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\ Crete
(1) / \Cyclades
(2) / \ Dodecanese
(3) / \ Peloponnese
(4) / \ Attica
(5) / \ Central
Greece (6) / \ Epirus
(7) / \ Ionian Islands
(8) / \ Thessaly
(9) / \ Evia
& the Sporades (10) / \ Macedonia
(11) / \ Thrace
(12) / \ NE
Aegean (13) /
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Grecian
Net © All rights reserved 2002
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The
city of Rhodes is the administrative centre. The name Dodecanese
means "12 islands." The term has been applied at various
times to groups differently composed and numbering more than 12.
Their
crops fruit, tobacco, olives, and wheat have varied from marginal
to enough to export, and the principal nonagricultural occupations
of the islanders fishing, shipping, sponge diving are still underdeveloped.
The islands have benefited, however, from the remarkable development
of tourism in the principal islands of the group. 
Secret
treaties on the future of the islands, drawn up by the Allies
during and after World War I, led to a dispute between Italy and
Greece over which nation should have jurisdiction over the islands.
In 1919 an agreement was reached whereby Italy would cede the
Dodecanese to Greece with the exception of Rhodes, which was to
have broad local autonomy. Subsequent Italian governments, however,
unilaterally denounced the accord with Greece and refused to carry
it out, and Italy used a special article in the Treaty of Sevres
(1920), whereby Turkey had ceded to Italy all rights and titles
to the Dodecanese and Kastellorizon, to enforce its claim on the
Dodecanese. Italian sovereignty over the islands was confirmed
by the Treaty of Lausanne (1923).