Monday 31 March 2014

Pan-Ionian Conference, Corfu, Contessa Diamantina Roma, Lady Bowen, Ionian Islands & Australia, Maria Strani-Potts


A reminder about Maria's paper on Diamantina Roma:

Παρασκευή, 2 Μαΐου 2014, συνεδρία απογευματινή (Friday 2 May, Afternoon Session; Iatreio Building)

17.00-17.20 Μαρία Στράνη-Potts: «Κοντέσα Διαμαντίνα ντε Ρώμα, Lady Bowen. Η ζωή και το έργο της (1833-1893). Η πολιτική επιρροή της στα Επτάνησα και την Αυστραλία τον 19ο αιώνα».


On the life and work of Contessa Diamantina Roma, Lady Bowen: her political influence in the Ionian Islands and in Australia in the 19th century. In Greek.

Extract:

"One can only speculate about Diamantina’s views and about her own and her father's influence on her husband’s political, strategic and diplomatic ideas. But George had made a proposal in 1850: 'We wish we could see any method by which England might, with honour and justice, surrender the really Greek islands to Greece, along whose coast they lie, and incorporate with the British Empire like Malta and Gibraltar, the half-Venetian, half-Albanian Corfu...Corfu, if annexed to Greece, must sink at once into a petty provincial town from a seat of Government and head-quarters of a large garrison'. George Bowen's plan, if considered feasible, 'would rescue Great Britain from all political embarrassment and would confer a real blessing on the Corfuotes by admitting them to all the privileges of British subjects; while their country would be enriched by the English capitalists and settlers who would in such an event make their home on the shores of the Adriatic, in the most beautiful and interesting of islands, by the brightest of seas, and beneath the softest of skies'."

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