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Business and the family
The Background
There is evidence that a small number of Greek merchants
were present in London from the late fourteenth and early
fifteenth centuries. They were mainly involved in the wine
trade
and
there
may
have
been
some
continuity
of
this
practice into the modern period as noted in Chapter One,1
but
it
was
nineteenth
a
new
century
entrepreneurial
spirit
Greek
to
merchants
that
the
drew
city.
In
the
the
aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, British industrial growth,
especially
in
textile
manufacture,
and
her
status
as
a
burgeoning imperial power coincided with expansion in the
world economy. Cain and Hopkins have argued the case for the
economic impetus behind British imperial ambitions, and the
creation of a new Greek community in London in the Victorian
period
developed
in
tandem
with
Britain’s
increasing
economic and political importance in the East, particularly
within the Ottoman sphere of interest.2 Britain’s usurpation
1
Jonathan Harris, Greek Emigres in the West 1400 – 1520, Camberley,
1995, p. 87; Chapter One, p. 40; Terence Spencer, Fair Greece, Sad
Relic, Athens, 1986, for historical connections with Crete and Chios,
pp.25 - 8
2
P.J. Cain, and A.G., Hopkins, British Imperialism: Innovation and
Expansion, 1688 – 1914, London, 1993, pp. 399 – 401; P.J. Cain,
‘Economics and Empire: The Metropolitan Context’, The Oxford History of
2
of France as the dominant European power in the Eastern
Mediterranean created new opportunities which Greek merchant
families were quick to seize. Their particular methods of
business, as will be outlined in this chapter, were flexible
enough to allow them to respond swiftly to changes and shift
their bases of operations accordingly, so that in a short
time, by mid-century, they were amongst the prime movers in
London’s business world.3
When Victoria came to the throne, British foreign affairs
were already under the influence of Palmerston, and in the
first two decades of her reign he continued to pursue an
aggressive
policy
of
free
trade.4
In
1825
the
Levant
Company’s Middle Eastern monopoly had been abolished and
British merchants were then encouraged to venture into the
Anatolian hinterland served by Izmir (Smyrna) as the major
port;
a
region
impenetrable.
Here
they
the
had
numbers
previously
of
British
found
almost
merchants
and
their agents increased, exploiting the ready market that
the British Empire: The Nineteenth Century, Andrew Porter (ed), Oxford,
1999, p. 42. 1800 – 50 world trade increased by about two and a half
times, 1850 – 1910 by ten times
3
Gennadius, ‘Introduction’, p. 53, Gennadius comments on the speed of
the growth of the London business colony
4
Oxford Companion to British History, John Cannon (ed.), Oxford, 1997,
pp. 720 – 1, Palmerston was foreign secretary from 1830 to 1851 with two
short breaks. British trade with Turkey increased eightfold during this
period. He was prime minister from 1855 – 65. Cain, pp. 39 - 42
3
existed
within
the
Ottoman
Empire
for
cotton
goods
manufactured in Lancashire and encouraged by a new era of
cooperation between Britain and the Porte, British financial
institutions were able to take advantage of the Sultan’s
abolition of state monopolies
up to the Crimean War in
1854.5
Initially
for
Greeks
became
acting
as
Westerners
dealing
known
their
for
go-betweens.
This
with
the
skill
as
reputation
Ottomans,
the
intermediaries,
was
by
no
means
always favourable, as the unwary foreigner had to put his or
her faith in someone who could easily take advantage of the
situation, and thus a connection was often made between the
Greek and sharp practice. This was a persistent prejudice
that
was
hard
to
shake
off,
and
its
durability
is
exemplified in the boy’s adventure story Yussef the Guide,
published in 1887. Here the Greeks of Smyrna are described
as
…small, lithe, dark men, with keen faces and dark
eyes,
differing
wonderfully
from
the
calm,
5
Elena Frangakis-Syrett, ‘Greek mercantile activities in the Eastern
Mediterranean, 1780 –1820’, Balkan Studies, 28 (1987), Thessaloniki, 73
– 86 at 73 & 82, Frangakis-Syrett argues that the infiltration of Greek
merchants into the Smyrna monopoly was instrumental in the demise of the
Levant Company; Charles Issawi, ‘British Trade and the Rise of Beirut,
1830 – 1860’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 8 (Jan.
1977), 91 – 101 at 92 & 97, effect of the Sultan relinquishing
monopolies and the Anglo-Turkish Commercial Convention of 1838; Sir
Llewellyn Woodward, The Age of Reform 1815-1870, The Oxford History of
England, Oxford, 1961, p. 236
4
dignified,
if it had
expression
overreach,
The
Greek
handsome Turks, but handsome in their way
not been for a peculiarly sharp, shifty
that suggested craftiness and a desire to
if not cheat.
dragoman
is
a
disappointment
to
the
English
travellers, not meeting the standards of classical sculpture
in appearance and despite, or even because of their talent
for
languages,
untrustworthy.
The
Greeks
have
to
be
bargained with severely in order to pay three times above
the value for their services and when the English party
takes a boat, the Greek sailors live up to their reputation
by trying to rob them. The Greeks, in the words of the
trusty Turkish guide, Yusseff, ‘obey the laws when they feel
the rod over their backs, but who, when they cannot see the
rod, laugh at them’, furthermore ‘the Greek dog will bite
the hand which fed him if he has a chance’.6 That even
towards the end of the century the Greek dragoman could be
portrayed as inherently unscrupulous in comparison with the
un-businesslike but noble Turk, shows how ingrained this
attitude had become.7
The
Turkish
lack
of
expertise
in
or
indifference
to
mercantile endeavour had allowed the Ottoman Greek merchants
6
George Manville Fenn, Yussuf the Guide, London, 1890, Chap. V, Chap X
Spencer, for an historical survey of prejudice against the Greeks, pp.
29 & 33 - 45
7
5
to
achieve
significant
control
of
the
Empire’s
internal
trade by the nineteenth century. This platform meant they
were well placed to exploit the difficulties experienced by
European
merchants
faced
with
the
language
and
business
customs of the Ottomans. From their success as middlemen or
agents they became independent merchants and ship-owners who
could look outward and play a major role in the Empire’s
external trade. Outside the Ottoman Empire competition for
the
Mediterranean
Russian
and
and
Hapsburg
Black
Sea
Empires
to
trade
had
introduce
induced
the
preferential
policies for immigrants, and Greeks had been enticed to set
up merchant colonies in Trieste and along the northern Black
Sea coast. By the time Greek entrepreneurial adventurers
spread their activities as far as London a trading network
already existed wherein, for example, the Greeks of Trieste
were known for their links with the Ottoman ports of Smyrna,
Constantinople and Alexandria and the Levant trade. After
the opening of the Black Sea to Austrian and Russian traffic
many Greek ships sailed under flags of convenience. Ottoman
Greeks
Turkish
were
allowed
ships
were
to
fly
Greek
the
owned
Russian
and
flag,
manned.
and
During
many
the
British occupation of the Ionian Islands (1815 – 1864) the
Ionian flag was also used. In consequence the Black Sea
6
trade had come
to be controlled by Greek middlemen and
merchants with their main colony at Odessa.8
The network of the major Greek trading and cultural centres
formed a chain from the Black Sea through the Mediterranean
and
into
Western
Europe
which
linking
Venice,
Trieste,
Vienna, Genoa, Livorno and Marsailles. In the eighteenth
century Paris and Amsterdam joined the list; it was only a
matter of time before London would be included.9 Up until
the 1820s British importation of Russian grain through the
Black Sea had been small and handled by British merchants.
With the relaxation of import controls and the repeal of the
Corn Laws in 1848 this trade became increasingly important,
so that by 1852 half the grain imported into Britain came
Gennadius, ‘Introduction’, p. 51 – 2; John Campbell and Philip Sherrard
Modern Greece, London, 1968, p. 50; L. S. Stavrianos, ‘Antecedents to
the Balkan Revolutions of the Nineteenth Century’, The Journal of Modern
History, 29 (1957), 342, and note 17. Yannoulopoulos, pp. 25 - 6;
Karides, pp. 112, 119, 123 & 127; Clogg, p. 94, the other major Black
Sea ports were Taganrog and Marinol, there are estimated to have been
1000 Greek owned ships by 1815; Gelina Harlaftis, A History of Greekowned Shipping: the Making of an International Tramp Fleet, 1830 to the
Present Day, London & New York, 1996, pp. 6 - 7 & 29; Vryonis, p. 51,
the Chiot ship-owners enjoyed customs exemptions which gave them
favoured status as merchants; Mark Levene, ‘Port Jewry of Salonika:
between neo-colonialism and nation state’, David Cesarani (ed.), Port
Jews: Jewish Communities in Cosmopolitan Maritime Trading Centres, 1550
– 1950, London, 2002, pp. 125 – 154, at pp. 135 – 6, Levene calls the
acting of Greeks, Armenians and Jews as middlemen in the Ottoman Empire
the ‘diasporic condition’. A native agent of a foreign company in
Smyrna, Beirut, Alexandria and Salonika was termed a ‘comprador’, Smyrna
being Greek dominated
9
Gennadius, ‘Introduction’ p. 51; Chapman, The Rise of Merchant
Banking, p. 127. The Greeks were in Amsterdam from the 1760s; Harlaftis,
p. 39
8
7
from the Black Sea and Mediterranean ports, the bulk through
Odessa. The establishment of the Greeks in London coincided
with this boom making fortunes for the small investment of
the
initial
traders.
Other
Greeks,
often
with
family
connections, soon followed until this trade was reported to
be exclusively in the hands of a small group of interrelated Greek families.10
The networks that came into place enabled Greeks to move
easily from one centre to another, as in the instance of
Dimitrios Vikelas who was born in the port of Ermoupolis on
Syra, in 1835. In 1840 his family was in Constantinople, and
from there they moved to Odessa, then back to Syra, and
finally, by way of Trieste, Dimitrios arrived in London at
the age of seventeen.11 Due to British control of the Ionian
islands some of the Greek merchants in the Levant were able
to operate under the British flag. By 1834 seven out of a
list of fifteen British merchants supplied by the consulate
in
Beirut
had
English
names,
whilst
the
rest
included
Ionians, Maltese and other British subjects. By 1848, in the
wake of this growth in British interests, of the four agents
10
Kynaston, p. 169; Richard Roberts, Schroders: Merchants and Bankers,
Basingstoke and London, 1992, p. 52. Between 1846 and 1853 British
Russian grain imports rose from 3% to 50%
11
Panagiotes Georgoudes, O Dglütqior Bijókar, Vikelas Library, Herakleion, pp.
1 – 2, www.heraklion-city.gr/vikelas.htm
8
involved with the Syrian trade in England two were Greek
based in London, Spartali and Lascaridi and N.S. Francopolo
and Co.12
The Greeks who came to London set up trading companies that
were of the type known in the City as an ‘International
House’, a firm with more than one centre of trade. The
Greeks were not the first to set up this type of business,
but were part of a wave of such entrepreneurs. Initially
these firms had been run by Dutch, French and Sephardic
Jewish
émigrés,
with
the
Dutch
in
the
forefront.
Their
hegemony was broken by merchants from Germany made up of
refugees, fleeing the chaos caused by Napoleon’s armies, and
Ashkenazi Jews, attracted to London because of perceived
religious tolerance and the growth in the British textile
trade. The Greek merchants were also drawn by the textile
trade and with their networks in Amsterdam, followed the
trail, to settle in London and Manchester and the north by
the 1820s.13 In Peter Thorold’s words these were ‘patrician
families
with
commerce
in
their
blood’
and
their
well-
Issawi, 94, from a dispatch to Palmerston, 29 July, 1834, FO 78/243.
On the growth of the British commercial houses in Beirut, 94 & 98;
Karides, p. 116, Ionian merchants and sailors made frequent applications
for British passports in Odessa
13
S. D. Chapman, The Rise of Merchant Banking, London, 1984, pp. 3 – 4
& 65; Peter Thorold, The London Rich: The Creation of a Great City from
1666 to the Present, Harmondsworth, 1999, pp. 298 - 9
12
9
developed mercantile ability meant that they had a different
attitude to business. They were not to be bound by British
conservatism
concerning
trade,
and
this
freedom
from
constraint was an advantage allowing some of them to make
considerable
fortunes
in
the
City.14
But
their
speedy
success aroused the suspicions and confirmed the prejudices
of some contemporary observers.
The Greeks in the City
…there was money to be made in London, and where
money was to be made, men of the Greek nation will
always be found. There were then, as ever, a host of
small Greeks in London, anxious to profit by the
various kinds of commerce which they, of all people
understand well.
By 1865, when M.R.L. Meason wrote the above lines,15 Greek
mercantile enterprise had been an established feature of the
City’s
life
for
nearly
fifty
years.
Meason’s
statement,
although it appears neutral on the surface, hints that their
English
competitors
only
grudgingly
appreciated
their
success. It appeared that with little or no capital they had
somehow come to dominate certain areas of the import-export
trade, and when this energy was spent, they had then moved
14
Thorold, p. 300
10
seamlessly into finance during the ‘mania for joint-stock
companies’.16 The Ionides family business interests, from
their beginnings as importers and exporters to the Ottoman
Empire specifically in grain and cotton goods, moved to
banking,
insurance,
stockbroking
and
directorships
of
companies, including the Crystal Palace Company.17 To the
Greeks themselves their good fortune was epitomized by the
Ralli Brothers partnership and its spearhead, Pandia Ralli,
who
died
in
the
same
year
that
Meason’s
words
were
published.18 The significance of the passing of the pioneers
of the Greek colony would be that, specifically for those
born in Britain, more than mere business decisions would
shape the future of the Greeks in London.
In the preceding chapter it was shown that the perception of
the native Londoner to the Greeks was mainly of two kinds.
Either the term ‘Greek’ was shorthand for a rogue or cheat
and often associated with sailors, some of whom may actually
have
been
sometimes
15
true
of
ethnic
great
Greeks,
wealth.
The
or
they
latter
were
merchants,
category
had
the
Meason, The Bubbles of Finance, London, 1865, p. 188, and ‘Preface’,
originally published anonymously in Dicken’s Household Words
16
Meason, p. 173
17
Julia Ionides, ‘Afterword’, in Luke Ionides, Memories, Ludlow, 1996,
p. 69
11
greater impact on London ‘society’ and it gave to those who
either moved in business or cultural circles their main
conception of the Greek character. Their business methods
were seen as different, certainly innovative in City terms,
and were easily explained in terms of racial stereotyping.
The Greek, who ‘haggles and tries to wriggle out of a deal
if he feels he will lose as much as half a farthing’,19 had
come to epitomize many of the negative qualities attributed
to the Levantine merchant. What rankled with Meason and his
audience was the climate of business in which the Greeks
seemed particularly adept, whereby
…at the present day, if a man has knowledge and
energy of character, he does not require either
capital or credit to commence trade with, and go to
get on in the commercial world.20
Comments like these must be treated with caution. As James
Taylor has warned, while corrupt business dealings in the
City ‘led to much soul-searching and indignant hyperbole
among
journalists,
today
might
reflections
18
be
on
clergymen
termed
events
the
do
and
novelists’,
‘chattering
not
those
classes’,
necessarily
give
whom
their
a
full
Catsiyannis, Pandia Stephen Rallis, 1793 – 1865, p. 46, see the Ralli
family tree. As Catsiyannis has it ‘Pandias Ralli was the man who gave
shape to the Greek Community’
19
Meason, p. 163, but amongst themselves the Greeks would ‘keep their
word’
20
Meason, p. 156; for the contemporary response to ‘the morality of
Mammon’ in Victorian society in the latter part of the 19 th century see
James Taylor, ‘Company fraud in Victorian Britain: the Royal British
12
understanding
of
contemporary
attitudes
to
commercial
morality.21
The Greek links with Odessa were already in existence by the
early nineteenth century, with trade routes in place whereby
Levantine commodities could be sold to Russia in return for
wheat.22 This meant that the Greeks who settled in London
were not innocents abroad who, with inbred cunning, were
able to cheat their way to success. They were well connected
when they arrived and were able to exploit the connections
to their considerable advantage. The fact that the agents of
the merchants in ports like Odessa were related by blood or
were fellow Greeks enabled the Greek merchants to buy grain
on the spot, exploiting the market to get it at a better
price. In Odessa, foreigners paid 5% brokerage, whereas the
Greeks only paid 0.5%. The buying and selling of merchandise
was the responsibility of a partner in the firm based in the
foreign port.23
bank scandal of 1856’, English Historical Review, Vol. CXXII, 497
(2007), 700 – 24
21
Taylor, 701
22
Karides, pp. 120 & 122, Eastern Mediterranean goods were shipped from
Alexandria, Thessaloniki, Izmir, Istanbul and the Aegean archipelago
with increasing European demand for wheat meaning that after 1815 grain
accounted for over ninety percent of Russian exports that passed through
Odessa
23
Karides, p. 128
13
In Meason’s book, The Bubbles of Finance, Mr. Velardi, a
fictitious ‘Greek gentleman’ and merchant, was aiming to set
up
…simultaneously,
mercantile
offices
in
London,
Smyrna, and Odessa, as correspondents of the same
firm. In each of the latter towns…he had already a
partner…’
In order to give him credibility, though, Mr. Velardi needs
an English partner in London.24 Through their exploitation
of the network of fellow Greeks it was perceived that such a
merchant was able to start up with little capital using a
method whereby he could draw his bills on foreign houses
‘endorsed
by
one
of
his
wealthy
and
better-known
countrymen’.25 Meason’s Mr. Velardi was not among the first
wave of Greek merchants coming to London, but reliant on
those who had already paved the way.
As Charles Capper noted in 1862 one of the advantages the
Greek merchants of London and Manchester had over their
rivals when trading with the Levant was 'their knowledge of
the
languages,
customs,
habits
and
requirements
of
the
various Eastern populations with whom they have to trade'.26
It was this facility they used to the full, but to his
24
Meason, p. 157
Meason, p. 159; Magriotis, p. 351, larger Greek companies acted as
credit for smaller ones
26
Charles Capper, The Port and Trade of London, London, 1862, p. 289
25
14
surprise the trade between Great Britain and Greece was as
not as extensive as would have been imagined given ‘the
number and wealth of the Greek merchants settled in London
and Manchester’. Instead
… the trade of the Greek merchants is all with the
Levant; and the trade of England with Greece Proper
is very limited, and is by no means increasing in
amount.27
Greece at this time was still a small and poor country and
as Capper failed to point out, few, if any, of the merchants
would have originated from within the borders of ‘Greece
Proper’ as it was then. It was the Greeks of the Ottoman
Empire whose knowledge and manipulation of local conditions
meant
they
did
not
rely,
unlike
the
foreigners,
on
middlemen. They could therefore act more profitably, making
themselves the ‘carriers, factors and traders of the Levant’
by
dealing
directly
in
the
buying
and
selling
of
commodities. They were also not afraid to deal in any size
or class of goods and through their operations in banking
exchange they were able to penetrate commercial activities
that had until then the prerogative of other merchants in
the Levant. In Capper’s view the feeling of unfairness in
this situation as regards the British merchant was only
redeemed with the establishment of the Ottoman Bank and the
15
Bank
of
Egypt,
both
based
in
London.
Then
the
British
traders could operate on an equal footing and were able to
gain access to areas monopolized by the Greeks.28
Part of the Greek’s success, as Capper pointed out, was also
due to their preparedness to diversify. They were involved
in the import of silk, opium and fruit from Turkey and
Greece
and
exporters.
cotton
Greek
from
firms
in
Egypt,29
but
Manchester
they
were
purchased
also
for
the
London houses ‘large quantities of Manchester goods’, which
they shipped on their ‘own account to the Levant’ or acting
‘as agents for firms abroad’. Again according to Meason they
outdid
the
native
English
competition
by
being
able
to
‘purchase cheaper than the English firms’. This he asserts
was by not insisting on trading in cash but carrying ‘on
amongst themselves a system of credit easier to operate on
small
capital
goods
were
than
sent
English
firms’.
‘throughout
the
Once
ports
purchased
of
the
these
Levant’
enabling ‘the Greek importers of English goods [to] make
27
Capper, p. 286
Capper, pp. 289 & 291; David Kynaston, The City of London: Vol. I, A
World of its Own 1815-1890, London, 1994, p. 225; Cain, and Hopkins,
British Imperialism, p. 401; Ioanna Pepelasis Minoglo, "Ethnic minority
groups
in
international
banking:
Greek
diaspora
bankers
of
Constantinople and Ottoman state finances, c. 1840-81", Financial
History Review, (9 October 2002) 125-146 at 128, the Ottoman Bank was
set up in 1856
29
Kynaston, p. 169
28
16
large fortunes where the local English merchants can barely
make
a
living.’30
The
rivalry
for
the
Syrian
trade
was
indeed so keen that the firm of Spartali and Lascaridi gave
their
correspondents
goods
could
be
special
sold
facilities
nearly
as
cheap
so
that
in
Syria
British
as
in
England.31
Over
the
years
of
Victoria’s
reign
the
Greek
merchant
families and their colony would move from being looked on
askance as being dubious foreigners, to becoming members of
the establishment.32 In the middle years of the nineteenth
century the Greeks had not reached such a level of respect
or assimilation, but had certainly moved from being émigrés
on the make to being people of some substance. It is during
this period that they began to acquire the trappings of
wealth and to broaden their social circle. By the time John
S. Schillizzi died in 1908 he was among the 35 richest
businessmen
of
his
generation,
leaving
over
two
million
pounds and Sir Lucas Ralli, who despite dieing in the middle
30
Meason, The Bubbles of Finance, pp. 164 - 5
Issawi, 97
32
W. J. Stillman, The Autobiography of a Journalist, vol. 2, London,
1901, pp. 3 & 148. Stillman, a philhellene and the husband of Marie
Spartalli, was happy at the end of his life to describe the Pasha in
Crete, a Greek, as having a native ‘Greek duplicity’ and even his friend
Charilaos Tricoupis, whom he admired as a politician, he believed could
be ‘as slippery and dishonest as any of his countrymen’ because for a
Greek ‘evasion, diplomatic duplicity, and the usual devices of the weak
31
17
of the depression in 1931, was able to leave a similar
amount.33
In the current climate of concern over immigration to the
UK, national groups have become associated with occupations
or characteristics that have then been extended to racial
stereotypes: hardworking, skilled or unskilled, reliable or
untrustworthy. Their presence has been seen as undermining
the status and prospects of the native population seeking
employment and bringing about a change in the national moral
outlook. One of the characteristics, or depending on the
point of view, charges held against the Greeks was their
close-knit community or clannishness. This was one of the
ways
Meason
was
able
to
attack
them,
but
according
to
Chapman, they were not unique in this. Hugenots, Jews Scots,
Quakers
and
Lutherans
involved
in
merchant
banking
also
exhibited the same characteristic. Any group of ethnic or
religious outsiders clung together. In the world of business
one
way
of
protecting
was
through
family
loyalty.
The
brought to terms by the strong, are ingrained with the race’. Such
attitudes would linger well beyond the Victorian era
33
Catsiyannis, Pandia Stephen Rallis, p. 118; Ionides, Ion, p. 4 – 5;
Alexander C. Ionides, Ion: (Notes and Index), p. 4 – 5; Dakers, p. 7.
Pandia Ralli and family moved from Finsbury Circus to 5 Connaught Place
W2 in 1851 and Alexander Ionides to an elite and artistic circle in
Tulse Hill in 1833, where he made his first artistic commission by
George Frederick Watts in 1837, by 1864 he was in Holland Park; Thorold,
p. 300
18
Quakers were particularly held to deal only with their own
but by 1867. Even so the Bensons were on good terms with the
Rallis
and,
despite
the
prejudice
that
Meason
reflects,
Greek firms were being invited to cooperate in financial
institutions inspired by the Credit Mobilier.34
In taking to task the sharp practices, as he saw them, of
‘the city of London, our own dear overgrown Babylon’ where
‘the
most
successful
frauds
have
been
the
handiwork
of
foreigners’, Meason expressed the view that contemporary lax
commercial morality was a foreign import.
He was careful
though to state in his preface that the characters in his
book were not based on single individuals but were in the
way of a cartoon caricature, an aggregate of types.35
Mr. Velardi was a fair average specimen of the Greek
merchant as found all over the world. He was about
thirty years of age, wore a short-cut and very black
beard, dressed well, was gentlemanly in his manners
– courteous, in fact, to a degree, except when he
was getting the worst of a bargain, when he would
rave and rant like the lowest Houndsditch Jew.
Besides his own language, he spoke English, French,
and Italian well; a little Russian too, and some
knowledge of Turkish. He had served as a clerk in a
merchant’s office in Syra, and also in Odessa. He
had been in business on his own account for five
years, during which he had suspended payment twice,
but had always managed to compound with his
34
Chapman, The Rise of Merchant Banking, pp. 65 – 6; Kynaston, p. 314 on
Rothschild family loyalty
35
Meason, pp. 87 & 149 and ‘Preface’
19
creditors
pound.’36
for
two
or
three
shillings
in
the
This portrait reveals some accurate knowledge of his subject
born out by the history of Greek business but the general
tone
is
one
of
condescending
respect
for
the
talents
attributed to the Greeks mixed with an air of disapproval.
The linking of Mr. Velardi with a Jew was more than a cheap
insult. The Greek and the Jew were the embodiment of the new
type of city entrepreneur,
…one of those clever cosmopolitan adventurers in the
financial world…who…find their way to London as
surely as sparks of fire fly upwards. A German by
birth, a Jew by race, a nominal Christian by creed,
a
Frenchman
by
education,
an
Englishman
by
naturalization, a universal linguist by intuition,
and a financial agent by profession…’37
36
Meason, pp. 158 – 9
M.R.L. Meason, The Profits of Panics: showing how financial storms
arise, who make money by them, and other revelations of a city man,
London, 1866, p. 18; John A. Petropulos, ‘Introduction’, Hellenism and
the first Greek War of Liberation, 19 – 41 at 20 – 21, a sense of
statelessness was something the Ottoman and diaspora Greeks felt in
common with the Jews. For a discussion on cosmopolitanism and the Greek
diaspora see Evridiki Sifneos, ‘”Cosmopolitanism” as a feature of the
Greek commercial diaspora’, History and Anthropology, 16 (March 2005),
97-111 and Henk Driessen, ‘Mediterranean port cities: cosmopolitanism
reconsidered’, History and Anthropology, 16 (March 2005), 129 – 141.
Sifneos argues that ‘cosmopolitanism’ was a particular characteristic of
the Greek commercial diaspora with particular refernce to Odessa and
Alexandria. Driesseen feels the case for a ‘cosmopolitan’ worldview in
such cities as Izmir and Alexandria, where the citizens felt more in
common with their fellows in other ports, has been overstated. Maria
Vassilikou, ‘Greeks and Jews in Salonika ad Odessa: inter-ethnic
relations in cosmopolitan port cities’, David Cesarani (ed.), Port Jews:
Jewish Communities in Cosmopolitan Maritime Trading Centres, 1550 –
1950, London, 2002, pp. 155 – 172 at pp. 155 – 6, Greeks and Jews shared
common characteristics and comparable development as members of trade
diasporas trading in the same geographical context and cosmopolitan
atmosphere
37
20
The cleverness of the foreigner, though acknowledged, is not
really
appreciated
and
is
seen
as
putting
the
native
merchant at a disadvantage. The chameleon character of the
foreigner
only
highlights
his
flighty
and
untrustworthy
nature reeking of insincerity and adventurism. This climate
of
opinion
colours
Trollope’s
dissection
of
speculative
finance in his 1873 novel The Way We Live Now, in which the
dubious characters are of foreign extraction and the archfinancier Melmotte is ‘a man without a country’.38
In Meason’s view this system of credit was at best dubious
and
at
worst
illegal.
By
exploiting
their
international
links, in Smyrna, Leghorn (Livorno) or Hamburg, where the
‘correspondents were always Greek firms’, the Greeks were
able
to
draw
on
funds
from
abroad,
keeping
the
plates
spinning until such time as which they could pay the bills.
The credit was sold on to the correspondent who had ‘orders,
so soon as he received the bill, to sell it as if it were
his
own
property,
and
remit…the
proceeds,
charging
his
commission of five per cent.’
The transactions always appeared legitimate –
Messrs. Velardi and Co. of Smyrna drew on Messrs.
Cavcali and Co. of Hamburg for the sum of one
38
Anthony Trollope, The Way We Live Now, Oxford, 1982, p. 30 and see
‘Introduction’ by John Southerland, pp. xiv & xviii
21
thousand pounds payable in three months, Messrs.
Cavali and Co. after sending the first bills of
exchange forward for acceptance endorsed it and sold
it on the Hamburg exchange. Anyone not in on the
secret thought Velardi & Co. owed Cavali & Co. and
had remitted this draft in payment of debt but the
bill was an accommodation bill on a large scale, the
profits of the sale going to the London branch to
pay off bills which either the Smyrna or Odessa
house had drawn upon the London firm.39
That
the
Greek
firms
were
able
to
exploit
their
international links was true. These links had been set up
over a period of time and were based on family networks. In
this way trust could be relied on where English merchants,
who still had some
…old-fashioned
notions
about
not
drawing
or
accepting bills, unless the said bills really
represent some veritable commercial transaction,
between drawer and drawee
were at the mercy of foreign agents. Meason suggests that a
bona fide capital of three hundred pounds could be turned
into credit of thirty or forty thousand pounds by a ‘paper
traffic’ through the Exchanges of Europe.40
The development from dealing in credit, to banking would
have
been
a
natural
one
and
the
diaspora
Greeks
in
Constantinople were the first to set up banks there in the
1840s.
39
40
There
was
a
culture
of
speculation
Meason, The Bubbles of Finance, pp. 160 - 2
Meason, The Bubbles of Finance, p. 162
within
the
22
Merchant Houses that, already operating a system of internal
banking, would gamble on futures. These financiers had links
with Marseilles and London, particularly George Zarifis,
personal
banker
Mavrocordatos,
to
the
Vlastos,
Sultan,
Coronios,
and
the
Schilizzis
and
Rallis,
Andreas
Syngros who moved to London in 1870. As Meason rightly says,
they operated on three months credit raising finance for the
Ottomans in the West and relocating the deferred payments
abroad as security where they could draw on a branch of
theirs
or
an
affiliated
firm
or
bank
in
Marseilles
or
London, to raise further capital. According to Meason it was
not until the Greeks started the trade in bills with no
backing on terms of ‘money or capital’ that it was felt that
large profits could be made in this way. The reason it
worked for the Greeks was that
…to do them justice, the Greeks are the only people
in the world that could carry on that extraordinary
trade, because they form the only nation the natives
of which have implicit
confidence in one another.
Whatever a Greek is to a foreigner, he is always
true to his countrymen.
Eventually by 1860 their floating debt had inundated the
Western markets with Ottoman ‘paper’ reaching four million
23
pounds in London, more than the Sultan could pay leading to
a crisis.41
Cotton textiles were crucial to international trade in the
early and mid-nineteenth century and the America Civil War
benefited the Greeks because American cotton did not reach
Europe, Egypt, or India.42 At their peak there were 50 Greek
commercial houses in London, importing wheat, linen and wool
and exporting cotton cloth, coal, sugar and other products
of the Empire.43 Most of these enterprises were listed in
the 1850s as ‘small’ or ‘very small’. Manchester was the
centre of the cotton industry where German, Dutch, Swiss,
French and Italian merchants were already established by
1835. The Greeks followed the trail to the northwest where
they
were
joined
by
the
Spanish,
Portuguese
and
the
Russians.44 Daunton argues that, contrary to the view that
the city represented a self-contained entity, connections
between the city and industry were close, at least early in
41
Meason, The Bubbles of Finance, pp. 162 - 3; Ioanna Pepelasis
Minoglou, "Ethnic minority groups in international banking: Greek
diaspora bankers of Constantinople and Ottoman state finances, c. 184081", Financial History Review, (9 October 2002) 125-146 at 126 – 8, 130,
142, Syngros ran a brokerage house, Syngros, Koronios [Coronio] and
partners
42 M. J. Daunton, ‘”Gentlemanly Capitalism” and British Industry 1820 –
1914’, Past and Present, No. 122 (Feb. 1989), 119 – 158, at 139;
Mangriotis, p. 351
43
Mangriotis, p. 350
44 S. D. Chapman, The Cotton Industry in the Industrial Revolution,
London and Basingstoke, 1972, p. 49
24
the century. The ties between merchants and industry were
‘one and the same’. The Greek merchant houses were part of a
circular
chain
linking
trade
that
took
textiles
from
Lancashire to the Middle East and brought in grain from the
Black Sea to London. In this way they developed a close
connection with calico-printers for the first and with the
Baltic Exchange for the second.45
The Greek London colony carried out its business in the
environs of the Baltic Exchange.46 Their families were such
a feature that when the exchange produced its first printed
list of members there were eleven Ralli, six Mavrogordato
and
six
Schilizzi.47
A
vibrant
picture
of
the
Greek
merchants at work in the mid-century is given by Walter
Thornbury.
The London terms of the factors are one months open
credit, and the buyer has to lodge any objection as
to the quality, bulk &c. at the factors stand before
eleven o’clock on the following market day, or else
abide by his bargain. The centre of the market is
devoted, at the entrance end, to shipbrokers of all
classes, and also to masters of small craft, and
lightermen; and in the middle assemble the great
Greek
merchants,
who
almost
monopolise
the
importation of corn from every part of the world:
they give directions to factors who are selling
their arrived cargoes, and to agents who are
negotiating with country merchants and factors from
45
Daunton, p. 139
Mangriotis, p. 350
47
Kynaston, p. 292
46
25
all parts of the kingdom, either personally or by
telegraph, for the sale of cargoes shipping at
foreign ports, or on passage, or arrived at Plymouth
or Queenstown.48
He continues, ‘The upper part of the market is the place of
oil-seed crushers, and here the Greeks again are the great
importers of all kinds of oil-seeds’.
Meason’s Mr. Velardi
always spent ‘…two or three hours…at “the Baltic”, which is
the stock exchange of all the Levant trade in London’, where
he saw friends and transacted business.49
The Families
According
to
Gennadius
the
Ionides
family
from
Constantinople were the first of the new breed of Greek
merchants to set up business in London. In 1815 Constantine
Ipliktsis
came
to
London
with
John
Ralli,
and
founded
Argenti, Thomas & Co. with offices in 14 Tokenhouse Yard,
near
the
Bank
of
England.
His
father
‘Joannes’
had
apparently already been importing ‘Manchester goods’ into
Constantinople but paid for his success by being murdered by
the Turks and nailed to his front door. Constantine’s great-
Walter Thornbury, Old and New London: a narrative of its history, its
people, and its places. Vol. 2, London, Paris & New York, 1872 – 8, p.
182. Mangriotis mentions Falmouth or Cork as the destination of the
goods. Mangriotis, p. 350
49
Meason, The Bubbles of Finance, p. 166
48
26
grandson,
Alexander
Ionides
claims
that
John
Ralli,
his
‘youthful assistant’, was responsible for founding Ralli
Brothers.50 This is contradicted by Gennadius who informs us
that Ralli is a fairly common name in the Greek world,
including
Constantinople,51
and
there
is
some
resulting
confusion in the story. In the Gennadius account the Rallis
operated independently. In 1818, John the eldest of five
brothers from Chios came to London with his youngest brother
Eustratius from Livorno where their father Stephanos Ralli,
already a wealthy Chiot merchant, had trading activities. At
some point it was decided to open a London branch and by
1820 Eustratio Ralli & Co were recorded as being in Billiter
Square and Ralli & Petrocochino in Bond Street. Ralli &
Petrocochino were also recorded as being at 5 Union Court,
50
Ionides, Ion, p. 1; Gennadius, ‘Introduction’, p. 52. According to
Gennadius, Constantine was smuggled to his friends in London by his
mother, which implies there already were links established in London at
that time. Catsiyannis has the story that Constantine Ipliktis, in order
to cut out the middle-men sent as his own representatives Nicholas Thomas
and Theodore, son of Strati Ralli, an uncle of the Ralli brothers, to
London to buy textiles from the mills. He doubts though that Constantine
came to London as early as 1815, but after the collapse of his business
in the 1822 troubles. Catsiyanis takes his information from the
biographer
Anastasios
Goudas,
Bioi
Paralleloi
ton
Andron
tes
Epanastaseos (Parallel Lives of the Men of the Revolution) Athens, 1875.
Catsiyannis, Constantine Ionidis-Ipliktzis, pp.
5 – 6 & 110. The
confusion is added to by a tradition that the Ionides family went to
Manchester first, David B. Elliott, A Pre-Raphaelite Marriage: The Lives
and Works of Marie Spartali Stillman and William James Stillman,
Woodbridge, 2006, p. 10; Caroline Dakers, The Holland Park Circle:
Artists and Victorian Society, New Haven and London, 1999, p. 8; Julia
Atkins, ‘Morris and Aglaia Coronio’, William Morris Society Newsletter
April 1990, www.morrissociety.org/newsltrs/newsltr-april90.html
51
Gennadius, Stephen A. Ralli, p. 21 note 23; Catsiyannis, Pandia
Stephen Rallis, p. 10, it may be John Ralli was distantly related as it
27
Old
Broad
Street,
between
1820
and
1825.52
Alexander
Ionides, maintaining the pioneering spirit of his father
Constantine, was credited as the first Greek to set up a
branch
in
Manchester,
and
his
family
were
regarded
as
leading lights, honoured amongst their fellows for their
‘patriotic traditions’,53 but it was the Rallis who went on
to
eclipse
all
others
to
become
the
largest
and
most
successful of the Greek businesses.
There is also contradictory evidence as to when Pandias
Ralli, the third son arrived in London to take over the
business
but
it
was
some
time
between
1820
and
1827.
According to the official Ralli company history it was in
1826 shortly before John left for Odessa. By 1825 due to the
rapid expansion of the business, now styled Ralli Brothers,
the centre of operations was moved to 25 Finsbury Circus,
where
the
remained
family
until
lived
its
behind
collapse
the
in
office
1961.54
and
where
Meanwhile
it
the
brothers, acting in partnership, each established a branch
was claimed the Ralli family had branches in Constantinople and Athens
and elsewhere
52
Gennadius, ‘Introduction’, p. 53; Frangakis-Syrett, ‘Greek mercantile
activities in the Eastern Mediterranean’, p. 82
53
Gennadius, ‘Introduction’, p. 52
54
Gennadius, ‘Introduction’, p. 53; Catsiyannis, Pandia Stephen Rallis,
p. 4 – 8. In ‘The Directory’ of 1826’ the firm was entered as Ralli
Brothers, 25 Finsbury Circus, Bowater Organisation, History and
Activities of the Ralli Trading Group, p. 2
28
of the family firm in a major strategic commercial centre
forming a network from the Black Sea to England. John was in
Odessa
to
organize
the
grain
exports,
Thomas
in
Constantinople, and Augustus in Marsailles. Once, according
to Gennadius, Pandia had brought the London branch to ‘a
sate of prosperity and prominence’ Eustratius was dispatched
to Liverpool. This cannot have taken long because he was
heading the Manchester branch that was opened in 1827. He
eventually died in London where he was ‘honoured as the
doyen of the community, after the demise of his brother
Pantia’.55 This close network may be on of the reasons for
the Ralli’s success. Whereas all the Greek firms used family
connections
to
further
their
aims
none
matched
the
dedication of maintaining a significant filial presence in
each
major
trading
centre.
As
Karidis
has
pointed
out,
through their family connections the Greeks of Odessa had
‘excellent access to commercial
information’ from across
Europe;
better
none
could
have
been
placed
than
the
Rallis.56
55
Gennadius, ‘Introduction’, p. 53, Gennadius goes as far as to say
that the grain trade of south Russia was organized and controlled by
Ralli Bros.; Gennadius, Stephen A. Ralli, pp. 21 - 2 and note 24,
Ionides, Ion, pp. 1 - 2; Ionides, Ion: (Notes and Index), p. 4;
Catsiyannis, Pandia Stephen Rallis, pp. 20 – 1; Bowater Organisation,
History and Activities of the Ralli Trading Group, p. 1
56
Karidis, p.127
29
The Ralli brothers were followed by their cousins Antonios
Alexander and Antonios Theodore Ralli, also from Chios, who
set up as Antonio Ralli & Co, which was eventually absorbed
by Ralli Bros. Antonios Alexander, whose father had been one
of the hostages murdered by the Turks on Chios in the 1822
massacre, became deputy to Pandia Ralli both in business and
community
affairs.57
When
the
Illustrated
London
News
published his will in 1882, they described Antonio Alexander
Ralli as a ‘foreign banker, late of No. 102, Westbourne-terrace,
Hyde Park, and of No. 9, Gracechurch-street’, who left a personal estate of
upwards of £437,000. He left his son
Alexander his freehold residence, No. 10, Heene-terrace, Worthing,
and his house and grounds in his native island of Scio; to his son
Pandia, his freehold house, No. 2, Heene-terrace; to his son Paul, his
freehold house, No. 3, Heene-terrace; to his son George, a freehold
garden and some land at Worthing; to his daughter Mrs. Polymnia
Peter Scaramanga, £50,000; upon trust for his daughter Antonina,
£50,000; to his daughters Mrs. Fanny Theodore Schilizzi and Mrs.
Virginia Demetrius Spartali, £20,000 each; to his son-in-law Mr.
Schilizzi, £5000; to his son-in-law Mr. Scaramanga,58
This will shows, apart from the wealth accumulated by not
the most successful of the Rallis, the family
ties and
connections maintained over the years and Antonio’s status
as a foreigner with links still to his home. The links with
the Scaramangas and the Schilizzis show that intermarriage
57
Catsiyannis, Pandia Stephen Rallis, pp. 24 – 6 & 73. Antonio Alexander
Ralli (1812 1882)
30
between the Rallis and these families had been maintained
since the early eighteenth century. Another oft-recurring
family name in Ralli marriages is that of Mavrocordato.59
The
success
Loukis
of
Tzifos
the
fled
Rallis
from
encouraged
Smyrna
to
others
London
to
follow.
following
the
Turkish reprisals of 1821. Turkish brutality was not his
only
motivation.
His
family
already
ran
a
prosperous
merchant enterprise within the sphere of Smyrna, Chios and
Syra
and
a
desire
to
deal
first
hand
with
their
‘correspondents in Europe’ and spurred on by the success of
…two or three of our fellow islanders – the
Columbuses of Greek commerce – [who] about that time
had pitched their tents in London…it was decided
that …I should go to London accompanied by a
maternal uncle of mine’
Being short of capital Tzifos was able to send a cargo from
Mykonos to Tinos on board a British vessel using a bill of
lading from a friend in Smyrna, who, being an Ionian, was a
British subject. With this small gain he was able to enter
the Russian grain trade based in Syra, where he went into
partnership with his brother-in-law, one selling in Tinos
the other buying in Syra.60 With this start, despite having
58
The Illustrated London News, ‘Antonio Alexander Ralli’, August 12,
1882, p.184
59
Catsiyannis, Pandia Stephen Rallis, p. 11, family tree, other recurring
names are: Argenti and Ralli itself
60
Vikelas, Loukis Laras, pp. 10 – 11, 61, 72, 89, 91 & 96
31
lost everything in Smyrna, he was able eventually to make
the move to London where he became a ‘respected and wellliked wheat merchant…working in the City’.61 The author of
Tzifos’
‘reminiscences’,
the
aforementioned,
Dimitrios
Vikelas came to London to work as an accountant in his uncle
Vasilios Melas’ firm involved in importing wheat from Russia
and the Danube, where they were joined by Vasilios’ brother
Leon.62
Following their early success the next logical step for
Ralli Bothers was to open an office in India, which they did
in 1851 opening a branch in Calcutta, followed in 1861 by
one in Bombay and a network of offices all over India.
Although
Lancashire
textiles
found
their
way
into
the
Ottoman Empire, with devastating effect for local producers,
the
real
expanding
market
was
India.63
Schillizzi
&
Co.
followed the Ralli lead in diversification and moving their
61
Vikelas, ‘Preface’ by Helen Vlachos pp. 5 - 6
Georgoudes, pp. 1 - 2
63
Bowater Organisation, History and Activities of the Ralli Trading
Group, p. 2; Catsiyannis, Pandia Stephen Rallis, p. 48; Kynaston, p. 169;
Bernard Porter, The Lion’s Share: A Short History of British Imperialism
1850 – 1995, Harlow, 1995, pp. 4 & 7. Cotton goods accounted for 63.8%
of exports in 1859 – 61; P.J. Cain, ‘Economics and Empire: The
Metropolitan Context’, The Oxford History of the British Empire: The
Nineteenth Century, Andrew Porter (ed), OUP, 1999, in 1854 – 7 exports
to India represented 31.7% whilst imports were 37.7%, both figures
increasing towards the end of the century, Table 2.2 and 2.4, pp. 35 &
44
62
32
focus
from
the
Mediterranean
and
the
Black
Sea
to
new
markets such as India.64 The Greeks were in the forefront of
taking
advantage
of
new
business
methods.
To
some
traditionalists in the City contracts made by the Greek
houses
taking
advantage
of
the
introduction
of
the
telegraph, steamships and the opening of the Suez Canal in
1869, were perhaps thought ‘illegitimate’. The Rallis and
Schilizzis were quick to embrace changes that enabled them
to offer competitive prices in Jute in London as opposed to
Calcutta. The Greek method of dealing whilst the produce was
‘afloat’
and
in
futures
rather
than
correspondents
and
commissions was seen as the coming trend.65 These trends
also had the effect of weakening family and ethnic ties.
In 1865 the Ralli partnership was dissolved but Stephen
Ralli
the
son
Eustratius
Brothers
of
Ralli
with
Augustus
Ralli
re-established
themselves
as
and
the
John,
company
partners.
A
the
name,
son
of
Ralli
succession
of
partners followed. Stephen Ralli with Alexander Vlasto, Sir
Lucas Ralli with Alexander Vlasto and finally Sir Strati
Ralli.66 The Ralli’s success could be put down to their
single-minded application to business. From the 1820s onward
64
65
Chapman, The Rise of Merchant Banking, London, p. 60
Kynaston, p. 306
33
there were two elements to the Greek colony.67 As Alexander
Ioinides Jnr. put it:
…the Greeks of the London community were of two
sorts. Those from Chios – the great majority - &
those from elsewhere – a very small minority,
consisting in two families. The nature of those from
Chios bid them occupy themselves in commerce to the
exclusion of anything else. Those from elsewhere –
including the Ionides – at times had other
interests.
Alexander words betray a rather superior tone which looks
down on the Ralli’s lack of cultural pursuits for their own
ends.
The
Ionides
whilst
certainly
successful
saw
their
fortunes fluctuate and not all the members of the family
were as gifted or determined in business.68
Gennadius credits Pandia Ralli
as the first to organize the system of trading in
cargoes of grain, while still on their way from the
Black Sea: a system which for more than two
generations was recognized as rule and custom of the
corn trade in England.69
The bill of lading and a sample of the goods, grain from
Odessa for instance, was sent by post to the London partner
as soon as the cargo was loaded and in effect sold whilst
the cargo was still at sea in ‘what was then the most
66
Bowater Organisation, History and Activities of the Ralli Trading
Group, p. 2
67
See Chapter One pp. 13 & 16 on clans
68
Ionides, Ion, p. 47
69
Gennadius, Stephen A. Ralli, p. 22, note 25; Kynaston, p. 169 - 70
34
profitable corn market’. The money made could then be laid
out on the return cargo of cotton manufactures, cotton goods
being in great demand in the Levant, or yarn or coal. In
order for the method to work strict controls were necessary,
but these were possible through the keeping the network a
family affair.70 However Gennadius puts the success of the
firm
down
to
Pandia’s
‘absolute
probity
and
straightforwardness in his transactions’. Although profit is
the motive of every merchant only ‘reasonable gain, fairly
acquired’ should be the goal. Pandia rule of the company was
based on ‘iron discipline’ within a ‘patriarchal tradition’.
This engendered according to Gennadius, a filial devotion
and submissiveness on behalf of the younger members of the
firm. This apparently did not hinder merit or hard work
attaining its rewards.
The richer members of the Jewish community had favoured
Finsbury
Circus
and
Finsbury
Square,
which
had
been
developed in the 1790s, as a place to live. In the 1830s
they started to move on, around the time the Greeks arrived.
Some
moved
north
others
took
a
western
route
through
Marylebone, Paddington, Hyde Park to the West End Synagogue
70
Kynaston, p. 169; Chapman, The Rise of Merchant Banking, p. 127
35
in St. Petersburgh Place in Bayswater. The Greeks would
follow a similar line around thirty years later establishing
the Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Moscow Road close by.71 The
activities of Ralli Brothers were not unique but parallelled
those of other foreign companies, but most specifically the
Jewish merchants like Schroders. These also had their family
networks
and
branches
in
Odessa,
capitalizing
in
the
expansion of trade in grain from southern Russia, and other
European
centres,
such
as
Paris,
Trieste,
Amsterdam
and
Antwerp. As Ralli Brothers activities in the cotton trade
required them to set up an office in Manchester in 1826, so
too Schroders had their Lancashire office in Liverpool. As
members of the Ralli family were major figures in the Baltic
Exchange, so too was John Henry Schroder a member of the
Baltic Committee until the 1870s.72
The Greeks certainly had trading friendships with the Jews,
but business was still business, at least outside the Greek
circle,
and
Mattos
Mocatta
of
Mocatta
&
Goldsmith,
who
counted the Rallis as friends, was evidently put out when
they went to a rival for bullion.73 The Greeks were part of
a move away from the old connections between the merchant
71
72
Thorold, p. 332
Roberts, pp. 52 - 3.
36
bankers and the aristocracy. This new blood, such as the
Rallis and the Spanish house of Murietta and various AngloGerman firms had no aristocratic connections, brought more
vitality and competitiveness to the City and were quicker to
seize
opportunities.
deficiencies
of
entrepreneurship
Chapman
the
was
has
gentlemen
offset
by
argued
amateurs
the
that
in
influx
of
the
British
foreign
entrepreneurs, especially Germans, Greeks and Americans to
the City. These groups were more single-mindedly devoted to
hard work because they came from outside the public school
leisured elite class. They paid little attention to politics
and socializing. Their loyalties lay outside the City, in
the case of the Greeks to their own family networks. As
Daunton points out being an outsider was true only in the
early years. Within a generation the Greeks would send their
children to Public School, marry into English families and
become
integrated
into
the
system;
they
would
at
least
attempt to become ‘gentlemen’.74
The dominance of the Anglo-Russian grain trade by Greek
families such as the Rallis, Rodocanachis, Scaramangas and
Negropontis,
73
with
Kynaston, p. 293
their
bases
in
London,
only
lasted
a
37
generation.
Unlike
their
Jewish
counterparts
they
were
unable to meet the need to invest in Russia in warehouses,
ships and docks, despite available capital, the Rallis had
£4.2 million in the Far Eastern trade. By the second half of
the century Jewish merchants had taken this lead. The Greeks
had lost their distinctive advantage due to the rise of
Jewish middlemen in the Russian grain trade who naturally
preferred to deal with fellow Jews. The Rodocanachis were
the only Greek firm who were able to make an investment into
Russia. Through their base in St. Petersburg they set up
cotton spinning and weaving factories, a flourmill, brewery,
pottery, wire factory and steamship company.75
Meason is not only concerned with the misuse
facilities.
The
attitudes
of
the
foreign
of credit
Levantine
commission agent can invade the world of banking. With a
reputation for clever business dealing it is but a short
step before the agent is invited on to the board of a bank
and where
Greek commercial men generally follow and often help
each other, no sooner was the name of one of their
community seen on the board of a joint-stock bank,
than a perfect flood of current accounts poured into
the concern…76
74
S.D. Chapman, ‘British-based investment groups’, Economic
Review, Vol. 38, No. 2 (1985), 230 – 251 at 231; Daunton, p.143
75
Chapman, ‘British-based investment groups’, pp. 241 & 248
76
Meason, The Bubbles of Finance, p. 177
History
38
Once established he can then abuse his position as director
by re-discounting the bills of small businesses through the
bank, making extra money not at his own risk.77 He was seen
as an asset because, through his trade connections
He introduced to the bank a host of friends, all so
called “”mercantile’ men, who opened accounts with
us, and “did” largely in the discount way. These
gentlemen
were
chiefly
foreigners,
mostly
descendents of the ancient Hellenic race. The bills
they brought us were pretty uniform in character.
The house of Bravetti and Co. of Odessa, would draw
for seven and four hundred pounds ten shillings and
eight pence, at three months after date, upon
Bravetti Brothers, of London, in favour of Ramonda
and Company, also of London. Of course the bill
would be duly accepted, and would then be brought to
us for discount. If matters went right – if no storm
arose – the bill would duly be provided for, at
maturity, by the London house drawing upon the
Odessa firm, and getting their draft discounted. Had
matters been sifted, it would probably have been
found that Bravetti and Co., and Bravetti Brothers,
were one and the same people, and if one house
failed the other was pretty certain to follow
suit.78
It can be seen that the proliferation of houses with their
interconnected network of directors and family members could
be taken as a way of keeping their dealings obscure and away
from scrutiny. The charge against the Greek house of never
allowing ‘many people to see below the surface in their
77
78
Meason, The Bubbles of Finance, p. 69
Meason, The Bubbles of Finance, p. 75
39
affair, and that is one reason why they succeed…’79 no doubt
added to the feeling that the Greeks kept everything within
the
family
both
metaphorically
and
literally.
Greek
companies often seemed to find it necessary to operate under
a proliferation of names, so that as well as the original
firm in London of Cassavetti, Cavafy and CoCavafy, which
then split to form Cavafy Brothers, the cotton business was
in the hands of P. J. Cavafy and Co. who had offices in
Alexandria and London’s Threadneedle Street, and Cavafy and
Co.
who
operated
elsewhere
and
in
Liverpool
and
Cairo.
Meason’s Mr. Velardi also has a number of companies, Velardi
and Williamson in London, Velardi and Co. in Smyrna and
Velardi Brothers in Odessa, but they are all a sham as Mr.
Velardi is the only true partner. A circular traffic of
trading
in
‘paper’
could
then
be
set
up
through
the
exchanges of Europe of whose dealing of course the whiley
foreigner has superior knowledge, being able to buy and sell
through
his
‘correspondents
in
every
part
of
the
known
world’.80
The successes of the early years where not easy to maintain
and by the middle of the century the vicissitudes of the
79
Meason, The Bubbles of Finance, p. 166
40
business world began to have their effect even on the most
prosperous of the Greek families. According to his grandson
the Crimean War was to blame for the beginnings of Alexander
Ionides financial problems. Luke Ionides, Alexander’s son,
when
he
returned
to
London
in
1857
from
Heidelberg
University found that his father ‘had lost nearly all his
fortune through the Indian Mutiny which affected the value
of stocks which had to be realized to pay for merchandise’.
Whichever was the main cause, the uncertainties of the 1850s
had their effect on business and the Bank of London of which
Alexander was a director failed, as did the London Discount
Co. leaving him losses of £120,000 in unlimited liabilities
in one year. In consequence Luke, who had been ‘destined for
the diplomatic service’ was put to work in his father’s
office. Alexander’s failure was a contributory factor in his
selling of his Tulse Hill home to raise funds and his move
to his new house in 1864 at 1 Holland Park which he bought
with
his
insulate
wife’s
the
diamonds.81
community
from
Greek
solidarity
financial
could
difficulties.
not
As
Meason claimed, ‘If the system fails half a dozen firms can
80
Meason, The Bubbles of Finance, pp. 58 & 59; Robert Liddell, Cafavy:
a critical biography, London, 2000, pp. 18 & 22.
81
Ionides, Ion: (Notes and Index), p. 14; Luke Ionides, Memories, p.
29; David B. Elliott, A Pre-Raphaelite Marriage: The Lives and Works of
Marie Spartali Stillman and William James Stillman, Suffolk, 2006, p.
16; Caroline Dakers, The Holland Park Circle: Artists and Victorian
Society, New Haven and London, 1999, p. 109
41
fall and the larger firm be weakened’ so in the 1860s the
Greeks were ousted from the Odessa grain trade by German
Jewish competition following the closure of numerous small
Greek houses in the Constantinople chain of bankruptcies.
Following the Bank of London failure in 1866, the leading
Anglo-Greek shipping line floundered in the financial crisis
of 1867 precipitated by the overreaching speculations of
Overend
suspend
Gurney
&
payments
Co.
Franghiadi
for
a
&
period
Rodocarnachi
in
1869
had
and
to
then
Rodocarnachis’ Imperial Bank, whose scramble for accounts
was accused of being eager and disreputable, was sold to the
Midland.
The
move
into
unwise
speculation
brought
down
Cavafy Brothers in 1876, when George Cavafy, manager of the
family firm was ‘led astray by the temptations of London
life’. Michael Spartali was declared bankrupt in 1885. The
Rallis’ partners and successors in the Russian trade, the
Scaramagas became insolvent in 1888. The Rallis survived and
prospered by concentrating on India.82
82
Meason, The Bubbles of Finance, p. 187; S.D. Chapman, Merchant
Enterprise in Britain: from the Industrial Revolution to World War I,
1992, p. 161; Kynaston, pp. 231 & 237 – 40; Liddell, Cafavy, p. 26. The
real fault, according to Constantine Cavafy, lay with younger brother
Peter John who speculated naively in ‘United Bonds and Sugar’ although
according to Liddle his other brothers Aristides and Paul were not above
some dubious activities. Elliott, p. 15; The Law Times, May 16 1885, p.
53, certificate of bankruptcy at the High Court of Justice for Michael
Spartali ‘Old Broad-Bt, merchant’ who became insolvent by ‘misfortune
and without any misconduct’
42
Michael Spartali’s ‘financial embarrassments’ were to the
sum of £600,000 and involved debts to individuals who were
more than mere acquaintances. The crash involved Michael’s
two sons, but not the wife of Demetrius who had her own
money. Their house in Rylstone was protected because it was
in Mrs. Spartali’s name. The crisis was overcome with the
aid
of
friends,
particularly
the
Rallis,
who
together
advanced £30,000 with which to pay off his creditors at an
agreed rate. The house in Marseilles house was also safe,
but they had to sell their house in Clapham and move to
Kensington. Michael’s failure was officially put down to
unwise
investment
in
the
Alexandrian
grain
market.
Unofficially, although clouded in obscurity, the very reason
for having family members involved in the business proved
not infallible. Mrs. Spartali’s brother who was dispatched
to
Alexandria
£60,000
Michael
and
to
chase
promptly
Spartali’s
up
a
vanished.
lack
of
debt
A
of
£100,000
contributory
funds
was
a
pocketed
factor
to
political
disagreement that kept back sums owed to Spartali and Co. by
the Greek government for services rendered in the 1870s for
the pursuit of Greek liberation. The involvement Gennadius,
as Greek charge d’affairs in London at the time, in the
43
affair shows that he cannot be relied on as an impartial
observer.83
Whereas Alexander Ionides failures were not permanent and he
continued
to
necessarily
prosper,
continue
the
with
mercantile
the
same
gene
force
into
did
not
the
next
generation of the family. The dynamic enterprising singlemindedness and solidarity of the founding fathers became
dissipated by the time of their grandchildren’s maturity.
Luke Ionides, who married out of the Greek and business
circle, was not gifted in commerce but more suited to the
life
of
a
bon
Ostensibly
in
supporting
his
viver
business
and
good
with
his
extravagant
companion
brother
lifestyle
by
to
artists.
Constantine
dealings
in
and
the
stock market his poor judgments finally led to financial
ruin. First in 1895 a disastrous purchase of shares on bad
advice and then
in 1900 his failure deliver
stocks and
securities to Mr. Sheffield Neave on money already provided
which brought him before the General Purposes Committee of
the Stock Exchange. As Julia Ionides says this was probably
due to carelessness, as there was no indication of criminal
83
Stillman, p. 661; Elliott, pp.
136 – 9
44
motive, but despite Luke’s assertion that he was efficient
in business in his early days, his heart was never in it.84
When the firm of Meason’s Greek merchant finally goes bust
it is because he has overreached himself ‘partly by a desire
of gain, and partly by a wish to be a great man in the eyes
of his poorer fellow-countrymen…’ and he is the victim of
increased
competition
and
playing
the
dangerous
game
of
allowing ‘open uncovered credits to…agents abroad for three
month
periods
to
obtain
shipments
of
produce
on
commission’.85 But in no time the irrepressible Mr. Velardi
is back at work again, his ‘money settled on his wife, villa
at Roehampton’. His Greek commercial friends rally round and
for the moment, chastened he turns to the legitimate trade
of
shipping
‘Manchester
goods
abroad
on
commission
[to]
received produce from the Levant upon the same terms’. After
the liquidation of the London branch of the family firm
George Cavafy is reduced to getting a job as a clerk or
sometime manager with a fellow Greek firm trading with the
Levant. Mr. Velardi managers to turn his situation round so
84
Julia Ionides, ‘Afterward’, Luke Ionides, Memories, Ludlow, 1996, pp.
79, 90 – 91 & 94 – 95. Luke married Elfrida Bird, the daughter of a
doctor in 1869; W.T.C. King, ‘The extent of the London discount market
in the middle of the nineteenth century’, Economica, New Series, Vol. 2,
No. 7 (1935), 321 – 6, at 322, Sheffield Neave had been Governor of the
Bank of England in the 1850s
85
Meason, The Bubbles of Finance, pp. 188, 191 & 194
45
much so that from his firm being hounded by its creditors as
‘“mere Greek adventurers;” “swindlers;” “scoundrels;” men
who had “over-traded;” who had “obtained money on false
pretences;” who had commenced without any capital”’ to, as
soon as their heads were ‘a little above water, than some of
those who had been our greatest enemies and most vehement
denouncers,
began
by
degrees
to
cultivate
a
sort
of
business-like friendship for us.’ Mr Velardi was able to
continue pursuing his grand schemes his handsome mansion in
Westbourne Terrace a ‘most respectable’ man.86
It has been argued that the instability and corruption of
the City have been exaggerated. Certainly the ten yearly
cycle
of
financial
crises
of
the
middle
years
of
the
nineteenth century, and in particular 1856 – 7 and 1868,
with the failure banks and financial institutions, were not
all the work of foreign speculators.87 Meason’s caricature
accusations must have reflected however a view of reality
because by 1877 it was felt that the City, as Lionel Cohen
put it in his evidence to the Royal Commission, was being
86
Meason, The Bubbles of Finance, pp. 163 – 4; Liddell, Cafavy, p. 27
King, ‘The extent of the London discount market in the middle of the
nineteenth century’, Economica, New Series, Vol. 2, No. 7 (1935), 321 –
6; J.R.T. Hughes, ‘The commercial crisis of 1857’, Oxford Economic.
Papers, 1956, 8, 194 - 222; Michael Collins, ‘The Bank of England as
Lender of Last Resort, 1857 - 1878’, The Economic History Review, New
Series, Vol. 45, No. 1 (1992), 145 – 53; Taylor, 700 - 24
87
46
taken
over
by
‘adventurers,
Jews,
Greeks’
and
other
disreputable types. It was proposed that a test of creed and
nationality should be imposed on the Committee of the Stock
Exchange.
88
The clan solidarity of the Greeks meant that
only they could carry on the trade in Levant trade bills
because they form the only nation the natives of
which have implicit confidence in one another.
Whatever a Greek may be to a foreigner, he is always
true to his countrymen.89
Chapman takes the view that Meason was being hard on the
Greeks whose belief was that the larger Greek houses, such
as the Rallis, Rodocanachis and Ionides took advantage of
the difficulties the numerous small Greek houses faced in
the volatile Levantine trade by baling them out when things
got tough by giving them credit at extortionate rates of
‘often as much as 9% or 10% for three months, being at the
rate of 30% or 40% annum’. It was true in general that
merchants in the City began to diversify into the financial
sector as an insurance in times of difficulty which lead to
the
establishment
of
Merchant
Banks.
A
small
group
of
merchants in one area of trade would act as a financial
service
to
the
others
in
that
sector
and
this
was
particularly true of the Greeks Houses, Ralli, Rodocanachi,
88
89
Kynaston, p. 293
Meason, The Bubbles of Finance, pp. 203 – 4, 207 -8, 210 – 11 & 215
47
Spartali and Argenti. It was perhaps no coincidence then
that the leading houses became rich and by the 1860s some of
them had formally moved into banking when their traditional
business methods became no longer profitable, although a
total commitment to finance as in the case of Zarifi Bros. &
Co. was apparently frowned upon. Chapman feels that the
charge of exploitation though was exaggerated and that the
northern textile manufacturers were also often the suppliers
of credit. Whether in direct refutation of Meason’s claims
the Ralli business was said to be built entirely on cash
trading ‘to its available means’ never issuing ‘paper’ and
Chapman supposed the Rodocarnachis were unwilling to risk
their credit standing with upstart competitors putting down
the Greek mutual support to, unlike most Germans, German
Jews, Dutch and
other migrants, that they arrived at a
period of nationalist passion and were slow to anglicise.90
Despite Meason’s prejudice practical considerations meant
that Greek firms were drawn into various financial companies
and the existing social relations flourished between the
Rallis
90
and
members
of
what
was
known
as
the
‘Quaker
Chapman, Merchant Enterprise in Britain, pp. 160 – 1; Chapman, The
Rise of Merchant Banking, pp. 129 & 132; Gennadius, Stephen A. Ralli, p.
24
48
Confederation’ and the Barings, the Scandinavian Arbuthnots
and the Jewish Sassoons.91
Another reason that foreign trade could be risky was the
reliance on shipping. Despite the relative peace in many of
the routes cargoes transported by sea were at the mercy of
uncontrollable events. Court reports highlight the dangers
including
financial
and
the
standing
of
the
Greeks
in
England. The case of Vissiglios Colucoridis, the Master of
the Elpsis from the Port of Syra, ‘owners unknown’, who
absconded with a £35 loan paid to him for repairs so that he
could return from Newcastle to Syra, could not have helped
the Greek reputation.92 The Scaramangas were brought before
the courts by Harris in1872. They were both described in the
Court report as ‘cornfactors’ who carried on their business
in London. The plaintiffs had bought a cargo of rye from the
Scaramangas on behalf of ‘Messrs Bacmeister & Stone, who
sold it to Kneist and Trademan, who again sold it to Bolte &
Co. of Bremen’. The Scaramangas were shipping this cargo
aboard The Bella Leandra, an Italian vessel that set sail
Chapman, The Rise of Merchant Banking, pp. 65 – 6; the tenancy of 17
Belgrave Square, the residency of Pandeli Ralli passed to Leontine, Lady
Sassoon in 1929, Margaret Harcourt Williams, ‘Belgrave Square in the
20th century - the first 50 years’, Psychiatric Bulletin (2000) 24: 3435, at 34
91
49
from Taganrog in Russia on the 22nd September 1867 bound for
Bremen when the ship ran into bad weather. She put into
Constantinople on 17th February 1868 for repairs where the
Master had to raise funs through a ‘bottomry bond’, a kind
of mortgage, from Herman Helbing a merchant of the city.
Further bad weather sent the ship to the haven of Malta
where further costs for repairs were incurred and the ship
did not set sail until the 1st of May arriving in Bremen on
the 25th of June. This time funds were raised from Ignazio
Buttigeig. In the meantime Bolte & Co. had bought the cargo.
When the cargo finally arrived in Bremen the losses could
not be redeemed, even after the sail of the ship. The bill
of lading were first handed to plaintiffs who passed them on
to Bacmeister & Stone who passed them on until they reached
Bolte & Co. the final owners of the cargo. Harris acting as
trustees of Bolte & Co. brought the action against the
Scaramangas and won the case.93
This case amply illustrates the complexity of the dealing in
the corn trade and the advantages, getting the money well in
advance of the cargo allowing for fast turnover of capital,
92
James Redford Bulwer QC (ed.), The Law Reports: High Court of the
Admiralty and Ecclesiastical Courts, Vol. IV, XXXVI – XXXVIII Victoria,
London, 1875, pp. 4 – 5 the Elpsis (6161) Dec. 11, 1872
50
but also the disadvantage of making a sale before the goods
are in hand and the risk involved. On the other hand perhaps
it was better to be acting as the plaintiff in cases of
losses at sea as when the Ionides company acted as brokers
on behalf of ‘G’ and ‘K’ of Hamburg and were successful in
the case they brought against The Pacific Fire and Marine
Insurance Company for loss at sea of hides from on board the
Socrates from Brazil to Hamburg in 1871.94 The excessive
length of time that the The Bella Leandra spent on its
voyage from the Black Sea to Bremen can be shown by the
round trips that the Spartan, a 916 ton screw and sail ship
registered in London and owned by Michael Spartali, of 25
Old Broad Street, took to Odessa and back. It left Cardiff
on
the
16th
of
December
1873
and
returned
by
way
of
Constantinople, Odessa, Malta and Hamburg by the 27th of
February 1874. By the 3rd of March it was off again to
Odessa via Athens and Constantinople, returning to Dublin on
the 2nd of May.
By the 6th of May it was leaving Cardiff
again for Odessa and the Crimea returning to Cork by the
10th August 1874, having stopped off in Constantinople on
93
James Redford Bulwer QC (ed.), The Law Reports: Court of Common
Pleas, Vol. VII, XXXVI Victoria, London, 1872, pp. 481 – 4 & 498, Law
Report 7C
94
Montagu Chambers, and Frederick Hoare, (eds.), Law Journal1872:
Reports New Series Vol 41, Common Law, London, 1872, p. 33
51
the way. It finally was finally back in Cardiff, its home
port, on the 17th of August.95
The case of Scaramanga v. Stamp of 1880 set a president
whereby a deviation to save property belonging to a third
party is not justifiable in common law. Their steamer the
Olympias was carrying a cargo of wheat for a charter party
when fellow steamer the Arion was spotted in distress. The
weather was fine and there would have been no difficulty in
saving the crew, but it was agreemed for a fee that the
Olympias was to tow the Arion into Texel, near Amsterdam,
but in the process the Olympias went aground and lost her
cargo. The case went in favour of the plaintiff for a breach
of contract. It was held that the deviation went beyond the
bounds of moral justification; that of saving life and the
ship-owner was held liable for the loss.
95
96
Barry Stevens, ‘Spartan’, Mariners-L Archives, 2000, voyages 1 - 4
http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/mariners/200010/0971278546
http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/mariners/200010/0971278617
http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/mariners/200010/0971278635
http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/mariners/200010/0971279006
Register of Ships, transcribed by Gilbert Provost from the Lloyd’s
Register
of
British
and
Foreign
Shipping
1764
–
2003,
2007
www.reach.net/~sc001198/shipsS2.htm
96
Vidya Venugopal, ‘Deviation and delay during voyage’, Shipping Law
Notes, V. M. Syam Kumar (ed.), 7, Dec. 2007, Cochin, India, p. 5 – 6,
52
Family and networks
Chapman has suggested that the view that the Greeks formed a
close-knit
business
community
circles.
was
Most
not
so
unique
International
within
Houses
merchant
were
family
businesses. Loyalty in the institution was focused on the
founding
family
maintaining
this
and
its
and
of
traditions
bringing
in
and
a
talent
method
was
of
through
marriage but it was difficult by this method to maintain the
required levels of recruitment. A solution to the problems
of succession were large families. Many of the banks were of
foreign extraction or if British they were Scots or from the
north of England. Chapman suggests that is easy suppose that
‘exiles’ clung together and intermarried, so we would expect
to find ethnic and religious groupings such as Hugenot,
Jewish,
Scottish,
Quaker,
Lutheran
and
Greek,
but
in
practice these groups proved weak or ineffective once the
alien group had acclimatized itself to the City.
The need
for cooperation quickly overwhelmed ethnic loyalties.
But
there was an exception; ‘Apart from the Jews, the racial and
religious
minority
that
appeared
most
clannish
is
the
Greeks’.97
Peter Birks, An Introduction to the Law of Restitution, Oxford, 1985, p.
306
97
Chapman, The Rise of Merchant Banking, p. 65
53
The point is endorsed in Loukis Laras that it was the Chiot
custom for marriages within the Greek merchant class to be
arranged.
Each family was anxious to form alliances with its
equals, and as the choice was restricted, the
competition for suitable partners began at an early
age. The aristocratic exclusiveness of those who
intermarried and the narrow limits of Chios society,
necessarily brought about in the end marriages
between near relatives.98
At
38
in
1831
Pandia
Ralli
married
his
second
cousin
Marietta Scaramanga, aged 21 and from a fellow Chiot trading
family, in the Chapel of the Russian Embassy. She was living
in London with her youngest of nine brothers, Dimitrios.
Laurent and Eustratius were established in Russia whereas
Pandias, Jean and Loucas were based in France. Ambrosios
lived
in
Greece
and
became
influential
in
politics.99
Demitrios (1814 1867) had studied medicine in Paris where he
met Corais before becoming a senior executive for Ralli
Brothers.
Family
ties
were
strengthened
when
he
married
Julia Ralli, daughter of Eustratios in 1844.100 When one
branch
gets
maintain
98
the
in
trouble
standing
it
of
was
the
valuable
House
by
to
be
having
able
to
wealthy
Vikelas, p. 5
Catsiyannis, Pandia Stephen Rallis, pp. 48 – 9 & 58. Eustratios Ralli
married Marigo Mavrocordatou there in 1825
100
Catsiyannis, Pandia Stephen Rallis, p. 54
99
54
partners
abroad
as
in
the
case
of
the
Rallis
and
Rodocanachis.101
The Ralli Brothers succession passed from uncle to nephew.
Pandia
Ralli
attached
Stephen,
the
son
of
Augustus
his
brother in Marsailles, to the London firm in 1851. According
to Gennadius he had shown the promise that merited him being
singled out as a partner in the future. Circumstances may
also
have
played
a
part.
Pandia’s
eldest
child
was
a
daughter, Julia, who married out of the Greek colony. Her
husband, Charles Monk, was the son of an Anglican Bishop and
in business terms an unsuitable candidate. His two sons died
young.
Stephen
Ralli
continued
the
Chiot
tradition
of
marrying while ‘still a young man…[a] bride, from within his
own circle, but from another branch of the same extensive
family’. This was Marietta the daughter of Anthony Ralli.
His business partner was his cousin Alexander Vlastos.102 In
Loukis Laras
… the success of the Chiots’, not only in the
management of their municipal affairs before the
revolution,
but
also
of
their
commercial
organization after the destruction of Chios
101
Chapman, The Rise of Merchant Banking, p. 63
Gennadius, Stephen A. Ralli, pp. 27 & p. 34; Catsiyannis, Pandia
Stephen Rallis, pp. 46 & 127, family tree. Petros Ralli (1837 – 1868)
also married a Ralli, Alexandra. His older brother, Stefanos died as a
baby in 1834
102
55
is
attributed
to
this
discipline
of
forging
ties
by
intermarriage and ‘living in close union’ so that families
‘became strong’ and increased their power.103
The particular success of the Ralli family, aside from their
business acumen, may be put down to the disciplined way in
which each brother was assigned to a territory and stuck to
it
until
the
call
came
to
do
otherwise.
No
other
organization responded with such dedication. Arranged or
advantageous marriages were not only the prerogative of the
Chiots
and
principle.
the
other
Thomas,
Greek
Argenti
families
and
followed
Co.
was
set
the
up
same
by
Constantinos Ipliktis in 1822 under the name of Nicolaos
Thomas, who was brother-in-law to his wife’s sister and John
Argentis, possibly one of his cousins who was to be married
to his daughter Anthea.104
The name Ipliktis was believed to be Turkish denoting a
cotton or textile merchant, so the tradition was that the
Ionides
family
was
already
established
in
the
textile
business before they came to London. Constantine did not use
103
Vikelas, pp. 95 - 6
Catsiyannis, Pandia Stephen Rallis, p. 68; Butterworth, Ionides Family
Tree, p. 1; Ionides, Ion: (Notes and Index), p.
4; Timotheos
Catsiyannis, Constantine Ionidis-Ipliktzis 1775-1852 and the Ionidi
family, p. 9
104
56
his ‘Turkish’ name, the Greeks did not have surnames, as he
believed it difficult to pronounce in English.105 Argenti,
Thomas & Co., moved from Tokenhouse Yard in the City to 9
Finsbury Circus in 1829. Finsbury Circus had become so Greek
it was necessary for the premises to become the first Greek
Chapel of the new merchant colony and the business rented
the ground floor from the ‘Greek Community’, which was based
on the second floor.106 Constantine’s son Alexander had come
to London in 1827 at the age of 16 and it was he who took
the name Ionides and founded Ionides & Co. in 1833. He moved
from Cheetham Hill where he was living with his new wife,
Euterpe, from a leading Constantinopolitan family, Sgouta,
to Finsbury Circus with the business. By 1837 he had become
a British subject.107
Constantine died in 1852 in Athens on his way to Constantinople to raise capital
by selling his property. His son Alexander settled in Manchester in 1827 changing
his name to Ionides. His son Constantine, at the age of 17 (1850) entered his
father’s business in Manchester, five years later he went to Romania in the grain
trade, representing his father’s firm. Between 1861 and 1863 the sons, Alecco
and Luke went travelling, if not with the express purpose of maintaining family
105
Ionides, Ion: (Notes and Index), pp. 1 - 4
Catsiyannis, Pandia Stephen Rallis, p. 68; Ionides, Ion, p. 4;
Liddell, p. 19
107
Ionides, Ion, pp. 13 – 4 & 43; Ionides, Ion: (Notes and Index), p. 6
106
57
links, to Athens and Constantinople. Here they met their relatives and no doubt
and it would be surprising if this had no bearing on maintaining the network. Luke
also went on to Brailla where his elder brother Constantine was presumably
engaged in business. By 1864 Constantine was back in England with a wife,
Agothonike, and three young children, where he entered the London Stock
Exchange as working on half commission for Clapham Bros. In 1866 he started
up on his own with a partner called Barker as stock and share brokers in the City,
continuing successfully as Ionides & Ionides and Ionides Constantine. His son
credits his father with averting a financial crisis in the 1870s by warning the City
that Turkey was in arrears on her loans and was only making payments by
raising further loans. In 1882 Constantine retired from active business having
realized a considerable fortune.108 Of Constantine’s City friends only one was
Greek, Stephen Ralli, the others were his partner Henry Barker, Lionel Cohen,
Lord Swathling, Merton Messel, Henry Raphael, Sir William Crookes, Edwin
Arnold, Joseph Pulley M.P., (?) Mahony and in Constantinople, George Zarifi.109
Constantine’s son Alexander carried on the family tradition by studying abroad,
but the plans for his future seem unclear. His father decided for him to be an
architect and he went to Athens for that purpose and to learn Greek, which
indicates that perhaps this was not a wholehearted decision and by 1881
Alexander was working as a stockbroker for J. & A. Scringeous & Co. It was
evidently seen as part of the training of each generation that they study abroad
108
Ionides, Ion, pp. 2 & 4; Ionides, Ion: (Notes and Index), p. 6; Luke
Ionides, Memories, p. 30
58
and travel, meaning the cultural centres of Europe and the Eastern
Mediterranean. Alexander’s contemporary Michael Schilazza (sic) was sent on a
‘wanderjchr’ by his father before entering Stock Exchange.110
Once the Ionides firm was set up George Cavafy came to
London from Constantinople in around 1827, to work as a
clerk in the Tokenhouse office.
By March 1834 he too was
married, to Thomas' daughter Mariora. His brother Peter John
followed to England in 1836, where he lived in Manchester
until
1839
Manchester
moving
and
to
London
Liverpool
till
in
1841,
1846
when
then
he
living
in
returned
to
London. He worked for Ionides & Co. until 1844 then for
Cassavetti, Cavafy & Co. and in 1849 with George as Cavafy
Brothers. In April 1849 at Neochori (Yenikoy) on the Upper
Bosphorus he married Hericleia (1835 - 1899) daughter of
George Photiades (1800 - 18910 a diamond merchant and member
of a distinguished Chiot family established in the Phanar by
1680. Peter John returned to manage the Liverpool branch of
the firm leaving his wife at his mother's house, where she
gave birth to George, Jan.1850. Brother George wanted Peter
John, who was there then, to go to Alexandria to open a
branch there and to be joint manager in Cairo with Emmanuel
109
110
A.C. Ionides, Ion: (Notes and Index), p. 41
Ionides, Ion, pp. 31 – 5; Ionides, Ion: (Notes and Index), p. 45
59
Pittaridis (married to sister Maria). Peter John however
returned to England with his family. In August 1850 applied
from 8 New Bond St. for British nationality: the certificate
of
naturalization
Metaxas in
dated
13
Eleutheros Kosmos
August
(article
by
Kyriakos
Athens, 6 May 1973).
The
family lived at 47 Stamford Hill where Peter John II (Peter)
was born 12 March 1851, baptized in London on the 24th, with
Mariora as godmother.
Also in the Ionides circle but unrelated to them were the
Spartalis. They were of Phanariot descent by way of Smyrna,
where they had been successful merchants in grain and fruit.
Around
the
time
of
the
Turkish
reprisals
in
1820
they
abandoned their business and left for Trieste. Finally they
arrived in London where they set up a partnership, Sparali
and Lascaridis. Michael Spartali who took over the business
was only an infant when the family arrived in England and he
never saw Greece, but when the time came, the tradition was
for a suitable match to be made. The marriage was arranged
by
an
exchange
of
portraits
and
Euphrosyne
Valsami
was
chosen from a Greek family in Genoa.111 In this manner the
first
111
generations
expectations
of
continuity
were
set.
Elliott, p. 11 – 12. In 1846 George Lascarides married Katherine
Ionides (1826 1862), the youngest of Constantine Ipliktis’ eleven
children and sister of Alexander Ionides, Butterworth, p. 3
60
Alexander
Ionides’
son
gained
his
business
experience
working at the Spartali office in 38 Finsbury Circus, and
the
second
generation
friendships
were
initially
within
their circle, despite the fact they lived at some distance
from one another; The Spartalis in Hornsey and Muswell Hill
and the Ionides in Tulse Hill.112 No doubt it was felt by the
parents
that
future
marriages
would
develop
from
this
intimacy.
The tradition of arranged marriages came under increasing
pressure as the
century progressed. By the time of the
publication of Loukis Laras in 1881 Tzifos noted the change
in the ‘national life’. The custom of arranged marriage had
degenerated into one of ‘consideration of material interests
alone, and into questions of dowery…’.113
Given
the
attitudes
to
the
influx
of
foreigners
into
Victorian London expounded by Meason and others, it would be
a surprise if the Greeks themselves were not aware of them.
All travelers…praise the family virtues, the social
decorum, the political good sense of the Chiots,
their commercial aptitude, free from guile or craft,
the firmness of their character, their skill in the
arts, their industry, their sobriety.114
112
Elliott, p. 14
Vikelas, p. 95
114
J. Gennadius, Stephen A. Ralli: A Biographical Memoir, London, 1902,
p. 10
113
61
In 1902 John Gennadius penned a eulogy to the Ralli family
and the Chiots in the form of a memoir to the recently
deceased Stephen Ralli, the ‘president, Nestor and father’
of the Greek community in London.115 For Gennadius the Rallis
in
particular
and
the
Chiots
in
general
represented
everything noble in the Greek character. He goes to great
lengths
to
extol
the
virtues
of
the
islanders
quoting
eminent sources from Herodotus and Thucydides by way of
Korais, to Finlay, who even had a good word to say about
them, and of course, Korais himself. Gennadius’ purpose is
to show the Chiots as the leading lights in a moral yet
commercially successful ideal of Greekness. The Rallis had
set forth into the world armed with their strong inherent
values
and
continents
created
without
a
great
losing
enterprise
their
dignity
spanning
or
many
compromising
their morality. They had successfully married capitalist and
Christian virtues through their sobriety and fair dealing
and had never lost their commitment to Orthodoxy and the
Greek nation. In the City no one was ‘better informed in
commercial affairs’ than Alexander Vlastos, who combined his
business acumen with the ideals of the scholar and patriot,
thus the achievement of the Chiot merchants was no mere
62
narrow-minded venal pursuit.116 For these reasons they could
be held up as a model to Greeks everywhere of the new
Greece. Even as late as 1979, when Ralli Brothers was no
longer
a
private
partnership
but
part
of
a
larger
organization, the company ethos was enshrined in the Staff
Instruction Book of 1881, and quoted in the motto: ‘our
fulfillment
important
of
than
moral
the
obligations
letter
of
under
the
contract
contract’,
is
the
more
first
consideration being ‘the honour of the house’.117
Gennadius was close to Stephen Ralli and Alexander Ralli,
having worked for Ralli Brothers and been trained by them.
In his words they
Both did honour to the name of Greeece, and their
memory
will
ever
be
held
in
gratitude
and
blessedness by the many hundreds of young Greeks who
in their firm have been taught how to prosper by
probity, and hoe to attain honour by conscientious
hard work.118
The focus by Gennadius on building up the Ralli image is
understandable in a his memorial to Stephen Ralli, but it
can also be informative through what it is left out and its
115
Gennadius, Stephen A. Ralli, p. 29
Gennadius, Stephen A. Ralli, pp. 27 and note 30 & p. 35
117
Bowater Organisation, History and Activities of the Ralli Trading
Group: Commodity Merchants for 160 Years, London, 1979, pages
unnumbered, but at page 2. The partnership of Ralli Brothers was
incorporated as a private company in 1931, it became a public company
in 1941 and was bought out by the General Guarantee Corporation Ltd. In
1959
116
63
hints at a subtext. Gennadius, as a champion
of modern
Greece, either in his official capacity as Ambassador in
London or as a private citizen, was forever aware of how the
outside world viewed the Greeks, but this piece was not
written initially as a defence against outside attack but
for Greeks.119 The implication is that the Chiots embody a
kind of purity, not found on the mainland.120 It is not a
racial purity in the strict sense because many of these
families traced their lineage to Genoese forbears, but this
gives
them
some
nobility.
A
double
pride
is
taken
in
descendants of the ‘forty families’ that could claim descent
from Genoa or Constantinople and Chios.121 The Nineteenth
century merchant families of Chios continued a tradition of
maritime
trade
penetrated
the
begun
by
Eastern
their
Genoese
Mediterranean
forbears
to
trade
who
in
had
bulk
cargoes such as wool and grain in the later Middle Ages.122
In
118
Gennadius’
account
the
baton
of
command
is
passed
Gennadius, ‘Introduction’, pp. 54 - 5
It was originally published in the Nea Imera of Trieste, see the
Preface to the English translation
120
J. Gennadius, Notes on the recent murders by brigands in Greece,
London, 1870, pp. 115, 118 – 9. Gennadius claims that brigandage on the
Greek mainland is carried out by Slavs or ‘Vallachs’ recognizable by
their lower physical type
121
Catsiyannis, Pandia Stephen Rallis, p. 7
122 Ernle
Bradford, Mediterranean: Portrait of a Sea, Harmondsworth,
2000, p. 378. The Venetians on the other hand had favoured the lighter
and more expensive commodities, such as the spices from the Orient. Both
city-states vied for privileges in Constantinople to facilitate this
trade and gain access to the Black Sea markets, Bradford, Mediterranean,
p. 380 – 2; Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the
119
64
seamlessly from one Ralli generation to the next. But where
are the other Greeks of the London community, those from the
rest of Greece and Asia Minor? They are conspicuous by their
absence. Greeks from other parts may have been too close to
the Turks, or perceived as too ‘Oriental’ or Levantine in
their
attitudes
and
behaviour
for
comfort.
For
whatever
reason they do not figure. For the purpose of this chapter
it
is
the
emphasis
on
the
business
ethics
that
is
the
important theme and in that sense Gennadius is at pains to
distance
the
Chiots
from
what
became
associated
with
Levantine practice. By extension the lives of the Rallis can
be used as a model for the rest of Greece including the
diaspora.
Roman Empire: Vol. VIII, Felipe Fernadez –Armesto (ed.), London, 2000,
p. 62