‘British Corporate Imperialism and Sovereignty in Interwar Greece: The Power and Traction Question’

In 1925, the British group Power and Traction Finance Company Ltd. obtained a mammoth concession for the electrification and transport services of Athens and Piraeus from the Greek dictator Theodoros Pangalos. Popularly known as a ‘colonial contract’, the agreement was ironically an underground by-product of a League of Nations humanitarian scheme, the refugee loan agreement between the Bank of England and the Greek state. This paper explores how a foreign utility investment in the 1920s Greek market unleashed clashing forces: it undoubtedly spurred transformative infrastructure in the capital, but this reform came at a high economic, political, and moral cost. Coercive ab initio, this scandalous long-term concession engendered great exploitation, produced existential politico-economic dilemmas and resistance, and jeopardised Greek democracy, parliamentarism, and state independence. In a decade when the City of London’s banking houses controlled most of the debt and British companies dominated the investment landscape of Greece, this business milestone knitted together finance capital, ‘subcutaneous’ forms of empire and imperceptible violence, sovereign spaces, power gaps, and humanitarian crises, challenging us to rethink imperial agents. The Power and Traction case debunks the myth of exclusively metropolitan agencies, highlighting the centrality of transnational capital synergies and comprador elites.