Dodecanese Under Italian Rule

The Dodecanese (, ; , ''Dodekánisa'' , ) are a group of 15 larger and 150 smaller Greek islands in the southeastern Aegean Sea and Eastern Mediterranean, off the coast of Anatolia, of which 26 are inhabited. This island group generally defines the eastern limit of the Sea of Crete. They belong to the wider Southern Sporades island group.

Rhodes has been the area's dominant island since antiquity. Of the others, Kos and Patmos are historically the most important; the remaining 12 are Agathonisi, Astypalaia, Halki, Kalymnos, Karpathos, Kasos, Leipsoi, Leros, Nisyros, Symi, Tilos, and Megisti. Other islands in the chain include Alimia, Arkoi, Farmakonisi, Gyali, Kinaros, Levitha, Marathos, Nimos, Pserimos, Saria, Strongyli and Syrna.

Name

The name "Dodecanese" (older form , ; modern , ), meaning "The Twelve Islands" denotes today an island group in the southeastern Aegean Sea, comprising 15 major islands ( Agathonisi, Astypalaia, Chalki, Kalymnos, Karpathos, Kasos, Kastellorizo, Kos, Lipsi, Leros, Nisyros, Patmos, Rhodes, Symi, and Tilos) and 93 smaller islets. Since Antiquity, these islands formed part of the group known as the "Southern Sporades" ().

The name first appears in Byzantine-period sources in the 8th century, as a naval command under a , encompassing the southern Aegean Sea, which eventually evolved into the Theme of Samos. It was not applied to the current island group, but to the 12 Cyclades islands clustered around Delos. The name may indeed be of a far earlier date, and modern historians suggest that the 12 islands Strabo mentions (''Geographica'' Χ.485) were the origin of the term. The term remained in use throughout the medieval period and was still used for the Cyclades in both colloquial usage and scholarly Greek-language literature until the 18th century.

The transfer of the name to the present-day Dodecanese has its roots in the Ottoman period. Upon the Ottoman conquest of the islands held by the Knights Hospitaller in 1522, the two larger islands, Rhodes and Kos, came under direct Ottoman rule, while the others, of which the 12 main islands were usually named, enjoyed extensive privileges pertaining to taxation and self-government. Concerted attempts to abolish these privileges were made after 1869, as the Ottoman Empire attempted to modernize and centralize its administrative structure, and the last vestiges of the old privileges were finally abolished after the Young Turks took power in 1908. It was at that time that the press in the independent Kingdom of Greece began referring to the 12 privileged islands (Astypalaia, Chalki, Ikaria, Kalymnos, Karpathos, Kasos, Kastellorizo, Leros, Nisyros, Patmos, Symi and Tilos), in the context of their attempts to preserve their privileges, collectively as the "Dodecanese". Shortly afterward, in 1912, most of the Southern Sporades were captured by the Italians in the Italo-Turkish War, except for Ikaria, which joined Greece in 1912 during the First Balkan War, and Kastellorizo, which came under Italian rule only in 1921. The place of the latter two was taken by Kos and Rhodes, bringing the number of the major islands under Italian rule back to 12. Thus, when the Greek press began agitating for the cession of the islands to Greece in 1913, the term used was still the "Dodecanese". The Italian occupation authorities helped establish the term when they named the islands under their control " Rhodes and the Dodecanese" (), adding Leipsoi to the list of the major islands to make up for considering Rhodes separately.

By 1920, the name had become firmly established for the entire island group, as acknowledged by the Italian government when it appointed the islands' first civilian governor, Count , as "Viceroy of the Dodecanese". As the name was associated with Greek irredentism, from 1924 Mussolini's Fascist regime tried to abolish its use by calling them the "Italian Islands of the Aegean", but this name never acquired any currency outside Italian administrative usage. The islands joined Greece in 1947 following as the "Governorate-General of the Dodecanese" (), after 1955 the "Dodecanese Prefecture" ().

Geography

The Dodecanese are in the South East Aegean sea and are bordered by Turkey in the East, Crete in the southwest and the Cyclades in the west.

Climate

Most of the Dodecanese have a hot-summer Mediterranean climate (''Csa'' in the Köppen climate classification) while Karpathos, Kasos and Nisyros have a hot semi-arid climate (Köppen climate classification: ''BSh'') with mild winters and hot summers. Rhodes Port, Kasos, Karpathos and Kastellorizo record among the mildest winters in Europe. South East Rhodes experiences a significantly warmer climate with Lindos registering a mean annual temperature of around ,National Observatory of Athens