State land reform efforts also encouraged the deepening of monoculture in the Peloponnese. Two land reform laws, one in 1835 and another in 1871, were passed at moments of swelling demand for currants and enabled investors to plant new vineyards. After the revolution, land that was owned by the Ottoman state—which was most land—was transferred to ownership by the Greek government. The intention was to sell this land quickly, but the assassination of Kapodistrias put these plans on hold. Called the “national estates,” this land remained the property of the Greek state. Private cultivators were permitted to live on the national estates and work the land as their own, and instead of paying rent, they paid a tax to the Treasury called the “right of usufruct,” which amounted to 15% of the total output of the land worked.In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, a crisis in Western Europe caused a sudden spike in demand for Greek currants. Around 1863, the North American insect phylloxera vastatrix arrived in France aboard a steam ship. American vines had evolved an immunity to the aphid over centuries of coexistence, but phylloxera proved fatal to European vines, which had never been exposed to it. In addition to the rise of greenhouses and amateur entomologists in France and the UK, the main cause that enabled phylloxera to travel from America to Europe was the advent of new steam ships. By 1860, steam ships had improved dramatically from earlier models and could now cross the Atlantic in ten days, which was a short enough time for the phylloxera aphid to survive the journey.As a result of uncertainty and misinformation,aeroponic tower garden system phylloxera was allowed to spread slowly but widely throughout France.After the aphid was first positively identified in France in 1868, it spread throughout that country in the 1870s, devastating vineyards.
Even though the aphid had been identified, there was no known treatment. Despite the efforts to stop the spread of phylloxera through the use of flooding and the application of carbon bisulphide, the aphid continued to spread and to cause destruction in France and beyond.Phylloxera destroyed vineyards in sixty out of the seventy-five of the wine-growing provinces in France, and from 1869 to 1883, French wine production decreased by forty percent.By 1881, phylloxera had also been identified in the wine regions of Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Algeria.Phylloxera did not make it to the vineyards of southern Greece, and Greek cultivation rose to fill the vacuum created by vineyard collapse in Europe—in addition to the foreign demand for Greek currants for British puddings, there was now a demand for Greek currants for the raisin wine they could be used to make. Phylloxera had reduced French wine production by more than half, putting it well below the requirements of domestic demand, not to mention the requirements of the foreign demand for French wines. As a result, French consumers turned to making wine out of Greek currants, importing them cheaply from London since prices had fallen so low and making them into wine in the South of France.The Société Corinthienne in Marseilles was established to import currants from Greece to be processed into raisin wines.French currant imports continued to rise every year, and by 1889/1890, France imported more than 70,000 tons or about half of all of Greek currant production to convert into raisin wine for domestic consumption.Despite accounting for a minority of total land use, currants did account for the majority of the overall exports of Greece . Due to the increased relative profitability of currants, monoculture progressed and currant exports grew at the expense of other commodities. One scholar has called this period, from the 1860s to 1893, the “golden age” of the currant in Greece.During this time, currants were the majority of the overall exports of Greece. From 1850 on, they accounted for around half of the overall value of Greek exports, and in some years over 75%.
In the last quarter of the century, currant exports soared from 50,000 tons to 170,000 tons by 1900.While the rest of Europe was suffering the Great Depression of 1873–96, the Greek economy thrived.Despite the outsize role of currants in the Greek national economy, the state was not heavily involved in the currant industry. The state’s role was limited to imposing a tax on currants, and it occasionally intervened to negotiate a lower tariff in importing countries. Currant taxes remained the same from year to year—a 10% land tax and a 6% export duty, both collected at the customs office. In 1858, these taxes were fixed. For every 1,000 Venetian liters, the land tax was 10.50 drachmas, and the export duty was 5 drachmas.In Patras, the currant tax funded a wide array of projects, including public education, public welfare, public insurance, and university scholarships. Infrastructure in Patras, however, was not funded through taxes on currants, but through taxes on imports. Patras lacked a pier and a quay until 1840. These were constructed through a 0.5% tax on imports imposed in 1836, and from 1840–1869, these funds were used for repairs to the quay and to build wooden storage sheds.Toward the end of the century, big projects like the Athens to Patras railway and the Isthmus Canal were underwritten by the future revenue to be collected through the currant tax. Over the course of the nineteenth century, from the end of the Greek Revolution until 1893, currant cultivation spread through Greece in three distinct phases, punctuated by dips at “crisis” moments . In the first phase of expansion, from 1828 until 1852, the currant vineyards recovered from their destruction during the war, fueled by the continuing strength of the demand for currants from Britain. It took ten to twelve years for a currant vine to reach full productive maturity, and five to seven years before it started bearing any fruit at all.As a result, currant vineyards took a while to recover their pre-independence production. In 1828, because of the war, the Peloponnese was “a large stretch of uncultivated land.” The replanting of currant vineyards in the eparchy of Patras began in 1828 and was finished in 1847.82 While currant vineyards were being planted in Patras, they were also being planted all along the north coast of the Peloponnese, from Patras east to Corinth.
The continuing strength of the demand for currants in Britain made it more profitable to plant currants than it was to plant other crops. Tempted by higher prices and given the opportunity of a blank slate because of the destruction of the war, Greek peasants planted currants instead of food crops for household consumption. In 1829, the agronomist Christophoros Kontachis traveled the Peloponnese to teach peasants to grow potatoes. He wrote, “last February, while traveling the Peloponnese to teach potato cultivation, I saw many people in the region of Achaia planting currants, considering this plant more profitable than other products.”He observed that they were resistant to growing potatoes because it was much more profitable to grow currants. This first phase ended with the outbreak of the “vine sickness” of the early 1850s. This was caused by a fungus known as Uncinula necator, or Odium. This fungus covered the leaves, fruits,dutch buckets for sale and stems of grapevines with a powdery, white mildew. Odium was not just a problem for Greece—far from it. By 1852, the disease was endemic in vineyards all over Europe, Asia Minor, and North Africa. In Greece in 1852, the disease destroyed two thirds of the currant crop. From 1852 to 1855, currant production in Greece—and grape production in general in Greece and in many other countries—was effectively zero.In Greece, the Oidium crisis was compounded by the British blockade of Patras and other ports during the Crimean War from 1851 to 1853 and a rise in the price of wheat. As a result, the economy of the currant zone was very depressed during the 1850s. An indication of the suffering in Patras can be seen in the establishment of a foundling home in the city, and the number of foundlings increased from seven in 1852 to 48 in 1859.This crisis was overcome within a few years when a French botanist at Versailles developed a treatment. He discovered that dusting crops with a sulphur spray killed the fungus and protected vines from becoming infected. At this point, it became common practice in Greece and elsewhere to walk through the vineyards with spray cans, applying a thin spray of sulphur to protect the vines from Oidium . By the end of the decade, all vineyards were being treated in this way, and the Oidium pandemic was fought back.With the recovery from Oidium, Greece entered a second phase of expansion, lasting roughly from 1857 to 1878. The main impetus for growth during this period was the change in consumption patterns in Britain described above. The application of ring-cutting in the Peloponnese around the middle of the nineteenth century also enabled the currant zone to expand further south in the peninsula. Without the application of this technique, it was not possible to grow currants in soil that was too fertile. Before ring-cutting, attempts to transplant currant vines to the fertile plains of Ilia had failed because, “the currant vine, as soon as it was transplanted to rich and humid soils, turned wild and gave no fruit at all.”With ring-cutting, Ilia, which had been a center of cereal production, replaced cereals with currant vines and became the “capital of currant production.”The currant zone thus expanded south, but the currants produced south of the traditional currant-growing zone in Achaea were of an inferior quality.
The dryer soils of the northern Peloponnese produced sweeter fruit. Currants grown in Vostizza and Patras were classed as Α’ quality currants, and currants from other regions were Β’ or Γ’ quality. Nevertheless, because of the fertility of the soil, the quantity of production was much greater in the south.89 In the middle of the nineteenth century, for the first time since the sixteenth century, the center of Greek currant cultivation shifted from the Ionian Islands back to the Peloponnese. From the sixteenth century to 1847, over half of total Greek currant production came from the Ionian Islands of Kephalonia, Zakynthos, and Ithaki. In 1848, the Peloponnese finally overtook the Ionian Islands, and the North and West coasts of the Peloponnese became the center of currant cultivation. By 1870, production in the Peloponnese was almost 80% of overall Greek production. This is not to say that currant production in the Ionian Islands decreased; on the contrary, it also grew. However, production in the Peloponnese grew faster and eclipsed the islands.The final boost in the second phase of the extension of currant vineyards in the Peloponnese occurred after a political change that encouraged currant cultivation to spread even further south in the peninsula. After ring-cutting, the “age of pudding” in Britain, and improved steamship travel promoted the extension of vineyards south to Ilia, it was the land reform law of 1871, which sold the national estates to private land-owners, that allowed currant cultivation to spread south and for vineyards to colonize Messenia. The second phase of expansion stalled with yet another crisis. Responding to an everincreasing British demand for currants, Greek supply grew to the point that it outstripped demand, and Greece entered its first over-production crisis. This state of affairs was largely enabled by the land reform of 1871. In the years following the law, a large segment of the national estates in the Peloponnese were sold to private individuals and planted with currant vines. As mentioned above, it took six to seven years for new plantations to begin bearing fruit, so in 1877/1878, the market was overrun with a sudden flood of low-quality currants. Currant prices fell to all-time lows. In the spring of 1878, the price of currants on the London market barely covered the cost of shipping them from Greece. The Greek currant economy seemed to be on the verge of a crisis. Solutions were proposed by Greek ministers and currant merchants, including instituting a state monopoly on currants and restricting the planting of new vineyards. These plans received much opposition, and they were soon forgotten when rescue to the Greek crisis came from phylloxera and the sudden demand from France.91 The phylloxera crisis in Western Europe rescued Greece from the first over-production crisis. Under the influence of greatly increased global demand and the misfortune of their competitors, Greek currants in the Peloponnese became very profitable, and currant viticulture expanded in response.