Product Description

The publication “Charilaos Trikoupis and the Public Works” has an academically well-documented text and is illustrated by a wealth of photographs, tastefully presented. It is a reliable account and a well-deserved tribute to the work of Charilaos Trikoupis and his contribution to the history of modern Greece. It also provides a clear picture of Greece in the middle of the 19th century, at a time when none of the things we now take for granted even existed.

Charilaos Trikoupis had a strong personality and progressive ideas for his time. An optimist, an indefatigable worker, and possessed of an iron will, he struggled to impose new administrative methods in Greece in an attempt to raise the country, which had been an independent political entity for only fifty years, to the level of a European state. In order to assist the development of the economy and raise the standard of living, he sought to attract capital, to protect Greek industry and, above all, to construct public works. The digging of the Corinth canal, the widening of the Euripos straits, the draining of Lake Kopaïs, the creation of lighthouses, the reorganisation of the telegraph and postal services, and especially the development of communications through the construction of the road and railway networks are all projects that bear his seal. The railway network, in particular, was his greatest vision and was to give an impulse to local trade and help to prevent robbery.

It is no coincidence that Trikoupis was the first suggest to Parliament the construction of a bridge from Rion to Antirrion, a bridge which is now, over a century later, being built, and which will bear the name of Charilaos Trikoupis.