Once they were migrants (then they were settlers): Fotios Papadopoulos, From migrants to settlers: the history of Greek communities in colonial Zimbabwe and Tanganyika, 1890s-1960, PhD dissertation, EUI, 2025 | settler colonial studies blog

Once they were migrants (then they were settlers): Fotios Papadopoulos, From migrants to settlers: the history of Greek communities in colonial Zimbabwe and Tanganyika, 1890s-1960, PhD dissertation, EUI, 2025

24Nov25

Abstract: This doctoral thesis examines the position of Greek migrants in the colonial societies of sub-Saharan Africa, focusing on their transformation from migrants to settlers. Through the cases of colonial Zimbabwe and Tanzania from the 1890s to the 1950s, it explores how Greeks, as marginal Europeans without a colonial background, were positioned both materially and culturally within these societies. Although generally classified as Europeans in the 20th century, Greeks lacked direct colonial rule background, having themselves been subjects of British and Italian rule in the Ionian Islands, Cyprus, and the Dodecanese. The study argues that Greek migrants’ racial and settler status was fluid, shaped by their economic activities, class, and interactions with European settlers, indigenous communities, and other immigrant groups, such as Indians. In the early period (1890s– 1920s), most Greeks worked as laborers, small shopkeepers, or traders with indigenous populations, often occupying peripheral roles in colonial society. However, from the late 1920s to the 1960s, their status shifted: in Southern Rhodesia, Greeks entered politics and even held mayoral positions in major cities, while in Tanganyika, they acquired extensive agricultural estates—land ownership on a scale rarely seen in their homeland. This dissertation examines the conditions that allowed only certain social classes to access the privileges of settler colonialism and how individuals from a non-imperial background—lacking capital, foreign language skills, and religious or ethnic alignment with ruling elites—were able to integrate into, and sometimes thrive within, colonial structures. Ultimately, it challenges approaches to settler colonialism as an exclusive domain of imperial powers, demonstrating how ‘smaller’ European migrant communities strategically navigated, participated and even influenced colonial systems.

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