This book explores how the Union Jack came to fly over the island of Cyprus and why after thirty-five years the British wanted it lowered. Cyprus' importance was always more imagined than real and was enmeshed within widely held cultural signifiers and myths.

This book explores the tensions underlying British imperialism in Cyprus. Much has been written about the British Empire’s construction outside Europe, yet there is little on the same themes in Britain’s tiny empire in ‘Europe’. This study follows Cyprus’ progress from a perceived imperial asset to an expendable backwater by explaining how the Union Jack came to fly over the island and why after thirty-five years the British wanted it lowered. Cyprus’ importance was always more imagined than real and was enmeshed within widely held cultural signifiers and myths. British Imperialism in Cyprus fills a gap in the existing literature on the early British period in Cyprus and challenges the received and monolithic view that British imperial policy was based primarily or exclusively on strategic-military considerations. The combination of archival research, cultural analysis and visual narrative that makes for an enjoyable read for academics and students of Imperial, British and European history.

In June of 1878, the British Empire acquired the small Mediterranean island of Cyprus, after a secret agreement with the Ottoman Empire. The occupation of Cyprus was officially announced by the British government about a month later and what followed was an unprecedented mania with the island, which manifested itself through the publication of dozens of books and articles, the composition of poems, novels, and music pieces, the staging of operas and ballets, the appearance of dozens of advertisements in newspapers, the dispatch of special correspondents to the island, the announcement of forthcoming tours, etc. This book examines the “Cyprus Frenzy” of 1878 and the way it was expressed in both major and provincial newspapers in Victorian Britain. It follows the six main special correspondents who were commissioned to cover the occupation and who traveled to the island for that purpose: Archibald Forbes (The Daily News), St. Leger Algernon Herbert (The Times), John Augustus O’Shea (The London Evening Standard), Edward Henry Vizetelly (The Glasgow Herald), Samuel Pasfield Oliver (The Illustrated London News), and Hepworth Dixon (for several provincial newspapers). What is pertinent in the investigation of Victorian journalistic practices is the relationship between these correspondents and the military establishment, which was tasked with the duty of forming the first British government on the island. In this context, General Garnet Wolseley, who served as the island’s first High Commissioner, and his famous clique of associates are central characters in the story of Cyprus’ colonization. The book further considers the role of advertisements in propagating colonial discourse and it examines “Letters to the Editor,” published in major newspapers of the time, as a tool in the investigation of the Victorian readers’ reception and response to the occupation. By concentrating on the history of a very particular event—the British occupation of Cyprus in 1878—this book aspires to scrutinize colonial practices through a close examination of the mechanisms that they put in motion, the networks they utilize, and the fantasies they stir.

In 1914 almost one quarter of the earth's surface was British. When the empire and its allies went to war in 1914 against the Central Powers, history's first global conflict was inevitable. It is the social and cultural reactions to that war and within those distant, often overlooked, societies which is the focus of this volume. From Singapore to Australia, Cyprus to Ireland, India to Iraq and around the rest of the British imperial world, further complexities and interlocking themes are addressed, offering new perspectives on imperial and colonial history and theory, as well as art, music, photography, propaganda, education, pacifism, gender, class, race and diplomacy at the end of the pax Britannica.

Cyprus Historical and Contemporary Studies Since the onset of Ottoman rule, but more especially from the mid-18th Century, the archbishops of the autocephalous Cypriot Orthodox Church have wielded a great deal of political power. Most people of a certain age will remember the bearded monk who became a Greek nationalist politician and the first President of the Republic of Cyprus in 1960, Archbishop Makarios III. Indeed his presence at Madame Tussaud’s is a reminder of his stature. But were all Cypriot archbishops such political and powerful Greek nationalists? This study is unique in its exploration of the peculiar role of the archbishop-ethnarch and, as such, offers valuable historical and political insights into the phenomenon. This book offers a political history of religious authorities in the pre-modern, modern, and post-modern eras. It examines how nationalist politics evolved and was co-opted by religious authorities in order to re-establish political hegemony from a secular European colonial power, and the consequences this entailed after the end of the British empire.

Comic empires is an innovative collection of new scholarly research, exploring the relationship between imperialism and cartoons, caricature, and comic art.

As Cyprus experienced British imperial rule between 1878 and 1960, Greek and Turkish nationalism on the island developed at different times and at different speeds. Relations between Turkish Cypriots and the British on the one hand, and Greek Cypriots and the British on the other, were often asymmetrical with the Muslim community undergoing an enormous change in terms of national/ethnic identity and class characteristics. Turkish Cypriot nationalism developed belatedly as a militant nationalist and anti-Enosis movement. This book explores the relationship between the emergence of Turkish national identity and British colonial rule in the 1920s and 1930s.