History History

According to archaeologists, the island has been inhabited since the Paleolithic period. The Archaeological Museum of Corfu traces the life of the inhabitants in the various periods of prehistory, based in particular on the work of the Corfu archaeologist Augustus Sordinas. During a large period of prehistory, during the Ice Age, Corfu was still attached to the mainland. It was around 10,000 BC, at the end of the last ice age, that temperatures warmed up a bit, the water level rose and the island broke away from Epirus. The first inhabitants were hunter-gatherers, equipped with weapons and stone utensils. In the Ionian Islands, it is to the northwest of Corfu, towards Sidari and on the islet of Diaplo, that we find the oldest traces of settlements between the end of the Mesolithic (10,000-6,500 BC) and the beginning of the Neolithic (6,500-3,000 BC). Agriculture was organized and populations settled near the coasts. During the Bronze Age (3,000-1,100 B.C.), these islanders continued to rely on animal husbandry, agriculture and fishing to survive, now with metal tools. The habitat migrates to the center and throughout the island.

In 734 BC, the Corinthians founded a colony known as Kerkyra south of the present site of the old city. This city became a trading post on the way to Sicily and founded new colonies in Illyria and Epirus. Corinthian colony during the classical period (VIIth century BC), Corfu knows an important development, as well economic as cultural, and is then called Corcyre. From the end of the IVth century, it passes successively under the control of the Spartans, the tyrants of Syracuse and the kingdom of Epirus. Ally of Athens, it participated with its powerful fleet in the Peloponnesian wars, but then experienced a period of decline with constant raids by barbarians and pirates. Independent state, Corfu decides nevertheless to join Rome, the new master of the Mediterranean, in 229 BC. After six centuries of calm, Epirus wavers and the island lives under the threat of the Huns, the Vandals and the Goths. The coast of Epirus and Corfu came under the influence of the Roman republic in 229 BC and served as the starting point for Rome's expansion to the east. During this time, the unity of the Greek cities will not survive Alexander the Great. The Greek world enters a period of decadence from which the Romans take advantage. It was the time of Epicurus, Zeno, father of stoicism, and the statues of Tanagra.

Corfu passed under the domination of the Eastern Empire at the time of the division in 336 and knew a long period of troubles, which began with the invasion of the Goths in 551. The population gradually abandoned the old town. Corfu was taken by the Normans in 1081 and returned to the Byzantine Empire in 1084. In 1204, during the fourth crusade, the crusaders took Constantinople and founded a Latin Empire which lasted until 1261. The Byzantine Empire was dismantled. Geographically close to the Papacy and the West, the island remained under the control of Byzantium. A few miles from Catholic Italy, the Orthodox faith is practiced here. The emperors of Constantinople managed to keep the island thanks to an ally of circumstance: Venice. The Serenissima will then gradually increase its influence on Corfu. This first Venetian period did not last long. From then on, in exchange for their military support, the Venetians obtained naval bases, including Corfu which they occupied from 1204 to 1214. The island fell then under the domination of the last despots of Epirus (1214-1267), then under that of the Angevins of Naples (1267-1386), which used it to support their policy against the Byzantine Empire, then restored in Constantinople, and the Republic of Venice. The first Frenchman to rule Corfu, the king of Naples Charles of Anjou left a bad memory to the inhabitants for having fought against the Hellenic culture and the orthodox religion. However, he and his successors gave the island its first administrative structures and welcomed the Jews fleeing the pogroms in the West. But the City of Doges still coveted the island and seized it in 1386. These few years were enough to destroy the cohesion of the Byzantine civilization and create the circumstances for its decadence. The weakening of the Byzantine Empire will be quickly perceived by the Ottomans: in 1453, Constantinople falls in the hands of the Turks, an event still felt tragically by many Greeks. On its side, in the XIth century, Cephalonia is invaded by the Normans of Sicily, then becomes the possession of the Franks before passing under Italian supervision.

The history of Ottoman Greece is not the same according to the territories. While Crete, the Ionian islands, Nafplion and the Cyclades remained in the hands of the Venetians, a new enemy broke in: the Ottoman Empire. Founded in 1299, this Turkish and Muslim power gradually conquered the Byzantine territories. Constantinople itself was besieged four times before its ramparts gave way under the blows of Mehmed II's cannons on May 29, 1453. In Cephalonia, the dynasty of Orsini and Tocchi are present on the island until 1478. The island is under the Ottoman yoke only during twenty years and the Venetians settle then and develop the commercial activity of the island until 1797. The Republic of Venice took advantage of the internal conflicts in the kingdom of Naples to take control of Corfu. This second Venetian period lasted more than four centuries (1386-1797) and deeply marked the island. For its own needs, the Serenissima will transform Corfu into a huge larder, introducing the olive tree and the tomato. Trade developed during this period. Faced with pirates and Turkish sultans, powerful fortifications were erected. A true Venetian colony, Corfu became more westernized while the rest of Greece became more easternized. In spite of the prosperity, deep social inequalities weigh on the inhabitants. With the capture of Venice by Bonaparte, the island became French in 1797, with the treaty of Campo Formio. But the future emperor, who was already preparing his Egyptian campaign, did not want to let go of this strategic island on the road to the Orient. According to him, "Corfu is worth more than all of Italy". However, with the French rout in the Mediterranean, the Russian, Turkish and English allies became the new occupants in 1799. The Russian-Turkish alliance founded the Federative Republic of the Seven Islands, of which Corfu became the capital between 1799 and 1807. Napoleonic troops returned in 1807, until the fall of the Empire in 1814. France marked the island by abolishing the feudal system, reorganizing the administration and developing the city center. In 1814, the British protectorate was established and lasted for half a century until 1864.

The last long foreign occupation began: the British protectorate. Meanwhile, elsewhere in the country, the war of independence was launched. The Greek people remembered March 25, 1821 as the date of the beginning of the uprising in Patras. In fact, the motto "freedom or death" was brandished from 15-17 March 1821 in several localities of the Peloponnese. The emotion relayed by Delacroix, Hugo, Byron and Lamartine arouses the birth of philhellenic movements. The latter put pressure on the European states to support the Greeks. On July 6, 1827, the treaty of London marks a turning point with the intervention of Russia, England and France in favour of the Greeks. The naval victory of Navarin (October 20, 1827), then the French expedition of Morée and the ninth Russian-Turkish war finally oblige the Ottomans to withdraw from the south of Greece on September 14, 1829. The fragile Hellenic Republic that was born at independence represents about a third of the current Greece. Corfu and the Ionian Islands are finally attached to the new independent Greek state more than thirty years after its creation. Greece recovered the Ionian Islands from the British in 1863 and part of Thessaly in 1878. Then, at the end of the Balkan Wars (1912-1913), the country took its current form, except for the Dodecanese islands which were ceded by Italy in 1947. During the 19th century, Corfu became a cultural center, with the creation of the Ionian Academy. In Zakynthos, the poet Dionysos Solomos (1788-1857) wrote theHymn to Freedom which became the national anthem.

During the First World War, the island was used as a naval base by the British and the French. Corfu will then know the darkest hours of its history. With the invasion of Greece by the Axis forces in 1941, Corfu came under the control of Rome. Mussolini wanted to make it an Italian island, like its neighboring islands. The French writer Louis de Bernières chose Cephalonia as the backdrop for his famous historical fresco, Captain Corelli's Mandolin, a love story between a young woman and an Italian officer. Meanwhile, unloved by his people, the Greek general Ioannis Metaxas becomes a national hero by refusing Mussolini's ultimatum on October 28, 1940 ("Day of No"). After a fierce resistance against the Italians, Greece was invaded by Nazi Germany in April 1941. But during the occupation, the country experienced two major traumas: the famine of the winter of 1941-1942 (more than 250,000 deaths) and the extermination of 86% of the Jewish population. In Corfu, Italians, settlers and descendants of old Venetian families were massacred or forced to flee. As for the Corfu Jews, they were systematically deported to the concentration camps, 2,000 of them died in Auschwitz

In all, the Second World War caused the death of 574 000 Greeks (8% of the population). In 1944, the Communists succeeded in liberating the territory. However, under British pressure, they were removed from power. This provoked the Greek Civil War (1946-1949), the first confrontation of the Cold War. After a decade of war, Greece was plunged into poverty. The constitutional monarchy was dominated by Constantin Karamanlis (1907-1998), on the right, and Georges Papandreou (1888-1968), on the centre-left. The country remained weakened by weak industrialization, debt, corruption and a bloated and inefficient civil service. Faced with this situation, a group of officers seized power on 21 April 1967. Led by George Papadopoulos, the "dictatorship of the colonels" intended to restore order and relaunch the Great Idea. With the support of the United States and Great Britain, communists were imprisoned, rock music and long hair were banned. Europe was shocked when, on November 17, 1973, tanks stormed the Polytechnic in Athens. But it was another event that caused the fall of the regime. Weakened, the junta tried to restore its image withEnosis: the union of Greece and Cyprus. On 15 July 1974, the Greek military overthrew the Cypriot president Makarios. Turkey feared for the Turkish Cypriot minority and sent its army to capture the northern part of the island. The fiasco is such that the colonels give up power.

Since the return of democracy in the summer of 1974, the country has opted for the end of monarchy. It has been ruled alternately by two political parties and three family dynasties: the center-right New Democracy, with the Karamanlis and Mitsotakis clans, and the center-left Pasok, with the Papandreou family. But the system was corrupt: corruption, tax gifts to shipowners and the Church, fictitious jobs in the civil service, and so on. On January^1, 1981, Greece joined the European Community. The first shock came with the fall of the Communist regimes. Driven out by poverty, 900,000 Albanians settled in Greece, particularly in nearby Corfu from 1991 onwards. The organization of the Olympic Games (2004) further increased the debt. In October 2009, Prime Minister Georges Papandreou revealed the extent of the deficit. Placed under supervision, Greece obtained new loans with draconian conditions: public spending cuts, higher taxes, lower pensions and 25% job cuts for civil servants. While the state was saved, the economy collapsed. The crisis is also moral and political. In 2015, for the first time, voters rejected the Pasok-New Democracy system: they entrusted power to the left-wing Syriza party. But Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is forced to pursue a policy of austerity. And he had to cope with the departure of some 500,000 Greeks and the arrival of hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing, among other things, the Syrian conflict. Despite a return to a balanced budget (2017), Syriza was defeated in the 2019 elections, allowing the Mitsotakis clan to return to power. Outgoing Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis was re-elected in 2023 for another four years.

The Ionian Islands still bear traces of all these events. The influence of its martyred populations remains. Venetian vocabulary has also survived in the local dialect, and Greek is sometimes spoken with a slight Italian accent. Opera and classical music are also part of Corfiote culture. Today, as English tourists have colonized the island, Corfiote music, gastronomy and customs remain distinctly Hellenic.