The Maritime Sector

Abstract

The “maritime sector” is the “success story” of Greek entrepreneurship at an international level; the Greek-owned fleet from the 1970s to the present day is the biggest in the world. It is the interaction of the Greeks and the sea that has been, and continues to be, a profoundly significant factor in the economic and social development of Greece along with its linkages with the wider world. This chapter analyzes research and historiography in Greek maritime history since the 1990s. It traces the development of Greek shipping from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries by focusing on the linkages of Greek islands and coastal towns with the Greek diaspora trading houses in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It examines the entrepreneurial networks and the maritime transport systems they formed. Ultimately, Greeks, by functioning as conduits for the integration of the economies of the Eastern Mediterranean and Black Sea regions in the international economy of the nineteenth century, expanded in the twentieth century to all oceans, contributing to the globalization of the world economy.