Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 July 2017
Trois grandes réformes économiques ont lieu en Grèce, entre 1870 et 1940, toutes liées, exclusivement ou en grande partie, à la question paysanne : bien qu'elles se réalisent graduellement et sans aucune planification à long terme, elles ont des répercussions sur la condition de la population rurale. Après avoir cédé aux agriculteurs les terres nationales en 1871, la réforme agraire leur attribue les grandes propriétés privées en 1924. La réforme du système de crédit accroît le flux de capitaux bancaires vers les campagnes dès les années 1870 et remplace, en 1929, les prêteurs d'argent traditionnels par une banque agricole publique. La réforme du régime fiscal débute peu avant 1870, avec la réduction de plusieurs impôts grevant les produits et les revenus paysans, et s'achève entre 1935 et 1955, quand tous ces impôts sont éliminés.
After obtaining its independence in 1830, the new Greek State converted ail Ottoman estates into “National Lands”. The notables and merchants were neither much interested nor allowed to buy them, but kept their traditional control on tax farming, trade and credit. The peasants kept their holdings and were allowed to expand to rented and illegally occupied public land. Meanwhile, traditional clientelism blended with early parliamentary democracy and universal male suffrage; and the peasants became a formidable electoral force. Such conditions favoured negotiation, compromise and privilege-sharing between the two politically dominant classes. The Bourgeoisie enjoyed tax-haven legislature, large subsidized credits, and unconditional protectionism, abandoning tax-farming and agricultural credit to the State. The Peasantry peacefully obtained land, tax, and credit reform, product subsidies and cancellation of debts—and this in just over eighty years (1871-1955). The lower urban classes, underrepresented in Parliament, paid the bill through heavy taxes and waves of inflation. Their discontent was diverted to chauvinist and populist ideologies; contained through social mobility, civil service recruitments or other spoils; and occasionally suppressed by authoritarian régimes, brief and relatively mild. The interwar crises and World War II reversed this unstable equilibrium and led to a period of conflict and instability.