ABSTRACT
As was seen at the end of Chapter 9, Mediterranean populations as a whole were on the increase, with a significant migratory move away from rural areas to the cities and even out of the basin as a whole. In many areas, these moves were reinforced by the economic catastrophe brought by the phylloxera virus that decimated vine production at the start of the twentieth century. The population of Italy had increased from 27 to 35 million between 1871 and 1914; in France, growth over the same period was from 37 to 40 million. These general trends continued through the first part of the twentieth century, although migration from Mediterranean Europe became more limited. In part, this reflected changing politics in the sending countries – for example, Mussolini’s banning of emigration from Italy by 1929 – and in part changes in receiving countries, particularly the limitations on entry into the USA by the Quota Laws of 1924. The population of the Argolid, for example, which had risen from 7,954 in 1848 to 12,549 in 1896, dropped back to 11,255 in 1961 (Jameson et al., 1994). These trends reflected general crises in rural Europe in general and the Mediterranean in particular. For example, decreasing transport costs saw the increase of cheap food imports from the USA and elsewhere, particularly in the second half of the nineteenth century (Tracy, 1989). However, populations still had a significant rural element. The French population had 42 per cent employed in agriculture in 1901, compared to 8 per cent in the UK (Tracy, 1989). To the east and south, though, change was slower to occur – 78 per cent of the Greek population were employed in agriculture in 1920, declining to 63 per cent in 1951 (Leontidou, 1990), compared to 82.3 per cent of the Turkish population in 1955 (Tachau, 1984).
