Bookshelf: A history of the postwar Greek shipping industry

Gelina Harlaftis’ Greek Shipowners and Greece: 1945-1975 From Separate Development to Mutual Interdependence (2015) outlines the basic structure of the Greek shipping firms, analyzes the Greek shipowners’ ties to the rest of the Greek economy, as well as the specific problem and policy dilemmas that are associated with these ties as the ship-owners land-based diversification created artificial monopolies that are poorly integrated with the local economy.

As M. Stephen Salmon stresses in International Journal of Maritime History, commenting on Harlaftis’ Oxford D. Phil Thesis (1993) on which “Greek Shipowners and Greece” is based the Greek state has followed an internationalist shipping policy to a profitable shipping sector. With this goal in mind, various post-war governments have not intervened in shipping except to foster a low-cost business environment. The major only departure from this practice has been a repatriation policy, which was designed to attract Greek-owned flag-of-convenience vessel back to Greek registry. Harlaftis argues that most of the measures enacted to foster this were at best irrelevant and at worst deprived the country of much-needed revenue by allowing ship-owners to operate virtually tax-free. …The only successful Greek government intervention in shipping was the development of a modern infrastructure at Piraeus Port after 1967. The port was gradually transformed from a local backwater into an international shipping centre.

The reasons for the Greek Shipping’s enormous expansion after the Second World War have been the subject of considerable debate and the net benefits to Greece – as distinct from the welfare of individual entrepreneurs – have also been the focus of discussion. The book provides a thorough account of this perplexed but extraordinary story while the body of data presented and analyzed makes it possible to form an informed historical view of Greek preeminence in sea transport.

Gelina Harlaftis is Professor of Maritime History in the Department of History at the Ionian University, Corfu, Greece. She was President of the International Association of Maritime Economic History during the period 2004-2008. Her last publications are The World’s Key Industry: The History and Economics of International Shipping (2012), with Stig Tenold and Jesus Valdaliso; and Merchant ‘Colonies’ in the Early Modern Period (15th – 18th Centuries) (2012), with Viktor Zakharov and Olga Katsiardi-Hering.