Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/608

 600 REVIEWS OF BOOKS The historical part is mainly devoted to ancient times. For the Byzantine chapter the author does not seem to have consulted the narrative of Nikephoros Blemmydes, 1 a first-class authority who was the guest of the ' Caesar ' Gabalas at Rhodes in 1233 and describes his host as an inde- pendent, hereditary ruler. A reference in a document published by Miklosich and Muller 2 shows that it was not Michael VIII but Theodore II Laskaris who made John Palaiologos governor of Rhodes about 1256. The authority for our Richard I's stay there should be Geoffrey de Vinsauf. The name and castle of Castel Rosso (Kastellorizon) the island which the Italians received in 1921 are found long before Heredia's time in Ludolph's ' Journey to the Holy Land' 3 between 1336 and 1341. The cession of this island by Pope Nicholas V to Alfonso of Aragon and Sicily in 1450 deserves mention in view of its recent fate. Dr. Volonakis expresses a more favourable view of the Knights' rule than some historians, and thinks that the islanders preferred it to that of the Turk. During the Turkish period Syme came into special prominence. As M. Chaviaras has shown from documents, Syme was the first of the ' privi- leged islands ', a term which included Ikaria and Kastellorizon, but excluded Rhodes and Kos, because Syme and the eleven other ' privileged islands ' had voluntarily submitted. Thus, the term ' Dodecanese ' has three meanings, as the author points out : (1) in Byzantine times, the Cyclades, the later Duchy of Naxos ; (2) in Turkish times, th x e islands of Kalymnos, Leros, Nisyros, Telos, Syme, Chalke, Astypalaia, Karpathos, Kasos, Patmos, Ikaria, and Kastellorizon ; (3) since 1912 the islands occupied by the Italians under the treaty of Lausanne. Syme twice, in 1867 and 1885, pluckily resisted forcible attempts to infringe her privileges, and the action of Lords Stanley and Clarendon on behalf of the islanders is still remembered in the Dodecanese, which, against its wishes, was excluded from the Greek kingdom in 1830. The present position is that Italy, despite the Venizelos-Tittoni and Venizelos-Bonin agreements, declines to hand over to Greece the twelve islands (i. e. all, except Rhodes) promised in those agreements, on the ground that the treaty of Sevres (under which she has received Kastellorizon) has not been ratified. The book is beautifully illustrated, and contains a pleasing introduc- tion by Professor Myres, a connoisseur of the Southern Sporades. WILLIAM MILLER. Papers of the San Frandsco Committee of Vigilance of 1851. Edited by MARY FLOYD WILLIAMS. (Academy of Pacific Coast History. Berkeley : University of California Press, 1921.) History of the San Francisco Committee of Vigilance of 1851. By MARY FLOYD WILLIAMS. (Berkeley : University of California, 1921.) THOUGH not among the older states of the union, California has a history already told at great length and based upon a priceless collection of docu- ments. As the late Professor Morse Stephens wrote in the preface to the first of the two volumes now before us, Mr. H. H. Bancroft made his 1 Ed. Teubner, pp. 61-2. * Acta et Diplomata Graeca Medii Aevi, vi. 198. s De Itinere Terrae Sanctae Liber, p. 28.