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`The Mountain Laboured and Brought Forth a Mouse': UNRRA's Operations in the Cyclades Islands, c.1945—46

University of Patras (Greece) and Mediterranean Studies at King's College, University of London

Like many a recently liberated country with the experience of starvation and hardship vivid in its people's physical state, Greece emerged in the immediate aftermath of the second world war in great need of assistance, facing a wrecked economy and drained resources. Relief provision became the responsibility of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), an international relief organization established in late 1943 with the purpose of furnishing essential supplies and services to war-devastated states. For over two years (April 1945-June 1947), Greece received goods worth approximately $350 million, as much as its pre-war commercial imports, and almost 12 per cent of total UNRRA assistance. This article traces the provision of UNRRA aid in the micro-context of the Cyclades, a famine-stricken group of some 25 Aegean islands. Drawing on UNRRA's mostly undisclosed archive, it examines the implementation of welfare policies and the conversion of general plans to particular actions to disclose the interplay between relief strategies and the development of the local economy.

Key Words: Aid • Cyclades • Greece • relief • UNRRA • WWII

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