A chain of islands called the Dodecanese fell to the Italians in the Italy-Turkey war of 1912. The question was what to do with them? So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.
These stamps are a little bit of a disappointment being bulk mail issues with just an overprint. One nice thing was that they list the islands individually, the islands only foray to date in stamps. The Italians managed to stay a bizarrely long 36 years, too bad they never got around to proper empire issues with the King’s portrait in the corner and the window into their exotic colony.
Todays stamp is issue A43, a two cent stamp issued by the then Italian Military Occupation of Karki Island in 1912. It was a ten stamp issue in different denominations. According to the Scott Catalog, the stamp is worth $7.25 unused. A double overstamp ups the value to $360.
The Dodecanese Islands, the largest Rhodes, sit very close off of Asia Minor but most of the people on the islands are Greek. At first the Italians just had a military occupation that did not bother much with civilians. There were even a Treaty of Ouchey agreeing to give them back to the Turks that was never enacted and later a Treaty of Sevres agreeing to hand them over to Greece. Neither was enacted as you don’t give things to war losers.
Things changed in the 1920s with Italy still in procession and a fascist government keen on Empire building. Cesare Marie De Vecchi was appointed Viceroy and set out a program of Italianization. Schools began to teach in Italian. Italian settlers were invited in to farm previously unused land and as employees of the Italian military. Once there, they were encouraged to marry Greek girls. One obstacle was that the Greeks were Orthadox and the Italians Catholic. De Vecchi tried to finesse this by starting a separate Italian controlled denomination of the Orthadox Church for the Dodecanese. Promising students from the islands were given scholarships to the University of Pisa in Italy.
To some extent this stuff worked as year after year went by and the Italians were still there. De Vecchi was promoted to something called the Grand Council of Fascism back in Rome. When the weather changed that was something that was no resume builder. Oddly he was first sentenced to death in absentia by the German backed Italian Social Republic for not doing enough to keep Mussolini in power. De Vecchi escaped to Argentina on a fake Paraguay passport. He was able to return to Italy in his last years though he was still a vocal fascist.
In 1943 the British hoped to take advantage of the chaos in Italy to take the Dodecanes. Lord George Jellicoe was parachuted onto Rhodes to try to convince the large Italian military presence to change sides. They hoped for airbases that could be used to bomb Axis targets in the Balkans from a shorter range. While he was there the Germans landed with full force. The Italians didn’t fight the Germans but about 75 percent demilitarized. Like De Vecchi, Jellicoe used the chaos to escape, though he didn’t need a Paraguay passport. He was later the Leader of the House of Lords. The formal handover of the islands from Italy to Greece happened in 1948. A casino built by the Italians has proved quite popular.
The Greeks have not proven to be that great for Karki Island which they now call Halki. In the 1950s there was a mass migration of Greeks off the island setting up a Greek community in Tarpon Springs, Florida in the USA. The island is down to about 300 people.
Well my drink is empty. I will pour another to toast having a place to run to. Come again on Monday when there will be another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.