The chapters that follow elaborate two case studies, each of which demonstrates how market integration in the second half of the nineteenth century caused traditional agricultural practice motivated by subsistence to be supplanted in certain zones of specialization by the new norm of profit-driven, commercial agriculture. This normative shift was made visible in the physical landscape of Greece as wetlands were drained, hills were terraced, forests were cleared, fluvial channels were rerouted, and human settlement patterns were altered. In this way, it will be demonstrated that this moment of intensive commercial agriculture in Greece, while itself fleeting, left a lasting imprint on the Greek physical environment, with consequences to be felt in that country for decades to come. Currants are a variety of the common Mediterranean grape vine that produces a small, black grape.Currants are seedless, making them ideal for being dried and consumed as raisins.This is likely the reason they were first brought into cultivation.The drying of grapes into raisins is a practice mentioned by ancient Greek and Roman writers, but it is not known if the raisins mentioned in these texts were currants or some other variety.The first explicit references to currants appear in the historical record during the period of Frankish rule on the Peloponnese,barley fodder system and it is often suggested that the Franks initiated the cultivation of currants in the thirteenth or fourteenth century.

One of the earliest references to currants is found in a book written by the Florentine merchant Francesco Balducci Pegolotti around 1340 called Pratica della mercatura. Pegalotti compiled tables of the many different currencies and forms of measurement found in different trading cities to assist merchants in converting between them when buying and selling abroad. One of the places listed in his Pratica is Chiarenza, also known as Glarentza. Located on the west coast of the Peloponnese, Glarentza was the main port on the peninsula during the era of Frankish rule and was, along with Patras, the chief commercial center for the Franks.6 Pegalotti notes that Glarentza was importing from Corinth a product called uve passe di Coranto, or Corinthian raisins. Glarentza, in turn, exported uve passe to the Italian cities of Venice, Ancona, and Florence.The currant trade maintained this basic structure until the mid-fifteenth century, with currants being exported from Glarentza to a few major Italian ports. In 1430, the Byzantines captured Achaea from the Franks, and during the war, Konstantinos Palaiologos ordered the fortifications of Glarentza to be destroyed along with the city’s churches and monasteries.Nevertheless, the port seems to have recovered quickly under Byzantine rule, and although it lost its exalted position as the chief port of the Peloponnese, it continued to control the peninsula’s currant trade with Italy. In 1440, another Florentine merchant, Giovanni di Antonio da Uzzano, revised Pegolotti’s Pratica della mercatura with more up-to-date information. Uzzano’s updates show that currants continued to be shipped from Corinth to Glarentza, and thence to Venice, Ancona, and Florence.9 With Ottoman conquest in 1460, Glarentza was marginalized, and the currant trade relocated to other ports.

By this time, the Venetian Empire, with outposts at the ports of Modon, Corone, Navarino, Malvasia, and Nafplion, ascended to dominate the peninsula’s trade with the Italian peninsula, and Venetian merchants inherited control of the currant trade.From the Italian ports, currants were sent to Northern Europe, particularly to Britain. Extant commercial records from southern England indicate that “raisins de Corauntz” were sold in small quantities in London in 1345 and 1392 and in Boxley in 1376 and 1377. The average price for these four sales was about 3d per dozen pounds.This demand became more steady over the course of the fifteenth century.Commercial records show that currants were purchased by Cambridge University almost every year from 1403 to 1450. The price Cambridge paid for currants during this period fluctuated from a low of 2d per doz. lbs. to a high of 8d per doz. lbs., but the price rose on average, indicating a growing demand in England and the formation of a more stable market.Soon, Britain was the chief market for Greek currants. By the seventeenth century, British currant consumption was six times that of the next highest consumer, Holland.15 In the eighteenth century, Britain consumed 78% of the total production.16 In the early modern period, and perhaps from the beginning of their cultivation, currants were purely an export crop. There was very little or no demand for currants in the places where they were grown or elsewhere in Greece. An English observer in the seventeenth century noted that the inhabitants of Zakynthos, by then the chief currant-producing region, were unaware of the use of currants. He wrote, “The Zaniots have not long known what we do with them, but have been perswaded that we use them only to Dye Cloth with; and are yet strangers to the luxury of Christmas Pies, Plum-potage, Cake and Puddings, &c. amongst the English.”Nevertheless, currants were a niche market, and aggregate demand remained relatively low.

The region where currants were first cultivated is contested. Based solely on the name, many sources contend that Corinth must have been the first region to cultivate currants.In Greek, currants are called korinthiakes stafides, or “Corinthian raisins.” In French, they are called “raisins de Corinthe,” which English received in the slightly corrupted form of “raisins de Corauntz,” which eventually became “currants.”Alternatively, currants may originate from the regions of Patras and Elis in the West Peloponnese. Patras is located at the entrance to the Gulf of Corinth, and the name “currant” may have been derived from the Gulf of Corinth rather than from the town of Corinth.As discussed above, Pegolotti’s Pratica mentions currants being sent from Corinth to Glarentza and thence to Italy, but this does not necessarily mean that all currants were being grown in Corinth. It is possible that the currants shipped to Glarentza were combined with currants being grown in that town’s hinterland and shipped from other locations in the North Peloponnese such as Patras and Vostizza before being sent on to trading cities in Italy. It is also possible that the currants sent to Glarentza from Corinth were actually being grown in another location in Corinthia or elsewhere, and Corinth was just the first port of egress in the early currant trade rather than the place of cultivation. Despite the uncertainty surrounding their exact date and place of origin, it is nevertheless clear that, by the early fourteenth century, currants were being grown in the Northern Peloponnese, certainly in the vicinity of Corinth, and perhaps also in other locations along the coast. Before the nineteenth century, the demand for currants was low enough that it could be satisfied through the production of a few specialist micro-ecologies. These places were dynamic, as currant cultivation intensified and abated in response to changing political and economic factors,hydroponic barley fodder system but they were all located within a relatively small region in the vicinity of the Gulf of Corinth. In the Northern Peloponnese, Corinth, Vostizza, and Patras were the regions most associated with currant cultivation . Monoculture, however, is not by any means a purely modern phenomenon. In premodern Mediterranean history, islands were frequently the site of specialization and intensification.21 The cultivation of currants in isolated micro-ecologies may have been the normative preference before the nineteenth century, but it was not the only possible option. In at least one instance, currant cultivation did grow to assume an outsize role in a larger region. When currants were transplanted to the Ionian Islands in the early modern period, they did grow to approach a state of monoculture. Currants were first transplanted to the Ionian Islands in the sixteenth century. With the Ottoman-Venetian Wars of 1499–1503 and 1537–1540, the Venetians lost all of their strongholds on the Peloponnese.

As a result, Venetian merchants lost their privileged access to currant cultivation, but the Venetians lost no time in transplanting currants from the Peloponnese to their possessions in the Ionian Islands. In 1541, an observer in Zante noted their “recent” planting on the island.The provveditore of Kephalonia, A. Balbi, noted in 1560 that currants had been planted on that island just a decade earlier.Currants brought great prosperity to Zakynthos and Kephalonia. The islands were relatively new additions to the Venetian Empire, having been acquired in 1481 and 1500, respectively. At first, they were both a financial burden to the empire, requiring Venice to invest in their development and to pay tribute to the Ottoman sultan. With the introduction of currants, however, the islands became hugely profitable for Venice.The English traveler Sir George Wheler, visiting Zakynthos in 1682, wrote that it was called the “Golden Island,” a name “which it well deserves, because of the fruitfulness and pleasantness of its soil and abode. But it now more truly merits that name from the Venetians, who draw so much Gold, by the Curran-Trade, from hence and from Cephalonia, as beareth the ordinary charge of their Armada at Sea.”The profitability of currants on Zakynthos and Kephalonia meant that vines began displacing other crops. By the 1570s, on Kephalonia, it was about seven or eight times more profitable to plant a field with currants than with wheat.As a result, currant cultivation on Zakynthos and Kephalonia started displacing cereals. This became a problem for the Venetian governors, who worried that these islands soon would not be able to feed themselves. As William Miller writes, “The wholesale conversion of corn-fields into currant plots caused… such alarm that the local authorities applied to Venice for leave to root up the currant bushes.”The Venetians responded to this in 1576 by imposing a land tax on currants to discourage new plantations. The tax worked on Zakynthos to discourage cultivation, but on Kephalonia, it was ignored. As Phokas-Kosmetatos has written, “on rough and mountainous Kefalonia, the residents were not at all in the habit of obeying orders from the Venetian government.”In 1584, the Venetians imposed an export tax on currants in addition to the land tax. Called the nuova imposta or “new tax,” the proceeds of this tax would be used to buy and store cereals for the islands. This tax, however, had the opposite of its intended effect on Kephalonia. Seeing decreasing profits from their existing vineyards, the inhabitants planted even more vineyards to compensate for their losses. Kephalonia’s currant output grew from 400,000 Venetian liters in 1576, to 1,500,000 in 1593, and to 4,000,000 in 1603.29 After protests from the islanders, the Venetians abolished the nuova imposta, but to capture more of the revenue from the currant trade, they mandated that all currants leaving the islands must be shipped directly to Venice. This measure also failed, as it only led to the creation of a thriving smuggling industry. On Kephalonia, about a quarter of the currants were shipped to Venice, and the rest were smuggled off the island by night through the island’s many bays and taken to the port at Glarentza, where English merchants bought them and took them West.Production continued to rise, reaching a high of 9,000,000 Venetian liters on Kephalonia in 1640.The monocultural character assumed by currant cultivation in the Ionian Islands did not spread to Ottoman Greece. In the Northern Peloponnese and on the coast around the Gulf of Corinth, currants continued to be grown in isolated, specialist micro-ecologies. These places changed, however, as currant cultivation spread to other locations around the Gulf of Corinth over the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In 1678, the French physician and archaeologist Jacob Spon traveled to Corinth and noted that, although currants owed their name to that town, they were not being grown there anymore. He made inquiries in the town and gathered that currants used to be grown in Corinth, but under Ottoman rule, “The cultivation had been neglected because the Turks do not use the fruit,” and to protect the Gulf of Corinth, “the Turk has built two forts at the entrance to the Gulf of Lepanto, and does not permit the passage of our ships for fear that the forts may be suddenly occupied or attacked by Maltese pirates entering the gulf on the pretext of shipping currants.” As a result, currant cultivation shifted westward to locations closer to the entrance of the Gulf of Corinth or outside the gulf altogether.