Greek peasants turned to vine monoculture, with most of the currant exports now destined for France as well as Britain. The phylloxera crisis in Europe ushered in a third phase of the extension of currant vineyards that lasted from 1878 to 1893. As global demand for Greek currants inflated to unprecedented levels, the monocultural currant-growing region in Greece extended further, well beyond the traditional currant region around the Gulf of Corinth. Currants spread south to the region of Messenia in the Southern Peloponnese, which had never been a currant region before, and by the end of the century, the southern coast of the peninsula had displaced the north as the primary currant-cultivating region. The French market that emerged after the Phylloxera epidemic preferred currants from the southern Peloponnese, because although they were lower quality, they were cheaper, and the lower quality was appropriate for the making of raisin wine.Thus, from the 1860s to the 1890s, the currant-growing region expanded and moved from a system of diversified agriculture to a state of vine monoculture. Nevertheless, currant specialization was geographically limited to the north and west coasts of the Peloponnese and the Ionian Islands of Kephalonia, Zakynthos, and Ithaki. The currant region did not expand to encompass the entire peninsula, much less the whole of Greece. In terms of the total area of the cultivated land of Greece, currant vineyards only occupied about 6% throughout the period of most intensive cultivation—keeping in mind that during this period,hydroponic net pots the Kingdom of Greece added the currant-growing Ionian Islands to its borders, but it also added Thessaly, which was not a currant region.
Despite its outsize role in the Greek export economy, it is important to note where, specifically, the choices were made to switch from diversified agriculture to monoculture, and to currant monoculture, specifically. This is not to say, however, that commercial agriculture was limited to these places, and that the rest of the peninsula remained committed to traditional agricultural practice. Rather, agricultural activities became specialized, intensive, and commercial in various parts of the peninsula, but it took different forms in other regions. Some of these activities were adjacent or supplemental to “currant mania,” such as the specialization in wine grapes, timber production in the mountainous inland regions of the peninsula, and the corresponding industrial activities, making timber into stakes and barrels, and making grapes into wine. Other regions specialized in different agricultural commodities, sometimes for export and consumption abroad, particularly olives and livestock. It is also worth noting that, while the currant zone was geographically limited, other varieties of vitis vinifera were ubiquitous. Unlike currants, the common grape vine is a very versatile crop, and it thrives in a variety of climates and soils.At the same time the currant region was advancing toward currant monoculture, the Peloponnese as a whole was becoming more devoted to vine monoculture. In the currant region, the extension of currant vineyards was accompanied by the extension of other vineyards. In the deme of Patras, the percentage of cultivated land devoted to currants increased from 5% in 1833 to 43% in 1861. In the same period, the percentage of land devoted to other vines increased from 3% to 28%. Thusin 1861, almost 71% of the cultivated land in the deme of Patras was growing vines.The increase in wine production was part of the same trend toward intensification, specialization, and commercialization in Greek agriculture. Wine was primarily produced for household consumption, but wine was also one of the main exports of Greece. The others included olive oil, leather and hides, cocoons, acorns, and figs.The production of these other commodities also increased along with currants. The extension of vineyards and the move to vine monoculture also led to the creation of a small wine making industry in Patras. After the emergence of the market for raisin wine in France, most wine making was done in that country, with raw currants being exported to France to be made into wine there. In Paris in 1890, there were twenty factories for producing wine from currants.However, a local wine making industry did also develop in Patras.
The first attempt to start a wine making industry was in the recovery from the Oidium crisis. In 1858, Wine making A.E. was founded, and operated 16 wine making factories in Patras. Because of the uncertainty caused by dependence on foreign demand, Wine making A.E. tried to create a domestic market for currants to be consumed as raisin wine.98 However, with the recovery of the currant vineyards from Oidium, the imperative to protect the currant industry from the whims of foreign markets faded, and Wine making A.E. failed. In the 1870s, however, Patras did become a wine making center after British and German entrepreneurs invested in the local wine making industry. In 1873, the German businessmen Gustav Klauss and Theodor Hamburger founded a joint-stock company called Achaia which manufactured spirits and red port wines from Greek grapes and currants. Three to four Greek companies also formed to manufacture wine.The currant economy collapsed due to the disappearance of French demand and the emergence of new competitors. First, the demand from France, which proved so crucial to sustaining the extension of currant vineyards in the 1880s, disappeared. French agronomists discovered that grafting European vines to North American roots made them immune to the phylloxera aphid. American vines had grown resistant to the aphid after centuries of co-existence and could thrive even with phylloxera living on their roots. Over the course of the 1880s, American roots spread to vineyards throughout France, and French production began to recover. The area of vineyards in France with American roots grew from 2,500 hectares in 1880 to 45,000 in 1885.100 The recovery of the French wine industry was not immediate, however, as raisin wine made from Greek currants had found a loyal market in France. Currant wine was popular among lower-class, urban consumers who liked it for its sweet taste.
It was also more affordable than domestically-grown French wines and was taxed at a lower rate. Working people could buy currants and make their own wine at home for 5 times less than the price of French-grown wine. Currant wine also kept better than regular wine. French vineyards were recovering, but they faced stiff competition from raisin wines and struggled to regain control of the market.101 When their vineyards were recovering but they were not able to sell their product, French vineyard-owners took to the streets and set up barricades to push for an import duty on raisin wines, and the French government responded with protectionist measures. In 1889, the Chamber of Deputies passed the Griffe Act, prohibiting raisin wine from being marketed as wine, and mandating that all wine made with currants be sold with a label prominently affixed that indicated it was “currant wine.”When this proved ineffective to curb the consumption of currant wine, the next year, the Chamber imposed a manufacturing duty on currant wine of 4s. 8d. per cwt. of currants. This was more effective,blueberry grow pot but currant wine consumption continued. From 1892 to 1896, the Chamber raised the import duty three times, from 2s. 4d. per cwt. to 6s., then to 10s., and finally to 19s. With the 1896 tariff, the French taxes on currant wine amounted to five times the cost of the product itself. In 1897, legislation was also passed to raise the tax on raisin wines to be equal with the tax on all other wines, but the market for currant wine was effectively dead in France by 1896.Currants did not disappear from Greece after the collapse of the currant economy in the 1890s. They remained an important cash crop long after the currant crisis. In fact, in the immediate aftermath of the crisis, currant cultivation continued to grow. In the wake of the crisis, those involved in the currant industry, particularly in Patras, organized to call for state intervention. In 1895, the Greek Parliament passed a plan for state retention of surplus currant production. The state would retain the estimated excess production of currants based on the previous year’s consumption, and these currants would be directed toward promoting the domestic wine making industry. The law required currant exporters to deposit 15% of their inventory at a government storehouse to be sold domestically at reduced rates. In addition, the revenues from these sales would be deposited in a Currant Bank , established in 1899, and the accumulated capital would be used to assist currant growers in the future.112 At first, the retention act succeeded in promoting a domestic wine making industry, and distilleries opened throughout the country. The act thus succeeded in the short term in creating a domestic demand for currants—something that had not existed in Greece before—but the act was amended to prohibit the use of retained currants for wine production. The goal was to compel producers to buy currants at market rates rather than reduced rates, but the additional cost constrained the growth of this new industry.
The retention act, moreover, did nothing address the problem of the overproduction of currants—if anything, it removed disincentives to grow— and currant production continued to rise.The 1903 surplus was huge, and the National Bank of Greece, the Bank of Athens, and the Ionian Bank all had to lend to the Currant Bank. In 1904, a bill was passed that taxed new currant plantations and substituted the export duty on currants with a 15% duty in kind, having the effect of increasing the amount of retained currants.Eventually, an equilibrium was found, and the migration of rural populations alleviated the rural labor surplus. Currant cultivation continued to be strong in the traditional currantgrowing core—Zakynthos, Kephalonia, Patras, Vostizza, and Corinth—which produced high quality currants purchased by Britain for consumption in puddings. This market remained unaffected by the closing of the French market, which preferred lower quality currants from the southern Peloponnese to be made into wines.The newer currant-growing provinces in the southern Peloponnese also continued to grow currants, but on a much smaller scale. Currants never regained the exalted status among Greek agricultural products that they enjoyed during the “golden age,” and a greater segment of the landscape was devoted to other crops such as figs and olives, but currants continued to be a part of the regional economies in the Peloponnese throughout the twentieth century.This chapter has demonstrated that an increase in foreign demand, technical and technological innovations, and land reform policies operated together to deepen the integration of Greek currant production with Western markets and transform normative agricultural practice from micro-ecological specialization to regional monoculture. The next chapter moves on to examine the spatial and ecological dimensions of this monoculture in the Peloponnese, i.e. how landscapes and settlement patterns were transformed to sustain intensive currant cultivation. In the middle of the nineteenth century, the spread of currant cultivation in the coastal plains of the Peloponnese transformed the regional economy and changed this pattern of settlement and migration, redefining the relationship between high villages and coastal hamlets. First, currant cultivation provided the impetus for lowland colonization. During the Little Ice Age climate, land reclamation was difficult and dangerous work. Under these conditions, there had to be a compelling reason to marshal the necessary labor and capital to drain lowland plains. The profitability of currants on the global market in the nineteenth century provided just such an incentive. The spike in foreign demand for Greek currants created the imperative and produced the means to undertake land reclamation and colonize lowland plains in the coastal Peloponnese in order to devote more land to currant cultivation. Moreover, around the middle of the nineteenth century, the Little Ice Age came to an end in the Mediterranean, making the reclamation of land from wetlands much easier .As a result, as Tabak argues, “During the course of the nineteenth century, but mostly gaining velocity from the 1850s, the low landscapes of the Inner Sea were steadily yet inexorably re-colonized.”In the late nineteenth century, there were “massive drainage projects” to turn lowland wetlands into arable land.The further incorporation of Greek agricultural production into global markets combined with a warming of the Mediterranean climate to permit large-scale, permanent colonization of the lowland plains. The dispersed, mountain settlement that characterized the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in the Peloponnese gave way to large-scale, aggregated lowland settlements by the end of the nineteenth century.