Venetian rule in the Ionian Islands 1809, Great Britain took possession of all the islands with the exception of Corfu and Paxos, which was only surrendered in 1814. In 1815, the Ionian Islands became a British protectorate under the name United States of the Ionian Islands. The civil and military governor of the Ionian Islands was the "Provveditore generale da Mar", who lived on Corfu and had the supreme peacetime command of the Venetian navy. In wartime, due to his absence at the head of the fleet, he was sometimes replaced by a "Provveditore generale delle Tre Isole" ("Superintendent general of the Three Islands"), referring to
Venetian rule in the Ionian Islands language they want and especially the Italian as it's the language with the greatest preference on the Ionian Islands". These cultural remnants of the Venetian period were the pretext of Mussolini's desire to incorporate the Ionian Islands into the Kingdom of Italy. Even before the outbreak of World War II and the Greek-Italian War, Mussolini had expressed his wish to annex the Ionian Islands as part of his wider plans for an Italian Empire centered around the Mediterranean Sea. On 15 October, in a meeting in the Palazzo Venezia, he made the final decision to invade Greece. His initial goal