Italian colonists in the Dodecanese colonists of Rhodes. In the Treaty of Paris in 1947, the islands were ceded to Greece. For the nearly 8,000 Italian colonists, after the Italian defeat in World War II, started a process of return to Italy and successive disappearance. The Dodecanese officially passed from Italy to Greece in 1947, and in that year all the Italian schools were closed. Some of the Italian colonists remained in Rhodes and were quickly assimilated. Actually only a few dozen old colonists remain, but the influence of their legacy is evident in the relative diffusion of the Italian language mainly in Rhodes and
Greece in the Balkan Wars promises of the Young Turks caused much enthusiasm both inside the Empire and in the Balkan states, but they gradually adopted a policy of forced "Ottomanisation", which, coupled with the parallel rise of Albanian nationalism, threatened the interests of the other Balkan states. Italy too, in search of a colonial empire, took advantage of the turmoil in the Ottoman Empire, attacking Libya and seizing the Dodecanese islands during the Italo-Turkish War. The Italians promised to cede the Greek-inhabited Dodecanese islands to Greece, but in the end kept them. This aroused indignation in Greece. Coupled with Bulgarian aspirations for Macedonia and