Samos is a Greek island in the eastern Aegean sea, south of Chios, north of Patmos and the Dodecanese, and off the western coast of Anatolia. The island derives its name from the Phoenician word sama, meaning "high", and it became a rich and powerful city-state of Ancient Greece, known for its wine production, the Pythagoreion (named for the philosopher Pythagoras, a native of the island), and the Heraion. The island was colonized by settlers from Epidaurus and went on to join the Ionian League during the 7th century BC, becoming one of Greece's leading commercial centers. Samos developed extensive overseas commerce and colonized Bisanthe, Perinthus, and Samothrace in the northern Aegean Sea, Kydonia on Crete, Nagidos and Kelenderis in southern Anatolia, Dicaearchia in Magna Graecia, and Oasis Polis in Egypt; the Samians were the first Greeks to reach the Straits of Gibraltar. Samos became bitter rivals of the Ionian merchant power of Miletus and allied with Egypt against the Persians, but Samos lost the Lelantine War to Miletus. Miletus' subjugation by a series of Asiatic kings, however, allowed for the island city-state of Samos to once again flourish. The death of the Samian tyrant Polycrates in 522 BC allowed the Achaemenid Persians to conquer the island, but the Samians revolted against the Persians during the Greco-Persian Wars. Samos joined Athens' Delian League, only to rebel in 440 BC after Athens sided with Miletus in a mercantile dispute with Samos. The ensuing Samian War saw Pericles himself subdue the Samian uprising, and Samos was treated leniently, only paying reparations for the war rather than becoming a tributary of Athens. During the Peloponnesian War, Samos remained loyal to Athens, providing their port to the Athenian fleet. A series of political revolutions led to the establishment of a democracy on Samos, and Samos temporarily sheltered Athens' democratic government following the oligarchic coup of 411 BC. After the surrender of Athens in 404 BC, the Spartan general Lysander besieged and captured Samos and installed an oligarchy in power. In 394 BC, the withdrawal of the Spartan navy allowed for Samos to revolt and recover its independence. In 387 BC, Samos once again fell under Persian occupation, but the Athenians reconquered the island in 366 BC and placed a large garrison on Samos. Athens lost Samos to Macedon following the Lamian War of 322 BC, and Samos eventually came under Ptolemaic control and served as an Egyptian naval base. In 189 BC, the Romans transferred control of the island to Pergamon, and Samos joined the Roman province of Asia in 133 BC. Samos joined Eumenes III's Pergamene revolt in 132 BC and sided with Mithridates VI Eupator in 88 BC, after which it was stripped of its autonomy. Samos later came under Byzantine rule before being governed by the Seljuks (1081-1091), Genoa (1346-1566), and the Ottomans (in 1475 and from 1566). By the time of the second Ottoman conquest, the island was practically depopulated due to pirate raids and the plague, and the island was repopulated with Ionian Greeks and Albanians. From 1771 to 1774, the Russian Empire briefly occupied the island. Samos' proximity to Turkey led to the island facing several Ottoman invasions during the Greek War of Independence and struggling to join the newly-independent Greek nation. Rather than accept reintegration into the Ottoman Empire, the island's Greeks created the Principality of Samos, which paid tribute to the Ottomans in exchange for autonomy. In March 1913, the island became part of Greece following the First Balkan War, and many Samiots participated in the communist ELAS resistance movement during World War II and the Greek Civil War. During the 2010s, Samos became home to a significant migrant camp as the result of the Syrian Civil War and the Iraqi Civil War. By 2011, Samos had a population of nearly 33,000 people, and the island was a battleground for the social democratic PASOK and the liberal-conservative New Democracy until the Great Recession, after which it backed the left-wing Syriza until 2019 and the conservative New Democracy thereafter, likely influenced by the migrant crisis.
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