Most of the Cypriot population, especially the lower classes, remained loyal to the British cause during the Great War and the island contributed significantly to the First World War, with men and materials. The British acknowledged this yet failed to institute political and economic reforms once the war ended. The obsession of Greek Cypriot elites with enosis (union with Greece), which only increased after the war, and the British dismissal of increasing the role of Cypriots in government, bringing the Christian and Muslim communities closer, and expanding franchise to all classes and sexes, led to serious problems down the line, not least the development of a democratic deficit. Andrekos Varnava studies the events and the impact of this crucial period.

This book explores the role of the Cyprus regiment, a military unit of the British Army, in the Second World War. Highlighting the contribution of Cyprus to the war effort, the book contributes to the limited historiography on the military engagement of Cyprus in the Second World War. Through an analysis of British official records and interviews the author aims to provide the required chronological and contextual placement of events involving Cyprus and the Cyprus Regiment. By drawing upon veterans’ narratives and operational insights, the book offers a personal view and assessment of the Second World War period. The book covers a number of themes, including the recruitment of Cypriots to the British Army and the training they received, the establishment of the Cyprus Volunteer Force, the experiences of Cypriot soldiers while serving in multiple countries, and the wider impact of the war on Cyprus, economically, socially and militarily.

Exiting war explores a particular 1918–20 ‘moment’ in the British Empire’s history, between the First World War’s armistices of 1918, and the peace treaties of 1919 and 1920. That moment, we argue, was a challenging and transformative time for the Empire. While British authorities successfully answered some of the post-war tests they faced, such as demobilisation, repatriation, and fighting the widespread effects of the Spanish flu, the racial, social, political and economic hallmarks of their imperialism set the scene for a wide range of expressions of loyalties and disloyalties, and anticolonial movements. The book documents and conceptualises this 1918–20 ‘moment’ and its characteristics as a crucial three-year period of transformation for and within the Empire, examining these years for the significant shifts in the imperial relationship that occurred and as laying the foundation for later change in the imperial system.

This book explores the colonial history of Cyprus through the history of technology. Based on materialist and actor-network approaches to power, it unfolds the role of technology in the formation of British colonial rule during critical episodes in Cyprus. It considers the entanglement of colonial rule and technology in four cases of infrastructural development: the island-wide electrification project, Famagusta and Larnaca Harbours, and the Cyprus Government Railway. Throughout these cases, the reader will discover the expert-based, developmentalist and material ways of governing crises with which the British Empire expected to reproduce and prolong its rule on the island.

This book marks the 200-year anniversary of uprisings in the Ottoman Balkans between February and March 1821, which became known in the West as the beginnings of the Greek War of Independence (1821–1832), and led to the formation of the modern Greek state. It explores the war and its impact on societies involved by delving into the myths that surround it, the realities that have often been ignored or suppressed, and its lasting legacies on national identities and histories. It also explores memory and commemoration in Greece, in other countries impacted, and the Greek diaspora. This book offers a fresh perspective on this pivotal event in Greek, Ottoman, Balkan, Mediterranean, European, and world histories. It presents new research and reflections to connect the war to wider history and to understand its importance across the last 200 years.

This book shows how cultural production derived from, or in anticipation of, conflict can be used to create specific social identities, national histories, and contemporary concepts of memory in Britain and Australia. Studies on the politics of cultural production have usually focussed on one conflict, or on one particular cultural medium, at a time. This volume, however, presents a broader horizon to draw attention to more popular forms of cultural production from the Great War up to and including its Centenary. The chapters in this volume interrogate the contentious philosophical notion that culture thrives in times of war, and expires in peace, and asks whether ‘art’, as a form of social barometer, can anticipate conflict rather than merely respond to it. This is a fascinating read for students, researchers, and academics interested in British and Australian History and its relationship with Popular Culture. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Contemporary British History.

This memorial book honours the legacy of Eric Richards’s work in an interplay of academic essays and personal accounts of Eric Richards. Following the Eric Richards methodology, it combines micro- and macro-perspectives of British migration history and covers topics such as Scottish and Irish diasporas, religious, labour and wartime migrations. Eric Richards was an international leading historian of British migration history and a pioneer at exploring small- and large-scale migrations. His last public intervention, given in Amiens, France, in September 2018, opens the book. It is preceded by a tribute from David Fitzpatrick and Ngaire Naffine’s eulogy. This book brings together renowned scholars of British migration history. The book combines local and global migrations as well as economic and social aspects of nineteenth and twentieth century British migration history.