This work is an attempt to bring together what in the writer's opinion is the most significant historical information on
the subject, and on that basis to propose a synthetical explanation of social change and military intervention in the politics
of Greece from the turn of the century to the inter-war period. This is not an historical work in the strict sense of the
term, this being a field very ably covered by other students of military intervention. Nor is it an attempt to classify a pleth
ora of coups according to a theoretical model of taxonomy of civil-military relations. In my final chapter-on methodology —
which, incidentally, may be read first — I give the reasons underlying my personal preference for a much less mechanistic approach. More on this subject is made explicit here and there in my main discussion, and still more is suggested implicitly. What
I tried to do, as well as I was able, was to understand the interrelations and shifting movements of the fundamental forces
within the Greek economy and society between the turn of the century and the 1930s, relate them to the major currents of political conflict, and then trace the officers' action, via the process of politics and back again to the roots of the conflict:
the economic and social structures and their interaction with the social actors. I believe that such endeavours lie outside
considerations of success or failure. Empirical research incites explanatory synthesis, this in turn indicates the dark
areas where new research is needed. Thus the relations between events, their explanation, the critique of the explanation, the
new understanding derived from the critique, and the-new information derived from a better-oriented empirical research are relations dialectical in nature and the process is endless — and so is 'doubt over the long-term validity of every single contribution to the process1. The approach chosen, therefore, allowed only limited research into primary sources; simply because the period investigated is so long and the area for synthesis of economic, social and political information so wide that consistent research .into historical sources becomes impossible. Moreover, the sort of information needed in a venture of this kind is of such a general nature that very selective use of only really relevant material is the sole means to avoid getting swamped by details. For example,' whereas data on the evolution of the number of factories between 1880 and 1930 are absolutely essential for pinpointing the period of true take-off into capitalism, the breakdown of these figures by geographic regions or even by manufacturing sectors is much less so, if at all. Normally, such important information is available in the secondary sources, but in the case of Greece this is not always so; and even if such material does exist, it is scattered over a discouraging number of books or articles. This is not surprising: even elementary social works, such as a social history or an economic history of contemporary Greece, are lacking. So there was a need for some research in primary sources after all, to fill the many gaps in basic information. I therefore had to look in the Annual Series of the British Foreign Office Consular Report for between 1886 and 1910; and the Special Report submitted to the British Government (henceforth referred to as Law’s Report) on the economy of Greece up to 1893, the year the Greek State went bankrupt; (shortly afterwards an international financial control commission on Greece's resources was imposed; to my knowledge, this is the first time this report has been investigated.) I also examlned the writings of certain foreign travellers, visitors to Greece during the 1880-1913 period, especially French and English: Martin, Deschamps, Girard, Lewis Sergeant, for example; certain statistical works compiled around the turn of the century and containing comparative data on various European countries — Mulhall's admirable Dictionary of Statistics, as well as the works by Webb and Sundbarg; and, very selectively, certain Greek pamphlets and periodicals of the 1900-09 period, during which there was an upsurge of the kind of cultural activity which often goes hand in hand with social change. Finally, in the absence of an economic history of nineteenth to twentieth-century Greece, I had to rely very intensively on the editions of the National Statistics Bureau of Greece, especially those dated between 1920 and 1938. Many are those who helped me, and long lists of acknowledgement are not customary in the foreword to Ph.D. dissertations. However, I could not omit thanking Dr Spyros Asdrahas, Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Université de Paris; Dr Constantine Tsoukalas, Université de Paris-Vincennes; and Dr (Oxon.) Thanos \
Veremis. I also wish to express my gratitude to my supervisor, . K.W.Watkins, University of Sheffield, for boldly and timely
criticising, and above all for encouraging me. to understand history and then respecting ray way of doing it; and to Dr Nicos
Moucelis, London School of Economics and Political Science, for having tolerated my ignorance and been patient enough to erect
on it whatever ability 1 may now have for thinking in socialterms and for doubting — especially my own dicta. I final note to explain the organisation of the text. facilitate the reader, I have relieved the main argument of too many details, references, empirical observations and figures and tried to keep it to essentials. This may, at certain points, make the argument appear formalistic, yet it is precisely such comparative simplicity which may help the non-specialised reader to grasp more easily a' complex totality by not being unduly distracted from the main text. Disregarding footnotes without asterisks, which are bibliographical references or minor comments, he may wish to give his attention only to footnotes marked with • an asterisk which contain more important information, comments oi arguments, and this can easily be done after the reading of each
chapter-section. Needless to say, the expert on Greece or the academic reader may well choose to read text and footnotes together -- but even he, I hope, will be facilitated by the above arrangement.