The “War on the Goat”: Forestry, Husbandry and Politics in Early Modern Greece

Abstract

This article examines the conflict over forest use in modern Greece. While the
main protagonists were foresters, who prioritised the importance of forests in providing
timber, and those involved in animal husbandry, who needed the forests as grazing
grounds, a number of other societal and political actors also engaged in this century-long
struggle, which culminated in the 1937 decision to remove goats from Greek forests. It
shows how the Greek foresters succeeded in framing the goat and goat rearing as the
symbol of the country’s deforestation but also underdevelopment, both in economic and
in cultural terms. Also, from the 1920s onwards, the large goat herds stood in the way of
the development of the Greek agricultural sector: the extensive and free-roaming animal
husbandry was viewed as an opponent of the state-sponsored and -endorsed settled farmer,
who would help Greece in securing the desperately sought σιτάρκεια (grain sufficiency).
Once Ioannis Metaxas seized power and established his authoritarian 4 August regime,
which placed special emphasis on the agricultural development of the country, the fate of
the goat was sealed: the “horned Satan” had to die, not just for the sake of the forests but,
according to Metaxas himself, for the very survival of the Greek people.