CORFU

This is a list of the British High Commissioners of the Ionian Islands; (as well as the transitional Greek Governor, appointed a year prior to Enosis (Union) with Greece in 1864).

·         Sir James Campbell 1814–1816

·         Sir Thomas Maitland (1759–1824) 1815–1823

·         Sir Frederick Adam (1781–1853) 1823–1832

·         Sir Alexander Woodford (1782–1870) 1832

·         George Nugent-Grenville, 2nd Baron Nugent (1788–1850) 1832–1835

·         Howard Douglas (1776–1861) 1835–1840

·         James Alexander Stewart-Mackenzie (1784–1843) 1840–1843

·         John Colborne, 1st Baron Seaton (1778–1863) 1843–1849

·         Sir Henry George Ward (1797–1860) 1849–1855

·         Sir John Young (1807–1876) 1855–1859

·         William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) 1859

·         Sir Henry Knight Storks (1811–1874) 1859–1863

·         Count Dimitrios Nikolaou Karousos, President of Parliament (1799–1873) 1863–1864

First World War

During the First World War, the island served as a refuge for the Serbian army that retreated there on Allied forces' ships from a homeland occupied by the Austrians, Germans and Bulgarians. During their stay, a large portion of Serbian soldiers died from exhaustion, food shortage, and various diseases. Most of their remains were buried at sea near the island of Vido, a small island at the mouth of Corfu port, and a monument of thanks to the Greek nation has been erected at Vido by the grateful Serbs; consequently, the waters around Vido Island are known by the Serbian people as the Blue Graveyard (in Serbian, ПлаваГробница, Plava Grobnica), after a poem written by Milutin Bojić following World War I.

Interwar period

In 1923, after a diplomatic dispute between Italy and Greece, Italian forces bombarded and occupied Corfu. The League of Nations settled this Corfu incident.

Second World War and resistance

Italian occupation

During the Greco-Italian War, Corfu was occupied by the Italians in April 1941. They administered Corfu and the Ionian islands as a separate entity from Greece until September 1943, following Benito Mussolini's orders of fulfilling ItalianIrredentism and making Corfu part of the Kingdom of Italy. During the Second World War the 10th infantry regiment of theGreek Army, composed mainly of Corfiot soldiers, was assigned the task of defending Corfu. The regiment took part inOperation Latzides, which was a heroic but ultimately unsuccessful attempt to stem the forces of the Italians. After Greece's surrender to the Axis, the island came under Italian control and occupation. On the first Sunday of November 1941, high school students from all over Corfu took part in student protests against the occupying Italian army; these student protests of the island were among the first acts of overt popular Resistance in occupied Greece and a rare phenomenon even by wartime European standards. Subsequently, a considerable number of Corfiots escaped to Epirus in mainland Greece and enlisted as partisans in ELAS and EDES, in order to join the resistance movement gathering in the mainland.