About

The purpose of this research project is to produce a historical account of the evolution of Greece’s tobacco sector in the period that spans between the end of the Greek Civil War (1949) and the country’s accession into the EEC in 1981. More specifically, the project addresses three bundles of questions related to a) the relations of power among stakeholders within the tobacco sector (transnational organizations, state institutions, organized labor, agrarian associations, firms); b) the distribution of economic activities related to tobacco production and commercialization across the Greek geography; and c) changes in technology and value-adding processes. The project addresses these questions in an integrated fashion and paying attention to different nodes along the value-adding chain: agricultural production, leaf processing and export, and cigarette manufacturing. The project will therefore contribute to a more detailed, concrete understanding of what Greece’s economic transformation looked like from the point of view of production and the groups that were involved in it.