2017-12-04

Greek war decade war pensions- A progress report

A resource acquired some time ago by the Venizelos Foundation in Chania, a collection named "Πολεμικαί Συντάξεις θυμάτων πολέμου 1912-1922" (War pensions of war victims 1912-1922), contains the material related to war pensioners residing in Crete: Their applications, the correspondence between departments and individuals to determine their eligibility, the act granting the pension and any subsequent change in the status of those initially entitled to it.
The collection is, in fact, a subset of the archive of the Ministry of Finance: Υπουργείο Οικονομικών > Γενική Διεύθυνσις Δημοσίου Λογιστικού > Διεύθυνσις Συντάξεων > Τμήμα Συντάξεων παλαιών θυμάτων πολέμου > Πολεμικαί Συντάξεις θυμάτων πολέμου 1912-1922 (Ministry of Finance > General Directorate of Public Accounting > Directorate for Penstions > Department for Pensions of old war victims > War pensions of war victims 1912-1922).
How and why the collection was detatched from the main body of the archive that is kept at the State Archives is unknown. The resource is not available for research as it has only partly been catalogued. In exchange for an offer to complete the cataloguing, I was given permission to study its contents. I wish to express my most sincere gratitude to Director Nikos Papadakis and chief archivist Chara Apostolaki for granting me privileged access to this resource.

The upcoming conference on the end of World War One, to be held in Thessaloniki on 10-13 May 2018 offer me an incentive to work on the material of this collection, to analyse its records in an attempt to shed light on the social impact of the wars on Greek society and, more specifically, to interpret my findings within the broader temporal framework of a Greek society traumatized by war and defeat.

Technically, a set of digital tools help me organise my research workflow.
  • For context I use JSTOR Worldcat and other on-line bibliographies and data providers.
  • For bibliography and referencing I use Zotero.
  • For structured data management I use Heurist.
  • And for scanning digital images I use Scannable, a very intuitive app that allows me to transfer images of documents (even multi-page ones) from my mobile phone straight into Evernote either as image or as pdf.
Optimally, the workflow should look like this:
Research workflow diagram             

Resources (updatable)


A. Bibliography


ASHWORTH, WILLIAM. “Reviewed Work: THE COST OF THE WAR, 1914–1919: BRITISH ECONOMIC WAR AIMS AND THE ORIGINS OF REPARATION by Robert E. Bunselmeyer.” History 61, no. 203 (1976): 496–97.

Bresler, Maxwell. “War Pensioners’ Widows.” The British Medical Journal 2, no. 5371 (1963): 1530–1530.

Diehl, James M. “Victors or Victims? Disabled Veterans in the Third Reich.” The Journal of Modern History 59, no. 4 (1987): 705–36.

Elsey, Ena. “Disabled Ex-Servicemen’s Experiences of Rehabilitation and Employment after the First World War.” Oral History 25, no. 2 (1997): 49–58.

EVANS, SUZANNE. Mothers of Heroes, Mothers of Martyrs. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2007. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.cttq48v6.

Great Britain., Parliament., and House of Commons. “War Pensions. A Bill to Amend the War Pensions Acts, 1915 to 1920, and to Provide for Other Matters Connected with the Administration of Pensions, Grants, and Allowances.,” 2007. http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&res_dat=xri:hcpp&rft_dat=xri:hcpp:rec:1921-024318.

Koven, Seth. “Remembering and Dismemberment: Crippled Children, Wounded Soldiers, and the Great War in Great Britain.” The American Historical Review 99, no. 4 (1994): 1167–1202. https://doi.org/10.2307/2168773.

Lamm, Doron. “British Soldiers of the First World War: Creation of a Representative Sample.” Historical Social Research / Historische Sozialforschung 13, no. 4 (48) (1988): 55–98.

Mehdi, Syed Sikander. “Wars and War Victims.” Pakistan Horizon 44, no. 1 (1991): 63–77.

PARRY, EDWARD ABBOTT. WAR PENSIONS : Past and Present (Classic Reprint). [S.l.]: FORGOTTEN BOOKS, 2015.

ZÜRCHER, Erik Jan. “BETWEEN DEATH AND DESERTION. THE EXPERIENCE OF THE OTTOMAN SOLDIER IN WORLD WAR I.” Turcica 28 (1996): 235–58.

Ανδρεάδης, Ανδρέας, ed. Les effets economiques et sociaux de la guerre en Grece. Histoire Economique et Sociale de la Guerre Mondiale : Serie Grecque. Paris, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1929.

“Νόμος 116 Περί Τροποποήσεως Τκαι Συμπληρώσεως Των Νόμων Περί Στρατιωτικών Και Ναυτικών Συντάξεων.” Εφημερίς Της Κυβερνήσεως Α, no. 271 (1913).

“Νόμος ΠΣΑ’ Περί Τροποποήσεως Των Περί Συντάξεων Του Στρατού Της Ξηράς Και Της Θαλάσσης Νόμων.” Εφημερίς Της Κυβερνήσεως Α, no. 49 (1864).

“Νόμος ΣΕ’ Περί Των Συντάξεων Του Στρατού Της Ξηράς.” Εφημερίς Της Κυβερνήσεως Α, no. 34 (1852).

Παλούκης, Κώστας. “Οι Ανάπηροι Πολέμου 1912-1922: Ιδιωτική Φιλανθρωπία ή Κράτος Πρόνοιας; Δεύτερο Μέρος.” Τα Ιστορικά, no. 62 (December 2015).

———. “Οι Ανάπηροι Πολέμου 1912-1922: Ιδιωτική Φιλανθρωπία ή Κράτος Πρόνοιας; Πρώτο Μέρος.” Τα Ιστορικά, no. 61 (December 2014).

B. Other resources


For geographical data, see geonames and Μετονομασίες των Οικισμών της Ελλάδας
Invaluable info also on a National Archives blog post Finding the wounded: re-cataloguing First World War pension files