Sources and uncertainty
The indispensable author. Philip Pandely Argenti (1891–1974) is to Chian history what no single scholar is to most places. A member of one of the great Chian merchant families, educated in England, he devoted his life and a private fortune to recovering, editing, and publishing the documentary record of his ancestors' island. His principal works are:
The Occupation of Chios by the Genoese and their Administration of the Island, 1346–1566 (Cambridge, 1958), three volumes — the foundation of everything written since on Genoese Chios, comprising a narrative volume and two volumes of documents.
The Massacres of Chios Described in Contemporary Diplomatic Reports (London, 1932) — the essential collection for 1822.
Chius Vincta, or the Occupation of Chios by the Turks (1566) and their Administration of the Island — the documents of the Ottoman conquest and settlement.
Libro d'Oro de la Noblesse de Chio (Oxford, 1955), two volumes — the genealogies of the Chian nobility.
The Religious Minorities of Chios: Jews and Roman Catholics (Cambridge, 1970).
Bibliography of Chios from Classical Times to 1936 (Oxford, 1940); and, with Herbert Rose, The Folk-lore of Chios (Cambridge, 1949).
Argenti was a partisan of his island and of his class, and the reader should allow for it. He was also an outstandingly honest editor who printed documents that did not flatter his own ancestors.
Ancient sources. Herodotus, Books 1, 5, 6 and 8, for Glaucus, Lade, and the Persian conquest; Thucydides, Books 3 and 8, for Chios in the Delian League and the revolt of 412; Xenophon and Diodorus Siculus for the fourth century and the death of Chabrias; Strabo, Book 14, and Pausanias for topography and monuments; Athenaeus, Books 1 and 6, for Chian wine, for Theopompus on slavery, and for the Drimacus narrative drawn from Nymphodorus of Syracuse; Appian, Mithridatica 46–47, for the deportation of 86 BC; Pliny the Elder for wine, marble, and the sculptors; the surviving fragments of Ion of Chios and of Theopompus. Alexander's edict is Tod, Greek Historical Inscriptions no. 192; the Chian constitutional inscription is Meiggs–Lewis no. 8.
Archaeology. Sinclair Hood, Excavations in Chios 1938–55: Prehistoric Emporio and Ayio Gala (British School at Athens, 1981–82); John Boardman, Excavations in Chios 1952–1955: Greek Emporio (BSA, 1967).
Byzantine and medieval. Doula Mouriki, The Mosaics of Nea Moni on Chios (Athens, 1985), the standard study. Anna Comnena's Alexiad for Tzachas. Michel Balard, La Romanie génoise (1978), for the Genoese Aegean and Black Sea; and the wider literature on Genoese colonial and financial institutions, including the maone and the Casa di San Giorgio.
Ottoman Chios. Argenti's Chius Vincta; the Ottoman fiscal registers and the firmans of the mastic villages; and the substantial Greek-language local historiography.
1822. Argenti (1932) above all, and the contemporary consular correspondence he prints, together with the extensive Greek scholarly literature. All casualty figures should be treated as reconstructions.
The merchant diaspora and modern shipping. Gelina Harlaftis, A History of Greek-Owned Shipping: The Making of an International Tramp Fleet, 1830 to the Present Day (Routledge, 1996), and her subsequent work — the essential modern scholarship on the subject of Parts VI and VII, and the first place anyone seriously interested in Greek shipping should go. Also Stanley Chapman, Merchant Enterprise in Britain (1992), for the Chiot houses in the City of London; and the literature on the Greek communities of Odessa, Trieste, Marseille and London.
Current fleet data. UNCTAD, Review of Maritime Transport (annual, freely available online) for beneficial ownership by country; the annual report of the Union of Greek Shipowners; Clarksons Research and Lloyd's List Intelligence for fleet lists by group. For the internal economics of one Chian house, the SEC filings and annual reports of Tsakos Energy Navigation. The trade press — Lloyd's List, TradeWinds, Splash 247 — carries the running story, and should be read with the usual caution about unsourced tonnage claims.
A closing caution. Four areas in this book carry more uncertainty than the confident tone of narrative history naturally conveys, and they should be flagged plainly.
Homer. The Chian claim rests on the Homeridae and on four lines of a hymn. It is the strongest of the seven claims. It is not proof, and this book has not treated it as proof.
The casualty figures of 1822. The orders of magnitude are secure and the substance is not in dispute. The specific numbers are reconstructions from consular estimates and should never be quoted as counts.
Modern shipping tonnage by family origin. Private ownership through single-ship companies in open registries makes precise attribution impossible for anyone outside the firms concerned. The widely repeated figure of fifty per cent of the Greek fleet is a rule of thumb rather than a measurement, and chapter 55 examines it at length. The wider conclusion — that Chian-origin families constitute the largest origin group in Greek shipping and that their share of the world fleet is somewhere between one ship in twenty and one in ten — is defensible; the precision is not.
The private shipping houses generally. Because these are private companies that do not publish accounts, the details of founding dates, fleet composition, and current scale given in Part VII are drawn from the public and trade record and are inevitably less certain than the documented history in the earlier parts of this book. Readers wanting current specifics on any individual firm should go to the trade press and the commercial databases rather than to a general history.
Where this book has had to choose between a clean story and an accurate one, it has tried to choose the second.
End.
Giustiniani. Not a bloodline but an albergo — the artificial clan formed in 1362 when the shareholders of the Maona of Chios adopted a single surname, taken from the Genoese palace in which they met. Original families absorbed included Recanelli, Campi, Longo, Garibaldo, Banca, de Fornetto, Arangio, Oliverio and Paterio; several branches retained the old name as a second element. Governed the economy of Chios from 1362 to 1566. Produced Giovanni Giustiniani Longo, commander of the land walls at the fall of Constantinople in 1453, who died of his wound on Chios; and the Blessed Martyrs of Chios, the boys executed at Constantinople after the annexation. Descendants remained on the island for centuries and are recorded in the Libro d'Oro.
Zaccaria. Genoese family holding Phocaea from 1275 and Chios from 1304 to 1329. Benedetto I (d. 1307), admiral of Genoa, Castile and France, diplomat, and alum magnate. Martino, styled King and Despot of Asia Minor, deposed and imprisoned in 1329.
Ralli. The largest of the Chiot houses. In London from 1818; Pandia Stephen Ralli (1793–1865), known in the City as "Zeus," the dominant figure. Expanded into India from 1851 — Calcutta, Bombay, Karachi, Madras and dozens of up-country stations — becoming one of the great trading houses of the British Empire, in jute, cotton, grain, seeds and hides. Naturalised, knighted and made baronets in Britain; founders of the Greek churches of London and Manchester; major benefactors of Chios.
Rodocanachi. Odessa, Livorno, Marseille, London. Grain, banking and shipping on a very large scale.
Argenti. Marseille, Trieste, London. Produced Philip Pandely Argenti (1891–1974), the historian of Chios, whose published archives are the foundation of the island's modern historiography.
Mavrogordato. Constantinople, Odessa, Trieste, London; connected to the Phanariot princely house of the same name, which gave the revolution Alexandros Mavrokordatos.
Scaramanga. Dominant at Taganrog on the Sea of Azov, with Odessa and London houses.
Petrocochino, Vlasto, Sechiari, Schilizzi, Negroponte, Calvocoressi, Agelasto, Franghiadi, Zarifi, Zizinia, Prasakakis. The second rank of the network, operating in the same ports in the same trades, intermarried with each other and with the above.
Livanos. Kardamyla. Stavros G. Livanos (1891–1963), the pivotal figure of the postwar era, buyer of Liberty ships on a great scale, famous for never selling; father-in-law to Aristotle Onassis (m. Tina Livanos, 1946) and to Stavros Niarchos (m. Eugenia Livanos, 1947, and later Tina). Son George Livanos (1935–2022) continued the fleet with total privacy.
Angelicoussis. Kardamyla. Antonis founded the business in the 1950s as Anangel; Yiannis (John) Angelicoussis (1948–2021) built it into Greece's largest privately held group across Anangel Maritime (bulk), Maran Tankers, and Maran Gas (LNG); his daughter Maria Angelicoussis succeeded as chief executive in 2021.
Tsakos. Kardamyla. Captain Panagiotis N. Tsakos (b. 1935) founded Tsakos Shipping & Trading in 1970 after a career at sea; Tsakos Energy Navigation (TEN) listed in Oslo and on the NYSE; son Nikolas Tsakos chief executive and former chairman of INTERTANKO; the Maria Tsakos Foundation funds maritime education in Greece and Uruguay.
Chandris. Chios. Brothers Anthony and John Chandris built Chandris Lines, the world's largest Greek-owned passenger operator, carrying postwar migrants to Australia aboard the Patris, Ellinis, Australis and Britanis; launched Celebrity Cruises in 1988 and sold it to Royal Caribbean in 1997 for around $1.3 billion.
Carras (Karras). Chios and Kardamyla. Postwar cargo and tanker fleet; John Carras built the Porto Carras resort and vineyard on the Sithonia peninsula, one of the very few large land-based industrial ventures financed by Greek shipping money inside Greece.
Logothetis. Chian through the maternal line — the Kalamotousis family of Kalamoti, one of the mastic villages — with a continuing family presence on the island. Michael Logothetis founded Lomar Shipping in 1976 with one vessel; George Logothetis took over in the mid-1990s in his twenties, expanded the fleet aggressively into a depressed market, and in 2003 founded the Libra Group, a diversified international holding company with interests in shipping, aviation leasing (LCI), hospitality, renewable energy, real estate and finance across dozens of countries — the closest modern parallel to the Ralli transformation from family shipping house into a global conglomerate.
Lemos. Oinousses. Multiple independent branches. Costas M. Lemos (1910–1995), at his peak among the largest independent tanker owners in the world; famously private, famously debt-averse; a major benefactor of Oinousses and of maritime education.
Pateras. Oinousses. Numerous branches operating separate companies, principally in dry bulk; among the oldest continuously operating names in Greek shipping, and a long-standing source of masters and chief engineers as well as owners.
Hadjipateras. Oinousses. Long-established London and Piraeus operations across dry cargo and tankers.
Lyras. Oinousses. Shipowners, and unusually prominent in the collective institutions of the industry in Piraeus and London.
Vafias. Brave Maritime and Stealth Maritime under Nikolas Vafias; Harry Vafias founded StealthGas in 2004, listing on NASDAQ in 2005 as a specialist in small and mid-size LPG carriers, and has subsequently launched further listed vehicles in tankers and dry bulk — making the family among the most active Greek users of the public equity markets.
Angelakos. Angelakos (Hellas); a long-established private dry-bulk house of the classic type, Piraeus-operated with London commercial connections.
Kollakis. A Chian-origin shipowning family running private fleets through the postwar decades and into the present, and a recurring name in the island's philanthropic record.
Los, Fafalios, Frangos, Lignos, Xylas and others. Oinoussian and Kardamyla families running private fleets, mostly dry bulk, most of them for several generations.