Reflections on Primary Resource Material Research in Lahania, a Greek Village on the Island of Rhodes and Migration to Thebarton, Adelaide, South Australia. Part Two

Abstract

The brief upsurge of positive contributions to Lahania in the mid-1920s by the Italians was swept away by the Fascism that was imposed in the next decade. This imposition affected the daily lives of the villagers, their religion, language and management of their own affairs. Health conditions in the nineteen thirties deteriorated and deaths increased by fifty percent over the previous decade. At the same time the significant traditions of the village continued to suffer. Thirty six villagers moved to Australia between 1931 and 1940 — 22 males and 14 females — which added new types of migration. (One of these men settled in the suburb of Thebarton, South Australia, in 1938.) Also the Second World War came to the village along with two further but brief foreign occupations.