Dodecanese of the major islands under Italian rule back to twelve. Thus, when the Greek press began agitating for the cession of the islands to Greece in 1913, the term used was still the "Dodecanese". The Italian occupation authorities helped to establish the term when they named the islands under their control "Rhodes and the Dodecanese" ("Rodi e Dodecaneso"), adding Leipsoi to the list of the major islands to make up for considering Rhodes separately. By 1920, the name had become firmly established for the entire island group, a fact acknowledged by the Italian government when it appointed the islands' first
Massacres during the Greek War of Independence the islands in the Aegean Sea, in the early years of the Greek revolt. According to historian William St. clair, one of the aims of the Greek revolutionaries was to embroil as many Greek communities as possible in their struggle. Their technique was ""to engineer some atrocity against the local Turkish population"", so that these different Greek communities would have to ally themselves with the revolutionaries fearing a retaliation from the Ottomans. In such a case, in March 1821, Greeks from the Samos island had landed in the Island Chios and attacked the Muslim population living in that island. The