In preparation for the peace conference that was expected to follow World War I, in the spring of 1917 the British Foreign Office established a special section responsible for preparing background information for use by British delegates to the conference. Islands of the Northern and Eastern Aegean is Number 64 in a series of more than 160 studies produced by the section, most of which were published after the conclusion of the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. The book covers 24 islands in the Aegean Sea, including Khios, Samos, Rhodes, and Patmos. Lying off the coast of Asia Minor (Turkey) and ruled for centuries by the Ottoman Turks, these islands were inhabited mainly by ethnic Greeks. Most of the islands were occupied by Greece in the First Balkan War of 1912–13. Rhodes, Kos, and the Dodecanese were seized by Italy in the Italo-Turkish War of 1911–12. Chapter I discusses physical and political geography. Chapter II provides a brief overview of the political history of the islands, from the classical and Byzantine periods to the eve of World War I. Chapters III and IV cover, respectively, social and political conditions and economic conditions. The appendix includes tables with detailed statistics on shipping and foreign trade.