Colonial Cyprus

An original, innovative, and timely study on the cultural history of Cyprus under British rule, offering a new interpretative framework for studying the island’s colonial past. The book focuses on the often-overlooked cultural dimensions of the island’s colonial experience and demonstrates the crucial role culture played in shaping its historical trajectory and future. This is the first volume to explore various aspects of the island’s cultural life from 1878, when it transitioned from Ottoman to British rule, until the establishment of the Republic of Cyprus in 1960. It features a series of thematic chapters by female authors, focusing on photography, architecture, literature, theatre, art and collecting, cultural policy, advertising, fashion, antiquities and archaeology, public gardens, and sports clubs. Individual chapters bring to light previously unpublished source material in Greek and English, both written and visual, from state and private archives. Using cross-disciplinary analytical tools from fields such as imperial and colonial history, politics, cultural studies, and media and communication studies, the authors provide new insights.

Gathering established and young scholars, independent researchers and cultural practitioners, Colonial Cyprus: A Cultural History is a path-breaking incursion into the historiography of Cyprus under British rule in more senses than one. Fundamentally interdisciplinary and touching on questions of visual and textual representations, material culture and cultural heritage, gender and identity, this unprecedented initiative gives flesh to the experience of colonialism in the island, too often still confined to the dry realms of politics and diplomacy. It is therefore an essential read for anyone interested in understanding modern Cyprus, the product of a colonial encounter at the crossroads of cultural hybridity and resistance., This collection of innovative and eclectic essays makes a notable contribution to one of the hallmarks in recent writing on the history of Cyprus: the shift of focus from politics to more experimental concerns with culture. Animating the whole is a striking paradigm: the dynamism, but also the pitfalls, of a small island society experiencing modernity through the agency of a curiously hybrid form of British colonialism. Along the way Cypriots increasingly embraced opportunities for change, fresh forms of expression and organization, social flux and (for some at least) cosmopolitan practices. Yet the new society that emerged was also one where differences between Cypriots became more acutely felt rather than less, with dangerous implications for the future. The book keenly evokes this razor’s edge which patchwork modernization brought to wider Cypriot experience., This book offers rich and novel analysis of the long-neglected cultural history of Cyprus in the colonial period. Covering a wide and diverse range of topics, it interrogates how colonial rule and the forms of hybridity, negotiation, and resistance it provoked, shaped and were, in turn, shaped by modes of cultural expression on the island. Through its critical engagement with the cultural history of colonial rule in Cyprus, this book not only offers new insights that look beyond the dominant political histories of the island, but also integrates the Cypriot case into wider cultural histories of empire. Thus, Colonial Cyprus is vital reading both for historians of the island itself but also for cultural historians of the British Empire and of colonialism more broadly., The book Colonial Cyprus: A Cultural History is a fascinating read. It dives deep into different aspects of the cultural history of Cyprus, aspects that have not been extensively, or holistically discussed so far. It is a collection of micro-histories focusing on photography, architecture, theatre, public gardens, sports, advertising, and so on, that together weave a dense and thought-provoking macro-history of colonialism and the intricacies of the power relations between the periphery and the center, as these are understood within colonial regimes. By making these relationships visible and theorizing them within a wider historical framework, by shedding light on individual and collective cultural preferences and decisions, this book becomes part of a call to consider culture as a significant, yet often ignored, parameter in decision-making, politics, and history. This cross-disciplinary volume uses tools from different fields and areas of research, such as history, cultural studies, media, architecture etc., to analyse and discuss data from primary and largely unpublished sources. It can thus greatly contribute to many different areas of research and will be of interest to a wider readership.

Maria Hadjiathanasiou is Adjunct Faculty at the University of Nicosia and Research Fellow at the National Struggle Museum. She is the author of Propaganda and the Cyprus Revolt: Rebellion, Counter-Insurgency and the Media, 1955-1959 (Bloomsbury, 2020). Andreas Karyos is Adjunct Lecturer at the University of Nicosia and the Open University of Cyprus. His research interests focus on military and political aspects of Cyprus’ colonial history, decolonisation and post-independence history. Emilios A. Solomou is Emeritus Scholar and Honorary Director of the UNESCO Chair on Cultural Diversity and Intercultural Dialogue for a Culture of Peace at the University of Nicosia. He is the President of the Cyprus Society of Historical Studies.