The Genevan Intervention and the Man in the Middle: Thanassis Aghnides, Greece and League of Nations Economic Assistance

Abstract

This article unpacks the role of League of Nations official Thanassis Aghnides in facilitating economic assistance to Greece, from the Greco-Turkish population exchange (1923) until the so-called Geneva Protocol (1927), which constituted a second international loan. Taking as its vantage point Aghnides’ unique role as a “man in the middle”, between the league and Greek authorities, it narrates and contextualises the almost continuous strategic dialogue between him and the deputy governor (later director) of the National Bank of Greece Emmanouil Tsouderos. The article argues that Aghnides was an educator (even disciplinarian), a purveyor of rumours and plans, and a “translator”, who continuously embedded concrete economic reforms in the larger mission for a stable, liberal world order, with a peaceful, prosperous, democratic and, notably, Venizelist Greece as a part of it. This perspective, the article concludes, complicates a
strictly “imperial” reading of economic, technical and humanitarian assistance to Greece in the interwar period.