Mediterranean pathways of Greek merchants to Victorian England

Abstract

This article refers to the emergence of the Greeks as a small ethnic group of merchants in Victorian England and proposes comparisons with other trading groups in London, developing three main points. The first section configures trade migrations in the relevant historiography and argues the link between ethnic community, family firms and individual entrepreneurs in Greek commercial networks; the second section indicates common characteristics of Greek immigrants in England: their Ottoman past and their trade experience in the Italian Peninsula; and the third section concludes with two representative case studies, one of a medium-sized merchant house, and the second representing the longer-lasting and more successful case, a firm that diversified into a global network in direct response to nineteenth-century "Anglobalization".