Corfu History

It may be hard to believe that an island as small as Corfu could have had such a noteworthy role in the region's history, but it's proximity to Europe—72 km (45 miles) from Italy and 2 km (1 mile) or so from Albania—and its position on an ancient trade route at the mouth of the Adriatic, assured a lively series of conquests and counter-conquests. In classical times, Corinth colonized the northern Ionian islands, but Corfu, growing powerful, revolted and allied itself with Athens, a fateful move that triggered the Peloponnesian War. Subjection followed: to the tyrants of Syracuse, the kings of Epirus and of Macedonia, in the 2nd century BC to Rome, and from the 11th to the 14th century to Norman and Angevin kings. Then came the Venetians, who protected Corfu from Turkish occupation and provided a 411-year period of development. Napoléon Bonaparte took the islands after the fall of Venice. "The greatest misfortune which could befall me is the loss of Corfu," he wrote to Talleyrand, his foreign minister. Within two years he'd lost it to a Russo-Turkish fleet.

For a short time the French regained and fortified Corfu from the Russians, and their occupation influenced the island's educational system, architecture, and cuisine. Theirs was a Greek-run republic—the first for modern Greece—which whetted local appetites for the independence that arrived later in the 19th century. In 1814 the islands came under British rule and were administered by a series of British lord high commissioners; under their watch, roads, schools, and hospitals were constructed, and commercialism developed. The fight for national independence finally prevailed, and the islands were ceded to Greece in 1864.