of just twosuch incidents - quite insignificant in the great scheme of things but important to us because theyhappened relatively 'recently'. First we go to the Phanar in 1453 and then to Chios in 1822.

Since I shall not be going into any detail about the Greek War of Independence - it's farbetter told by historians to whom I owe a great debt - we're visiting mediaevalConstantinople so that I can paint in some background which helps to explain thedramatic events in the Phanar and on Chios in 1822 and then the spectacularachievements of their C19th diaspora in Britain, France, Italy, Egypt, India, Russia andthe USA.

Although 1453 was the year that Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks, the Byzantine empire hadbeen a dying giant for a couple of centuries. From 320 AD to 1000 AD it had grown ever moreglorious. Then the rot set in. In 1204 crusaders wrecked the city and Catholic 'Latins' temporarilyoccupied it. The Byzantine Greeks won it back of course, but by 1453 the once-great empire consistedof little more than Constantinople itself.

To grasp the significance of the catastrophe you need to remember that at one time theByzantine trading empire stretched from Gibraltar to Trebizond. Although founded onthe former Eastern half of the old Roman empire, it had filled the vacuum left by thelong defunct Western or 'Latin' half. So, Greek colonies had sprung up around muchof the Mediterranean and in its ensemble Byzantium controlled directly or indirectly,the Aegean, the Black Sea, most of the Balkans, southern Italy, Asia Minor and washugely influential in many port cities of the Mediterranean - often founded by ancientPhoenician/Greek seafarers.

I'm reminding you of all this because there was a paradox involved. If the wealth of the empiredepended on a scattered network of Greek trading posts and ports, what would happen if Byzantiumfell and was occupied? Suddenly there would be no Greek heartland, nowhere that was 'theirs',nowhere that might be 'Greece'. Before the year 1000 the idea would have seemed preposterous. Halfa century later the wolves were circling.

You know, of course, how the Palaiologos dynasty lost its empire: the Serbs andBulgarians threatened from the north; aggressively ambitious Venetians and Genoese

CHRISTOPHER A LONG - Greek Migrations - A Talk g... http://www.christopherlong.co.uk/migrations/index.html

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merchant adventurers attacked by sea from the west, acquiring islands and ports asthey went. But overwhelmingly the Ottoman Turks had advanced from the south andthe east and by 1350 had almost encircled Constantinople. By 1400 they controlledfour-fifths of the old Byzantine Empire.

In 1453 Mahomet the Conqueror took Constantinople - which then became Istanbul -and in 1461 Trebizond fell. The subjugation of the Greeks was complete. St Sophiabecame a mosque and non-muslims became second-class citizens.

Eventually the Ottomans expelled the Genoese and Venetians from anywhere thatmattered to them and within a couple of centuries the Ottoman Empire was twice aslarge as it had been in Byzantine times. So how did the Greeks survive as arecognisable people? Why weren't they assimilated or subsumed during the 500 yearsof absolute Ottoman rule? Was there something special about them?

I don't think so. Their traders, merchants, fishermen and pirates were much like any others.So too were their colonial administrators, priests, landowners, peasants and serfs. Theydidn't have a special ethnicity: they were, after all, of all colours, all physiognomies and allethnic backgrounds. They had no roots in any nation, as we know the term, because ofcourse, there were no nations, nor defined borders, nor passports to tell them who theywere.

Yet they were a recognisable 'Greek people' thanks to two assets which were essential to their sharedidentity: (1) a common language - even if it wasn't the language they used every day and (2) acommon and visible form of religious practice - perhaps as much a badge of culture as of faith.

But a shared language and faith don't guarantee survival. They also needed a rallying point, a leader,and an administration capable of keeping the scattered populations united and the language and faithalive until. . . one day. . . who knew when. . . liberation might be possible. And they did indeedacquire a rallying point.

After the Ottomans took possession of the ruins of Constantinople the GreekPatriarch, head of the Orthodox church, migrated. It was, I admit, one of the shortestmigrations in history. He simply moved a few miles to the Phanar, taking the Greekcommunity with him - the church being the only Greek institution left. And thousands more migratedto join him there, brought in from the provinces to revitalise Istanbul's desperate economy. And thesignificance of the Phanar is that here lay the dormant soul of what was one day to become the Greeknation.

Not only was the location new, so was the cast of characters. The star names of the Byzantine rulingdynasties almost vanish, turning up only occasionally as bit part players in the genealogies of a newÃ©lite. Gone are the Angelos, Argyros, Comnenos, Doucas and Palaiologos dynasties. Just a handfulof the old aristocratic families survive to play a role in subsequent history, families such as theCantacuzinos, Melissinos, Phocas, Ralli and Vlasto.

Bit by bit through the C15th and C16th migrants from all over the former Byzantine Empire settled inthe Phanar to make their fortunes in trade and a new breed of self-made men emerged. Here we meetthe Manos family who monopolised the fur trade, the Caradja who supplied livestock, the Mamonawho made their money handling tax revenues in the Morea, and the Soutzo (an Epirot family whobecame milk suppliers to the Ottoman army). Other migrants to the Phanar were the Callimachis(Florentine), the Ghika (Albanian), the Mourousis (from Asia Minor), the Mavroyeni (from Mykonos),the Mavrogordato or Mavrocordato (from Chios) and the Rosetti (from Genoa). These families [seeGenealogies] became the Phanar Ã©lite of the C17th and C18th and the torchbearers of Greekheritage.

Despite their subjugation, the community grew stronger. In a pale if sad reflection of the glories ofByzantium it also began to award itself the small trappings of grandeur. But most significantly thenew Ã©lite progressively infiltrated the Ottoman administration, feeding on it from within andultimately hastening its demise.

Whether or not the Turks foresaw the dangers, they tacitly assisted the process. Christ being aprophet recognised by Islam, the Ottomans granted all Christians - Catholic and Orthodox - theliberty to practice their faith, even going so far as to make the Greek Patriarch their own officiallysponsored spiritual head of all Orthodox Christians. The Ottoman plan was not to suppress Greeksbut to create a 'rum meleti' (a people of the old Roman empire) who would live a parallel but inferiorexistence alongside that of Sunni and Shi'ite muslims. The infidels would pay the 'haratch' tax ofcourse and suffer numerous restrictions and indignities - but their souls would be their own.

But keeping the Phanar Greeks in this inferior position was not easy. TheGreeks knew the value of education and their newfound wealth couldbuy the best. Of the innumerable Greeks who achieved high office in theOttoman administration, most had studied medicine, mathematics orastronomy at Italian universities such as Padua. These doctors with theirscientific knowledge, their ability to treat the sick and good contacts in foreign partsbecame indispensable to the Sultan and his entourage. Dimitrios Rodocanachi of Chios (my 10 timesgreat-grandfather) sent his son Constantine to Padua. In this case however, Constantine ended up asphysician to Charles ll of England and died in Cambridge.

And there was another reason why education came to the rescue: there was a taboo onmuslims speaking infidel languages - i.e. non-Muslim languages. This meant Turkswere forever dependent on Greeks to communicate with their non-Islamic subjects. So,during the C17th and C18th, Phanariot Greeks gradually came to occupy andmonopolise some of the most powerful positions in the Ottoman Empire as ministersand diplomats. Some, as we'll see, were even to be appointed the ruling princes - Hospodars orVoÃ¯vodes - of Moldavia and Wallachia (which together form most of present day Romania). But fornow it was quite enough that the Turks turned to their Grand Drogoman to the Sublime Porte - a Greekof course - not only to represent them but actually to formulate Turkey's foreign policy in its dealingswith European powers.

Some of these titles sound ridiculously grandiose now. But the Grand Logothete


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(effectively the intermediary between the Sultan and his Orthodox subjects) and theGrand Drogoman of the Sea (responsible for administering the Aegean islands) were twoother key positions allowing Greeks to become indispensable to the Turks in thehighest echelons of government. Not that the individuals themselves were indispensable: such menwere beheaded on the mere hint of betrayal or the whim of a sultan.

There's something touchingly absurd in the thought that the menacing Ottoman Turks, feared anddespised throughout Europe, had only the Greeks to turn to for advice. Surely the Turks suspectedthat the new Phanar nobility might one day become their own masters.

Nowhere was this process more visible than in the Danubian provinces of Wallachiaand Moldavia. By the C18th century some families from the new Phanariot Ã©lite wemet a minute ago took it in turns to be the state-appointed ruling princes of this therichest and politically most sensitive of the Ottoman territories on European soil.

The Callimachi, Ghika, Caradja, Mourousis, Mavrocordato, Mavroyeni, Rosetti,Soutzo, Ypsilanti and Handjery became temporary but notorious despots and marriedamong themselves. Along with their duty to collect the Sultan's taxes came outrageousprivilege and the opportunity to amass vast personal fortunes.

The few who led constructive lives, such as Jean Caradja, did not outweigh the dozenswho are remembered with distaste in Romania to this day. But if their lives were decadentand institutionally corrupt, they were not risk-free either. The Ottoman authorities wereforever suspicious that their Greek princes were plotting their overthrow with foreignerssuch as the Russians.

And there was never an iota of trust between any of the parties in this venal andpredatory game. Ambition, greed and temporary alliances were swiftly followed bybetrayals and sudden death. Of 41 high dignitaries of the Phanar between 1741 and1821 almost half were assassinated in office - 7 executed, 6 decapitated, 2 strangled, 2stabbed and 1 hanged...

But then again, as a Callimachi wife once said: "What do our deaths matter if our families acquire princelystatus!".

The Phanariot princes of Wallachia and Moldavia were spectacular but they were not among the mostglorious of Greek achievements. Yet their migration north into the Balkans was to prove essential toGreek independence.

Picture the scene: a new breed of Greek nobility has infiltrated the most important offices of theOttoman state in Istanbul. Their princely cousins have a fragile monopoly on power in the Balkans.Surrounding the Balkans are powers also seeking to strip the Ottoman Turks of their territories.Meanwhile, by the very early 1800s, Napoleon controls most of western Europe and has ambitions totake Istanbul. And all the while Russia too is set on overthrowing the Ottoman state and takingcontrol of the Balkans and the Black Sea. Surely out of all this the Greeks might manage to back awinner and, in return, recover their lost heritage - or at least find somewhere to call their own.

If I'd been a Greek in around 1453 I would have migrated south and found myself aquiet island - not too big, not too small - far enough from the political machinations ofIstanbul. . . but not too far.

I picture it situated on an anciently prosperous trade route with a sheltered port richlyfilled with vessels carrying silks, alum, turpentine, linen, wines, grain and spices.Inland, beneath dramatic mountains would be lush valleys with groves of orange,lemon and mulberry trees. Near the centre of the island would be one ofChristendom's oldest, holiest and most beautiful monasteries, built at the zenith ofByzantine artistry. Owing to its fabled wealth the island would have earned itself exceptionalprivileges and considerable autonomy from its Greek and Turkish rulers. And by god-given chance, itwould produce a shrub - unique to twenty villages on the island - whose sap has a hundred potentuses - not least that of freshening the breath of a thousand damsels in the Sultan's harem in Istanbul.A couple of dozen of the island's grandest families would form a sort of aristocracy renownedthroughout Europe and the Levant for its knowledge and sophistication.

They would be renowned too for their private libraries, their schools, the beauty andavailability of their women, their elegant town houses in the Genoese style and theirglorious country villas. One after another foreign visitors would write extolling thewarmth and courtesy of their hosts in this earthly paradise...

I'm talking about Chios, an island in the Aegean just off the Turkish coast. And it really was afabulous island until 1822...

By the mid-C14th two quite separate groups of people thought so too. The first wereGreeks, members of the old Byzantine nobility, who had decided to leave decayingConstantinople to the encroaching Turks. The second were catholic Genoese. They weremerchant traders who had first settled on Chios in 1304 and who became, on the basis ofa sort of lease, its rulers from 1345 to 1566. Before long these two communities, catholicand orthodox, Genoese and Greek, intermarried and produced descendants whoconsidered themselves 'Greek'. The famous Chian pragmatism was already visible.

It is at this point, in the mid-1500s, that I first encounter my migrant forebears as individuals withnames and dates and wives and children. And those names reveal the process...

Names in bold are purely Greek. Names in italics are purely Italian. Some are amarriage of the two such as Mavrogordato or Calvocoressi.

Indeed Chios was the only place in Greece where orthodox and catholic congregations shared


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churches - catholic masses were even said in the monastery of Nea Moni - and some Chians, everpragmatic, even adjusted their religious allegiance to suit their circumstances, which shocked Greekselsewhere. Remember that Luc Notaras of Constantinople had once famously said that he wouldprefer to see the cathedral of St Sophia wrapped in a turban than wearing a papal tiara.

Some of the children of these Greek-Genoese migrants on Chios became migrants in their turn,settling in ports around the Black Sea and Mediterranean. In the C15th and C16th, their tradingnetwork involved Pera (opposite Istanbul) and Kaffa (in the Crimea) as well as Genoa in theMediterranean. Kaffa provided access to Russian and Chinese markets, while Genoa offered aRenaissance vision of the world which was reflected on Chios in its architecture and in an enduringobsession among Chians with education, literature, the arts and sciences.

Chios was the hub and refuge. It was where you grew up and where many laterretired. Young men would be sent abroad to cousins to learn to be merchants and tomake the contacts on which their futures would depend. They'd usually return toChios to marry a girl - invariably a cousin - whose beauty would be exceeded only byher fortune and by the commercial and social cachÃ© of the bond to both families.

Much of their prosperity depended on two interwoven Chian traditions concerning business andfamily structure. The first was the use of sophisticated variations on the principal of the joint-stockventure in which a number of stakeholders agree to share risks and profits pro rata. Indeed, theGenoese had used such a method in the early C14th to finance the acquisition of Chios in the firstplace and then used a joint stock trading company - the maona - to manage the island thereafter.

Chians developed this business principle - sometimes known as the 'Chian Method' - into an art formwhich enabled partners to collaborate in regular or ad hoc ventures capable of handling the entiretrading process among themselves: the financing, purchasing, lading and shipping, as well as theprocessing and marketing of goods or commodities and the settlement of accounts.

Ventures involving partners thousands of miles apart seldom involved anyone outside the Chianclan. And individuals were normally involved in numerous ventures and partnership permutationsat any one time. Sometimes they acted as principals, sometimes as partners with only limited liability,and in this way they ensured that no one was ever over-exposed to risk. It was expected thatmembers of this exclusive Chian club would always have cash reserves - or their equivalent in bonds- so they could invest in each other's ventures. The club demanded scrupulous honesty andagreements were invariably verbal - so it helped if your partners were married to your daughters, forexample.

It shouldn't surprise us to find that, later in the C19th, Chians effortlessly became major players in theCity of London where 'one's word is one's bond'. And eventually Chian families such as theChryssoveloni, Ralli, Rodocanachi, Mavrogordato and Vlasto were to become some of Europe'sforemost merchant bankers.

The second very Chian tradition was basedon the Genoese concept of the albergho. Analbergho consisted of many separatehouseholds of the same family, organizedinto a self-contained clan, presided over byan elder, and usually occupying a particularquarter of the city. Of course the fortunes, wealth and prestige of these families would wax and waneover time, but because the alberghi clans were each led by elders (demogeronts) who together formedan over-arching grand-clan or super-albergho it was always possible for member families to makeprivate agreements with the others to get back into the game. For this reason, and for almost 400years, members of this aristocracy of about 20 families almost invariably married among themselvesand quite commonly married a second cousin from within their own clan. It took the First World Warto break the chain. . .

Anyway. . . by the end of the C18th the Chian clans were trading in the Mediterranean ports ofTrieste, Livorno, Marseilles, Smyrna and Pera's port at Galata as well as in the Black Sea ports ofTrebizond, Taganrog and Odessa where they dominated the Danube and Ukraine grain trade onwhich Europe's growing populations now depended.

Since I don't have time totalk in any detail aboutall the otherMediterranean and BlackSea colonies, Trieste provides a representative example of the genre.Here Chian Greeks used profits from the grain trade to build huge palazzos. These houses typicallycombined warehouses and offices on the ground floor and large opulent private apartments on thefloors above - a few of which have survived - as has the Greek hospital (though its roof line has nowbeen slightly altered).

The very large neo-classicalGreek church was opened in1782 and dominates thequay. It was sponsored by63 heads of household andwas intended for a largecongregation. Both the houses and the church are evidence of a Chian community that was sure of itsplace. Outside Trieste, on a hill top, the community established a beautiful Orthodox cemetery withviews across to Istria. And following the example of their cousins in Wallachia and Moldavia theyfounded schools to preserve the Greek language in preparation for eventual independence.

And by the early 1800s Chians had good reason to believe that independence was notfar off. By now they had access at the highest political levels in capitals such as StPetersburg and Istanbul. Other Greeks from the islands and the mainland (especiallyfrom Macedonia) were firmly established in Vienna.

The intelligence circulating in these capitals was promising if confusing because, by1800, Europe was in unprecedented turmoil. After 500 years the Ottoman Empire wasin the early stages of terminal decline. Meanwhile the emerging Russian Empirewanted control of the Black Sea and was counting on the support of her fellow-


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Orthodox 'princely' friends in Moldavia and Wallachia. More significant still, as we've seen, Napoleonheld much of Europe and had ambitions to take Istanbul and even Russia herself. How would it allend? The intelligence gathered by the Chian trading networks was probably as good, if not better,than that gathered by Europe's great powers.

One man who read the runes correctly was Stephanos Ralli of Chios who, by 1800,was the father of five sons and four daughters. Alarm bells must have rung when, in1798, Nelson destroyed the French fleet at the Battle of The Nile, thus endingNapoleon's chances of taking Istanbul by the back door. British ships now patrolledthe Mediterranean uncontested and orthodox Russia replaced catholic France as chiefclaimant to Istanbul.

The message was clearer still when Nelson defeated Napoleon's fleet at Trafalgar in 1805. StephanosRalli realised immediately that Europe's centre of gravity had dramatically shifted towards London.Istanbul was no longer first prize. He reacted immediately. He ceased trading through Chios andconcentrated all his Russian grain business in Trieste and Livorno, so avoiding French tradesanctions.

And when Wellington defeated Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815, three of Stephanos'sons were immediately dispatched to London to establish a new branch. Another sonformed a head office in Marseilles while the fifth, Ioannis, ran the Odessa branch. Andten years later, by 1827, London became the headquarters of Ralli Brothers. It's worth noting now thatwithin the next one hundred years Ralli Brothers was to operate on five continents as the largestmerchant trading company in the world.

Between 1818 and 1821, in the run-up to the Greek War of Independence, these Ralli brothers, alongwith many other Chian traders, played a vital role providing a secure means of communication acrossEurope for partners of the largely Russian-backed and very secret Philiki Eteria which was busyplotting the 1821 insurrection. It seems likely that the ciphers they used as code in their commercialcommunications served the Greek cause too.

Here is just a random example of how this worked. In around 1818, Theodoris Ralli -described as one of the three most prominent men of Chios - included among hismany activities a business with a fellow Chian Ioannis Argenti exporting cloth fromManchester to Argenti's father-in-law Constantine Ionides in Istanbul.

This Ioannis Argenti meanwhile had strong familyconnections in Vienna and cousins with businesses inMarseilles. Meanwhile, Theodoris Ralli's principalbusiness was the Russian grain trade managed, as we'veseen, by his cousin Ioannis Ralli in Odessa. Thus there wasalmost seamless communication between London,Marseilles, Vienna, Chios, the Phanar and Odessa.

What's more, George Rodocanachi of Livorno was banker not only to many of the Greekcommunity there - including the Ralli brothers - but also to Lord Byron. And who wasamong the first to recruit Byron to the Greek cause? Why none other than the PhanariotPrince Alexander Mavrocordato, whose despotic forebears we met in the Danubianprovinces a few minutes ago.

And he was a close cousin too of the Mavrogordato and Ralli families fromChios. . . And, as you know, it was this Prince Alexander Mavrocordatowho was destined to become the first president of Greece. . .

As a footnote, would you be surprised to hear that the governess to Byron's grandchildren,Mary Ann Chadwell, found her next employment with Pandia Ralli, the senior of the Rallibrothers in London? Anyway, it was through many such arcane networks that the Greekcause was promoted so successfully in Britain. Turkish intelligence could never compete.Indeed their Greek advisers were quite likely to have been members of the secret PhilikiEteria.

Sad to say, when the 1821 war of independence broke out with rebellions and reprisals onthe mainland, one of its first prominent victims was the Theodoris Ralli we've just met.Chios being among the richest of the Ottoman possessions - a sort of Hong Kong - theSultan was determined not to lose it, and was surely aware that he had been betrayed bothby the Phanar Greeks and by his specially favoured Chian subjects. In January 1822 hesummoned to Istanbul the three most prominent men of Chios. The three - Theodoris Ralli,Pandely Rodocanachi and Michael Schilizzi - duly set sail. On arrival they were immediatelyimprisoned in the notorious Bostandgi Bashi prison amid a blaze of publicity. Eventually they wereexecuted along with about seventy other prominent Greeks from the Phanar - including the GreekPatriarch, which was tantamount to murdering a head of state - and in due course most leadingChians in Istanbul were arrested and killed. But this was only the start. . .

My first encounter with the Massacres of Chios was in the early 1960s when Iwas about 14. My grandfather, Michel E. T. D. Vlasto, handed me this watch,made in the late 1790s by the great Paris watchmaker Breguet. Typicallydiffident, my grandfather said it probably wasn't worth keeping. It hadbelonged, he said, to a forebear who had been hanged. "Why hanged?" Iasked. "Oh my dear child, I hate to think," he replied. Within my family noone of his generation had ever referred to the massacres of Chios. Nor it seemed had his father'sgeneration - which takes us back to the 1860s. I suspect the subject of the massacres had become ataboo by the mid- 1850s when the last of the survivors simply decided not to burden their childrenand grandchildren with so much tragedy.

Historians wrote of the massacres, Delacroix painted them and all of Europe had beenprofoundly shocked by them. But for the survivors the subject was too painful. And yetfour generations of my Vlasto grandfathers had kept Loucas Vlasto's watch and passed iton in silence. . .


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On Chios, by 1822, the message from Istanbul was clear: if they took up arms theirisland lay only a couple of miles off the Turkish coast and could be easilyoverwhelmed. Furthermore their remaining relations in Istanbul would be killed. Sothe Chians played for time.

But when a squadron of Greek vessels fromHydra was seen on the horizon the Turkishgovernor reacted by demanding thathostages from the principal families be heldin a dungeon in the Kastro. The governorthen called in Turkish troops from the mainland. But thefabled riches of Chios were too tempting. The troops immediately started looting and harassing thepopulation. The governor, holed up in the Kastro, now demanded more and more hostages until hehad 75 heads of household from 30 of the principal families. (The dungeon survives, with a plaquerecording the event.)

Then disaster struck. Chios was invaded by about five hundred Greeks from the neighbouring islandof Samos. They interpreted the Chian inactivity as a sign of treachery and thus an excuse to rob, lootand terrorise the Chians. Prince Alexander Mavrocordato, now head of the provisional Greekgovernment in Corinth, was well aware of the dilemma facing his Chian cousins but the help he sentwas too little and too late.

The presence of the Samians on the island nowprovoked the Sultan to extreme measures. First - onthe, 8th May 1822 - some 47 of the hostages held inthe Kastro were led out of their dungeon, semi-naked,Archbishop Plato Franghiadi at their head, and they were hanged inthe main square. (A memorial in Vounaki Square records the namesof most of them.)

Then a Turkish fleet arrived and unleashed its fury, its troops producing one of the most appallingmassacres in modern history. Twenty-five thousand men, women and children were butcheredwholesale. Scores were hanged from the spars of the Turkish admiral's flagship. Corpses rotted inpiles all over the island and eventually blocked the harbour. Towns and villages were destroyed.Women and children clustering for shelter in the monastery at Nea Moni were slaughtered. Othersdeliberately jumped to their deaths from the cliffs at Anavatos to avoid rape or worse.

Altogether about three quarters of the population were either killed, taken as slaves or forced intoflight. And the atrocities were deliberately obscene. My distant cousin, the distinguished historianPeter Calvocoressi concludes: ". . . a terrible truth comes through: the aim was the virtual annihilation of thepopulation and their homes. . ."

I calculate that 1,000 or so of the Chian Ã©lite survived the massacres. Some happened to be abroadat the time, others got away early on merchant boats. The majority however were overtaken by eventsand had to run the gauntlet of the marauding Turks and Samians. These people trekked across theisland by night with what they could carry and the lucky ones were plucked from the westernbeaches by seamen from the neighbouring island of Psara where they were offered temporarysanctuary.

I don't want to dwell on the Chios massacres - they form a subject in themselves. But Ido think there have been serious misconceptions concerning them. First, the peoplewho suffered most were the overwhelming majority who were poor - the servants,serfs and peasants - who had no means of buying their escape and whose securitydepended on a very small Ã©lite who were now being forced to abandon them. Weknow almost nothing of their fate apart from the mute piles of skulls and bones such as thoseconserved at Nea Moni. Few enough records survived the 1822 devastation but the appallingearthquake in 1881 destroyed nearly everything that remained and incidentally killed another 5,600people.

And while the Ã©lite could have read some sort of crazed rationale in the mind of an enraged Sultan,no one could have persuaded the poor that butchering them would help either the Greek or Turkishcauses. Later, when the Chian diaspora poured colossal sums into Greece to found schools andhospitals - many of which still exist - I suspect that it was not jingoism that motivated them but acollective unease that the poor of Chios - and of Greece generally - had paid too high a price.

The other misconception concerns the survivors. From all the evidence in the thousands of records ofindividuals Sarah and I have studied, nothing suggests that the Chian Ã©lite regarded themselves asvictims. Some of their stories are harrowing but nowhere does one detect self-pity or any angeragainst the Turks or Samians.

Twenty year-old Oriettou Rodocanachi (nÃ©e Vlasto) reached Trieste with her husband and threechildren but died almost immediately of exhaustion. Her death is accepted with grief.

Children were separated from their parents in the dark and confusion but were adopted by otherChians without hesitation. Thousands of women and children were taken to the brothels and slavemarkets of Asia Minor - but no one swears vengeance against the Turks.

Peter Calvocoressi asserts that two of his great-grandfathers were taken into slavery and that it tooktheir relatives ten years in each case to find them and buy them back, in one instance, for the price of aring. And in fact there were now so many slaves in Asia Minor that slave market prices collapsed.

Costi Ralli of Liverpool simply implores his children, in his Will, to marryGreeks of the Orthodox faith, to help their mother country, not to forget thattheir relatives perished unjustly at the hands of the Turks and that 'I myselfwas sold as a slave'. There's not a hint of bitterness.

John Schilizzi describes in a matter-of- fact way that,although his father Stephanis was already dead, his brotherZannis, his mother and his sister were captured by the Turks


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at Mosta. Zannis was taken to Smyrna but ransomed by afamily friend, while the women were able to escape toLivorno. John himself spent almost a year as a prisoner on a Turkish shipbefore his relations discovered his whereabouts and paid his ransom.

What John does not mention, however, is that his sister hadearlier been forced at knifepoint to watch her husband,Petros Paul Rodocanachi being beheaded in their owngarden while she stood on their once-peaceful balcony withher baby son in her arms.

The only jaundiced testimony comes in the memoirs of Emmanuel Scaramanga who wasundoubtedly influenced by several sad events in his subsequent life on Syros.

Very few of the Chians we'll meet from now on did not lose closerelatives, but the survivors appear to have kept their grief tothemselves even if their expressions betray them as in theseportraits of Zenni Vlasto and her husband Pandely Mavrogordato.

The Chian massacres produced refugees unlike any others we comeacross in modern history. They were a small island community witha strong sense of identity and were more often than not related byblood or by marriage. They knew each other well and wereaccustomed to cooperating. They all had substantial assets - andmany were extremely rich by any standards. They were highlyeducated and multi-lingual. They had a sophisticated knowledge of the world and of the causes andeffects of the events they were living through. Owing to their trading activities they were usually welltravelled, with good connections in ports all around the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. Some evenhad close relatives or business partners in London where the whole of the growing British Empireawaited their entrepreneurial skills. I suspect that the massacres only hastened a migration thatwould have occurred quite naturally during the remainder of the century - which was precisely whathappened in the case of the Phanar Greeks.

Returning to the Phanar Greeks for a moment. . . When theTurks realised they had killed their golden geese on Chios,the Sultans offered reform and liberalism particularlyaimed at persuading the Phanar Greeks to remain. Butthroughout the middle and latter years of the C19th,Phanariot families left for Marseilles and London while others regardedRomania as their birthright. The Chryssoveloni family, for example, established banks in Bucharestand in London. (I've included this Rolls Royce because it was bought by Jean when he was establishing hisLondon bank and it became famous in Bucharest. What's more, it has survived and is now being restored. . .)

Tselebis Ianko Zarifi provides anothergood example of a Phanariot in the C19th.Born in 1770 he lived in the Phanar andtraded wine between Constantinople andOdessa. In 1821, having been a secret financial supporterof the Philiki Eteria, he fled to Odessa, with family and friends in achartered ship, where he was welcomed by Tsar Alexander l. But so desperate were the Turks forGreek skills that Ianko's son George Zarifi returned to Istanbul to set up the Ottoman state bank andto become banker to the Sultan himself. Unlike the desperate flight of the Chian refugees in 1822, thePhanar Greeks simply melted away from Istanbul when it suited them - even if they kept theirbeautiful sea-front houses in Therapia where families would gather from all over Europe for holidays.

Anyway. . . back to Chios. . . Immediately after the massacres nearly every Chian refugee passedthrough Syros in the Cyclades. For some it was merely a transit stop on the way to Trieste, Livorno orMarseilles. But the majority who had no obvious destination elsewhere settled on Syros and created asort of new Chios - even renaming the town Ermoupolis (after Hermes the god of commerce).

Syros lay on a good sea-lane and Chians continued to live there until well into the C20th. But it wasalways a backwater. The trading capitals of the future were not in the Aegean and the great days ofthe Black Sea trade were numbered. The Crimean War was looming.

A better destination for those with ambition but more modest means was Alexandria where, it has tobe said, their fortunes did not stay modest for long. In Egypt they spotted the next great speciality:cotton. Some of the largest Greek fortunes ever made involved Chians in Alexandria exporting cottonto Chians in Liverpool for manufacture into cloth in Manchester from where it was re-exportedaround the world by Chians in London. Families such as the Benachi, Rodocanachi, Sinadino,Zervoudachi, Zizinia and Choremi came to dominate this extremely lucrative trade which lastedabout 100 years, only ceasing when President Nasser nationalised most of Egypt in the 1950s. (But bythen of course a whole new breed of Chian was cornering sectors of a new shipping market.)

Apart from Alexandria and Trieste the other favoured destination in the Mediterranean in theaftermath of 1822 was Marseilles. Fortunately the massacres had occurred seven years after Napoleonhad left the scene and France was desperate to rebuild her economy. Families such as the Argenti,Petrocochino, Ralli, Rodocanachi and Sechiari had had a presence there before the massacres but theirnumbers now grew.

Following the Trieste pattern they built the inevitable church, acemetery and a school. They quickly dominated commerce inthe port though their fortunes really took off when the Zarifiand Zafiropoulo families abandoned Istanbul in the midC19th, intermarried with Chians and established merchantbanks as an even more profitable adjunct to trade. Some, suchas the Argenti and Sechiari families later established their headquarters in London but most acquiredland in the 'Prado' quarter of Marseilles and a few of their houses still exist - as does the Zarifi bank.

But England was the preferred destination for the majority of the Chian diaspora inthe first half of the C19th, followed later by another large contingent from Smyrna -families such as the Kessisoglu, Balli and Demetriadi. Britain was not just a bigger


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island than Chios. Its solid Victorian values based on family, self-determination and free enterpriseappealed to Chians and Phanariots who found themselves at the centre of the world's largest empire -much as Constantinople had been.

Scores of these families established businesses in andaround Finsbury Circus where Ralli Brothers wasalready well known and where Alexander Ionides,another early arrival, provided a room in his offices forthe community to use as a chapel. By 1849 they had builtthemselves a church - the Church of Our Saviour - innearby London Wall.

Broadly speaking they specialised in three activities. First there was the cotton trade(which linked London, Liverpool and Manchester with merchants in Egypt, theAmerican South and increasingly India).

Second was merchant banking which linked London with Greek communities throughout theMediterranean and in European capital cities. In fact so strong were these international links thatyoung men in London would very frequently choose a bride from among their cousins overseas.

Finally there was Ralli Brothers which eventually dwarfed all theothers and was involved not only in cotton and banking but came todominate world trade in commodities of all sorts, notably in India. Infact, between 1830 and the 1890s most of England's Chian familiesprovided young men who worked for Ralli Brothers in Britain orabroad at some stage in their lives. On the whole they adopted the British pattern ofworking abroad and returning home to Britain to retire.

But in the case of the USA, there are still Agelasto, Ralli, Negroponte and Rodocanachifamilies living there - descendants of merchants who followed Nicholas Benachi toNew Orleans in search of cotton. In fact this painting by DÃ©gas in 1872 showsAlexander M. Agelasto in the New Orleans cotton office. . .

Back to London. . . We calculate that the heart of the Chian and Phanariot community in Englandnever numbered much more than about 600-700 at any one time with perhaps another 500 or sothroughout the rest of Europe.

In Liverpool families such as the Vlastos and Pallis builthuge houses in places like Sefton Park and had a churchto match. The church in Manchester was no less grand.

In London so many of the community settled into the large, newly built villas in thethen very fashionable area of Bayswater that a new church, St Sophia's, wasestablished there in Moscow Road in 1877. Gazettes of the period show Greek familiesowned whole stretches of Westbourne Terrace, Inverness Terrace, Porchester Terraceand Pembridge Gardens.

As a broad generalisation, the Chian families tended to congregate between Hyde ParkCorner and Notting Hill Gate while the Phanar families were more often found aroundHolland Park. For example, Constantine Ionides lived at 1 Holland Park.

This is a picture from the interior of the original house whichwas destroyed by incendiary bombs in World War ll and isnow the site of the Greek embassy. Pandia Ralli, head of theGreek community until his death in 1865, lived in ConnaughtSquare. But wherever they had lived they nearly all ended uptogether in the Greek cemetery at West Norwood in SouthLondon. . .

Those who were particularly successful sought a refuge inthe country - reminiscent of those country villas on Chios.Eustratius S. Ralli had a villa on Clapham Common (then arural area) that he called 'Scio House'. And Peter P.Rodocanachi retired to a house in Sussex that he called 'Chios'.

Contrary to some accounts, I find these immigrants integrated into English societyextremely quickly. Sons were immediately sent to conventional schools such as Eton,Harrow, Winchester and Charterhouse. Most of them became merchants and bankers liketheir fathers although an increasingly large proportion became surgeons, academics,writers, artists and philanthropists. This took them into the heart of English society atmany levels. As early as 1854 the very conservative City of London happily acceptedStephen Ralli and Michael Rodocanachi as founders of the Baltic Exchange in which they had thelargest shareholdings.

And a few of the first generation of their daughters rejected marriage with an inevitableChian cousin, and leapt effortlessly into the British establishment. Julia Ralli, daughter ofthe head of the Greek community in London, married Charles Monk who became an MPand was the son of the bishop of Gloucester & Bristol. Julia's cousin Janie married the Hon.Richard Moreton, son of the Earl of Ducie and became lady in waiting to the Duchess ofAlbany.

Janie's brother Pandely Ralli became a J.P., Deputy Lieutenant for Dorset, a Liberal MP fortwo constituencies and the life-long intimate friend of Lord Kitchener who stayed withhim whenever he was in England. In the next generation Fay Zarifi married Claude


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Yorke, son of the Earl of Hardwicke.

At the other extreme were men such as Petros Vlasto and his father-in-law AlexanderPallis who remained deeply attached to a Greece they had never really known. Together,from their homes in Liverpool, they campaigned relentlessly for a Demotic Greeklanguage, writing and publishing furiously for the new Greek nation. Pallis' works evenprovoked the famous Gospel Riots in Athens in 1901.

But, not surprisingly, younger generations found thecommunity increasingly claustrophobic. Most did as theywere told, marrying cousins and joining the family firm.But cracks were appearing. For example, by 1869, the greatart patron and collector Alexander Ionides was proudlycommissioning works by pre-Raphaelite painters and waseven prepared to let his daughter, AglaÃ¯a model for Burne-Jones's The Mill in which her cousinsMarie Spartali and Mary Cassavetti also appear - the famous Three Graces. But Alexander was not sohappy to hear that Mary Cassavetti had become Burne-Jones's mistress and still less happy whenMary tried to drown herself and Burne-Jones in Regent's Canal when he refused to leave his wife.

In the end Ionides left his extraordinary collection to the Victoria & AlbertMuseum where it has recently been re-hung. These photographs showpart of the collection as he had it arranged at home.

Like nearly all immigrant communities, the first generation was more than willing to adapt itself tothe new surroundings but didn't like to see their children and grandchildren rejecting the traditionsand norms of an old culture these younger generations had never really known. Some were willing tocomply while others rebelled.

George Eumorfopoulos, whose colossal collection of Chinese artworks isnow at the British Museum, dutifully followed the demands of thecommunity - choosing a wife to whom he was related in seven differentways and a career with Ralli Brothers. Two of his brothers, however,married working-class girls (probably servants). The evidence is clear: thecommunity excluded them and their progeny.

Mostly however, the Greeks of London slowly became more English.By Derby Day in 1901 they almost looked the part as here whenmembers of the Ralli, Demetriadi, Schilizzi, Ionides and Mavrojanifamilies gathered at Pandia Ralli's home at Ashstead Park.

Yet in their private lives some of the flavourof Chios and the Phanar remained as in thefurnishings of these Ralli and VlastoLiverpool houses. From the evidence ofhundreds of pictures from the years justbefore the First World War, the gap betweenthe generations is clear.

On the one hand the older generation is intenselyproud of its achievements and of the luxuries theirsuccess has brought them. But others show rich, spoiltyoung men and idle, bored young women who musthave been longing for something to happen, somethingchallenging and unexpected. . . and 1914 brought them that.

I'm going to end my talk here, at the First World War. When a community can send offits young men to die for their country (whether for Britain, France, Austria or Russia)it's a sign - if a tragic sign - that the community has come of age in its new home. Theold Ottoman empire was dead. A vigorous new Greek nation was emerging. The oldtorchbearers of the Phanar and of Chios had done their job.

Over the next 50 years or so most of their descendants slowly lost contact with their origins.. . And yet. . . that said. . . I too will pass on Loucas Vlasto's pocket watch. . .

See Family History Pages

See The Massacres of Chios

See The Houses of Chios

See Genealogies of Chios and Phanar Families

See Main Index

Unfortunately there is room on this page for only small versions of approximately 130 images that illustrated theoriginal talk. For this reason some of the references in the above piece may not be as clear as I would like -C.A.L.

© (2005) Christopher Long. Copyright, Syndication & All Rights Reserved Worldwide.The text and graphical content of this and linked documents are the copyright of their author and or creator and site designer,Christopher Long, unless otherwise stated. No publication, reproduction or exploitation of this material may be made in any

form prior to clear written agreement of terms with the author or his agents.


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Greek Migrations – Phanariot & Chiot Families

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