Karpathos has around 6,500 permanent residents. But if you count the Karpathians living abroad — in the United States above all, then Canada, Australia and Germany — you easily reach 50,000 or 60,000 people of Karpathian origin around the world. The number is approximate, because no one keeps precise records, but that's the order of magnitude. For every Karpathian on the island, there are eight or ten outside it.
Mass emigration began in the 1950s, in a period of economic poverty and scarce work. Families sent their sons to America — often to New York, Baltimore, Newark — where there was already a network of fellow countrymen. The first emigrants were manual labourers, builders, waiters. The next generation opened restaurants, diners, their own businesses. The third generation went to university.
In a diner in Baltimore run by a Karpathian family I found the menu written in English and Greek. It wasn't folklore. It was history.
The remittances the emigrants sent back to Karpathos transformed the island between the 1960s and 1980s: the stone houses were abandoned in favour of new buildings, some villas of questionable architectural taste but with a very clear message — we're making it. Then the American money stopped being enough, the island opened up to tourism, and the cycle began again in a different way.