‘Best’ Greek islands: their maritime history and tourism

This paper offers a maritime historical perspective of some of the ‘best’ Greek island tourist destinations in the modern period. It indicates how island communities, accustomed to earning their livelihood in relation to the sea by specialising in shipping, adapted to the major economic and social transformations that the industrial revolutions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries generated. Moreover, it examines some of the endogenous and exogenous factors that transformed these islands into major tourist destinations. The aim is to highlight maritime history concepts that provide different tools of analysis, including fresh methodological approaches useful for understanding the transformations that occurred.