Underfunded Modernization: Tobacco Producers and Agricultural Policy in Interwar Greece

Abstract:A historical analysis of the state-led project of optimizing tobacco production in interwar Greece allows us to appreciate how the scarcity of capital, combined with the merchant-friendly stance of Greece’s authorities, placed a great burden on the peasantry. At the same time, dependence on German demand for Greek tobacco constrained the ability of state institutions to intervene in the tobacco sector. The scale of analysis proposed here enriches the historiography on Greek agriculture by overcoming some of the limitations of the approaches that emphasize quantitative data on productivity, output, and land use, without paying sufficient attention to the concrete impact of policy on the daily lives of the peasantry, the houses in which they lived, and their interaction with state officials.