Cyprus In The 1930S: British Colonial Rule and the Roots of the Cyprus Conflict 9780755623914, 9781780764382

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In loving memory of Lambis and Evlambia Rappas

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

Table 1.1 Comparative evolution of colonial legislation, 1880–1931

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Table 2.1 Comparative expenditure (key departments), 1924 and 1934

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Table 2.2 School Programme of the Greek Gymnasium of Varosha, 1936– 1937

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Table 3.1 Positions per ethnicity in the colonial administration, 1929

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Table 4.1 Sample of petitions from six villages, 1939

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Table 4.2 Breakdown of subordinate staff per district, 1934

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Table 4.3 Coffee-shops in Cyprus: number and ratio of persons per cafe´, ca. 1930

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Table 6.1 Breakdown of occupations in Cyprus, 1931

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Table 6.2 Average cost of living for a family of five in Cyprus, 1932– 1940 (in pounds)

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Figure 4.1 Map of the main towns and villages in Cyprus, 1928

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The preparation of this manuscript was generously supported by a LabexMed postdoctoral fellowship at the Institut de Recherches et d’Etudes sur le Monde Arabe et Musulman (Maison Me´diterrane´enne des Sciences de l’Homme). I owe thanks to the director of the LabexMed programme, Brigitte Marin, as well as to my colleagues at the Institut de Recherches et d’Etudes sur le Monde Arabe et Musulman. I am continuously learning from my exchanges with Isabelle Grangaud, Nicolas Michel, Ghislaine Alleaume and JeanRobert Henry. I extend my warm gratitude to George B. Dertilis, Robert Holland, Sebastian Conrad and Diogo R. Curto for their guidance and support throughout my doctoral studies and beyond. I am grateful to Mathieu Grenet, Angelos Dalachanis, Andreko Varnava and Anastasia Yiangou for their assistance at various stages of the preparation of this manuscript. I thank Rolandos Katsiaounis, George S. Georghallides, Paschalis Kitromilides, Giorgos Georgis, Hubert Faustmann, Aristidis Koudounaris, Maria Roussou-Sinclair, Diana Markides and Evanthis Hatzivassiliou for their advice during my doctoral research. I would like to express my appreciation to the Press and Information Office of Cyprus for the research grant they provided me. Thanks also to archivists at the UK National Archives, the Bodleian Libraries at Oxford University, the Cyprus State Archives, the Press and Information Office of Cyprus, and the

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Makarios III Foundation for their support and to Tom Davis and Vathoulla Moustoukki for their generous hospitality at the Cyprus American Archaeological Research Institute Scholar’s Residence. I am greatly indebted to Damian Mac Con Uladh for his invaluable assistance in transforming a doctoral thesis into a research monograph. I am grateful to I.B.Tauris and Tomasz Hoskins for their confidence in this project. Part of the material of this book appeared initially in International Labor and Working-Class History and I thank the editor of this journal for permission to use it here. Part of the material and some of the conclusions of chapter 5 appeared in The Archbishops of Cyprus in the Modern Age: The Changing Role of the Archbishop-Ethnarch, their Identities and Politics and are published here with the permission of Cambridge Scholars Publishing. My heartfelt thanks to my parents and my brother who never ceased to believe in this work. My greatest debt goes to I˙pek A. C¸elik without whom this book would not have been possible.

FOREWORD

Virtually every book on the modern history of Cyprus emphasizes the faultline represented by the Oktovriana of 1931. The outbreak of disorder on the island was short and sharp, repressed by emergency transfers of British troops from Egypt and Malta. It drove a stake into Cypriot affairs from whatever vantage-point it was viewed, both at the time and since. It is not too much to say that in the light of subsequent events, all roads lead back to the juncture that marks the starting-point of Cyprus in the Thirties: British Colonial Rule and the Roots of the Cyprus Conflict. In his introduction, Alexis Rappas quotes Governor Sir Ronald Storrs, his career painfully on the line amidst the embarrassment of the outbreak, that ‘strong confident government should succeed the regime of apprehension as soon as possible. . .’. Certainly the British administrative presence on the island ever since 1878 had been subject to endemic doubt and nervousness that had only become more accentuated through the 1920s. As Rappas’ account makes clear, the Oktovriana itself was welcomed on the British side as a blessed relief, an escape from a dead end, and an opportunity to make a fresh start in which Cyprus could become a real British colony – say, like Malta – and not the oblique affair that it had been hitherto. This book explores the paradoxes that bedevilled the efforts that ensued before the outbreak of war in 1939 reshuffled the cards once again.

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Those efforts were fundamentally concerned to hammer out something like a conventional colonial state. This involved an expanded remit, as was the case throughout the British colonial world as local administrations struggled with commercial depression, peasant indebtedness and social dislocation. With colonialism went modernity, and it was the latter as much as the former that was uncongenial for some leading local classes and institutions. This was especially true of the Orthodox Church of Cyprus, with its growing sensitivity to threatening secular change; inevitably the role of the Church looms large in Rappas’ account. The ambition to remake an authentically ‘British’ Cyprus might conceivably in the end have got somewhere if with an enhanced Britishness there had gone more money. But the metropolitan authorities in London were never prepared to spend the cash required so that there might be, for example, an ‘Admiralty House’ in Famagusta as there had been for decades in Valletta. Progressively from 1936– 1937, the British drive to ‘strong, confident government’ in the island ran into the sands, and Rappas describes how this came about. In understanding Cyprus – like most islands, even big ones – context is everything, since the internal and the external are bound up inextricably with each other. In this book the author firmly places the island and its experience of the 1930s in its regional setting. From the late 1920s a political and social tremor rippled across the Mediterranean from Spain to the Levant. Many regimes sought to struggle with the consequences, and in doing so took actions that clashed with existing norms and understandings. In doing so they touched off acute reactions, and formed the background to civil war, class confrontation, resistance to colonial authority or ethnic breakdown. Cyprus in the Thirties: British Colonial Rule and the Roots of the Cyprus Conflict is suffused with a sense that the patterns charted here are by no means unique, and versions of them were to be found in such near-by locations as the Italian-ruled Dodecanese and Mandatory Palestine, as well as others further away. As it turned out, European and world events, especially after 1939– 1940, altered everything. Lost opportunities are a notable feature of Cypriot historical discourses, itself perhaps a comment on

FOREWORD

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the special character of the island’s experience. In this case, Rappas argues powerfully that, once the years of Palmerocracy run into the ground, had British administration developed a more liberal style of administration, then a very different future might have been charted. Instead, Cyprus remains, in some degree, a ‘regime of apprehension’; and in this psychological sense the shadow of 1931 lingers. Cyprus in the Thirties helps us to understand a crucial phase in the story. Robert Holland, Centre for Hellenic Studies, King’s College London

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION: A REVOLT AND THE CONSOLIDATION OF AUTHORITARIAN RULE

On 20 October 1931, in yet another display of his formidable eloquence, Nicodemos Mylonas, bishop of Kitium and a leading member of the Legislative Council, addressed a crowd of 3,000 people in the stadium of Limassol, in southwestern Cyprus. Declaring the union [Enosis ] of the island with Greece, he summoned his flock – the Greek-speaking, Orthodox Cypriots – to initiate a campaign of civil disobedience against their British colonial rulers, ‘the immoral, vile and reproachful regime which is called the “English regime”’.1 In making this grandstand, the bishop sought to reclaim the leadership of a deeply divided Greek Cypriot nationalist movement. News of Mylonas’ initiative was telegraphed on 21 October 1931 to political leaders in Nicosia, Cyprus’ capital, who made and diffused manuscript copies of the bishop’s speech, forcing the remaining Greek-Orthodox members of the Legislative Council to resign their seats. Summoned by the ringing of church bells, on the same evening a massive crowd from different parts of the town gathered at the Commercial Club, where calls in favour of a united front for ‘Enosis’ were issued. Archimandrite Dionysios Kykkotis called for a revolution and, seizing a Greek flag, led a 5,000-strong procession

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of political leaders, students and priests to Government House. Carrying sticks, lanterns, electric torches and flags, they reached their destination at 8 pm. At around 9.30 pm, sensing they were losing control of the situation, the leaders of the improvised corte`ge abandoned the scene.2 The demonstrators now besieged the colonial governor’s residence and, after nearly three hours of heavy stonethrowing, managed to set it alight. As Governor Sir Ronald Storrs’ precious rare book collection went up in flames, the event in Nicosia sent shockwaves throughout Cyprus, with riots erupting in both towns and villages.3 On 22 October, the exact same script was played out in Limassol. Summoned by church bells, a procession of people carrying sticks and cans of petrol set the district commissioner’s house on fire. Two days later, the island’s communists officially joined in the revolt when a tactical alliance was brokered by a lawyer, Dr Achilleas Aimilianides, between the Orthodox prelates and communist leaders. Harilaos Vatiliotis, the Communist Party’s secretary general, symbolically kissed the hand of the archbishop and promised him the support of his party in the immediate struggle against the government. The same day, 300 people, led by Bishop Makarios Myriantheus, raided government offices in Kyrenia, hauled down and tore to shreds the Union flag, which they substituted with the Greek flag. Meanwhile, communists in Varosha (Famagusta) led ‘a concerted attack’ on the local police station. Villages were not immune: in Zhodia (Nicosia district), British troops were welcomed by a barrage of 300 stonethrowing villagers; in Akacha (Nicosia district), a crowd held up a ration lorry, inducing the warrant officer to open fire, killing a man and wounding another. On 24 October, allegedly encouraged by Christodoulos A. Galatopoulos, a Greek Cypriot member of the Legislative Council, villagers of Pissouri (Limassol district) robbed the tax collector, burnt the customs house and government offices at the port, and illegally collected salt (a state monopoly) from Limassol lake. On 26 October, in Famagusta district, two forest plantations and some forest buildings were set on fire, four police stations were broken into and wrecked and one customs building was looted and burnt down. The following day, in the same area, a further three

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forest buildings were torched and three salt stores looted. Two further forest stations were burnt on 28 and 29 October. The authorities’ response was swift and repressive: the governor telegraphed the general officer commanding in Egypt to send additional troops by air and then to the commander-in-chief of the Mediterranean fleet for an aircraft carrier or a cruiser.4 The local police set up and armed a voluntary force of 40 British officials resident in Cyprus. On 24 October, the bishop of Kitium was arrested in Limassol. Between 24 and 26 October, the communist leaders, the bishop of Kyrenia and six other leaders of the nationalist movement were also arrested. By 27 October the towns were quiet and by the first week of November law and order prevailed throughout Cyprus, in urban and rural areas. The revolt was suppressed, at the cost of seven Cypriot civilians killed, 68 wounded (29 civilian and 39 military and police), 400 arrests, 10 Greek Cypriot political leaders deported for life – among whom were bishops Nicodemos of Kitium and Makarios of Kyrenia as well as the communist leaders – and 3,359 appearances in court leading to 2,606 convictions, with penalties ranging from a simple fine to prison sentences of up to five years. A barrage of laws, promulgated within a year following the events, completed these sanctions. Letters Patent were passed on 12 November 1931 abolishing the Legislative Council, Cyprus’ ‘parliament’. On 30 November 1931 three laws were passed, forbidding the flying of foreign flags, prohibiting the ringing of bells (used as tocsins during the revolt) for motives other than religious, and abolishing the partly elective nature for the appointment of mukhtars and azas (village headmen and their council). On 21 December 1931, the government passed the Reparations Impost Law, under which a collective fine of £34,315 was imposed exclusively on the Greek Cypriot community for the damage inflicted during the uprising. The colonial authorities argued that the island’s minorities, of which the largest was the Turkish-speaking Muslim community, should be exempted from the collective fine because they had not participated in the events, although this is contradicted by a report from the Greek consulate in Cyprus, stating that an Armenian and

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‘numerous Turks’ had received heavy sentences for inflicting damage on public property and stealing salt.5 Regardless, however, of their effective participation, all of the island’s inhabitants were subjected to the same political, as opposed to financial, measures. After Governor Storrs left the island, two more laws completed the repressive edifice: in June 1932 a law on censorship severely curtailed the freedom of newspapers to discuss ‘matters of public policy or general interest’; and in October 1932, a law forbade assemblies of more than five persons, without the prior authorization of the colonial authorities.6 Throughout the 1930s, the colonial administration in Cyprus sought to take over the control of spheres of social activity which hitherto had only been partially tampered with, like education or local administration (municipal councils, village authorities), or which had remained far beyond the government’s reach, such as the Greek-Orthodox Church. During the early years of British rule, these institutions had been thoroughly politicized, that is to say, their role within the community had been publicly and critically discussed, in the press, in the Legislative Council, at the village cafe´, with the result that alliances and factions emerged to impose their own understanding of their place and function in the society. Throughout the 1920s, these ‘public rational-critical debates’, according to the Habermasian expression, were being expressed in the press in two diverging nationalist idioms:7 Greek, and, from the mid-1920s onwards, Turkish. In the wake of the revolt, colonial policy focused on reversing this logic and depoliticizing these social institutions, namely, to settle, or congeal, once and for all, their purpose, meaning and functioning. This book explores the evolution of British colonial policy during the little-explored decade following the 1931 uprising. It argues that during those years, British policy was the paradoxical product of both a confident reformism and beleaguered mentality. It evinces how, from the viewpoint of the Cyprus government, the repression of nationalism served as a matrix for the creation of a new Cypriot polity, based on a symbiotic relation between a functional government and a stable, conflict-free society. The 1931 uprising

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offered the colonial administration, particularly under Sir Herbert Richmond Palmer (1933– 1939), a long-awaited opportunity to implement a colonial policy which would focus primarily on the ‘minds’ of the Cypriots and the relations they maintained with the space they inhabited. Colonial officials, availing themselves of their “human expertise”, did this not solely by disciplining and punishing, but also by seeking to persuade, inculcate loyalty locally and establish social transparency. In other words, their work became an exercise in social and political engineering. It goes without saying that Cypriot society was not an inert matter that could be shaped into any given form, nor did the Cyprus colonial government have totalitarian ambitions. It ‘merely’ sought to streamline social evolutions and Cypriot allegiances in order to keep them compatible with British interests and, in this, British policy in Cyprus was very much identical to British policy in any other part of the empire. The difference lay in the fact that the Cyprus government obtained, in the wake of the uprising, the means to this end in the form of an unusual degree of executive authority. Five main principles guided its endeavours to transform Cyprus into a depoliticized, British colony. In order to carry out the projected reforms, the colonial administration needed first of all to secure a certain level of autonomy with regard to the metropolitan authorities. Secondly, it had to remain simultaneously cohesive and ‘embedded’ in local society. This in turn presupposed a smooth cooperation between the different administrative departments and a constant interaction between colonial officials and Cypriots. This close contact with ‘locals’ would enable the colonial administration – and this is the third and perhaps most crucial principle – to control local (intra- and pan-Cypriot) solidarities and prevent the formation of island-wide movements. Regular and frequent interactions with Cypriots were also expected to cultivate their acquiescence, if not consent, to British rule. Finally, the island needed to remain internationally isolated, that is to say interferences from abroad – essentially on the part of Cypriot diasporas – were to be eliminated. A central argument in this study is that the nature and purpose of the colonial regime as it emerged in the aftermath of the 1931

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uprising were multifarious and far exceeded the calculations and expediency of the colonial administrators manning the colonial state. Nonetheless, the planned and thorough eradication of nationalism was one of the central goals relentlessly pursued in the 1930s. Colonial administrators worked hard to reverse the diffusion of nationalist ideas which had found efficient conductors in the institutions created by the Colonial Office in the early days of British rule. To better understand the direction of colonial policy in the 1930s, it is therefore necessary to briefly review the ways in which historiography has analyzed the interplay between British administrative institutions and local politics before October 1931.

Exploring the crystallization of mutually exclusive nationalisms in colonial Cyprus Because of the ongoing conflict between Greek and Turkish Cypriots, much of the historiography on Cyprus has been concerned with tracing the development of nationalism on the island. Many studies highlight the impact of British colonial rule (1878– 1960) on the crystallization of increasingly conflicting Greek and Turkish ethnic allegiances in Cyprus. Political scientist Adamantia Pollis was among the first to underscore the culture-defining capacity of British modern technologies of power.8 Pollis explains how, under the preceding Ottoman regime, Cypriots located themselves socially according to religion, class, kinship, patronage and locality. Through their instruments of rule – censuses, surveys, registers – the British collapsed fuzzy religious and linguistic differences and social hierarchies into three administrative categories: ‘Greek’, ‘Turkish’ and ‘Other’.9 On the basis of the census, they designed entirely segregated semi-democratic institutions (elected village authorities, municipal councils, a central Legislative Council and boards of education) to which Cypriots returned representatives according to their religion. These institutions were then exploited by the political leaders of the two main religious communities in their efforts to cultivate an ethnic sense of belonging among their coreligionists.10 Historian Paschalis Kitromilides shows how Greek Cypriot notables

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and schoolteachers, having received their higher education at the ‘national centre’ of Athens, availed themselves of the liberal policy characterizing the first years of British rule to promote Greek nationalism: Enosis thus became a fixture of debates and press articles covering the elections to the various representative bodies, from the village authorities to the Legislative Council and the municipalities. School curricula were modelled on those of mainland Greece to ‘socialis[e] [children] in Greek nationalist values’.11 Rolandos Katsiaounis and Rebecca Bryant have highlighted, each from a different perspective, the avenues through which the masses were involved in Cypriot politics. Focusing on the island’s labouring poor during the pivotal transition period from Ottoman to British rule, the work of the former highlights the political usage of financial leverage in rural Cyprus and the ambiguous role of patrons – the Orthodox Church and wealthy rural and urban moneylenders – as both protectors and oppressors. Class is thus put in balance with nationalism and formal colonial rule to shed light on how local clientelistic networks were marshalled within the framework of elections to the institutions (Legislative Council, municipalities) created by the British colonial authorities.12 Bryant is also concerned with the crucial passage from Ottoman to British rule and evinces how, with the abolition of official hierarchies by the British and the establishment of equality before the law, elite Orthodox and Muslim Cypriots began competing for power over their coreligionists within the new framework of electoral politics. In so doing, they elicited the participation of the masses, through the press or petition campaigns requiring the signatures of the ‘simple ones’. This newly created ‘public sphere’ incited otherwise unrelated Cypriots to perceive themselves as belonging to one of two mutually exclusive, imagined national communities, Greek and Turkish.13 For historians of late colonial Cyprus, the interwar period marks a turning point in the process of the consolidation of Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot nationalisms. In the 1920s, relations between Greek Cypriot political leaders and colonial authorities became more confrontational as the British government dashed the former’s hopes for Enosis by officially making Cyprus a Crown colony in 1925.

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Concurrently, a renovated Turkish nationalist movement modelled itself on the principles underpinning the Turkish Republic, established in 1923.14 In this context, historians portray the 1931 revolt, or Oktovriana as it became popularly known, as a true watershed, a pivotal moment between a liberal phase and an authoritarian phase of colonial rule.15 Hence, in reaction to post1931 colonial coercive measures, the argument goes, Greek Cypriot nationalists turned to increasingly radical alternatives to pursue Enosis, eventually resorting, in the 1950s, to a guerrilla warfare led by EOKA (Eunikή Orgάnvsi6 Kyprίvn Agvnistώn – National Organization of Cypriot Fighters); this in turn strengthened the position of the more radical Turkish Cypriot nationalists. This book is less concerned with this historiographical pattern as a whole, which it largely endorses, and more with one of its underlying premises, namely, the dramatization of the 1931 rupture. No doubt, the restrictive legislation implemented in the 1930s affected the daily lives of Cypriots: Aside from obviously politically repressive laws such as press censorship, the colonial state intermeddled with their most quotidian transactions. Indeed, the uprising provoked radical transformations for Cypriots. But did British colonial rule, as far as its objectives and methods are concerned, undergo that significant a change? The working hypothesis here is that ‘October 1931’ released the full potential of the colonial regime rather than fundamentally altering its nature. This is an invitation to shift the analysis beyond the tug-of-war between Cypriot nationalists and British colonial authorities and explore slower and less perceptible forces in the radicalization of local politics.

‘Disturbances’: the revolt and the colonial archive Testing our working hypothesis must require a re-examination of the available evidence, beginning with the reports on the October 1931 uprising. Two dispatches by Cyprus’ colonial governor, Sir Ronald Storrs, offer the official narrative of this revolt. The first one, dated 22 October 1931, enumerates the events which occurred the previous day, namely the storming and burning down of Government House

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in Nicosia. The second one is a highly detailed, 56-page document in 67 paragraphs accompanied by nine enclosures and a map. Dated 11 February 1932, namely four months after the last demonstration on the island, it aimed at the same time to offer a panoramic description of the various theatres of the revolt and a demonstration of its immediate and long-term causes. For years, Storrs explained, the unabated agitation of Greek Cypriot political leaders, who in his words, were a minority of ‘town-bred advocates, priests and schoolmasters’, availed themselves of the trappings of democracy Britain had granted Cyprus – a free press and elections of the village, municipal and legislative councils – to cultivate the cause of Enosis. They would stop at nothing to further their goals and were no foreigners to ‘mob violence’ against their rivals: in the past, they had ‘persuaded large bodies of the riff-raff in the towns to attack the [increasingly influential] communists’. But most of their efforts focused on campaigning and canvassing villages and towns. In villages, they exploited ‘the deterioration of economic conditions and rustic ignorance’ while in towns: [f]resh generations of youth sedulously indoctrinated with disloyalty had been launched by the secondary schools (. . .) on all the professions; and, outside the Government service and the realm of Government influence and activity, every branch of public life in the Orthodox community was in some way allied to the cause of Union. Athletic and social clubs in particular were identified with the movement. The boy scout organization (. . .) was subjected to it. Ceremonies of a quasi-martial nature staged by an “ex-service” association of a few Cypriots who have fought in the Greek [1912– 1913 Balkan] wars excited fervour not only among the students but the people generally, to whom the realities of any kind of military service were quite unknown. And yet Storrs was adamant that the uprising did not reflect any widespread commitment to Enosis among the Orthodox inhabitants of the island:

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The ground for disturbance was prepared by the leaders of the Union movement in the hope that the occurrence of generalized demonstrations would advance the cause of Union by means of publicity. Demonstrations occurred, but rapidly degenerated into orgies of criminal violence on the part of mobs and malefactors over which the Union movement had no control. The destructive crowds were largely composed of roughs and students. The majority of respectable citizens either kept out of the way or, in order to avoid the stigma of disloyalty, cheered for Union. It is indeed in this stigma of disloyalty that the strength of the Union movement chiefly resides.16 In spite of the high level of destruction and violence, there glimmered hopes for a different future. The governor tried to find some solace in the fact that the Turkish-speaking Cypriots, constituting the island’s second largest religious group, and the island’s smaller minorities (Armenians, Maronites, Catholics), did not partake in any way in the disturbances. He also noted that ‘emotion’ of a more or less destructive nature had been witnessed ‘only’ in 209 of the island’s 598 Greek Cypriot, and mixed Greek and Turkish Cypriot villages. Expurgated of short passages considered as potentially compromising, Storrs’ 11 February 1932 dispatch was published as a ‘Command Paper’, thereby becoming, for the British public, the definitive account of the October 1931 uprising. The primary function of this colonial reading of the revolt was to exonerate, as much as possible, the administration of any direct responsibility for the events. The dispatches are thus structured according to a binary scheme that pitted insurgent, mindless violence against official professionalism. Moreover, the use of the term ‘disturbances’ to refer to the uprising is characteristic of official euphemisms designed to reassure the metropolitan government – and, beyond, the British public – that the local administration remained in control throughout the events. But Storrs’ dispatches and, moreover, the language they employed, served a number of additional purposes. In a perfect illustration of what Ranajit Guha has called the ‘prose of counterinsurgency’, the whole rhetorical

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construction in these dispatches rested on a complete denial of the agency of the masses in the events.17 Villagers who participated in the uprising allegedly did so because they were gullible or economically deprived but never because of political convictions. For the most part, villagers were ‘respectable citizens’ who needed to be distinguished from political leaders, who were themselves likened to ‘criminals’, ‘malefactors’ and ‘mobs’. Storrs made no attempt to interpret the meaning of actions motivated by non-nationalist politics such as salt robbery (salt was a state monopoly) or the destruction of forest stations and tree-planting areas (a recurrent matter of dispute between shepherds and the government). Instead, the divisive language employed treated any political upheaval as a crime and expressed a consuming apprehension of ‘crowds’. It served to detect adversaries (the fanaticized Greek Cypriot elite and their delinquent underlings), identify potential allies (the villagers), justify the restriction of liberties for all and map out areas of government intervention (in education and the economy). Crafted in such a way as to highlight a problem without raising panic, Storrs’ dispatches offer a gripping narrative and exude a fascinating instantaneousness: the events they describe, which were, as Robert Holland reminds us, ‘the most humiliating blow sustained by the British in any of their Crown Colonies in the years between the two world wars’, captures the historian’s attention.18 But a closer inspection of the phraseology employed in the documents shows how consistent it is with the body of official colonial writing on Cyprus since the island came under British rule in 1878. Indeed, the impressions on Cypriot society and politics conveyed in Storrs’ dispatches and the social dichotomies they outlined were not original. Hence, the depiction of artless but fundamentally loyal peasants falling prey to the manipulations of self-serving moneylenders bent on Enosis is a standard rhetorical figure in the colonial correspondence on Cyprus. One example among many includes a 1917 remark by one of Storrs’ predecessors, Sir John Eugene Clauson, who wrote how entertained he felt being ‘head down against all usurers’.19 In fact, this Manichean and morally-laden division between a politically intriguing elite and a largely apolitical

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peasantry was and still is a very solid trope in the sociology developed by any nondemocratic state, and a recurrent one in European colonial writings, official and nonofficial.20 Such impressions then, which were decisive in shaping colonial policy, can hardly be attributed to a single governor and the expression Storrs’ dispatches is only useful as a figure of speech. What changed in the aftermath of the revolt was more the overall tone in which officials addressed these questions, as Clauson’s bemused contempt gave way to a more alarmist vision of politics. The discursive continuity between pre- and post-1931 colonial writings is not surprising. The language employed in these documents emerged at the confluence of a century-long British bureaucratic tradition of colonial governance and experience with Cypriot politics.21 Drafting an official dispatch was an operation in which more than one Cyprus colonial official was involved and the ultimate stage of a process whereby incoming information was subjected to prioritizing, advising and cross-referencing to older policy papers. Every official dispatch drew on the administration’s ‘memory’, rearranged and reshuffled available data as well as a stock set of concepts and shared methods to carve a policy orientation. In turn, every new dispatch contributed to the reinforcing of the colonial state’s sociology, ethnography but also, in the Barthesian sense of the word, ideology. Roland Barthes thus brought to light the linguistic processes and signs through which ‘the bourgeoisie convert [ed] its historical class-culture into universal nature’.22 Similar normative processes were at work in the official colonial discourse on Cyprus. But the point here is that the very staleness of that language was crucial to the survival of the colonial state: by simplifying social transformations, it rationalized them and facilitated government action. Awareness of this administrative inertia enables us to comprehend processes working both parallel to but less perceptibly than the notorious political disputes between rulers and ruled in the shaping of colonial policy. Unearthing these processes requires adopting a composite approach to archival records that not only focuses on content, namely the reported events, but also on the terminology

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used in the documents and the trajectories of the files through the sinews of the administration: this methodology has been applied throughout the book and more discernibly in Chapter Four. Indeed, policy papers are not merely or even primarily repositories of objective facts whose alleged erroneous colonial interpretation awaits redressing by the historian. They are first and foremost decisions, not only of a specific course of action but of what to forget and of what and how to remember it and why. An approach to archives that would not only be extractive – namely, concerned with the information they report – should also focus on what different official documents are designed to do and the regime of legitimacy they appeal to. Colonial archives are an adaptable combination of purpose and, to quote Ann Laura Stoler, ‘bureaucratic shuffles of rote formulas, generic plots and prescriptive asides’.23 Whatever ‘truth’ they aspire to and knowledge they aim to collect was always intended to serve an administrative and political purpose, including that, however paradoxical this may seem, of not doing anything about a specific question, or, in other words, ‘shelving’ it. Before proceeding with our investigation of colonial rule in the 1930s, it is therefore necessary to reread the historical narrative of early British colonial rule in Cyprus bearing in mind this other, slower and less reactive temporality at work in the administrative machinery.

Beyond politics: the expansionary logic of the colonial state Early British writings on Cyprus tend to present late Ottoman Cyprus as being on a path of irreversible economic and moral decay, administrative incompetence and corruption, widespread illiteracy and superstition.24 Meant to justify the British takeover of the island from the Ottomans in 1878, this Orientalist trope has wormed itself into the historiography of colonial Cyprus, perhaps because it allowed an overdramatization of the transition from Ottoman to British rule and its induced political changes, particularly in the matter of intercommunal relations.25 While this premise often relies on reified and sometimes caricatural understandings of ‘Ottoman’ as opposed to ‘British’ rule, some changes brought by the latter were

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bound to be socially far reaching, though often at a much slower pace than what is commonly assumed.26 It should be noted that owing to the specific circumstances under which the British took over the administration of Cyprus, these changes did not result from any colonial development policy. Indeed Cyprus’ budget was burdened by the so-called ‘Tribute’, namely a sum of money, initially meant to be a lease payment – deducted from the island’s fiscal receipts minus the budgetary expenses – Britain committed to pay the Ottoman Empire in 1878 in exchange for the right to occupy the island. This Tribute was secretly commuted in 1881 into a ‘Cypriot contribution’ to the debt the Ottoman government had contracted with British bondholders during the Crimean War (1854–1856). By the time it was abolished in 1927, Cyprus had paid Britain an astronomical amount of over £2.6 million. Scholars have shown how damaging the Tribute was for the relations between Cypriots and Britain. Some of them have also noted that colonial administrators themselves criticized it for the political difficulties it created for them.27 The Tribute was indeed a major hindrance to the development of the colonial state, so that the work of administrators was confined to the thankless tasks of collecting taxes, policing the island and delivering justice. Cyprus’ budget was so exiguous that when the Tribute was commuted to an annual, £10,000 Cypriot contribution to Imperial defence in 1927, Storrs was able to use the released funds to completely revamp the administration’s health and agricultural departments.28 The changes that most greatly affected Cypriot society derived from the reorganization of the administrative, judicial and political institutions. As mentioned earlier, much of the available literature on colonial Cyprus has analyzed the impact of British rule on the politicization of the island, through the introduction of the elective principle, the liberalization of a free press and the incentives given to education. It has often been noted that these democratic trappings granted by the metropolitan government from 1882 onwards not only failed to satisfy Cypriot political leaders but were also deeply resented by the ‘men on the spot’. Indeed, for colonial administrators, the Legislative Council in particular became the epitome of a

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dysfunctional government. The council was composed of a majority of elected ‘Non-Mohammedan’ representatives, a minority of elected ‘Mohammedan’ representatives, and a number of appointed British colonial officials in proportions supposed to reflect the island’s demographics. Practically, however, the numbers of Muslim and official members was calculated in such a way as to function as a blocking majority against Orthodox representatives who, as a rule, voted against government initiatives. Echoing many of his predecessors, Storrs considered the fact that the administration needed to rely on Muslim representatives – who on occasion had voted with Christians against the government – to pass laws an ‘exasperating and humiliating nuisance’.29 Some historians rightly point out that the administrators’ annoyance regarding the Legislative Council stemmed from the fact that Greek Cypriot political leaders increasingly used it as a platform to promote Enosis, with renewed vigour in the 1920s.30 But the suggestion may be advanced that whatever use Cypriots might have made of the semidemocratic institutions, it was their very existence that frustrated colonial administrators for two interrelated reasons: it ran against their professional ethos and constituted an obstacle to the development of the colonial state which tended, through the very logic of its functioning, to assume an increasing amount of responsibilities. These two points will be elaborated consecutively. The metropolitan government could afford to dissert, in an aloof and noncommittal way, on how Cypriots’ ‘Europeanness’ entitled them to liberal institutions. But for colonial administrators in Cyprus, their subjects’ culture was no inconsequential academic debate. Indeed, Greek Cypriot nationalists professed a filiation with ancient Greece, acknowledged by British officials, steeped in classical humanities, as the cradle of their own civilization.31 Hence recognizing the Greekness claimed by many Cypriots entailed for colonial administrators the risk of tacitly conceding the illegitimacy of their very presence in Cyprus as colonial rule drew its ethical justification in the presumed asymmetry between civilizations. Although British colonial administrators in Cyprus were never very consistent in their attempts to ‘orientalize’ the Cypriots, they would

16

CYPRUS IN THE 1930S

not, at least officially, refer to them as freely as their counterparts at the Colonial Office as being of ‘Greek descent’.32 Admirably capturing this uneasiness are the personal memoirs of Sir Charles Belcher, chief justice of Cyprus from 1927 to 1930, whose views his colleagues could easily endorse: Nobody knows the origins of the Cypriot so far as the Christian part of the populace goes. They speak a dialect of Greek, but you no more draw racial conclusions from that than you can from American negroes speaking English. They are darkercomplexioned than the mainland Greeks, and almost certainly have a large admixture of Asiatic blood, perhaps from the semifabulous Phoenicians. And yet they are in part European: nobody who has seen the beauty of Cypriot youth in both sexes between fourteen and twenty could doubt that for a moment. By contrast, Belcher saw in Turkish Cypriots the ‘descendants of the Turkish invaders of the 16th century’ who had ‘preserved among themselves the Turkish language and the religion of Islam’.33 Acknowledging the ‘Turkishness’ of Muslim Cypriots located them beyond the pale of ‘Europeanness’ and was therefore conceptually not incompatible with colonial rule. Aside from these ideological and political concerns, there were also reasons of a more sociological nature behind colonial administrators’ opposition to Cypriot claims for representative institutions. Hailing from the middle class or the rural gentry, their education at public schools and Oxbridge and their recruitment by the Colonial Office on account of their ‘character’ and ‘leadership’ had ingrained in colonial administrators an unwavering and authoritarian conviction of where the ‘natives’ true interests lay and of how to better serve them.34 The idea that they could be accountable to their colonial subjects was something they not only considered impolitic but altogether absurd. Faced with growing opposition and resistance sometimes federated under the banner of nationalism, British administrators chose to avoid, as much possible, to submit their initiatives to public debate. In the battery of legislative measures, the governor’s decree, in the

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17

form of ‘order-in-council’ or ‘order’, acquired increased importance (as can be seen in Table 1.1) at the expense of the ‘law’, which was submitted to Legislative Council scrutiny. Compounding the administrators’ trained authoritarianism was the administrative machinery itself. The Cyprus government in the 1930s, like all British administrations across the empire, was run through a bureaucracy, on principles of efficiency and detached professionalism.35 As Hannah Arendt noted, in colonial settings bureaucracies construed themselves as the embodiment of superior civilizational forces; the aloofness or, in the words of Michael Herzfeld, ‘transcendence’ characterizing their activity was premised on the fact that the latter could not be influenced by stimuli from a backward society.36 Hence, much of the Cyprus government’s activity was induced through inertia, as colonial administrators sought to improve, attune and adjust the instruments of rule according to their own understanding of the island’s needs, a process which led to a proliferation of government activities. This, along with the training of its cadre, made it an expansionist organization. The rationales at work in the administration’s day-to-day business were multiple and complex, braiding political calculation, cultural prejudice, the rationalization of expenses and the improvement of overall ‘efficiency’. In progressively transforming the Evkaf, a pious Table 1.1

Comparative evolution of colonial legislation, 1880– 1931.

OrdersLaws Proclamations In-Council Orders 1880 1890 1907 1911 1920 1925 1929 1931

11 18 13 8 28 22 13 21

26 38 6 6 20 20 12 12

10 16 12 19 18 56 64 65

0 0 0 0 23 11 19 10

Total number of legislative measures 47 72 31 33 89 109 108 108

Source: Cyprus Blue Book of Statistics, 1880, 1890, 1907, 1911, 1920, 1925, 1929, 1931, CO 456.

18

CYPRUS IN THE 1930S

Muslim foundation dating from Ottoman times that managed estates for charitable purposes, into a government department in 1915 and 1928, British administrators were equally motivated by political purpose, controlling a central social institution in the Turkish Cypriot community, and administrative rationalization, absorbing a communal body considered to be mismanaged by locals.37 Throughout the 1920s, the colonial government adopted measures which were less and less aimed at the island’s population taken as a whole, and more and more at groups better defined within the main Cypriot communities: schoolteachers, local policemen and farmers. Although it infringed on an increasing number of communal prerogatives and, therefore, exacerbated the divisions within the communities, the development of the colonial state’s activity was a self-sustaining process. In this context, the October 1931 revolt constituted an auspicious event as it enabled the removal of the last obstacles in the colonial state’s expansion, promoting at the same time the role of colonial administrators.

Freeing the administration’s expansionist forces: the revolt as an auspicious event The numerous references in Storrs’ dispatches to the frequent ‘antiBritish invective’ and ‘abuse of Government’ by Cypriot political leaders before the events bespeak a certain helplessness on the part of the local administration that believed it was deprived of the legal means to clamp down on ‘agitation’. By contrast, the repressive measures and emergency legislation that were passed by the Cyprus government and authorized by the Colonial Office in the immediate aftermath of the uprising laid the foundations of what in the governor’s opinion constituted the most appropriate form of government for Cyprus: ‘I conceived that strong, confident government should succeed the regime of apprehension as soon as possible and that extraordinary powers of a wide and, if necessary, permanent character should be immediately acquired’.38 In his 1937 memoirs, the disgraced governor expressed regret that such latitude of action had not been given him early enough to prevent the riots:

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19

Kullu haraka fi-ha baraka, says the Egyptian proverb; “all agitation brings some compensation”. The baraka for the future government of Cyprus was clear enough. [. . .] As it is, future Governors will benefit, solely because of the disturbances, by all – and more than all – the safeguards for which I through five years of peaceful development had vainly petitioned. The Greek Consul was expelled. The Legislative Council was abolished. The troops were brought to Nicosia. The doctrine of Enosis was proclaimed illegal. The Union Jack is no longer obscured by foreign flags, and church bells ring for their lawful purposes.39 The revolt then, Storrs seemed to assert, had opened the eyes of Colonial Office officials at Downing Street to a situation which he had correctly assessed and against which he had repeatedly, but ‘vainly’, issued warnings. The denunciation of metropolitan oversight of the way ‘men on the spot’ did their job is a recurrent trope in the writings of colonial administrators.40 Hence Belcher, who made no secret of his contempt for Storrs or, indeed, for the Cypriots, also deplored ‘the real control being exercised by Downing Street [the Colonial Office], by men who despite their occasional rush trips to the colony in the pleasant season are wholly ignorant of local conditions and local politics.’41 In apportioning part of the blame for the revolt to the Colonial Office, Storrs and his successors thus negotiated the local administration’s future independence from further metropolitan interference. In other words, they sought to turn the logic of imputation of responsibilities for the 1931 revolt against the metropolitan government and promote anew their own role by advancing their ‘human expertise’, their intimate knowledge of local conditions and of the Cypriots’ genuine, if unconscious, needs. The uprising and Storrs’ account of it were surely instrumental in that they granted colonial authorities the opportunity to do away with all the remaining obstacles to the administration’s full development. Prefiguring British policy on the island and setting a new discursive framework, their impact on policymaking would be considerable, as Storrs’ successors saw in the events both the spectre of professional infamy and a blank check for the implementation of new,

20

CYPRUS IN THE 1930S

far-reaching measures. The innovative aspect in Storrs’ dispatches lay perhaps in the sense of urgency they conveyed and the readiness of the Colonial Office in London to take a more proactive stance as far as Cypriot affairs were concerned. In post-1931 Cyprus, colonial administrators found very accommodating interlocutors at the Colonial Office, particularly in the persons of the two officials who successively served as heads of the Pacific and Mediterranean department in the 1930s: Arthur James Dawe, who took over in 1936, and A.B. Acheson, who succeeded him in 1938.42 In 1933, Dawe went as far as to write that the 1931 revolt had been a ‘godsend’ as it pushed the colonial authorities into abolishing a constitution long considered defective; a godsend, what is more, reinforced by the timely condemnation of the revolt by Greece’s prime minister, Eleftherios Venizelos.43 This convergence of views between London and Nicosia materialized around the November – December 1931 debate on the desirability or not to send a royal commission of inquiry to Cyprus to investigate the causes of the rebellion. Not wanting to appear to be critical of the governor in a time of crisis, the British government shelved the idea. It was believed in the Colonial Office that ‘[t]he appointment of a Commission would no doubt greatly encourage the Cypriots of Greek race in Cyprus and elsewhere to continue their agitation in the hope of obtaining concessions’.44 This statement epitomized a new colonial obsession about not appearing ‘weak’. In the 1930s, whenever Cypriot claims for the restoration of a representative constitution were discussed in official circles, the standard observation was that before the uprising, ‘concession [had] been misinterpreted as weakness on the part of the Imperial government and the secretary of state for the colonies had therefore decided against making similar concessions in the future’.45 There were reasons outside of Cyprus behind this sudden need to display firmness: the civil war in Spain from 1936 onwards and its unpredictable impact on the British fortress colony of Gibraltar; Mussolini’s invasion of Abyssinia in 1935– 1936 and the consequent expulsion of anti-British Italians from Malta; and finally the rapidly deteriorating situation in Palestine, a British mandate, reaching its

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climax with the Arab revolt (Thawra) of 1936–1939 against the immigration of Jews.46 This context generated among British official circles a feeling of imminent threat on Britain’s Mediterranean interests and an ‘image of weakness in the face of a hostile environment pervaded the appreciations and advice of the chiefs of staff’.47 Expressively summing up the state of the ‘official mind’ in those years, Dawe wrote of the Palestinians, Jews, Maltese, and Cypriots in 1936: The people are excessively addicted to scandal and intrigue. They are always ready to throb with hysteria about petty politics and in the political sphere are much more destructive than constructive. The Romans before us found them a stiffnecked, hot-headed lot, subtle and difficult to govern.48 In other words, these ‘unruly races’ called for an iron-fisted government. When devising their policies for Cyprus, the conceptual framework of colonial authorities was both that of the British Empire but also of the Mediterranean. Historians have often treated colonial Cyprus as a sui generis case, neglecting its imperial milieu. As will be shown in Chapter Two, during the 1930s British colonial authorities looked towards the Italian-ruled Dodecanese for cues on how to rule a mainly Greek-Orthodox, Mediterranean colony.

The colonial state: a tale of shifting boundaries Based on the case of Cyprus, this book aims to contribute to a larger discussion on the colonial state. Understandings of this notion have moved beyond erstwhile dry legalistic approaches interpreting the colonial state as set of institutions formally embodying the power imposed on a population and its territory by a foreign government.49 In the wake of Bernard S. Cohn’s work, historians and anthropologists underscored the central role of colonial states’ intelligence-gathering mechanisms. The information thus collected served to create highly performative instruments of rule such as censuses which, at the same time as they aspired to describe colonial subjects, conditioned their interactions with the administration and

22

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with one another.50 This is, as some scholars have noted, a highly suggestive perspective highlighting a crucial dimension of the colonial state, but one which leaves little room for other agents participating in the elaboration of colonial subjects’ selfunderstandings.51 As Christopher Bayly noted, by the end of the nineteenth century, a whole range of institutions ‘spoke the language of the state’, ‘counted, catalogued and kept records’, with similar consequences on social behaviour.52 As Chapter Five of this book argues, the Greek-Orthodox Church played precisely such a role in Cyprus. Although normative definitions of the colonial state are rightly shunned because of the dangers of reification they imply, the absence of any working notion of the concept can be just as analytically paralyzing. This can be illustrated using a double set of paradoxes. Identical methodological premises or ethical-political positions may lead to diametrically opposed interpretations; conversely, diametrically opposed methodological premises or ethical-political positions may lead to identical interpretations. Thus, studies aiming at underscoring the culturally destructive potentialities of the colonial state attribute to the latter a power just as absolute as analyses which, by contrast, illustrate the developmental virtues of the colonial state’s structures and administrative organization.53 Conversely, the methodological premise of a ‘weak’ state is equally shared by, on the one hand, analyses seeking to restore agency to colonized peoples and, on the other, analyses (stemming from a completely different ethical-political horizon) seeking to minimize the destructive impact of colonial rule.54 This book offers a conceptual approach to the colonial state through an analysis of its shifting boundaries. Thus, it argues that the policy pursued by British colonial administrators in Cyprus amounted to a redefinition and consolidation of the colonial state’s ‘boundaries’. These were meant to be locally expanded and outwardly retracted and consolidated. Namely, British colonial administrators attempted to ward off external – foreign or even metropolitan – interferences in the administration’s policymaking and, therefore, consolidate the colonial state’s ‘external’ frontiers; at the same time they sought to

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increase government intervention within the local society, and thereby expand its local boundary.55 Organized chronologically and thematically, the chapters in this book will therefore investigate the political impact of colonial rule in Cyprus in the 1930s, not only from the narrow perspective of policy but also from the perspective of more structural transformations in the colonial administration, from the decision-making process to the rituals of bureaucratic governance and intelligence-gathering practices. Chapter Two examines the policies enacted by the colonial government after the 1931 revolt in the fields of decentralization, education and development. It argues that these were part of a policy of social engineering intended to alter the way Cypriots perceived themselves and their relations with the space they inhabited. Providing a close analysis of the professional and social environment, as well as the daily rituals, of colonial civil servants, Cypriot and British, Chapter Three explores the colonial state ‘from within’. It contends that the patterns of estrangement characterizing its functioning played a significant part in disrupting vital information flows on the island. The consequence of this discrepancy between ambitious goals (social engineering) and imperfect implementation (dysfunctional colonial state) are investigated in the book’s last three chapters. Chapter Four follows the initiatives of Cypriot political leaders to reverse the existing constitutional order. Highlighting how the rural masses were involved in the political campaign through a vast petition movement, it also reveals the problems in colonial information-gathering practices. Chapter Five focuses on the vexed question of the archiepiscopal election from 1933 onwards, and pieces together the reconstitution of a Greek Cypriot, essentially nationalist, public sphere around the issue. Finally, Chapter Six is an account of the ‘labour question’ in Cyprus and suggests that despite colonial opposition, trade unionists in Cyprus constructed a pugnacious labour movement with its own alternative vision of Cyprus as a polity. These threads are brought together in the conclusion, which offers an assessment of the ideological polarization of Cyprus’ political landscape between nationalist right and the communist left mapped out in Chapters Five and Six, and of its impact on the ongoing Cyprus conflict.

CHAPTER 2 THE THREE PILLARS OF ARCADIAN CYPRUS: EXPERIMENTS IN SOCIAL ENGINEERING

Arcadia is a fecund topos in Western iconography and literature of pastoral prose and poetry. It is meant to evoke a ‘rolling, verdant landscape [...] populated by sociable shepherds and studded with purling brooks and enamelled meads’.1 This image, particularly during the Renaissance and after, became associated with a utopian polity, an ideal society ruled by the ‘four necessary virtues’ – justice, prudence, fortitude and temperance – and characterized by the ‘peace and political stability of the land [and] the harmonic, well-tempered stability of the Arcadians’.2 This chapter argues that when they imagined post-1931 Cyprus, the colonial authorities had something like Arcadia in mind. From the smouldering ashes of October 1931, the Cyprus government sought to build a polity where Cypriots would abandon the misleading lure of ‘politics’ in favour of ‘public spirit’. The would-be architect of this Arcadia was Sir Richmond Palmer, a controversial, authoritarian governor who ruled the island for most of the decade (1933–1939). Though the measures enacted in the immediate aftermath of the uprising were meant to eradicate the demand for Enosis, Palmer’s ambitions went much further. His

THE THREE PILLARS OF ARCADIAN CYPRUS

25

administration sought nothing short of turning Cypriots into British subjects in the full sense of the term. In other words, the main reforms implemented by this governor and his administration during the decade sought to directly influence the mindset of Cypriots, the relations they maintained with the space they inhabited, the identity they claimed for themselves or the way they associated with one another. This was to be achieved through three policies. Decentralization, i.e, the empowerment of both British district commissioners and the nominated local (municipal and village) authorities in order to depoliticize the island’s communities by fragmenting integrative pan-Cypriot political ideologies such as Enosis and substituting them with a narrow, local civic commitment. The reform of elementary and secondary education was meant to break the ideological and institutional links binding Cypriots to either Greece or Turkey and foster a Cypriot sense of belonging. Finally, the development of agriculture and the improvement of the agriculturalists’ financial situation aimed to secure the independence of peasants from moneylenders. In contrast to the disjointed initiatives in pre-1931 Cyprus, these three policies were enmeshed in the ‘official mind’, thereby constituting a form of social engineering.3

Blueprints for ‘social engineering’ As D.A. Low reminds us, ‘social engineering’ was always a background temptation and an ongoing debate in the British Empire, famously exemplified in Macaulay’s theses on the desirability to sow the seeds of western civilization in India.4 These were not only academic debates: hence in 1833, the Colebrooke – Cameron commission for Ceylon recommended far-reaching policies, addressing simultaneously constitutional, economic and social issues.5 In the case of Cyprus, colonial authorities relied heavily on three major texts for the general policymaking framework during the 1930s: the Survey of Rural Life in Cyprus, prepared in 1930 by Larnaca district commissioner Brewster Joseph Surridge, the 1933 Memorandum by Sir E. Stubbs, and Sir Ralph Oakden’s Report on the Finances and Economic Resources of Cyprus, published in 1935.

26

CYPRUS IN THE 1930S

The Survey of Rural Life in Cyprus was the product of an extensive, two-year socioeconomic research project coordinated by Surridge, who sent close to 30 investigators, government officials, retired officials and Cypriot lawyers and merchants to 569 of the island’s 641 villages to interview the people. Surridge’s report was much more than a mere compilation of statistics and figures; one might indeed view it as the first comprehensive ethnographic survey of the island. It addressed such diverse issues as housing conditions, local customs, the influence of traditional authorities such as the village Orthodox priest or the Muslim hoca and, more broadly, power relations within the village; it explored the centres of rural sociability such as the village coffee-shop, this incontrovertible node structuring both the political and economic life of the village.6 The Survey presented a grim picture of the peasantry’s living conditions. This agricultural world, constituting the overwhelming majority of the island’s population, was crippled with debt: 82 per cent of Cyprus’ 59,175 peasant-proprietors were indebted to moneylenders, who were urban merchants, lawyers or other rural farmers. Aside from indebtedness, part of the peasants’ plight derived from existing inheritance laws according to which ‘all property transmitted at the death of the owner should be divided equally among the heirs, sons as well as daughters’.7 As a result, peasants possessed on average a holding of 1.77 acres, scattered over a wide area, and sometimes barely suitable for subsistence agriculture. The Survey’s main recommendation to relieve peasant poverty and economic precariousness was for the administration to assume a more coherent and concerted role in the development of the cooperative and cooperative credit society system, as well as to reform the Agricultural Bank in order to bolster the financial autonomy of cultivators. While Sir Ralph Oakden’s Report on the Finances and Economic Resources of Cyprus dealt more extensively with the colonial administration rather than the local society, it confirmed Surridge’s finding of a social divide caused by money lending. Oakden, a retired Indian Civil Service official and a former senior member of the Board of Revenue in Lucknow, was appointed Financial Commissioner for Cyprus by the secretary of state for the colonies in March 1934 and

THE THREE PILLARS OF ARCADIAN CYPRUS

27

was assigned a seemingly paradoxical task: he was to suggest ways to curb the colonial administration’s expenditure in every possible way while, at the same time, proposing the most cost-effective, government-sponsored financial, legislative and institutional incentives in order to stimulate the local economy. Oakden spent little over four months on the island, visiting the headquarters of the administrative and technical departments (secretariat, health, agriculture, police, education, forestry, etc.) as well as the rural areas, where he met cultivators and members of the cooperative societies.8 Oakden extensively reviewed the administration’s sources of revenue, which amounted to £767,865 in 1934.9 The most important of these were the customs on import duties, accounting for a total of 41.1 per cent. Additional sources of revenue included port, harbour and wharfage dues; excise duties (on salt, which was a government monopoly since Ottoman times, and tobacco) accounting for roughly 15.5 per cent of the total revenue; animal taxes (on goats, those on pigs and sheep having been abolished in 1934); immoveable property tax (the vergi kimat, the island’s main direct tax, which was four per thousand on the assessed capital value of immoveable property; and the defter hakani, namely the fees collected by the officers of the land registry department in connection with certain land transactions); plus some additional municipal and local taxes. Oakden believed that the incidence of taxation was not entirely fair and suggested the introduction of a system, in the long term, whereby each village would dispose of its own budget and decide, according to the local situation, on the level of taxes to be levied in view of specific expenses such as the remuneration of rural constables, maintenance of schools, public health services, loan charges, etc. Oakden also thoroughly analyzed the general expenditure of the Cyprus government, the main elements of which are reproduced in Table 2.1 for general reference. He criticized the heavily bureaucratized management of the treasury department, the disproportionate size – with regard to the island’s needs – of the justice department, which maintained a supreme court of five judges,

59,463 27,256 8,017 29,347 17,055 8,148 10,260 23,083

Education Pensions District Administration Health Agriculture Public Works Public Debt Public Works Annually Recurrent

Source: Oakden, Report, p. 28.

1924 11.09 5 1.5 5.4 3.2 1.5 1.9 4.3

% of total 12,2001 50,801 13,471 50,422 32,094 15,793 24,723 34,398

1934

Comparative expenditure (key departments), 1924 and 1934.

Department

Table 2.1 17.3 7.2 1.9 7.2 4.5 2.2 3.5 4.8

% of total 62,538 23,545 5,454 21,075 15,039 7,645 14,463 11,315

Actual increase

105.2 86.9 68 71.8 88 93.8 140.9 49

% increase

28 CYPRUS IN THE 1930S

THE THREE PILLARS OF ARCADIAN CYPRUS

29

the compartmentalization into too many offices of the land registry department, and the incompetence of subordinate (Cypriot) medical officers. But his most scathing criticisms he reserved for the forestry department because of the virtually open war forest officials waged on goat herders and cultivators engaged in felling or clearing.10 Forest officers systematically sued or fined offenders, much to the embarrassment of the administration. The document that Oakden produced at the end of his mission signalled a clear intention to bolster the government’s ‘initiative in the matter of development’, opening an era of state activity, particularly in the domain of agriculture.11 The Report thus called for the appointment by law of special, extra-legal courts or committees to investigate cases of rural indebtedness and impose arbitration on the creditor and the debtor; it further suggested the transformation of the existing Agricultural Bank into a state bank as a constitutive part of the colonial administration’s treasury department and its disentanglement from the cooperative credit societies. Here again, as in Surridge’s Survey, which is mentioned oftentimes in the Report, the intent to establish state-control over money-lending is conspicuous. The Memorandum by Sir. E. Stubbs was an entirely different document. Completed on 16 October 1933 by Governor Stubbs (1932– 1933), it was a review of Cyprus’ constitutional situation following the abolition of the Legislative Council in 1931 and was intended for internal circulation only and, more specifically, addressed to his successor.12 ‘I know of no community’, Stubbs wrote, ‘which is so utterly unfit to take any responsible part in the Government of its native country as is that of Cyprus.’ Cypriots had to go through a ‘considerable period of training in western civilization’ before any kind of representative government could be reintroduced. An essential starting point for this training was, logically enough, the reform of secondary education, by which he meant ‘the introduction of an English atmosphere’. Within this newly defined authoritarian regime, the only possibility Stubbs envisaged for Cypriot participation in the administration of the country was through the establishment of an advisory council

30

CYPRUS IN THE 1930S

composed of British official and Cypriot unofficial members, all ‘nominated by the Governor and approved by the King’. Beyond its policy recommendations, Stubbs’ Memorandum also set the tone for how Cyprus was thenceforth to be ruled or, in other words, the discursive framework of the regime; it introduced new, or simply ossified old, colonial categories, discriminating between the ‘respectable’ or ‘better-class Cypriots’ as opposed to the self-serving ‘demagogues’; it reinstated and officialized the representation of Cypriots as ‘Orientals’ or ‘Asiatics’ which, in turn, served only to buttress their alleged political inaptitude. Unsurprisingly, the term ‘Greek’ was to be banned from official correspondence when referring to Greek Cypriots (‘these bogus Greeks’, as Governor Stubbs colourfully put it), favouring instead that of ‘Orthodox-Christians’.13 Each of these documents was designed for its own purposes; yet not only did they cross-reference, but they also defined common fields of action, illustrated a common concern for the administration’s perception by the local society, its legitimacy and, last but not least, offered a reading grid of Cypriot society that functioned on simple dichotomies that juxtaposed the hard-working and politically unconscious (and therefore loyal) peasant to the parasitic and politically minded (and therefore disloyal) urban professional (moneylender or merchant). Taken together, they offered an apparently simple and straightforward policy framework. Governors focused on the overlapping passages of these three documents, ignoring more subtle statements qualifying the above-mentioned dichotomy, such as warnings not to consider all debtors as ‘deluded simpletons at the mercy of unscrupulous townsmen’.14 In a decade brimming with ideas on social engineering in Europe, the three documents legitimized the implementation of thorough reforms aimed at influencing the Cypriots’ mindsets as well as the general economic context. In the aftermath of the 1931 revolt, the local society, deprived of its means of public and collective resistance, was now a cleared ground for the experimentations of one governor in particular, Sir Richmond Palmer.15

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31

‘Authoritarianism’ in context Palmer assumed his governorship on 21 December 1933, at the age of 56. A lawyer by training (Middle Temple, 1904), he had previously spent most of his colonial career in the northern provinces of Nigeria (1904– 1930), where he reached the position of lieutenant-governor (1923) before assuming the governorship of the Gambia in 1929. During his term in Nigeria, he had the opportunity to work under Lord Frederick Lugard, one of the most distinguished colonial administrators of his time and the acclaimed author of The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa, which became the landmark treaty on indirect rule.16 His Cypriot adversaries, his own colleagues and historians underscore his blunt and ‘autocratic’ style. To this day, the regime he implemented in Cyprus is remembered as the ‘Palmerocracy’.17 Cypriot political leaders of the time assumed that Palmer’s methods of rule derived from his experience with ‘Africans’. Unfortunately, some historians of colonial Cyprus have echoed this assumption, thereby unwittingly reactivating its racist undertones; hence, according to one of them, Palmer failed to understand that he was governing ‘Europeans’ and not ‘natives’.18 Instead of juxtaposing, in normative fashion, ‘Europeans’ with ‘natives’ it would have been more insightful to show how political leaders and colonial authorities used the racial hierarchies in force in the British Empire as a negotiating device, respectively to claim, and refuse to grant, political rights. Instead, from the available evidence, it emerges that Palmer’s authoritarianism was a personality trait which fed his political and ideological inclinations for far-right ideas. The governor indeed fits perfectly the ‘authoritarian personality’ which Adorno et al., relying on Freud, define as paradoxical, combining aggression towards minorities and submission to established authorities.19 In fact, the governor’s governing style was also unsettling for the Colonial Office; in 1938, its legal adviser, H.H. Duncan, commenting Palmer’s intention to nominate a further British official to the Executive Council, wrote that ‘the Government of Cyprus are becoming

32

CYPRUS IN THE 1930S

imbued with the political philosophy of Mussolini, and are afraid of any criticism in any shape or form’.20 But Palmer’s policies were very seldom opposed, and this approbation, no matter how reluctant it might have been, meant that the Colonial Office shared to a great extent the governor’s belief that Cyprus needed to be ruled roughshod. John Basil Williams, a principal secretary at the Colonial Office, eloquently summarized all the ambivalence of the relationship between metropolitan authorities and the governor when in 1938 he assessed the latter’s governorship: It would perhaps be scarcely an exaggeration to say that Sir Richmond Palmer is his own worst advocate. He blusters, throws out dark hints, and is prone to outline his policy in a way which immediately brings a feeling of disquiet to anyone possessing the normal democratic outlook of this country [Great-Britain]. When however [. . .] his apparently bull-like methods are judged by their effects I think we must recognise that Cyprus today is not only a more peaceful, contented and prosperous country than is to be found in many other parts of the world, but is also by all accounts more prosperous, contented and peaceful than it has perhaps ever been before since the British Occupation [1878].21 Thus, British policy in Cyprus took shape in the exchange between the governor’s forceful and even impulsive initiatives, on the one hand, and the Colonial Office’s grudging approval on the other. The concluding remarks of the previous chapter underscored the principal reason explaining the Colonial Office’s acquiescence to a much sterner form of administration in Cyprus namely the deteriorating international – and specifically regional – context. But there was a second, important factor evident in Duncan’s remark about the Mussolinian character of Palmer’s rule, an element closely associated with the broader ideological and political climate prevailing at the time in British colonial circles. In the interwar period, there was a certain diffuse sympathy in British official and intellectual circles for what we may call the

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modernist project, namely, a public authority sufficiently strong to fast-track reforms without much time wasted in deliberations. In the wake of the Great Depression, modernist policies – or simply planning – were very much in vogue in Britain, and more generally in the west, both among right-wing and left-wing sympathisers, and considerations on economic development always conjured a vision of a transformed society; in some cases, even at the highest echelons of the British government, sympathy for the modernist project entailed a certain fascination for the authoritarian regimes of Europe, and specifically for fascist Italy.22 Julie Gottlieb has underscored the ‘complex marriage of inconvenience’ between British fascism and formal modernist elements around a common appreciation of modernist aesthetics.23 The modernist project, this association between authoritarian rule and economic and social development, even acquired a name, social engineering.24 In Cyprus, there were financial limitations on overambitious developmental policies. Just like all colonies, the island was supposed to ‘pay its own way’, which meant that reforms had to be financed by local taxation. In that sense, they could not have the exuberance of comparable interwar French or Italian colonial projects of ‘mise en valeur’. Nonetheless, in 1929 the British government passed the Colonial Development Act in order to establish a fund of up to £1 million a year to be spent on colonial development. Between 1929 and 1939, the government of Cyprus made ten applications to the fund, nine of which were granted, for a total sum of £153,150, making Cyprus the seventh highest recipient out of 50 recipient dependencies. Most of the time, the applications made by the colonies to the metropolitan funds – and Cyprus is no exception in this regard – were made ad hoc in view of attaining each time a very specific and circumscribed objective, an essential prerequisite for the Colonial Development Advisory Committee to grant the funds.25 That it was financially difficult does not mean that social engineering was not considered desirable by the Cyprus government. Inconspicuously, hints may be discerned, here and there, at what can be called a certain fascination for the Italian fascist colonial

34

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administration of the nearby Greek Dodecanese islands, where political repression was combined with economic development. Storrs mentioned in his memoirs, published in 1937, his admiration for the work of his friend Senatore Mario Lago, Italian governorgeneral of the Aegean Islands (1922– 1936), whom he officially visited in 1927. In July 1939, two months after he retired, Palmer, delivering a lecture to the Royal Central Asian Society, also praised fascist Italy’s active involvement in the development of its colonies, specifically Rhodes and Tripoli.26 Fascination for the fascist administration of the Dodecanese did not mean a fascination for fascism, but rather for the efficiency of fascist policy within the narrowly defined context of a colonial setting. As always, the issue in Cyprus was money and to implement the contemplated policies the governor and his administration would have to rely on institutional rather than financial means.

Decentralization and the neutralization of politics Several thousand years ago a lady called Aphrodite landed in Cyprus, and the island has never quite recovered. The people of Cyprus make a luxury of discontent and always pretend that they do not like being ruled, and yet, like the lady I have mentioned as a prototype, they expect to be ruled, and, in fact, prefer it.27 In these oft-quoted lines from Palmer’s lecture at the Royal Central Asian Society, Cyprus is depicted as a sulfurous Oriental female, a victim of her own wayward instincts that need to be tamed by a strong Western male. The feminization of the ‘Orient’, to which Cyprus was relegated in the aftermath of the 1931 uprising, is a wellknown topos usually invoked to justify colonial rule. In Cyprus this disposition on the part of colonial authorities, interpreting local expressions of discontent as signifying their opposite, was new and for the governor it marked the end point of a reasoning which first saw him dismiss Cypriots’ opinions altogether.

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At the beginning of his term, Palmer did not think he could immediately obtain the support of Cypriots for his policies and did not actively seek it. He would not tolerate resistance but would be satisfied with ‘consent’, a notion which, as Clarence-Smith reminds us, ‘includes acquiescence in a social order in which people do not necessarily believe, and which they do not particularly like’.28 Debating official policy with Cypriots was thus simply out of the question: ‘It is not enough to confer benefits on the Island and leave the Island to judge them and applaud’, wrote Palmer at one stage; ‘[t]hey must be told how they do benefit and also told how to applaud’.29 Accordingly, the governor wished to remove any ambiguity as to the constitutional future of the island, and more specifically as to the restoration of the Legislative Council. Elective politics in Cyprus, according to the governor, amounted to ‘professional Levantine politicians’ promoting their own vested interests through ‘bribery’ and ‘manufactured popular demand’.30 In the immediate aftermath of the uprising, the suspension of the Legislative Council had been considered a temporary measure pending a new constitutional order. This eventually took the form of the Advisory Council. Convened for the first time on 28 October 1933, it was meant, in the words of the secretary of state for the colonies, Philip Cunliffe-Lister, to ‘postpone indefinitely any future constitution’. It soon became evident that Palmer had no intention of making the new body central to the administration’s policymaking. On 2 November 1934, one of its members, Paul G. Pavlides, a Limassol merchant and landowner, protested that the institution had utterly failed in its purpose. During its first year of existence, it had convened only three times and then only to discuss ‘whether the Wild Birds needed protection [. . .] or whether the Firearms and Tobacco Laws needed unimportant amendments’. The assistant undersecretary of state for the Colonies, Sir Cosmo Parkinson, who had enjoined the creation of the nominated body, had to admit that consultation with the council was ‘a mere farce’.31 In appointing the unofficial members of the Advisory Council, the governor had to choose people with a certain knowledge of government affairs and who were well-versed in law, economics and

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CYPRUS IN THE 1930S

finance. Inescapably, this meant that he had to pick men from the dominant social classes: the first Advisory Council thus comprised three merchants and landowners (Neophytos Nicolaides of Paphos, Michalakis J. Louizides of Famagusta and Paul G. Pavlides of Limassol), three lawyers (Antonis Triantafyllides of Nicosia, Mehmet Munir from Nicosia and Panayiotis Cacoyiannis from Limassol, the latter two ex-officio members as members of the Executive Council), and one physician (Rauf Potamializade´ of Nicosia).32 In other words, the governor had to select the members of the Advisory Council from within that same socio-professional group which in his eyes constituted the breeding ground of ‘agitation’. No doubt this contributed to Palmer’s reluctance at convening the body. Instead, Palmer’s preference was for what he called a ‘decentralized’ system of administration that would rely on the British district commissioners. District commissioners, in Cyprus as elsewhere in the British Empire, could best be defined as prestigious factotums, the heads of the executive responsible for the coordination at district level of the activities of various government departments. Potentially very influential, in practice district commissioners seemed to have become in Cyprus ‘post-offices who transmit communications from bodies or people in their districts to the Secretariat or to Departments by whom the actual decisions were made’.33 This was a tendency the governor wanted to reverse as he envisioned a class of administrative officers who would make a point of constantly visiting the villages under their jurisdiction and making themselves available to the population in order to cultivate trust in the authorities.34 This insistence on face-to-face contact with the locals was for Palmer an absolute prerequisite; district commissioners should ‘continuously make [their] presence felt; and [they could not] do this if [they were] frequently absent at some distant headquarters’.35 Following Oakden’s recommendation, he put district commissioners and secretariat officers on a common administrative roster, thereby making all administrative officers interchangeable and allowing each to obtain the necessary ‘field experience’. He gave precedence to commissioners over all other colonial officers and residents of the colony, with the exception of the

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chief justice and colonial secretary. Only empowered district commissioners would be in a position to secure the administration’s control of local society as well as its safety against any sudden ‘popular clamour in a country which is au fond Oriental’.36 The enhancement of the powers of the executive branch was accomplished at the expense of the judiciary’s prerogatives. This was not mere collateral damage. Justice and law meticulously observed often conflicted with the executive’s high-handedness; and British governors throughout the empire would have made their own a remark by Stubbs, Palmer’s predecessor, according to which colonial judges in Cyprus were ‘invariably doing [their] utmost to find against the Government and the Police’.37 One incident neatly highlights this structural contradiction in colonial government. Around mid-May 1938, 88-year-old Ioannis Kyriakides, a Greek Cypriot veteran political leader, backed by the younger lawyers Ioannis Klerides (51, from Nicosia) and George Vassiliades (35, from Larnaca), lodged a complaint against Palmer. According to Kyriakides, the governor had libelled the whole Greek Cypriot political class in the preface he wrote for a book by police commandant Michael Kareklas. When the Limassol district court rejected the complaint, Kyriakides appealed to the Supreme Court, which rejected it as well, but only in April 1939, namely one month before the governor’s retirement and almost a full year after the procedure began. The libel case was given some coverage in the press, and Vassiliades exulted: Old Kyriakides has been made an idol. They come down from the villages every day in order to congratulate him, and they make him weep from exertion and enthusiasm. In Nicosia the Commissioner goes round the various shops in order to invite the people to have pity and sympathy for the unfortunate Governor, who, although he has too much work in Cyprus is dragged before the Court.38 Palmer seemed quite aware of the political turn the whole affair was taking when, obviously infuriated, he wrote to the Colonial Office

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that ‘if this sort of abuse of legal procedure is going to continue, both the Governor and other officials will need somewhat more stringent protection by the Law than actually exists or is necessary in most Colonies’. This proposition was outwardly rejected by the Colonial Office: ‘the Governor’, wrote legal adviser H.H. Duncan, ‘is not in a position of a Viceroy, and is not above the law’.39 If he could not place himself ‘above the law’, Palmer adopted a strategy that consisted in nibbling away certain prerogatives of the justice department and reallocating them to the executive branch of the administration. In his Report, Oakden had suggested abolishing the post of district court president and giving the prerogative to chair sessions to the local district commissioner.40 The colonial authorities in Cyprus did not go that far and maintained separate presidents for the district courts (one president for two districts); nonetheless, they enacted a series of laws placing de facto the whole judicial department under the direct authority of the executive (governor, secretariat officers and district commissioners). Under law 36 of 1935, providing for the overhaul of the entire judicial department and the significant reduction in its permanent staff, the governor assumed the right to appoint, suspend or remove the presidents and judges of the district courts, a prerogative heretofore pertaining to the King-In-Council. Moreover, under law 30 of 1935, an executive officer obtained the right to intern or even commit to prison for a term of up to one year ‘any person [. . .] upon a statement on oath being made that such person is likely to commit a breach of the peace’; finally, law 26 of 1936 handed jurisdiction to the district commissioners for the settlement of certain petty criminal offences.41 The police department was the second branch of the administration which saw some of its prerogatives transferred to the district administration. Oakden reported that in 1933 the police was one of the most important departments in terms of annual cost and personnel. Receiving £79,600 per year, the police consumed 10.6 per cent of the budget; by then the force comprised one (British) chief commandant, eight local commandants (of whom five were British), seven inspectors, eight sub-inspectors and 703 rank and file (all of

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whom were Cypriot) and operated 117 police stations which were scattered all over the island.42 Up to 1931, the duties of the rank-and-file police were somewhat ill-defined. Officers were often used by their own department, or seconded to other departments, as messengers, clerks or stewards for miscellaneous tasks; in effect, Palmer had the impression that the ‘whole country [is] governed by the police’, a system he clearly intended to ‘eradicate’. From 1932 the police department and particularly the criminal investigation department were increasingly given the task of political intelligence-gathering in close collaboration with the district commissioners. In fact, local police commandants were expected to act as assistants to the district commissioners.43 Not only was the work of police officers restricted to crime prevention and political surveillance, but a whole branch of the police department came under the authority of the district commissioners. In addition to the police force, there existed in Cyprus a corps of 816 rural constables, known until 1923 as field watchmen, whose duties were to prevent trespass and damage to cultivated areas. Until 1923, field watchmen were appointed, paid and dismissed by elected village commissions and, hence, were ‘under the control of politicians’, a system the colonial authorities deemed unsatisfactory. Law 16 of 1923 renamed the members of the force ‘rural constables’ and placed them under the direct control of the chief of police. The status of rural constables changed again after the 1931 uprising; law 62 of 1932, while confirming their affiliation to the police department, specified that their function was also ‘to perform such other duties as may be assigned to [them] by the [district] commissioner’. Moreover, since under law 19 of 1931 mukhtars (village headmen) and azas (village councils) were no longer elected but directly appointed by the governor, the main responsibility for bearing the cost of the rural constabulary changed from the public purse to village funds and the management of the constables was placed under the control of the respective villages where the men were employed.44

40

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A final step in the governor’s scheme for the empowerment of the district administration was the reform of the office of mudir (a term derived from the Turkish mu¨du¨r). In Ottoman times, the mudir was the executive head of the nahieh, a subdivision of the district. With the advent of British administration, they served as assistants to the district commissioner, keeping him informed of the condition and requirements of the villagers in their respective areas, examining complaints and petitions and conducting confidential enquiries. When all elected bodies were abolished in the 1930s, they became, in the words of Charles Henry Hart-Davis, the district commissioner for Nicosia, ‘the Commissioners’ only means of contact with the outside world’. Because of this, Palmer was determined to enhance the role of the mudirs and ensure that they spent more time in the field than in the office as this ‘would enormously increase our grip on the country’. The new mudirs, renamed ‘district and assistant district inspectors’ in late 1934, would be employed to supervise the rural police force and the mukhtars, and used for any other task the district commissioner might assign them.45 In addition to its many purported advantages, Palmer’s decentralization policy was also presented as more legitimate in the eyes of Cypriots themselves, since, according to the governor, it merely espoused the strong Cypriot sense of localism; and ‘District enthusiasm tends to offset Enosis and other harmful propaganda’.46 As already noted, in the wake of the 1931 revolt, local authorities in Cyprus (municipal councils and village commissions) were no longer elected, or partly elected, but appointed by the governor. As late as March 1937, Denis Nowell Pritt, Labour MP for Hammersmith North, asked in a parliamentary question to the secretary of state for the colonies whether ‘it [was] the intention of His Majesty’s Government to restore the constitutional position in Cyprus’; to which Secretary of State William Ormsby-Gore replied in the negative, offering instead to increase the powers of governmentappointed municipalities and village authorities.47 Indeed, both in Nicosia and in London, ‘factions’ of ‘well-known Enosis agitators’ were reported to be active in the 17 to 18 towns with municipal status. It was further said that ‘to reintroduce municipal elections

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41

will [. . .] be interpreted by the Cypriots not so much as a gesture of confidence in their ability to manage their own local affairs but [. . .] as a sign of weakness, and will thus bring back again the old agitations which have disappeared under the present regime’.48 Palmer’s decentralization scheme, like most of his initiatives in Cyprus, was dictated by his quasi-paranoid fear of local politics. But he was careful to present it in a positive light. Decentralization, Palmer argued, was essentially part of a long-term policy intended to instil ‘public spirit’ in Cypriot society. This was the constructive side of ‘decentralization’, an official euphemism for government control over local authorities. The governor’s claim that it offered colonial authorities the opportunity to train the future Cypriot governing elite over at least a generation was particularly congenial to the Colonial Office. ‘A systematic and extended administrative use of Cypriot Local Authorities working in close touch with Commissioners [. . .] [would] awaken in the municipalities and village commissions a new sense of their responsibilities to the community’ and might in time lead to the restoration of elections, at least at the local level, on much safer grounds. To which Arthur Dawe, the head of the Pacific and Mediterranean department at the Colonial Office, commented: ‘An organic growth with its roots in the soil, if we can get it, seems to be more suited to Cyprus than a Legislative Council of professional Levantine politicians at the centre’. The aim of this ‘civic education’ was to foster ‘loyalty’ to British rule among the Cypriots. At the time, Palmer estimated that the latter’s ‘disloyalty’ was unequalled within the empire; but he did not lose hope: ‘That [the Cypriot] is teachable, and responds to suggestion and the sentiment of loyalty to the British Crown, has been amply demonstrated in the last two years.’ This was written in 1936, and Palmer was referring to the two years of his own governorship.49 Ever since 1934, municipal elections had been postponed yearly by law. Instead in 1938 the governor asked for the outright removal of any mention to the elective principle from the municipal corporations bill under consideration.50 Only this would pre-empt ‘the risk of wholesale bribery, canvassing, etc.’. But because colonial

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policy in Cyprus was coming under increasing criticism in Britain (see Chapter Four), this was something the secretary of state for the colonies was not disposed to contemplate: I am afraid Sir R. Palmer wants to ‘fix’ things lest his or my successor take a more liberal view. [. . .] It will cause trouble in Parliament if we pass this ordinance now, and while I have every admiration for Sir R. Palmer as an administrator I don’t want him to over-egg the pudding during his last year and make his successor’s position difficult as well as mine. When I said what I did in the H[ouse] of C[ommons] I certainly contemplated that any liberalizing of the Cyprus constitution should begin by more responsibility in local Government as soon as the time is ripe. We are living in the 20th century and not under a dictatorship. I know Sir R. Palmer has extreme right-wing views and a turn of them has served us well in Cyprus – but they cannot be enshrined forever.51 In the face of the secretary of state’s opposition, the governor’s idea was rejected and the law eventually enacted provided that municipal elections would take place in 1940.52 In the meantime, laws enacted in 1934 and 1938 gave police-like powers to municipal councils as mayors could for instance grant or revoke licences and permits to coffee-shops, these inescapable vectors of politicization in Cypriot life, or require hotels ‘to keep a special register with the names of every person staying together with other particulars as may be prescribed’. Here again, the central authority was the district commissioner, since persons who wished to appeal a council’s decision to grant, withdraw or renew a licence could only appeal to him. His decision was ‘final and conclusive’.53 Decentralization had a triple ambition: to facilitate cooperation between government and society, to secure a more efficient control of the country by pre-empting the formation of any centralized political movement and to ‘educate and train’ Cypriots to be ‘good citizen[s]’.54 Endowed with an expiry date (1940), it was, furthermore, a generational bet. Its success, therefore, was predicated

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on two closely intertwined prerequisites, which will alternately be explored: the thorough reform of schools and the material and social improvement of Cypriots’ lives. This correlation was clearly established by Palmer, who argued that elections should not be reintroduced before ‘a period [elapsed] by which the boys and girls now at school would have grown up, and the present method of administration would possibly have matured and produced further results in greater well-being and economic prosperity’.55

Teaching Cypriotness Colonial authorities had begun interfering with education in Cyprus in the 1920s. Laws were passed – in 1920 for Muslims and 1923 for Christians – under which teachers were to be appointed by the governor on the recommendation of the boards of education, and their salaries paid from direct taxation earmarked for education.56 Reaction in the press to this law was vigorous, but nothing quite like the one following the adoption of the 1929 education law.57 This measure, which stripped the elected members of the education boards of the prerogative to appoint and transfer elementary schoolteachers, made the latter public functionaries, and placed them under the authority of the department of education, which was now vested with all powers regarding the appointment, promotion, transfer, dismissal and disciplining of teachers. Indeed, the teacher’s role expanded beyond the walls of the classroom; numerous researchers have underscored that teachers functioned as translators, interpreters or mediators, especially in rural areas. They read the newspaper at the village coffee-shop, or the letters Cypriots living abroad sent home to their parents; they wrote and filled out most of the administrative documents required by civil authorities from villagers.58 ‘Every village’, observed one official, ‘has its one or two schoolmasters or dismissed schoolmasters to read the news and propound meetings.’59 The main goal of the 1929 law was therefore the neutralization of the teacher as a political agent or vector of political ideologies. Yet, the education laws enacted before 1931 did not interfere with school

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curricula as such. This would be the focal point of the legislation conceived in the aftermath of the revolt. In 1932, there were 56,677 children (32,441 boys and 24,236 girls) of all denominations enrolled in primary education throughout Cyprus, in one of the 1,023 elementary schools, where 1,494 schoolteachers (896 masters and 598 mistresses) were employed. As far as secondary education is concerned, figures are available only for ‘public schools’, namely ‘town schools managed by local committees under the secondary education laws of 1920 and 1923 and village high schools managed by locally elected bodies’. According to these figures, there were two ‘Moslem’ schools, one for boys (the Turkish Lyce´e) comprising 336 pupils, and one for girls (the Victoria Girls’ School), counting 188 pupils; for the ‘Orthodox-Christians’, there were five gymnasiums with a combined attendance of 1,066, seven village high schools with 469 pupils, three girls’ high schools with 252 pupils and the Commercial Lyceum in Larnaca with 213 pupils. In total, this means that in 1932, almost 60,000 children, or more than 17 per cent of the island’s total population, attended school, though consideration must be given to the high rate of wastage, as ‘up to 50 per cent of the children enrolled in the first class of village schools leave within two years, during which time they may not even reach the second class’.60 In view of the sheer size of the schooled population, one can easily understand the colonial authorities’ preoccupation with education. It is useful to note that education at the time constituted a topic which generated an intense activity on the part of social scientists and philosophers, and throughout Europe and the United States schools of ‘social engineering’ persistently underscored the primacy of education. It is difficult to assess how these reflections trickled down to the Colonial Office and, thence, to Nicosia; suffice it to say that planning colonial education was deemed important enough in London for the Colonial Office to create various ‘advisory committees’ on the issue from the 1920 onwards.61 In 1933, the Cyprus government enacted a law making the governor ‘the central authority for all matters relating to elementary education’. It gave him the power to control, approve or veto ‘the books to be used in schools and school libraries; the classification,

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examination, registration and promotion of teachers [. . .]; the curriculum, syllabus, and courses of instruction to be followed in schools’.62 Thus, as W.W. Weir noted: By the beginning of the school-year 1935 – 1936, a new curriculum was ready for introduction into the elementary schools, both Turkish and Greek, to replace those copied from Turkey and Greece respectively [. . .] [F]or the first time all pupils, whether taught in Greek or Turkish, [would] follow the same lessons in all subjects but their own language and religions; history and geography, taught in parallel courses, [were] no longer dominated by Greece and Turkey but proceed[ed] outwards from Cyprus, through the Near East and the Mediterranean area, to the rest of the world [. . .]; English [was] introduced as an integral part of the curriculum in the top two classes of the larger schools (62 Orthodox-Christian, 18 Moslem and 2 Maronite). Arthur Dawe, a principal secretary at the Colonial Office, felt that ‘[t]his [was] certainly one of the most important laws we have enacted in Cyprus since 1878; one cannot help wondering how far the history of British rule might have been if it had been passed two generations ago’.63 But the ‘root of our problem in Cyprus’, in the words of the secretary of state for the colonies, remained the secondary schools.64 In March 1935, Arthur Mayhew, joint secretary to the advisory committee on education at the Colonial Office, was sent to Cyprus to discuss with the governor the means for carrying out a reform of secondary education. The report, completed the following month, recommended five main courses of action: a) the government would cease to financially assist institutions which depended on ‘alien governments’ (i.e. Greece and Turkey) for their operation; b) the funds thus released would partially be allocated to the English school, which was to be transformed into a training institution for future Cypriot colonial civil servants; c) special attention should be given to the education of girls because, as the report read, ‘politically the

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home influence of women cannot be overlooked’; d) ‘the question of suitable Greek and Turkish reading books ought now to be taken up without further delay’; e) finally Mayhew, concurring with Sir Ralph Oakden’s own conclusions, recommended that the government ‘experiment with one or two Rural Middle Schools, intended essentially for future small landholders and aiming generally at the improvement of village life’. All of these suggestions were incorporated into law 25 of 1935.65 In January 1937, the headmaster of the Greek gymnasium of Varosha (Famagusta), Ioannis P. Kalafatas, who had accepted the colonial government’s proposal of funds in return for curriculum control, submitted the programme of his school for the year 1936– 1937 to the Greek consul. As shown in Table 2.2, the teaching of English occupies a central place. Although they ultimately failed, two more colonial interventions in the field of education in the 1930s need be mentioned: the protracted, but ultimately fruitless, debates on the issue of a new history text book to be used in Cypriot schools and the discussions on the foundation of a university in Cyprus. In 1936, Palmer suggested that a new history book ‘of 300 to 350 pages’ be issued and used as a standard manual in Cypriot schools in order to shape the imaginations of schoolchildren into thinking of Cyprus as their homeland with its own history, distinct from either Greek or Turkish history.66 To paraphrase Sudipta Kaviraj, who analyzed a comparable intention on the part of the colonial state in India, ‘[t]he past thus became most political, the nodal point, the terrain, the prize of the ideological contest between imperialism and nationalism’.67 Very interestingly, the secretary of state suggested that the person to be trusted with the responsibility of concocting such a book should be Sir George Hill, a retired director of the British Museum, whose monumental four-volume A History of Cyprus remains seminal for researchers on Cyprus.68 Eventually the idea was dropped with Palmer’s retirement. The idea to establish a university in Cyprus was a little more substantial. It originated from the British consul in Port Said in early 1935 in order to compete with other English-language universities in the region, and specifically the American University of Beirut. The

2 7 3 – 2 4 3 2 – 1 – 9 33

Religion Ancient Greek Modern Greek French History Mathematics Natural science Geography Hygiene Music Philosophy English Total teaching hours

2 7 3 2 2 4 3 2 – 1 – 6 32

2nd Grade 2 7 3 3 2 4 3 1 – 1 – 6 32

3rd Grade 2 7 3 2 2 4 2 1 1 1 – 6 31

4th Grade 1 7 3 2 3 4 4 1 – – – 6 31

5th Grade 1 8 2 2 4 4 3 – – – 4 6 34

6th Grade

10 43 17 11 15 24 18 7 1 4 4 39 193

Total

Source: Diplomatic and Historical Archives, Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Consul of Greece, dispatch N8 1174, 15 January 1937 to the Hellenic Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Directorate of Political Affairs, European Department.

1st Grade

Weekly hours/Grades

School Programme of the Greek Gymnasium of Varosha, 1936 – 1937.

Mandatory courses

Table 2.2

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CYPRUS IN THE 1930S

plan was taken up by Arthur Mayhew at the Colonial Office, but for different reasons. The fundamental objective in establishing a university in Cyprus, beyond securing the radiation of British culture in the Middle East, should be to provide an alternative to Cypriots who usually pursued their undergraduate and postgraduate studies in Greece or Turkey. If a university were to be established, its courses should have a decisively practical edge, in trade, agriculture and mechanics, otherwise the risk loomed large, according to Palmer, of swelling the ranks of the unemployed cultivated intelligentsia, a most dangerous class in political terms. After five years of discussions, the project was shelved in 1940, mainly for financial reasons.69 All of these were important steps in the government’s antinationalist policy, but their implementation remained imperfect. Hence, some Greek Cypriot teachers at elementary schools or government-aided secondary schools continued to secretly seek the church’s advice with regard to the curricula and the content of their lessons. For instance, in the summer of 1938, Konstantinos Christofides, a schoolmaster in Larnaca, asked the church, in vain as it turned out, to approve his book on New Testament Readings.70 Moreover the link between Greek Cypriot schools and the Greek government was not entirely severed. On 14 January 1938, Palmer asked the Colonial Office for the second time to request the Foreign Office to instruct the British ambassador in Athens ‘to make representations to the Greek Government with a view to obtaining an assurance that no further pensions would be granted to schoolmasters in Cyprus schools’.71 Notwithstanding these imperfections, the law definitely succeeded in eliminating, or at least forcing underground, the teacher as a political agent. But in contrast perhaps to earlier education laws, the ones enacted under Palmer were not solely driven by political concerns; they were also recommended for practical reasons. Colonial officials genuinely believed that education as practised in Cyprus failed to offer pupils any practical knowledge or skill that might be of some use in adulthood. The programmes in force in the schools of both communities placed the emphasis on classical learning and it was

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thought that they remained rather abstract and theoretical. In an overwhelmingly agrarian society, the rationale went, pupils had better acquire ‘a utilitarian education that would mainly provide training in agriculture and local crafts’.72 It should be noted that debates on education policy in Cyprus illustrate under a different light the construction of the colonial difference between rulers and ruled. Indeed, British colonial officials, most of whom had been classically trained in humanities in public schools and at Oxbridge, considered Cypriot ‘natives’ unfit to receive such an education; instead, they believed that they would benefit more from practical/ professional training. Consequently, in 1937, the colonial government established the Government Teacher Training College at Morphou, which became the ‘only training college for men teachers of the whole island’. The normal schools heretofore training Greek Cypriot teachers (the Nicosia-based Pancyprian Gymnasium for boys and the Phaneromeni School for girls) were no longer recognized by the government. The Government college was ‘residential and its course lasted two years. There was also a third-year course for a selected group of 20 per cent of the students who wished to stay on in the College for one more year to specialise in agriculture’. Only natives of Cyprus (hence British subjects) were allowed to apply to the college, and a few of them were sent for a ‘training course at a British university’. Furthermore, the colonial government implemented a policy of cooperation between its education and agricultural departments, encouraging schools to maintain gardens where pupils could be taught basic agricultural knowledge and principles; there were 302 of such school gardens in 1936.73 But as may be expected, even the administration’s more ‘practical’ concern for education corresponded, or at least coincided, with political aims. Indeed, the utilitarian education promoted by the Cyprus government was designed for agriculturalists. As we have seen in Chapter One, the peasantry had always been considered by colonial authorities as the bedrock of imperial loyalty in Cyprus. This explains that the reform of education was closely intertwined

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with efforts to resolve agricultural indebtedness and implement developmental policies.

Agricultural debt and rural transparency ‘It would be better first to give time for the schemes of social and economic amelioration,’ wrote A.R. Thomas of the Colonial Office, ‘on which the Government has embarked since 1931, to come to fruition, so that the Cypriot may have indisputable evidence before him of the good intentions of the Government.’ This constitutes among the most straightforward statements of a colonial strategy seeking to secure political allegiance through economic development; the latter, in the words of James Ferguson, would thus serve as a ‘technical point of entry for an intervention serving a variety of purposes’.74 Early initiatives in the field of general development of the island were rather piecemeal, disjointed or controversial. In the 1930s, however, the measures taken by the administration in the field of agriculture were more systematic, especially because of the dire economic, financial and even climatic context of the island in the early 1930s. Surridge had already underscored, in his Survey, the despondency of cultivators; this was greatly aggravated, as Oakden reported, with a three-year drought (1930– 1932) that contributed to a collapse of commodity prices. The conjuncture was naturally worsened with the world economic crisis, which shrunk Cypriot exports to Britain, itself experiencing the ‘worst year of the slump’ in 1932.75 The volume of carobs for instance – ‘by far the most important export crop’ of Cyprus – exported to the United Kingdom, the island’s main importer, dropped from 50,178 tons in 1932 to 26,424 a year later.76 Very soon after his arrival, Palmer believed that the government had to intervene financially in order to secure the Cypriots’ material welfare. The necessary funds for this developmental policy could be made available if the British government returned the money they had deducted for 49 years (1878– 1927) from the island’s revenue as part of the Tribute. Such a gesture would also present the advantage of reconciling the majority of Cypriots with British rule. In fact,

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Palmer made the Tribute, in the words of Arthur Dawe, his ‘grand cheval de bataille’. In this, and probably only in this, Palmer was in complete accordance with the Greek Cypriot press, as so many articles published therein testify. In spite of Palmer’s numerous attempts, the money was never returned and the administration’s attention turned towards other avenues.77 The most urgent economic and financial issue in Cyprus was agricultural indebtedness; Surridge thus reported that the Cyprus peasant except a small minority ‘is born in debt, lives in debt and dies in debt’.78 Rural indebtedness led to massive forced sales of land to mortgagees and judgment creditors, especially in 1932– 1933, and accounted for an important proletarianization of peasant-proprietors, the consequences of which will be analyzed in Chapter Six.79 Incidentally, it might be observed that this gave a considerable amount of work to the land registry department, which was responsible for the registration of land transactions, as well as to the district courts, which heard litigation over mortgaged land, thereby contributing to the self-sustained growth of the colonial state. Already in 1919, following an official inquiry into peasant debt, the acting high commissioner, Malcolm Stevenson, enacted a law ‘to protect farmers from the exploitation of merchants and moneylenders; to limit interest on farmers’ loans to 12 per cent per annum; to safeguard a minimum part of an insolvent farmer’s immovable property from forced sales; and to afford relief from indefinite liability for unpaid debts after the forced sale for a creditor’s property by giving the Courts power to grant to all such creditors their discharge from old debts within a maximum period of six years’.80 In 1934, the government enacted the Immoveable Property (Restriction on Sales) Law, which confirmed the principle by which a reserve price was fixed by executive order on all properties bought to forced sale. In late 1934, Surridge was appointed registrar of cooperative and cooperative credit societies in order to help bolster the financial autonomy of farmers; and in 1936 he was made head of a separate government department whose creation he had advocated in his own Survey. In doing this, the government merely centralized the ad hoc, rather disjointed and often short-lived, spontaneous constitution of

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cooperative credit societies.81 The third measure, extensively analyzed by Oakden in his Report, was the reform of the Agricultural Bank, which had been created in 1925 in order to provide credit at a low interest rate to farmers. In late 1937, the government of Cyprus issued a bill reforming the Agricultural Bank by increasing its capital available for loans and by drawing it closer to the administration, with the governor of Cyprus becoming its official representative.82 However it was only some months after Palmer’s departure in May 1939, that Oakden’s major recommendation was realized: the setting up, in early 1940, of an agricultural debt settlement board; its powers were to be quasi-juridical and its rulings, which could not be appealed, were, ‘as a general rule’, more accommodating to the farmer than the creditor.83 One more practical instance, related to land tenure in Cyprus, may be evoked to illustrate the political bias behind the administration’s agricultural policy. Land tenure was regulated until 1945 by the Ottoman code, which distinguished between many types of land ownership, including private holdings (mulk and araˆzi-i memluˆke), state land ‘possessed’ but not ‘owned’ by individuals (araˆzi-i mirie), land left for public use (araˆzi-i metruke) and so forth. Each of these lands entailed different procedures as far as inheritance, gifts, mortgages and transactions were concerned. Additionally, there were lands owned by the Orthodox Church leased to farmers and lands belonging to the Evkaf, part of the revenue of which was to be invested in pious or charitable causes.84 Cyprus was a microfundia country of peasant proprietors who owned various small, scattered plots. According to Alexander Apostolides, in the 1930s, 38.4 per cent of agriculturalists possessed holdings measuring five hectares or less, and 44.5 per cent holdings of between 5 and 10 hectares.85 Because of the various procedures regulating transactions (sales, confiscations, inheritances), the landholding pattern was extremely fragmented as individual plots were enmeshed one with the other to the extreme, a situation well illustrated in Surridge’s Survey: No holdings are self-contained. The fields are usually small in extent and those of one owner may be situated in various

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localities and it may entail a two hours journey from one field less than one-third of an acre in size to another even smaller. [. . .] Divided interests in a small field containing 20 or 30 carob and olive trees are frequently observed. For example on land owned by the heirs of the deceased A, there are often found trees owned by B, C, D and E and the heirs of the deceased F and G. This land may be mortgaged to X and some of the trees belonging to B and E may be let to X and Y.86 Surridge, who found land tenure in Cyprus extremely difficult to deal with, came up with a few suggestions to revise the existing laws relating to land ownership and inheritance in order to encourage the exchange and consolidation of properties. But he stressed that these could not be imposed and that the Cyprus government had to persuade villagers through the cooperative societies. His observations were based on rational considerations intimately connected with the financial autonomy of individual cultivators and with the productivity of individual properties. But they overlooked the cohesive social substratum emerging from the landed property pattern. As Loizos and Sant Cassia noted, transactions in land were not carried out only with a view of increasing one’s financial position but were also an ‘investment in social relationships’, best illustrated in the marital strategies in the village.87 What this means, practically, is that holdings in a village were not a nightmare of intricately enmeshed properties of otherwise unrelated individuals, but aggregations of households connected through marriage. As Michael Given observed, the complexity and detail of local land ownership was intimately connected with the relationships and kinship lines structuring the Cypriot villager’s social world. Moreover, if local kinship and its intimate association with land-ownership patterns were virtually impossible to translate to paper, they were well preserved in the memories of Cypriot villagers.88 Because of the social complexity of land ownership patterns, the administration refrained from changing them and limited itself to registering them. Yet, colonial officials drew mainly political inferences from the

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existing land tenure pattern. For Vyvien Hart-Davis, wife of Nicosia district commissioner Charles Henry Hart-Davis (1922–1935), the consequence of these ‘complicated laws of possession’ was that ‘lawyers flourished’.89 Storrs’ account was even harsher: ‘[m]ost of [the peasants] were illiterate. Seventy per cent were chronically indebted to usurers and merchants whose actions for recovery [. . .] afforded employment to the numerous advocates, who derived the major part of their professional income from that source.’90 Studies have underscored the emergence of liberal professions and social classes as a result of the increase in land transactions. James C. Scott mentions the ‘new intermediaries’, and their increasing power, owing to the fact that they were fluent both in the language of the administrative authorities and the mainly illiterate rural population.91 These intermediaries were specifically designated as potential political agitators after 1931. Since land tenure was not to be interfered with, the colonial administration opted for another solution to palliate its negative social effects. On 8 June 1933, Stubbs enacted the Law to Consolidate and Amend the Law Relating to Advocates, which restricted the practice of advocacy in Cyprus to lawyers who had undergone their practical training in Britain.92 In other words, lawyers holding a Greek or Turkish diploma were barred from practising on the island. * In Seeing like a State, Scott wrote that ‘social engineering’, in its ‘catastrophic mode’, implied the combination of four elements: an administrative ordering of nature and society; a high-modernist ideology; an authoritarian state willing and able to use the full weight of its coercive power to bring the high modernist ideology into being; and a prostrate civil society that lacks the capacity to resist these plans.93 Cyprus in the 1930s displayed only three of the aforementioned elements – the administrative ordering of society, the authoritarian state and a prostrate civil society – and then imperfectly, or in a way that will be fully explored in Chapter Four of this book. Regarding ‘high-modernism’, the colonial authorities in Cyprus only retained the idea of fast-tracked reforms and social planning. However, their vision of Cyprus as a polity seems to have

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been more animated by something like an anti-modernist ideology. Moreover, some years elapsed between each of the reforms constituting the ‘three pillars of Arcadian Cyprus’ – decentralization, education and agricultural development. Antagonizing laws such as the education law were immediately enacted (1933) whereas consensual reforms such as the agricultural debt relief scheme never saw the light until after Palmer’s departure. This speaks volumes about the government’s priorities and would be of dramatic consequences for the future of the political legitimacy of the colonial state. Yet, the reforms contemplated by Palmer were sufficiently farreaching and ambitious to merit the characterization of social engineering. Ultimately, the success of such a design to profoundly transform the local society depended on the smooth running of the colonial bureaucracy. We have seen the importance Palmer granted to certain offices in his administration, particularly the district commissioners. This next chapter will seek to measure the efficiency in the implementation of colonial policies by examining the profile and activity of colonial officials, both British and Cypriot.

CHAPTER 3 RITUALS OF BUREAUCRATIC GOVERNANCE

With limited financial resources, the colonial authorities’ ambitious plans for social reform depended on an impeccably run administration. Beyond fine-tuning and rationalizing administrative procedures, improving the Cyprus government meant first and foremost obtaining the most efficient civil servants, British as well as Cypriots, the island could afford. In the absence of elected bodies that were prone to expressing, however distortedly, public demands, these functionaries would be entrusted with a crucial responsibility: estimating, interpreting and anticipating the needs and disposition of ordinary Cypriots. More than mere administrators, they were therefore destined to become human experts, ethnographers of a peculiar kind. However, this work of close contact with Cypriots which the newly recruited civil servants were supposed to conduct was gradually hampered by two parallel processes: the gradual bureaucratization of administrative work and the exigency of loyalty on the part of Cypriot employees, which became absolute to the point of restricting their contacts with wider society.

The management of British personnel Post-1931 ambitions for social reform put renewed pressure on British colonial civil servants. Following an intention to enhance the

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powers of the colonial state, successive governors and Colonial Office staff systematically purged and renewed Cyprus’ administrative personnel throughout the 1930s. The general feeling was that Cyprus had been treated ‘as a sanatorium’ for incompetent or tired officials – the ‘flotsam and jetsam of Colonial Administrations’ – for too long. Held partly responsible for the deterioration of the political situation in the island which led to the uprising, these ‘misfits and oddities’ were thought to be lacking energy, initiative and insight.1 The reason behind this past policy of recruiting officers that were suddenly considered inadequate was financial. The appointment of a British colonial civil servant to a colony was always the result of a negotiation between the candidate, the Colonial Office and the local governor. Governors had to find a balance, essential to their own professional security, between local administrative needs, budgetary availabilities and their understanding of their subjects’ ‘needs’. The Colonial Office on the other hand had to reconcile three factors: governors’ requests for certain administrators, individual applications from administrators for transfer on promotion, and the salaries each colony could pay according to their budget. This last condition was of particular importance in deterring promising colonial administrators from seeking an appointment in Cyprus. Indeed, in the British Empire colonial civil service wages were levied on the colony’s revenue, through local taxation. And until the end of the 1920s, Cyprus’ finances were strained by the ‘Tribute’ and subject to the control of the Legislative Council, whose Greek-Orthodox members were very sensitive to the question of British salaries. As a result, in the words of Governor Sir Ronald Storrs (1926– 1931): The Administration of Cyprus was one of the lowest-paid of all the British Colonial Services. This was owing partly to the poverty of the island. Partly to the relatively low cost of living [. . .], and partly by the extreme susceptibility of the elected Members of Council on the question of British emoluments. [. . .]. The result of this short-sighted and uneconomic cheeseparing was that some of the Departments fell from time to time to the hands of misfits and incompetents, who remained

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untransferred for twenty or twenty-five years, while the good men were soon drawn off elsewhere. Some were pensioned invalids from tropical Colonies, and this practice of treating Cyprus as a sanatorium continued well after my appointment. Technical and scientific appointments were sometimes vacant for two years because Cyprus could not pay the standard market price which they commanded.2 But what the governors and Colonial Office presented as ‘incompetence’ remained rather unobvious. While numerous officials employed on the island between 1878 and 1920 pursued long, distinguished careers in the colonial service, some became scholars, producing works used to this day by students of Cyprus.3 Moreover, with an average length of stay of 17.6 years, most of them easily fulfilled the official requirement of fluency in one of the local languages and some actually obtained a command of both Greek and Turkish.4 Closer inspection reveals that the existing personnel were faulted on the basis of their social class and thought to be ‘robustious’ and insufficiently ‘gentlemen’.5 It is worthwhile to note that official dissatisfaction with Cyprus’ staff coincided with the rationalization and standardization of recruitment procedures to the colonial administrative service by Sir Ralph Furse, the Colonial Office’s head of recruitment. During their interview at the Colonial Office, shortlisted candidates had to appear ‘responsible’, showing an innate ‘sense of duty’ and qualities of ‘initiative’, ‘commandment’ and ‘sociability’, in short a ‘character’ they had shaped through their education in the public schools and the nation’s best universities.6 These were qualities which allowed recruiters to instantly recognize individuals belonging to their own social group. More than a social class in the usual sense of the term, this highly integrated ‘group’ corresponded to what Anthony Giddens has called a ‘governing class’ forged through common education and circles of acquaintance and solidified through restricted channels of recruitment.7 A number of developments from the mid-1920s onwards impressed the necessity on the Colonial Office and governors, and

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to an extent gave them the means, to implement a new system for the management of administrative personnel. In the aftermath of the First World War and with Britain’s taking over the control of mandated territories in the Middle East, Cyprus acquired a renewed importance in Britain’s Middle Eastern imperial and strategic interests.8 The island now became a bridgehead between these new British dependencies and the older Mediterranean ones, namely Gibraltar, Malta and Egypt. These evolutions, coupled with the collapse of Greece’s expansionist policy in the wake of the 1919–1922 Greek – Turkish War, accounted to a large extent for the transformation of Cyprus’ legal status into a Crown Colony in 1925. In fact, the island, in spite of its small dimensions, was ranked a II/IV Colony in the classification of governorships that the Colonial Office established after the war.9 Hence, the geopolitical context made it ever more desirable to recruit better administrators. What made it financially possible was the abolition of the Tribute in 1927 and what made it imperative was the 1931 uprising. But what made a ‘good’ colonial official? The Colonial Office and Governor Palmer understood the term differently and these different views reflected dissimilar representations of the Cypriots. In Palmer’s view, the fact that Cypriots were ‘Asiatics’ justified a sterner form of government exercised by determined representatives of the executive power. New recruits would have to be naturally inclined to learning languages (Greek and Turkish).10 It was essential that they be at ease with ‘field work’, which implied regular contact with the administered and was considered primordial, as well as with ‘office work’, which was secondary. Aside from these rather conventional requirements, Palmer also looked for signs of authoritarianism. District commissioners especially had to be mature, tried and experienced officers ‘with guts’, as he put it, and between 35 and 45 years of age. Finally, newly appointed officers should expect to spend their entire remaining careers in the Cyprus Administrative Service.11 In contrast, the Colonial Office thought brains were more appropriate than brawn for Cyprus. Finding a precarious balance between the politicized Greek and Turkish communities required

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personnel with ‘political instincts’.12 The most complete definition of the Colonial Office’s ideal colonial administrator was outlined by the head of the Pacific and Mediterranean department, Arthur Dawe, between 1926 and 1936. Far from seeing Cypriots as ‘Orientals’, Dawe thought of them as ‘white Christians’, more difficult to govern than ‘blacks and browns’ and a ‘quick-witted race’, who had to be dealt with by ‘men of firstclass brains [. . .] and a real feeling of what we may call the “aesthetic significance” of a place like Cyprus’. Indeed Cyprus, along with Malta and Gibraltar, ‘should be regarded more as “City States” with the background of a white and, in some sense, a highly sophisticated civilisation’.13 Hence, in choosing the ideal British official for Cyprus, the Colonial Office favoured education.14 In 1926, noticing a cleavage between the local population and British officials, Dawe attributed its ‘existence [. . .] to the fact that the officials are lacking the culture and knowledge of the world which would enable them to mix with alien races without detracting from their dignity as the ruling class’.15 A decade later, he remarked that ‘[t]he Colonial Office has been nothing like so successful in governing the white Mediterranean populations as it has been in governing coloured populations’. Calling for the creation of a Mediterranean administrative ‘elite corps’, he believed that: In a small Island men count more than measures. [. . .]. I am quite certain that for Cyprus we must have brains and education. I do not mean highbrows or Bloomsbury intellectuals. That would never do. But we ought to be able to get men with sound personal qualities who at the same time have enough sympathy and imagination to appreciate the ‘imponderable’ background in the Island, and to understand that British values are not the only values in the world and that other people are made differently from ourselves.16 These contrasted expectations regarding future administrators in the island underscore once more the plasticity of representations of

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Cypriots, adaptable as they were, to the political priorities of the moment. Palmer was quite successful and ruthless in ‘purging’ the Cyprus government, to the point where the Colonial Office warned him against spreading the impression that ‘tenure of office in Cyprus was less secure than elsewhere’.17 Yet, the officers recruited to replace the transferred ‘misfits’ corresponded more to the Colonial Office’s ideal type and less to Palmer’s wishes. Responsible with protecting the careers of colonial officials, the metropolitan government imposed a relaxation of language requirements which could under no circumstances jeopardize the career of ‘good’ officers. As a result, from 1931 onwards, the number of exceptions to the language obligations and the extensions of probationary periods – giving more time to newly appointed officers to learn the minimum standard of one of the languages – tended to increase.18 A sample of 127 British colonial civil servants recruited between 1925 and 1944 shows a significant rise in the educational level of the personnel appointed in Cyprus. Sixty four individuals had attended a public/grammar school, 85 had received a university degree, among whom 45 at one of the four top ranked (Oxford, Cambridge, Trinity College and London). Another noticeable feature of this sample is the amount of awards and honours granted to officials appointed between 1925 and 1945. Forty seven of them had already received an award prior to or during their stay in Cyprus, 25 of whom between 1925 and 1945. Finally, the sample shows a drastic reduction in the average length of stay to nine years of British officials in Cyprus.19 While this figure was no doubt affected by Palmer’s aforementioned purges, it was also the result of the adoption of the Colonial Service Unification Scheme (CAS) in 1931, which was meant to homogenize conditions of service of the colonial civil servants of various branches (administrative, technical, professional, legal) and to enhance and rationalize their transfer from one colony to another. This increased turnover of personnel thwarted Palmer’s vision of a permanent Cyprus administrative service. Primarily for structural reasons, Palmer’s requirement that administrative officers forge relationships of trust with Cypriots would also be considerably imperilled.

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Interacting with the ‘natives’ Interactions between colonial civil servants and Cypriots were governed by official regulations and unofficial but effective rules. Under the Colonial Regulations, colonial administrators were barred from ‘undertaking any private agency in any matter connected with the exercise of their public duties’, and, in a preventive measure against corruption, they were ‘prohibited during the continuance of their service in the Colony from receiving valuable presents’, in any shape.20 Additionally, relationships between British officials and Cypriot women were viewed negatively by both the Colonial Office and governors. Indeed it was generally thought that such relationships would jeopardize the colonial servant’s impartiality, an issue of particular sensitivity in a multi-ethnic colony like Cyprus.21 As Ann Laura Stoler has noted, gendered relations constituted shifting and anxiogenic boundaries of rule in colonial contexts.22 Of the ‘purged’ officers mentioned above, Attorney General Henry Blackall and Assistant Commissioner Alexander Dyer were married to Greek Cypriot women.23 Likewise, commenting on Cyprus’ director of education, James Reynolds Cullen, the secretary of state observed in 1940: ‘[H]is marriage to a Cypriot has earned him a reputation of being obstinately pro-Greek, and unfair in his dealings with the Cypriot Turkish community’ – a statement that clearly misapprehended how unpopular Cullen was among Greek Cypriots.24 The transformation of colonial officials’ work habits certainly contributed even more to their alienation from Cypriot society. After the abolition of the ‘Tribute’, the colonial administration expanded its activities: Departments grew both in numbers and in size and the colonial civil servant’s daily routine became itemized. This was further enhanced when the government, following Oakden’s recommendations, clearly separated the tasks among colonial servants, and mainly between administrative officers and members of the professional branches.25 Subsequently, British colonial servants devoted an increasing amount of time to office work: dispatching yearly and quarterly reports to the central government, managing a

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growing number of personnel, and examining increasingly technical files constituted their main duties. Already in 1926, Dawe complained that: Owing to the mass of hefty paper work thrown up by modern method of government the secretariat officers have neither the time nor the surplus (?) energy to deal adequately with the most important questions which should engage their attention. In fact, instead of being real administrators they have become mere clerks. [. . .] Furthermore, as Mr. Lobb [then Cyprus’ acting governor] points out, secretariat officers should have some time for travelling in the Island and getting acquainted with local conditions. A secretariat that is always shut up in an office will, rightly or wrongly, never have the confidence of the people outside, official or unofficial, with whose affairs it has to deal.26 As this bureaucratization led to more ritualized forms of interactions with Cypriots outside the colonial government, it also reduced their need and indeed their actual knowledge of local languages. David Athelstane Percival, assistant district commissioner of Nicosia and Kyrenia, wrote in 1939: ‘Greek has been doing very poorly. I never speak it, living as I do between office and club.’27 Naturally, poor understanding of local languages could be detrimental to the administration’s information flows. As Chief Justice Belcher caustically noted in his memoirs: ‘Fortunately the Governors never, and the secretariat-wallahs rarely, were able to read modern Greek, and their official native helpers showed discrimination in the selection of what might be suitable for tender stomachs, so that everything went well: the locals had their scream, the officials remained unperturbed.’28 With wages ranging from £400 to £1,400 a year (1930), housing accommodation procurable at rentals between £36 to £84 a year, servants available at 25 shillings to £4 per month, and food at very low prices (1934), British officials could lead a rather comfortable life. Indeed most of them could afford a house, two to three

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servants – usually a cook, a gardener and a houseboy. Locked into small, cosy ivory towers, British officials usually restricted their social circle during leisure time to their fellow countrymen, whom they regularly met after office hours in the various ‘English clubs’ of the island’s main towns where they would play billiards or bridge. The daily contacts of Britons with locals were in fact usually limited to their relations with Cypriot subordinates at work or domestic servants, to their official tours in the districts and the villages and to their wives’ occasional contacts with shopkeepers and grocers.29 For district commissioners in particular, it was a lonely life. Percival, who became district commissioner of Larnaca on 9 March 1940, reports that there were only three Englishmen in the town: himself, the district medical officer and the local police commandant. He remarked: ‘by a curious coincidence, we are all bachelors!’30 Hence bureaucratization and etiquette contributed in the administrator’s gradual estrangement from the local society. It is now proposed to reconstruct the working environment of colonial administrators from within, following the career of William Denis Battershill, who served first as colonial secretary (1935– 1937) and then as governor (1939– 1941) of Cyprus.

The narrow horizon of an ‘official mind’: William Battershill How did colonial administrators feel about the colonial regime established in the 1930s and the contemplated social reforms? At the heart of the Cyprus Government itself, some British administrators protested, though rarely officially, against the way the island was administered. Battershill perfectly exemplifies this dichotomy between an ‘official self’ in line with the Cyprus government’s policy and a ‘private self’ highly critical of it. Battershill arrived in Cyprus in the spring of 1935, propelled to the post of colonial secretary at the age of 39. This accelerated promotion he owed to a solid experience at the headquarters of two colonies, Ceylon (1920– 1928) and Jamaica (1929– 1935), as well as to the patronage of both Sir Reginald E. Stubbs – Battershill’s superior in Jamaica (1926– 1932) and governor of Cyprus (1932– 1933) – and Sir Cosmo

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Parkinson, assistant under-secretary of state for the colonies. Both believed he was ‘one of the best officers in the Colonial Service’.31 He became quickly disenchanted by his Cyprus appointment. ‘There is nothing to do but work’, he wrote to his mother, ‘and that is not very attractive having regard to all the conditions. I must say that much as I like the Island I should welcome not being here.’32 As his private diaries reveal, these ‘conditions’ referred to his professional relationship with Governor Palmer. In January 1936, barely a year after his appointment, Battershill wrote: Facts: (1) As C[olonial] S[ecretary] I am senior member of Ex[ecutive] Co[uncil] and the Chief Executive Officer of this Government. (2) I should be the confidential adviser of the Governor which I am not. (3) The Secretariat is not being consulted but outside opinion is to the extent that there are so to speak two entities working of which the C[olonial] S[ecretary’s] O[ffice] is quite unimportant. (4) Intrigue is rampant and is bad for the service [. . .]. (5) Every effort is being made to weaken the Secretariat for haven’t I been told that this country could best be run by a Governor and 6 bold barons [the district commissioners]? With this in view, everything is being kept as secret as possible – most things are kept from me officially. (6) I am placed in a most humiliating position vis-a`-vis the service.33 Battershill resented in particular Palmer’s obsessive attention to the district commissioners – the ‘bold barons’. He believed that the governor’s habit of bypassing the island’s secretariat’s assistants by corresponding directly with commissioners and the colonial secretary – Battershill himself – was self-defeating and in effect thwarted his intention to decentralize the government of the island. ‘The latest

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thing’, he wrote in the summer of 1936, ‘is that all communications must go at once as soon as they are received to him with only the C[olonial] S[ecretary]’s minute on them’. ‘It is not possible to submit everything [. . .], be it even when papers get such a perfunctory reading as he gives them at present: he would be swamped under.’34 This practice ignored the usual procedure of processing, prioritizing, advising and dispatch-drafting that incoming information gathered from various parts of the colony usually underwent before being submitted to the colonial secretary and then the governor. Hence, the desired effects of devolution of powers to the districts were contradicted by a centralization of the channels of information. With a governor endowed with all legislative and executive power, such centralization led, according to Battershill, to a highly personalized form of government and, inevitably, to ‘intrigue’. Among the numerous examples of ‘intrigue’ mentioned in his diaries, Battershill relates a meeting he had with Rupert Gunnis, once the private secretary of Governor Storrs (1926– 1932) and since a dilettante historian, resident in Cyprus and a fierce critic of Palmer’s administration: He [Gunnis] felt things were not going right. The impression abroad was that the Mayor of Nicosia [Themistoklis Dervis, elected in 1929] was the ruler of the Island. Monte [James Drogo Montagu, district commissioner for Nicosia] was held to be the Governor’s chief adviser and it was common knowledge that the Mayor had Monte [Montagu] in his pocket. The Mayor had said this openly. It was deplorable. I made no comment [. . .]. He then said that the fact that H[is] E[xcellency] had attended the cabaret [. . .] had created consternation in Nicosia. In Cyprus everything was sex and it was known that the Mayor was a great womaniser. The inference made was that the Mayor was producing woman for [not specified]. [. . .] It was obviously arranged by the Mayor and Monte who were both cabaret fans. It had done an immense amount of harm.35

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Battershill, who was entirely committed to a scrupulous observance of formal etiquette, highly resented this practice of government relying on shady dealings and an unofficial but influential triumvirate which he likened to an ‘autocracy’.36 It whittled away whatever esteem he had for Palmer, whom he increasingly perceived as Montagu’s pawn.37 Battershill would often mention that his quarrel with the regime was about form, not content. ‘[T]he tragedy of it all’, he thus wrote, ‘is that I’m in accord with general policy and willing to work to the side of X [the Governor] but he won’t allow it. He trusts no one.’38 Yet his rare references to ‘general policy’ are marked by a discursive detachment. For instance, commenting on the island’s constitutional future – which will be analyzed in detail in the next chapter – in May 1936, Battershill wrote that ‘[e]verything now turns on never to have a legislative council again and everything seems to be directed to that end’, in comments that clearly positioned him as administration outsider.39 A similar form is used in the case of the church problem – the topic of Chapter Six: ‘[t]he policy as I see it is to down the Orthodox Church as much as possible [. . .]’.40 Whatever the extent of Battershill’s ‘inward opposition’ to the regime, it did not affect in any way official policy in Cyprus. Yet, what the colonial secretary’s diaries show is how dysfunctional the administration’s international channels of information were. Battershill remained only two years in Cyprus as colonial secretary and asked for an immediate transfer after Palmer once again deprecated the organization of the secretariat.41 In early 1937, he was appointed chief secretary of the British Mandate of Palestine, during the Palestinian Arab revolt (1936– 1939).42 The transfer was on promotion but Battershill portrays his Palestinian appointment as ‘the most impossible job [he] ha[d] ever taken on and that had [he] known what it was going to be like [he] would never have come here or touched it with a bargepole’.43 He thus welcomed the news of his designation as governor of Cyprus in January 1939 with both pride and relief. He felt ‘in great sympathy with the people’ and expressed haste in working to ‘raise their standard of living’.44 The new governor’s enthusiasm was largely echoed in Cyprus as soon as the news of his appointment was diffused. Suggesting that his dislike

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of Palmer was quite known in Cyprus, newspapers welcomed the appointment in dithyrambic fashion. The left-wing newspaper Anexartitos praised Battershill’s ‘superiority of character’, ‘lucidity’ and intimate knowledge of ‘the Cypriot people’s psychology and views’,45 while Kyrillos Pavlides’ Phoni tis Kyprou wrote, in messianic style, of Battershill as ‘the Expected’ and the ‘enlightened guide’.46 On the day of his arrival in Cyprus on 10 August 1939, Eleftheria enjoined the new governor to ‘Trust yourself and the people’.47 From the outset however, though grateful, Battershill remained cautious about this popularity. ‘The feeling in Cyprus was one of genuine relief so I am told,’ he wrote before moving to Cyprus. ‘They did not like Palmer nor [sic] his regime and for some reason they like Joanie [Battershill’s wife] and myself. There is a drawback however in that they seem to think that I shall provide a new Heaven and a new Earth for them in a trice.’48 Once in Cyprus, six months later, caution had given way to mistrust: The newspapers continue to say what a fine fellow I am. But they are being more honest as to why they are saying this. They give as the reason that they feel sure I shall give self-government to the Cypriots, which of course is all bunkum. When they know what I am indeed going to recommend – I have not made up my mind yet but it certainly won’t be self government or anything like it – then they will be furious and the reaction from this popularity will be fierce. It will be a rather good thing actually. All this popularity business is’nt [sic] healthy, I feel sure.49 This extract is important as it highlights an effort towards selfimposed detachment: Enthusiasm on the part of the ‘administered’, Battershill believed, illustrated misplaced hopes; if he were to yield to his own popularity, he would encourage these misplaced hopes instead of working for the Cypriots’ ‘genuine’, if unconscious, needs. Popularity for a colonial governor was not ‘healthy’. The attitude conveyed here is that of a pathologist: a patient may have misplaced hopes, but it is to the physician to take the dreaded, though beneficial, measures. The allegory of the colonial administrator as a

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‘physician’ curing the ills of the colonial society was not new in Battershill’s terminology. In 1936, back in his colonial secretary days, he noted in his diary an interview he had with a reporter from The Times. When the latter inquired into his opinions on Enosis, Battershill replied that ‘it was a mental disease which was not generally caught by the villagers’.50 In the early 1950s, Battershill, then retired, wrote in his unpublished memoirs that ‘as regards the treatment of Enosis, which amounts to a mental disease, the most that Government can do wisely is to quell its more ebullient manifestations’.51 Supporters of Enosis were to be either confined (in the most desperate cases) or cured by infusing self-confidence within the healthiest (usually rural) element of the population. This, administrators believed, they had to do, as one of Battershill’s predecessors wrote, ‘expecting no gratitude and without giving one’s heart to the dog to tear and at the utmost with the interest of the scientific pathologist’.52 The medicalization of discourse on society and politics naturally goes way beyond the Cypriot case or colonial settings in general, for that matter. Irving Zola thus noted that ‘the labels “health” and “illness” are remarkable “depoliticizers” of an issue. [. . .] By the very acceptance of a specific behaviour as an “illness” and the definition of an “illness” as an undesirable state, the issue becomes not whether to deal with a particular problem, but how and when.’53 Detachment was an attitude closely related to administrative rank: the higher the rank, the more intense the pursuit of detachment. There is indeed a considerable discrepancy in Battershill’s tone when he writes as colonial secretary on the one hand and when he writes as governor on the other. But more remarkable is the total absence of any reference to the Cypriots. Already confined to the ‘background’ in his diaries as colonial secretary, Cypriots are simply nowhere to be found in his diaries as governor. This attitude was the result of both the self-imposed detachment described above, and, as will now be shown, a practice of estrangement. Commenting on the largely improvised and enthusiastic welcome thousands of Cypriots bid the new governor, Eleftheria stated that ‘it is worthwhile mentioning that these manifestations were in no way artificial or staged. They were wholly spontaneous, unconstrained and

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intelligible’. And this, Eleftheria went on, ‘in spite of the formalist welcome ceremony provided for by the official programme’. In underlining the relaxed atmosphere of the welcoming reception, Eleftheria in fact tacitly compared it to the ceremonious and rigid interactions between colonial administrators and Cypriots in the 1930s.54 Eleftheria explained this spontaneity as an expression of the Cypriots’ hopes for a swift and thorough change of regime under Battershill.55 Such change was predicated on a need to break the rigid framework of colonial ceremonialism and the glacial sanctimoniousness of the administrative language desiccating the interactions between rulers and ruled. In his unpublished memoirs, written around 1951, Battershill himself wrote that ‘[o]ne of the charges made against the official and unofficial Englishman [. . .] was that he lived apart and saw very little of Cypriots socially except for those few Cypriots whose connection with the Government brought them socially into contact with Englishmen’.56 Sometimes Battershill, in his capacity of governor, would ‘tour’ the districts. But these visits were announced in advance and rigorously organized, the welcome ceremonies formally set and the interlocutors selected beforehand. In other words, interactions between the governor and the locals followed a precise ritual. Nothing illustrates this better than the way in which Battershill related a meeting with members of the Turkish Cypriot community in November 1939: On Monday it was Bairam, the Moslem festival which marks the end of Ramadhan their month of fasting. In accordance with custom I visited the Evcaf [sic] Offices at Munir Bey’s invitation and there met all the Moslem Notables of the place, made a speech, listened to another, had some coffee and a cigarette and shook hands with all concerned. It lasted about an hour.57 Absent and distant, colonial officials came to represent for the Cypriots a disembodied, essentialized and uncompromising colonial will. For the administrators themselves, Cypriots were ‘work’ as long as they minded their own individual business; they became

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‘problems’ when they engaged ‘politically’, namely when they gave any public form to their preoccupations and requests. The scarcity of contacts between administrators and administered is a commonplace in the writings of colonial officials in Cyprus and elsewhere. This aloofness, as Hannah Arendt analyzed in her work, was consciously cultivated: Aloofness became the new attitude of all members of the British services; it was a more dangerous form of governing than despotism and arbitrariness because it did not even tolerate that last link between the despot and his subjects, which is formed by bribery and gifts. The very integrity of the British administration made despotic government more inhuman and inaccessible to its subjects than Asiatic rulers or reckless conquerors had ever been. Integrity and aloofness were symbols for an absolute division of interests to the point where they are not being permitted to conflict.58 Whatever alternative method of government to Palmerocracy Battershill had in mind– i.e. his own specific way of imagining colonial authority – it did not incorporate any original insight into who the Cypriots were. His professional trajectory in Cyprus as reconstructed here – namely his own specific way of practising colonial authority – suggests that this obliteration of the ‘Cypriot voice’ was due first to the colonial administrator’s identification with what may be termed an ideology of detachment and second to the bureaucratization of his tasks which, in turn, entailed a growing ritualization of his contacts with Cypriots; a process I refer to as the practice of estrangement. In this context, the sole interface between the colonial state and Cypriot society were the ‘native’ colonial employees. During the 1930s, managing the swelling ranks of Cypriot colonial civil servants became a crucial aspect of colonial policy.

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The ‘native’ interface The colonial state in Cyprus as in most British colonies was animated by close to 90 per cent of ‘native’ colonial civil servants. We know little about these Cypriot government employees, who presented the peculiarity of being both colonial public servants and members of the subject communities. And yet the corps of Cypriot colonial civil servants represented a non-negligible social reality: by 1939, the colonial administration employed 2,045 permanent Cypriot civil servants, to whom must be added 1,400 elementary school teachers directly remunerated by government funds and 3,485 contract labourers working primarily for the public works (2,770 daily workers) and railway departments (181 daily workers). With close to 7,000 people on its payroll, fulltime or part-time, out of a total population, in 1940, of 383,967, the Cyprus government was the island’s single most important employer and, along with its nemesis the Orthodox Church, the most spread-out organization, making its presence felt in each of the island’s six administrative districts, through its rural doctors, tax collectors, police officers, foresters and forest guards and, from 1933 when they became state employees, schoolteachers.59 They were the everyday face of colonialism in Cyprus. In a society of smallholding peasant-proprietors overburdened with debt, a post in the administration opened new prospects of financial autonomy: in 1936, the government of Cyprus estimated that an ‘average labouring class family’ earned £37 a year, taking into account the earnings of both husband and wife;60 comparatively, in the same year, a simple messenger (the lowest paid position in the administration, which did not require examinations) earned a steady £48 a year, worked seven to eight hours per day and was eligible for a pension at the end of his career. Employing Cypriot officials was first of all a financial necessity for the Cyprus government. Civil service wages were financed by the taxes paid by the Cypriot population. As the emoluments of British civil servants serving in the island were incomparably superior to that of their Cypriot subalterns, it was considered more politic to restrict their number. Hence in 1939, there were only 97 British officials in

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Cyprus (4.4 per cent of the total civil establishment of fulltime officials), who nonetheless absorbed a good 23 per cent of the total wage bill. Moreover, ‘expatriates’ and ‘locals’ were differently represented in each department. At the colonial administration’s hub, the secretariat, seven officers were British and 21 Cypriot, whereas ‘non-strategic’ departments such as the printing establishment or the postal department had been fully ‘Cypriotized’ by the 1930s. In the great majority of cases, Cypriots were entrusted with subaltern functions, most of them being ‘clerks’, a category subdivided in four ‘grades’ and forming an army of scribes interchangeable between the various administrative departments. The only areas where a well-educated Cypriot could expect to reach a high position were the judicial, medical and police departments. Cypriot district and assistant district judges commanded respect within the local society. In 1932, they were 18 (11 Greek and seven Turkish Cypriots), a number that fell to 15 by 1939 (nine Greek and six Turkish Cypriots).61 In the police department three officers made a very successful career, the Greek Cypriots Michael Kareklas and Ioannis Tilliros, and the Cypriot of Syrian origin Caesar Shellish; all of them reached the highest grade available to a Cypriot – local commandant of police, 2nd grade – and were awarded an MBE.62 Obtaining a permanent position in the administration entailed a number of successive selection procedures. Entry to the civil service as a clerk, for instance, was based on examinations testing the candidate’s proficiency in English, his basic knowledge of a third language (other than his own), and his mastery of arithmetic, history, geography, followed by an oral examination in front of the Promotions and Selection Board (consisting of the colonial secretary, a district court president, a senior treasury official and an assistant secretary from the colonial secretary’s office).63 Before his appointment was confirmed, the officer was given probationary status and was expected to pass another examination within two to three years, this time in colonial regulations, statute laws and general orders.64 In view of these requirements, positions in the administration other than messenger, policeman (zaptieh), forestguard, male orderly in hospitals, etc., were accessible only to a small

36 56 4 3 1

Percentage )

17 80 0.03

Sources: SA1 1111/1928, CO 67/226/15 and Eleftheria, 14 September 1929.

699 1101 76 56 21 1,953

Number

Estimated percentage of island’s demography69

Positions per ethnicity in the colonial administration, 1929.

Turks Greeks English Catholics and Maronites Armenians Total

Ethnicity

68

Table 3.1

70,680 123,820 48,320 10,792 3,180 256,792

Wage bill (in £)

27.5 48.2 18.4 4.2 1.2

Percentage of total salaries

74 CYPRUS IN THE 1930S

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number of young men from better-off families, fortunate enough to have received some education. The world of Cypriot civil servants was decisively male: only a few women were employed by the government, either as nurses in the medical department (25 in 1939), or as schoolmistresses (489 in 1934).65 As regards its ethnic composition, and despite allegations to the contrary, it tended to reflect the island’s demographics. A small but significant exception to this rule concerned the police department, as Turkish Cypriots were considered until well into the 1920s as better police ‘material’.66 In 1925, the chief commandant of police reported that ‘Moslems’ still outnumbered other ethnicities in the Cyprus police, representing 51 per cent of its establishment when they accounted for 18 per cent of the island’s population at the time.67 Table 3.1 represents the ethnic breakdown in the colonial administration in 1929. Of course, appointments to the government quickly became a politicized question: Greek Cypriot members of the Legislative Council complained that they were underrepresented with respect to their actual demographical weight and that the British (referred to in the press as the ‘blue bloods’, i.e. the nobility) were too numerous and too expensive. At the same time, Turkish Cypriot newspapers repeatedly expressed their concern with regard to potential hellenification (or ‘Greekification’) of the colonial administration.70 From 1927 to 1930, Governor Storrs politically exploited the issue of ‘native’ appointments: in order to quell the Greek Cypriot enosist movement, he opened higher positions to Cypriots in exchange for their loyalty. On 18 March 1927, he appointed the renowned Greek Cypriot lawyer and political leader Neoptolemos Paschalis to the newly created position of solicitor-general. On 1 October 1927, in the wake of a significant reform of the island’s courts of justice, he appointed Basil Sertsios and Mustafa Fuad Ziai bey as puisne judges to the Supreme Court.71 On 14 November 1927, a Cypriot of Maltese origin, Antonio Nicola Branco, an examiner of accounts at the audit department, was promoted to assistant local auditor.72 Finally, Stelios D. Pavlides, a lawyer and member of the Legislative Council (a position from which

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he resigned on assumption of his post), was offered the position of crown counsel on 1 December 1927, and became Paschalis’ deputy. Storrs’ ambitious initiative was coldly received both by his staff in Cyprus and at the Colonial Office. His chief justice, Charles Belcher, considered ‘Cypriotization’ an ill-conceived attempt at placating enosist political leaders, ‘a scheme which only appeared in its full futility four years later, when the appeasement of the politicians went up in the smoke and flame of Government House, and a British Governor had to hare for his life from the ruins of his official residence’.73 Notwithstanding these reservations, Storrs was initially vindicated as Cypriotization did split the enosist movement between what may be termed the gradualists, namely political leaders such as Ioannis Klerides who perceived the conquest of government posts as a preliminary step towards self-determination and eventually Enosis; and the maximalists, being political leaders and journalists who considered that the acceptance of civil service appointments was the surest path towards the emasculation of the ‘national struggle’. In the wake of the 1931 revolt, Storrs found ‘consolation in the absolute loyalty of the Cypriot civil servants, from the highest to the lowest; manifested no less in the brilliant advice of Neoptolemos Paschalis, the Cypriot Solicitor-General, than in the steadfast courage of scores of constables, Greek as well as Turk, risking their lives day and night against mobs of exultant hooligans’.74 He publicly expressed his gratitude to the entire Cypriot civil service in the administration’s official Cyprus Gazette and exempted them all from the collective fine imposed on the Greek Cypriot community for the damage inflicted during the riots. Cypriots had ‘made it a point of honour to support the government through thick and thin’.75 Hence, by the early 1930s, loyal Cypriot civil servants, who prior to the revolt were used as political pawns, became the vital rearguard for a beleaguered Cyprus government. From then on, the management of Cypriot personnel followed two parallel developments along the administrative hierarchy as higher civil servants were subjected to slightly different treatment than subordinates. If the exigencies of unflinching loyalty were uncompromising for subaltern native colonial civil servants, they

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were naturally even more so for their compatriots occupying higher positions. A very small circle of Cypriot ‘advisers’, composed of the highest native civil servants and the two members of the Executive Council, became indispensable to the government and thoroughly involved in policymaking. These people were usually selected among the island’s most successful lawyers and immediately appointed to influential positions instead of painstakingly climbing the rungs of the bureaucratic ladder. In 1937 there were exactly five such Cypriots: Sir Panayiotis Loizou Cacoyiannis, Kt., and Mehmet Munir bey, OBE, members of the Executive Council; Mustafa Fuad Ziai, puisne judge at the Supreme Court; Neoptolemos Paschalis, KC, solicitor-general, and Stelios Pavlides, crown counsel at the legal department.76 Cacoyiannis had become a highly successful lawyer in Limassol before being elected as a Greek Cypriot member of the Legislative Council (1925– 1930), then appointed, in 1929, member of the Executive Council and, in 1933, member of the Advisory Council. Munir had gradually become the official leader of the Turkish Cypriot community, gaining almost absolute power over Turkish Cypriot customary affairs as director of the Evkaf, which gave him the control of the Sheri (Sharia) courts and the Fetva Emini (Superintendent of religious affairs). Mustafa Fuad was probably the only one among the five owing his ascension to merit alone, although the fact that he belonged to one of the island’s most influential families – he was the son of the retired mufti of Cyprus, Hacı Hafız Mehmet Zia-ud-din, and cousin of Munir bey – certainly did not play against him. Paschalis had for years been a leading figure of Greek Cypriot nationalism, himself a member of the Legislative Council (1916– 1921) and one of the leaders of the election boycott movement and non cooperation policy in the early 1920s.77 Finally, Pavlides was a lawyer who practised in Nicosia and Paphos and had been a member of the Legislative Council between 1925 and 1927. As can be inferred from the curriculum of these luminaries, they had been chosen on account of their reliability – all had been trained in Britain – but also, perhaps even more so, because of their purported influence and reputation within their respective communities. After 1931, however, it was on their immaculate loyalty and

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impeccable pro-British credentials that British authorities clung to. In fact, it became something of a tradition in the families of these five Cypriots to serve the Crown: in November 1942, the son of retired Solicitor-General Neoptolemos Paschalis, Paschalis Neoptolemou Paschalis, was offered and accepted the position of crown counsel.78 Throughout the 1930s, it seems that the respect these powerful Cypriot intermediaries commanded within the community surreptitiously waned, particularly among left-wing sympathizers. At the beginning of the Second World War, the London-based Cypriot community organized the Committee for Cyprus’ Autonomy, and began to actively resist the recruitment of Cypriots to the British armed forces, seeing no point in defending a ‘phalanx of Government nurslings [. . .] secret police, military police, the Shellishes, the Paschalises, the Cacoyiannises and the loyal servants of Great Britain’.79 Another telling sign of the government advisers’ waning authority is the fact that the two members of the Executive Council became perfectly irreplaceable, despite the Colonial Office’s exhortations for some change especially with respect to Munir; in 1942, Governor Woolley wrote that he could find no member of the Turkish Cypriot community ‘who [would be] suitable or willing to serve in room of Munir, while to allow him to continue and to replace Cacoyiannis, who [was] invaluable adviser [sic], would be invidious and would have unfortunate repercussions’.80 As far as subordinate civil servants were concerned, there were different ways to cultivate their loyalty. The less sophisticated consisted in lavishing on them imperial paraphernalia: hence in the five and a half years of Palmer’s governorship, native officials received ten times more decorations, honorific titles, rewards, medals and even knighthoods than in the previous 55 years.81 A more discreet manner involved adapting the criteria for the selection and the promotion of Cypriot colonial civil servants: ‘Loyalty’ in the procedure became as decisive as ‘competence’. When Vassilios Vassiliades, first grade clerk at the secretariat retired in 1940, assistant colonial secretary Robert C.S. Stanley requested from the Limassol district commissioner, Oswald R. Arthur, for ‘personal information’ regarding Constantinos

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A. Soteriades, a second grade clerk in Limassol who was being considered for the position: The Promotions Board have been considering the filling of the vacancy of first class clerk created by the retirement of Vassiliades. Your Chief Clerk, Soteriades, is very much in the picture and there are one or two others who judged by their reports have at least as good a claim to consideration. I know Soteriades personally and agree with everything that has been said about him in his confidential reports as to his ability, adaptability, initiative and energy. It would very much assist us if you could let me have a personal report on his politics, associations, partiality or otherwise for intrigue and in fact anything affecting his personal outlook and character which might assist us in forming a judgment.82 The surest way to simultaneously guarantee the loyalty and competence of Cypriot civil servants was to provide them in-service training. Sending middle-rank Cypriot officials to follow vocational training courses in Britain became frequent beginning 1931: for instance in spring of 1938, the director of the education department, James Cullen, obtained a scholarship for ‘select’ schoolteachers to study for a year in a British university.83 As Acting Governor Hugh Foot noted in a secret dispatch on 19 December 1944, there were also political advantages in these training programmes: during their stay in Britain, Cypriots would mingle with Britons, which in turn was expected to improve, in the mid-term, the relations between the colonial government and the Cypriot society.84 This rationale may seem a little strange. But it speaks volumes about the despair of colonial authorities regarding the state of British– Cypriot relations in Cyprus itself. Finally, another device in the ‘anglicization’ of Cypriot civil servants was Nicosia’s English school, which Cullen attempted unsuccessfully to transform into the official training facility for future Cypriot colonial officials; instead, alumni of the English school were given priority – but not exclusive – access to government positions.85

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The logic of bureaucratic reification: dismissing subaltern civil servants These different measures reveal a fundamental contradiction in the British management of Cypriot colonial personnel. In theory, ‘native’ employees were expected to become the active link between state and society. In other words, as Cypriot civil servants, at once subjects and performers of colonial rule – ‘mimic men’ in a Bhabhian sense – they were supposed to become the state’s means to penetrate and reinforce its grip on the society.86 And yet in practice, everything was done to extract them from that society, monitor them and anglicize them. In so doing, colonial authorities deprived themselves of the means, to paraphrase Christopher Bayly, ‘to tap into the patterns of ordinary [Cypriot] family life’ and to access ‘other sources of affective knowledge’.87 The consequences of such policy on the quality and reliability of the information collected by the colonial state will be more systematically investigated in the next chapter. What needs to be highlighted here is that the belief that subaltern Cypriots could be transformed into mere cogs in the administrative machinery presumed too little of their capacity to jam that machinery. The Cyprus collection at the Colonial Office archives contains numerous files on cases of Cypriot subaltern civil servants appealing against sanctions imposed by their hierarchy. Such appeals initiated long, meticulous procedures and a hefty correspondence between the Colonial Office and the Cyprus government. Even when they were not successful and the aggrieved officer did not manage to overturn the sanction, these procedures always entailed a negotiation and clarification of the prerogatives of all parties involved: the sanctioned official, his or her immediate hierarchy and the Colonial Office. One case, that of a dismissed Greek Cypriot police officer, will serve here to illustrate these larger stakes. Although the years this event happened, 1926– 1928, fall outside the scope of this book, it has been selected among many because it provides the most thorough documentation on each of the stages of the procedure. It may be argued that such meticulousness and attention to legality was even

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more applicable after the 1931 uprising as Cypriot civil servants constituted the only interface between government and society.88 During an official inspection of the rural police stations by Michael Kareklas, local commandant of the Cyprus Military Police, Zaptieh (Private) No. 3576 Ioannis Vassiliou was found ‘untidily dressed and dirty’ and had ‘failed to enter his Diary for five days, viz from 5 November 1926, to 10 November 1926’. To Vassiliou’s misfortune, this occurred while the local commandant was accompanied by Herbert Layard Dowbiggin, inspector general of the Ceylon Police then on special duty on the island. Consequently Lieutenant-Colonel Albert Ernest Gallagher, chief commandant of the Cyprus Police, no doubt feeling humiliated in front of his distinguished guest, requested the immediate dismissal of the said private on the grounds of ‘gross neglect of duty and dirtiness while stationed at Kolossi on the inspection of the Inspector General, Ceylon Police, in November, 1926’.89 Governor Storrs approved. Using his right guaranteed by colonial regulation No. 212 stating that ‘every individual has [. . .] the right to address the Secretary of State, if he thinks it is proper’, Vassiliou, decided to appeal against his dismissal.90 In a memorandum dated 26 March 1928, he made the following representations: I was serving at the above station, as I mentioned, quite alone, and I had to look after a large volume of business, trying always to present myself worthy of the confidence given to me, and taking not into consideration anything else than my duty, I had to sleep [sic] for five whole days and nights, looking after a lot of robberies, and other troubles which happened. And just for the reason stated, I was found to be unshaven and my patrolling not passed in the proper book. My explanations and right justifications were not at all taken into consideration, and this was enough for my honesty, good conduct, long services, to be overlooked. Dismissed of my duty after a period of 12 years honest services, was the punishment I sustained [sic].

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I was and I am, a loyal man, and I understand that I had to sustain a punishment, but I am of the humble opinion, that Your Excellency will agree to that the punishment I sustained was hard. Being a father of a family, I have to protect my children and wife, while I am dismissed of my duties, and out of business whatever. My applications to the Governor of Cyprus, and the Chief Inspector of the Cyprus Military Police, were not taken into consideration. In pleading guilty to the charges, Vassiliou imputed them to the hefty workload to which he was entirely committed. The two central paragraphs of the quoted passage were meant to be the most important. In these, Vassiliou underlined four things: one, his seniority; two, his dedication to his work; three, his loyalty; and four, the rights to which such attributes entitled him as a civil servant and which, in fact, had been disregarded. Finally the last paragraph was more of an affective appeal. At the Colonial Office, Dawe noted that the local commandant who was inspecting Vassiliou’s station – the highly-respected Greek Cypriot Michael Kareklas – ‘informed Mr. Dowbiggin [the Ceylon Inspector of Police] that Private Vassiliou was a very good man’ and that ‘Mr. Dowbiggin also [said] that the man was not to blame. He submitted that it was the system which required consideration.’ But what is even more interesting is that Dawe appeared to be responsive to Vassiliou’s arguments, particularly those concerning his seniority. Insisting on the fact that ‘the right of an aggrieved officer to petition the Secretary of State is one of considerable importance and that it should be treated with respect’ he added that ‘it might appear [. . .] that the man had been dealt with too severely in being dismissed after twelve years’. Vassiliou, the 3/7 cp. per diem Limassol policeman, thus created a bridge between himself and the Downing Street powerful bureaucrat by using language marshalling a public service ethos.

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Consequently, the secretary of state’s despatch to the governor, drafted by Dawe and his collaborators, asked for more details concerning the facts reproached to the dismissed officer and a full memorandum by the chief commandant of police. In the memorandum in question, Lieutenant-Colonel Gallagher wrote that even if the petitioner was of ‘good character, he belonged to the old school, without any chance of promotion and consequently of the time serving type, which is fast disappearing from the Police by elimination’. The way he worded his memorandum, the chief commandant of police seemed to imply, therefore, that his decision merely quickened a process of natural extinction of a certain class of policemen.91 This argumentation was found to be unconvincing at the Colonial Office, to say the least. Bottomley, a principal secretary, noted that ‘[t]he penalty seem[ed] to be out of all proportion to the offence’. He added that the absence of ‘some sort of machinery for a trial or enquiry before a man is dismissed’ and the ‘summary nature of this man’s dismissal seemed to [him] to be all wrong’.92 Much stronger, though, were the observations of another principal secretary, Fiddian. In reaction to a suggestion by a colleague that it might be necessary to endorse the chief commandant of police’s decision in order to uphold Gallagher’s authority and preserve the discipline of the Cyprus police corps,93 he wrote that this: [was] an argument that [he had] met before, and it always made [him] sick. Whenever any more than usually scandalous act of injustice was committed in a Colony, we used to be told that we should undermine the authority and prestige of the Colonial Government if we got it put right. It is difficult to stigmatise this doctrine without using language too indecently strong for a minute. It is much more important to maintain the authority of the Government and the confidence which Colonial Civil Servants ought to feel in the justice of the British administrator than it is to maintain Colonel Gallagher’s authority and uphold discipline.94

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Fiddian’s remark was more ambiguous than it seemed. In order to contest his colleague’s outward defence of the racial hierarchy within the administrative apparatus, he appealed to what might be termed a ‘public servant ethos’, whereby the colonial civil servant’s confidence –and it should be noted that no ethnicity was ascribed to the colonial civil servant – had become the keystone of the government’s authority. Yet, this confidence was directed to the ‘British administrator’s justice’ and not to the impersonal rules of the public service. In that sense, Fiddian implicitly acknowledged the very racial hierarchy he appeared to be criticising, but he suggested that this hierarchy should be built on a feeling of the ‘justice’ in, rather than ‘prestige and authority’ of, the British administrator. This illustrated a deviation and adaptation of the public servant ethos to the context of a colonial bureaucracy: indeed, the logic of the racial hierarchy was entirely reversed here; whereas in his colleague’s rationale it functioned as a principle for the preservation of the British superior’s prestige, in Fiddian’s remark this same racial hierarchy functioned as a guarantee for the indigenous civil servant’s rights. The assistant under-secretary of state for the colonies, Sir John E. Shuckburgh, wrote to the acting governor, R.E. Nicholson, that ‘we cannot help feeling that this man was dealt with too severely in being punished with dismissal, after 12 years’ service, for what would seem, so far as our papers show, to have been a single and isolated offence’. Admitting that, two years after the incident, it was too late to reinstate the man in his original post, he asked however that something be done for him, i.e. ‘find him some small job, such as messenger or porter in some Government department’. He concluded by stating that ‘it does seem undeniable that there should be some definite procedure for the trial at any rate of offences which may involve serious punishment’.95 In short, Shuckburgh not only transformed his advisers’ concerns into an official decision, but also suggested the implementation of measures which would further protect the indigenous civil servants, in future, against what was perceived as their arbitrary treatment by the colonial government. The case was officially closed with Nicholson’s answer on 20

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December 1928 stating that Vassiliou ‘turned down an offer of employment as a Temporary Guard [in the Customs Department] on the grounds that the post is only temporary; and this in spite of the fact that he was told he would be employed permanently later on if found suitable’.96 The reasons commanding Vassiliou’s alleged decision are open to conjecture. Could the man have rejected what appeared to him to be a rather humiliating act of charity when, feeling sincerely aggrieved, he expected full rehabilitation? It is important here to highlight that Vassiliou took an active role in the whole procedure. In his memorandum, he presented himself as a civil servant with considerable seniority, dedication to his duties and loyalty to the administration, and it was as such that he demanded the revision of the disciplinary action he had received. This skilful self-representation created a bridge of communication with the colonial authorities in London around a shared conception of a public servant ethos and enhanced Vassiliou’s autonomy in the whole procedure. This autonomy was demonstrated down to the end of the case, when Vassiliou made the choice to refuse the accommodation proposed by the colonial government. The Colonial Office was very anxious to certify the legality of the whole affair, and tried to understand it in legal and regulatory terms. In the absence of specific rules, the suggestion was made to the colonial government to set up ‘some definite procedure for the trial at any rate of offences which may involve serious punishment’; for it was precisely the legality of the working of the colonial administration which would ‘maintain the confidence which the Colonial Civil Servants ought to feel in the justice of the British administrator’. This ‘over-conformity’ with the rules, to use Robert Merton’s words, was likely to provoke dysfunctions in the colonial bureaucracy, or a ‘displacement of its primary goals’.97 The rules were meant to regulate the functioning of a bureaucracy, the aim of which was to secure colonial domination. Yet this unwritten but fundamental task of establishing the domination of the British over the Cypriot might sometimes be at variance with the written rules of a system that allowed a Cypriot like Vassiliou to protest.

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It is tempting to apply to this case E.P. Thompson’s observation, according to which ‘the rulers are, in serious senses, whether willingly or unwillingly, the prisoners of their own rhetoric; they play the games of power according to rules which suit them, but they cannot break those rules or the whole game would be thrown away’.98 As a subordinate civil servant, Vassiliou belonged to the impersonal and bureaucratic sphere of what may be termed the ‘merely administrative’, where rules still mattered. His case suggests that ‘native’ colonial civil servants may at times have been in a position to change the nature of the colonial will by the mere fact of abiding by its rules. This need not be understood through the frame of collaboration and resistance. Nothing in the available evidence suggests that Vassiliou was motivated by politics. Yet this case, by dissecting the bureaucratic procedure at work in appeals against administrative sanctions, opens new and indeed more ‘systemic’ perspectives on colonial anxieties regarding control over Cypriot colonial civil servants. Michel Crozier famously described the ‘bureaucratic phenomenon’ as an inflation of procedure resulting from a bargaining of power between subordinates and supervisors in a bureaucratic structure. By defending their privileges mobilizing existing rules, subordinates force the organization to develop new rules and centralize even more its decision-making process.99 The discussion of Vassiliou’s case here is meant to show exactly the logic of such ‘bureaucratic vicious circle’ at the heart of the day-to-day working of the Cyprus government. Processes as this one led to more rigidity inside the colonial bureaucracy and less adaptability to the changing social and political context. * Throughout the 1930s, Palmer and the Colonial Office devised an ambitious plan to recruit promising British officials to govern Cyprus. However, the Colonial Service Unification Scheme and conflicting views between the governor and the Colonial Office regarding the ideal official profile for Cyprus thwarted Palmer’s ambition to appoint in Cyprus British administrators ready to spend their entire careers in the island and able and willing to mingle with the ‘natives’. Under the circumstances, only Cypriot colonial civil

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servants could function as a permanent and vital interface between the Cyprus government and the island’s inhabitants. But official fixation on their ‘loyalty’, ritualized through the recruitment procedures, meant that candidates well integrated in their communities were considered with suspicion. Additionally, regulatory contradictions, whereby ‘fair’, impersonal rules were put at the service of a regime founded on the principle of racial difference created dysfunctions that were remedied through more reifying procedures and regulations.100 Overall the management of colonial personnel, British and Cypriot, as well as the bureaucratization of their work distorted the links between state and society in Cyprus, and had damaging consequences on intelligence-gathering practices and the collection of information. This contributed decisively to the official misapprehension of the magnitude, and the novelty, of a campaign, beginning in 1937, for the restoration of constitutional liberties which is examined in the next chapter.

CHAPTER 4 THE CONSTITUTIONALIST MOVEMENT AND THE AVENUES OF MASS POLITICIZATION

The general opacity marring the colonial state’s information flows masked an intense political activity organized by a younger generation of Greek Cypriot lawyers and merchants in view of obtaining the restoration of constitutional liberties. These elites first attempted a conciliatory approach by opening a dialogue with colonial authorities and enlisting the support of British political personalities in London. On account of their activities, in 1937 the government took steps to sideline them completely. This constitutionalist movement, characterized by diversity and inclusiveness, generated unprecedented and unrepeated dynamics in Cypriot politics. It opened possibilities for practical cooperation between the two larger Cypriot communities, it temporarily reconciled leftwing sympathizers and conservative leaders and established durable links between town and village. Had colonial authorities been more receptive to the constitutionalist movement in the 1930s, later developments might have taken a very different turn: the formation of a legitimate state might have averted political violence in the 1950s. The movement failed in its goal of upgrading the island’s status from a colony to a dominion. But it contributed

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decisively in the advent of mass politics in Cyprus. The chapter is divided into two sections: the first offers a narrative of the initiatives taken by cross-sections of Cypriot society in the 1930s and highlights their novel features; the second focuses on one particular event, namely the submission of hundreds of petitions from most Cypriot villages to the colonial authorities beginning in May 1939. This last section should not only allow for a fuller understanding of the particulars of mass politicization in colonial Cyprus, but also for an evaluation of the colonial administration’s intelligence-gathering practices.

Appealing to the British liberal mind: enlisting support in England Perhaps the most influential personality behind the constitutionalist movement was George Soteriou Vassiliades from Larnaca. By the colonial authorities’ own admission, Vassiliades was a brilliant and energetic lawyer, idealist enough to be indifferent to money and not to claim the leadership of the movement for himself.1 Having served as member of the Advisory Council (1934– 1937) and deputy mayor of Larnaca (1929– 1937), this Cypriot Robespierre was fluent in the legal terminology and the administrative technicalities of the state.2 Vassiliades’ main objective was to get the colonial authorities to honour their pledge to ‘review the whole constitutional future of the Island’ following the ‘temporary’ abolition of the Legislative Council in 1931.3 In pursuing this goal, Vassiliades aptly acted, according to the circumstances, in his various capacities, as a private ‘British subject’ endowed with inalienable rights, as an advocate with a masterly knowledge of the colony’s laws and regulations, or as a government appointee concerned with the colony’s prosperity and the smooth relations between the government and the ‘people’.4 In late April 1937, applications for permission to create political associations open to all secondary-school graduates were submitted to the district and assistant district commissioners of Nicosia, Larnaca, Limassol, Famagusta and Kyrenia. The initiators of this campaign were, according to the criminal investigation department, Vassiliades and four of his close collaborators: Dimitris N. Demetriou OBE from

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Larnaca, a wealthy merchant, moneylender and president of the Cyprus Chamber of Commerce (1936– 1952); Ioannis K. Klerides from Nicosia, a powerful lawyer and legal adviser to the archbishopric of Cyprus; Paul G. Pavlides from Limassol, a merchant, landowner and former member of the Advisory Council; and Panayiotis Ioannou, a merchant, school benefactor and owner of a cotton factory in Famagusta.5 The application justified the creation of political associations on the ground that this would ‘promote public interest in, and obtain public views on, the local affairs of Cyprus as a country in the British Commonwealth of nations’.6 As we will later see, the phrasing acknowledging the island’s organic links with the British Empire was both novel and crucial in the constitutional movement’s strategy. The colonial authorities believed that the initiators of the campaign relied on the predictable rejection of their applications to bolster their denunciation of political repression in Cyprus and legitimize a deputation to the Colonial Office that Vassiliades, Klerides and Demetriou had been preparing since February 1937.7 The Nicosia-based newspaper Eleftheria (Freedom) granted its full support to the deputation, which set sail for London on 24 June 1937.8 Colonial attempts to question the representativeness of the deputation were outfoxed by its instigators, who pointed to the absence of representative institutions in post-1931 Cyprus and the impossibility ‘to seek from the people authority to represent them because public meetings of a political nature are not allowed by Government’.9 During their stay in London, the deputation made contact with British political leaders, notably Denis Nowell Pritt, KC, Labour MP for Hammersmith North, an acquaintance of both Demetriou and Klerides and a committed advocate of Cyprus. Pritt was also connected to the Committee for Cyprus Autonomy, established in London in late spring 1937, which called for the creation of a Cypriot polity where Greek Cypriots could vote for Turkish Cypriot representatives and vice-versa and was headed by the leftwing Cypriot and occasional collaborator to Eleftheria, Evdoros Ioannides.10 On Palmer’s express insistence, only Vassiliades, in his capacity of member of the Advisory Council, was granted an

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interview at the Colonial Office.11 He was received on 27 July 1937 by Arthur J. Dawe, head of the Pacific and Mediterranean department, who confirmed the Colonial Office’s unconditional support for the governor’s policy and said he could not contemplate any change in the existing regime in Cyprus.12 Vassiliades probably did not expect to win his interlocutors over. It is more likely that the deputation sought to create, in Governor Palmer’s words, a ‘buzz’ around the question of constitutional rights, by maintaining, through their contacts in London, interest for Cyprus alive in Britain and by raising, through their preliminary campaign for political associations, the level of political awareness on the island.13 Indeed, on 24 March 1937, three months before the deputation reached London, Pritt had asked the secretary of state whether ‘it [was] the intention of His Majesty’s Government to restore the constitutional position in Cyprus; and if so, whether the opportunity [would] be taken to grant a more liberal constitution than that against which the people of Cyprus rose in revolt in 1931’.14 The Cyprus government sought to nip the movement in the bud. In September 1937, Eleftheria was suspended for having published the deputation’s memorandum; Klerides lost one of his main clients, the Cyprus Mines Corporation, which, as we will see in Chapter Six, had close ties with the Cyprus government; Vassiliades, who also lost a wealthy client, saw his appointments as deputy mayor of Larnaca and member of the Advisory Council terminated.15 It is precisely the constitutional movement’s moderation that appeared particularly subversive to the colonial authorities. The various memoranda were written in a sober style that contrasted with pre-1931 petitions. Their request, ‘autonomy’ instead of Enosis, was more modest, and the efforts to enlist the support of the left, the Turkish Cypriot community and even the British, more sincere and systematic. Focusing on ‘constitutional liberties’ allowed the movement to cast the net wide and address different expectations. According to Dawe, their claims ‘appeal[ed] strongly to ordinary British sentiment: but beneath the surface of all this, there flows strongly a stream of Enosis. [. . .] It is the old Greek stratagem of the Wooden Horse.’16

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Going intercultural: the involvement of the Turkish Cypriot community The first manifestation of intercommunal cooperation at the level of ‘high’ politics followed a public statement made by Palmer precluding any change, in the foreseeable future, in the constitution of the central government. This elicited the reaction of four out of five of the members of the Advisory Council – Vassiliades, Pavlides, the lawyer, businessman and political leader Neophytos N. Nicolaides and the Turkish Cypriot lawyer Mehmet Zekia – who issued a memorandum in January 1937 requesting a liberal constitution, free education, the abolition of censorship and the right to hold public meetings. With the exception of Vassiliades, who retained his post until September, they were all sacked from the Advisory Council.17 A month later, on 3 February 1937, Mehmet Remzi Mulla Hassan Okan, editor of the Nicosia-based bi-weekly So¨z (Word, 1921–1940), called for Turkish Cypriot participation in Vassiliades’ ‘deputation’ to London, a possibility briefly contemplated by Necati Missirlizade´ ¨ zkan, a former member of the defunct Legislative Council. Later still, O on 1 July, the Larnaca district commissioner, R.C.S. Stanley, reported that an application requesting his authorization to set up a political association had been co-signed by two members of the ‘Moslem community’.18 Involving the Turkish Cypriot community in the constitutionalist movement was the idea of both Vassiliades and the London-based Committee for Cyprus Autonomy. All of the memoranda produced during the busy year of 1937 included references to Turkish Cypriots. When he visited the Colonial Office, Vassiliades claimed that ‘he and his colleagues [. . .] represent[ed] a large section of opinion in Cyprus and their sympathizers included Greeks and Turks and also “non-official” English settlers’.19 A grievance common to Greek and Turkish Cypriots concerned government intervention in education. In their 10 July 1937 letter to the secretary of state for the colonies, Vassiliades, Demetriou and Klerides excoriated the Cyprus government’s attempts at ‘eliminating national pride among the inhabitants of the Colony’ and

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warned that the elimination of Greek and Turkish history from the school curricula was ‘strongly resented both by the Greek and Turkish elements in the Colony’.20 The mention to each community’s ‘national pride’ is interesting and contrasts with earlier attempts on the part of the Communist Party of Cyprus or the Greek –Turkish Agricultural Party at fostering intercommunal solidarity premised on a renunciation of allegiance to foreign countries, Greece or Turkey.21 But by illustrating the effort at reducing the distance between the communities, this new stand also highlighted the frailty of the Greek – Turkish alliance. The more enthusiastic Greek Cypriot supporters of intercommunal cooperation came from the left. One of them may have been journalist Evdoros Ioannides, founder of the Committee for Cyprus Autonomy.22 The positive Turkish Cypriot response to calls for intercommunal cooperation should be set against the background of a multifarious, often contradictory, discontent within the island’s second largest community. The adverse effects of the collapse of agricultural prices as a result of the world economic crisis and growing dissatisfaction with colonial education policies were politicized by the Turkish Cypriot nationalist press. Economic difficulties induced numerous young males to cross on open boats, bereft of any official documents, the Cilician Sea separating Cyprus from the southern coast of Turkey. A total of 259 Turkish Cypriots thus tried their fortune between July and October 1937; only 21 of them managed to stay in Turkey, while the others, barred from landing by Turkish authorities or unsuccessful in finding work, returned to the island. An article in So¨z attributed the young men’s migration to ‘the Fatherland’ to the ‘deplorable conditions’ in Cyprus. Reacting to what they considered a subversively nationalistic piece, the colonial authorities on 17 August 1937 suspended the newspaper for three months.23 But they also wished to elucidate the reasons for discontent within what they had considered for a long time to be the ‘loyal community’. Mehmet Munir Bey OBE, a member of the Executive Council and director of the Evkaf, was therefore sent to meet the island’s ‘leading Moslems in the Headquarter towns of every district throughout the Colony and also at Lefka [Nicosia

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district], which is a large Moslem centre’. In a memorandum dated 12 August 1937, Munir cited rural indebtedness and the administration’s education policy as the community’s main grievances. Concerning the latter issue, the people Munir interviewed resented that a Briton served as headmaster of the Turkish Lyce´e and that the director of education, ‘an Englishman’, was a member of the body governing Muslim secondary schools. Munir also took initiatives to stymie Greek – Turkish rapprochement by denouncing ‘the political agitation for Autonomy and a new constitution which was organized by some Orthodox Christian gentlemen’, reminding his interlocutors that ‘the safety of the Moslems in Cyprus lay solely in displaying their loyalty to the British Crown’. As proof of his success, Munir attached to his report letters from Hamid bey, a member of the Larnaca district council, Celal S¸efik, an advocate and member of the Larnaca municipal council, and Ahmet Said Effendi, an advocate and Islamic scholar, who recanted their participation in the ‘Vassiliades movement’. All three had submitted requests to the colonial authorities to set up political associations.24 Unsurprisingly, Munir did not report that the greatest cause for discontent in the Turkish Cypriot community was his own absolute power. Many had been protesting against the fact that Munir had secured for himself every single influential official position open to Moslems. Amassing 13 mandates, he gained complete control over the pillars of the Turkish Cypriot community, namely the Evkaf, the Fetva Emini (who took over responsibility for religious affairs from the mufti in 1927), inheritance law, family law, the education system, and the Sheri (sharia) courts. Discontents resented the fact that the colonial authorities never elicited the views of the community with regard to their religion or the education of their children and contented themselves with delegating these issues to an ‘anglicized Ottoman’.25 Even Celal S¸efik, who officially recanted his participation in the constitutionalist movement, still believed that the ‘grievances of the people [. . .] should be heard directly from them’.26 This is perhaps the way most Turkish Cypriots who sided with Greek Cypriots understood ‘autonomy’, namely a larger share

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in the administration of their own communal affairs. Concern was expressed at the Colonial Office about the Cyprus government’s overreliance on Munir who, in the words of Dawe, ‘after all, only represent[ed] a minority of a minority!’ In November 1937, the secretary of state for the colonies enjoined Palmer to ‘maintain contact not merely with the more conservative members of the community like Munir Bey, but also with the younger generation of Turks who must inevitably feel the attraction of the present regime in Kemalist Turkey’. This advice would only be contemplated in 1949, namely at a time when Turkish Cypriot nationalists were already very well organized and firmly implanted in the community.27 Among the most vocal opponents of Munir and his establishment, comprising the Evkaf, the Sheri courts and the Fetva Emini, were the editors of the two main Turkish Cypriot newspapers, So¨z and the weekly Ses (Voice, 1929 – 1938), Remzi and H.I. Asim, respectively.28 So¨z was openly Kemalist, claiming that there existed a continuity of ‘language, race and tradition between the Turks and the Turkish Cypriots’. Remzi had opted for Turkish nationality in 1926 and was a cofounder of the Kardes¸ Ocag˘ı (Hearth of Brotherhood), a Kemalist political club in Nicosia. He was also said to be close to the Turkish consul-general, Ekrem I. Arar, and receiving funds from Turkey.29 In contrast, Palmer claimed that Ses represented the traditional conservative Turkish Cypriot establishment. But the language used in Ses was strikingly similar to that of So¨z when it referred, for example, to the Turkish Lyce´e as ‘the hearth of racial culture’.30 Also So¨z and Ses extensively covered the visit of the Hamidiye, a Turkish naval training ship, to Famagusta in a very similar nationalistic way, which caused them to be placed under censorship under the 1936 press law.31 Indeed the appeal of Kemalist reform within the Turkish Cypriot community was visible in numerous ways, from the western clothing adopted by men and women to the observance of Turkey’s Republic Day (Cumhuriyet Bayramı) every 29 October.32 The courtesy call of the Hamidiye was said to have drawn ‘almost the entire population of Famagusta and about four thousand Turkish Cypriots from other parts of the island’.

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Among the first to board the ship after the Turkish consul were ¨ zkan, ‘prominent Turkish Cypriot Kemalists’ such as Necati O 33 Mehmet Zeka and Necmi Avkıram.

The leftwing thrust One end of the constitutionalist movement that the colonial authorities found difficult to control were the left wing Greek Cypriots residing in London who had enlisted the support of a few British political leaders. An acquaintance of Demetriou and Klerides, Labour MP Denis Lowell Pritt had more frequent encounters with the Committee for Cyprus Autonomy, which was headed by Ezekias Papaioannou and Evdoros Ioannides, ‘communist[s] by repute’ according to the Colonial Office.34 The committee’s ideas, conveyed from 1939 onwards in the monthly Kypriaka Nea (Cypriot News) and the fortnightly Vema (Tribune), which was edited by Evanthis S. Nicolaides, found an audience within the Cypriot community in London.35 The 8,000 to 8,500 London Cypriots, gracefully designated as a ‘dodging and scrounging [. . .] riff-raff’ by a Colonial Office bureaucrat, were in their great majority Greek (as opposed to Turkish) Cypriot single men, usually dispossessed agriculturalists, speaking little to no English upon arrival. They worked as waiters or owned cheap restaurants or lodging houses in Soho, or were employed in the construction of camps and other government contracts as carpenters and woodworkers. There were fewer than 400 Cypriot women in the city and they generally worked as seamstresses.36 Being poor, some of them chronically unemployed, they were viewed as ‘offering proper material for agitation being a community which has not in the main succeeded in fusing with English society, is concentrated over a comparatively small area, and is composed largely of young men living the semi-vagabond existence of work, coffeeshop and lodging house with no real home life’.37 Reproducing their Cypriot habits, they gathered in ‘small cafe´s run by their compatriots in the Tottenham Court Road district’ to read the newspapers and debate the political situation in their country.38 The community was divided into two politically rival tendencies: one closer to the

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Orthodox Church, the other more open to communism.39 Yet, because they were among the very few papers printed in Greek and therefore accessible to all London Cypriots, Vema and Kypriaka Nea gave left wing activists such as Ioannides and Papaioannou a certain advantage, although in the late 1930s the committee’s line remained very moderate.40 The Committee for Cyprus Autonomy’s ideas were transmitted to the daily Greek Cypriot Anexartitos (Independent), edited by Lysandros Tsimillis. First published in late 1938, Anexartitos distinguished itself by its constant focus on labour issues in Cyprus (see Chapter Six). In its 16– 19 August 1939 issues, Anexartitos published the full draft of a 92-article constitution for Cyprus drawn up by the Committee for Cyprus Autonomy.41 According to the draft constitution, Cyprus should become an autonomous state under the British Crown (art. 1) and all Cypriots should remain British subjects (art. 60). The Crown, through its representative, the governor, acting as chief of state (arts 28 –31), retained sovereignty and power over the island’s defence and diplomatic relations (arts 34 – 6; 39 –42) and no alterations could be made to the relevant clauses of the constitution without prior agreement between the British and Cypriot governments (art. 91). The inhabitants of Cyprus were granted full control over all domestic issues (political, economic, educational, etc. (art. 10)) through an elected assembly, vested with full executive and legislative powers (art. 3). The assembly was to be composed of 44 members elected for five years (art. 4) by all female and male adults, born or living in Cyprus, all non-Cypriot British subjects, and all foreigners residing in Cyprus for more than five years. The governor of the island was to call the leader of the largest political party to form a government comprising seven ministers that would be accountable to the assembly. The governor himself retained the right to dissolve the assembly – a move that would require the approval of 75 per cent of the assembly – (art. 14); the prerogative of a ‘speech from the throne’ as given by the British monarch (art. 29); the right to influence, though not to command, government policy (art. 31), and to nominate the island’s judges upon recommendation from the interior ministry (art. 56). The constitution further guaranteed full

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freedom of speech and religion and provided for the separation of church and state (art. 12). ‘Greek-Christians’ and ‘Moslem-Turks’ – this designation was clearly intended as a reaction against the existing colonial nomenclature that only recognized ‘OrthodoxChristians’ and ‘Moslems’ – were to be equal before the constitution, they should share the same rights and Greek and/or Turkish candidates could be elected by Greek and/or Turkish electors. However, one-fifth (approximately nine) seats in the assembly should be reserved for Turkish deputies and, should this quota not be filled, the Turkish community would have the right to run by-elections to make up that number (art. 22). All the island’s communities should enjoy free and independent rights in the domain of education (art. 80); however, the teaching of English would be compulsory in all secondary schools (art. 83). This constitutional blueprint aimed for Cyprus to become a dominion within the British Commonwealth of Nations. It was the pinnacle of the constitutionalist movement and offered perhaps the most open and inclusive vision of Cyprus as a polity in the island’s modern history. The draft constitution drew its inspiration from existing arrangements within the empire. The distinction between a ‘domestic’ and an ‘imperial’ domain evoked the principle of dyarchy in force in India and Malta.42 In his articles in the press, the lawyer and scholar Dr Achilleas Aimilianides referred to the British North America Constitution Act of 1867, which granted Canada responsible government. Attempts at presenting Cypriots as ‘whites’ and negotiating Cyprus’ position among the dominions fed a racialized rhetoric based on the suspicion that British officials were applying in Cyprus the methods they had learnt in the African colonies where they had previously served.43 Aimilianides thus wrote that Cyprus was not on par with ‘countries and dependencies of the lowest civilization’ and that Cypriots did not originate in the ‘African jungle or among the nomads of Oceania’, but merited a constitution similar to that of the dominions inhabited by people of ‘European descent and advancement’.44 Prior to 1931, Aimilianides had been a committed enosist and the secretary general of the National Organization of Cyprus (1930– 1931). Yet, he published his articles

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in a leftist newspaper. There was then, by the late 1930s, a coalescence of ideas stemming from different sources into one political platform, occupied by the last liberal movement in Cyprus. Moreover, the numerous references to constitutional developments in other colonies illustrate what could be termed an imperial awareness or consciousness, namely the desire to situate Cyprus within the broader framework of the British Empire and to use the racial hierarchies established by the British themselves between the colonies to make the case for constitutional liberties.

The English connection In the second half of the 1930s, the British press and the House of Commons began to take notice of the constitutionalist movement, especially in the wake of the Kakoullis affair. Kyriacos Kakoullis, a former schoolteacher and experienced journalist, had been denouncing labour conditions and restrictions on freedom of speech in the island which led to the suppression of his newspaper, Proia (Morrow), in November 1938. The only English-language newspaper in Cyprus, the daily Embros (Forward), sided with Kakoullis and was consequently suspended. The irony was that the editor of Embros, George Blount Pusey, admired Palmer. But this case was different. Kakoullis had helped start Embros in late 1936 and Pusey had always defended the eccentric idea that a free press could function in Cyprus as a substitute for a parliament.45 The incident was reported in highly critical terms in the British press, particularly in the Manchester Guardian, which devoted practically all of its 16 December 1938 issue to Cyprus. A week later, in the 21 December session of the House of Commons, the Scottish Labour whip and MP for Linlithgowshire, George Mathers, asked the secretary of state for the colonies for particulars of the specific action of the Cyprus government, while the liberal internationalist and Labour MP for Derby, Philip Noel-Baker, followed suit stating that ‘whatever interference in the freedom of the press in Britain’s overseas dominions creates a deplorable impression, particularly in the Mediterranean’.46 Still later, on 8 February 1939, the Communist

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MP for West Fife, Willie Gallacher, asked whether ‘any steps [were] being contemplated with a view to restoring constitutional rights to Cyprus and holding elections to that end’; on the same day, Arthur Creech Jones, Labour MP for Shipley and member of the Colonial Office’s educational advisory committee, asked the secretary of state ‘whether he [could] make a statement on the restrictions of Press criticism and news in Cyprus; and what steps [were] being taken to give the people of this colony a greater responsibility in the government of the island’. Parliamentary questions constituted the sort of publicity the Colonial Office, and even more so the Cyprus government, preferred to avoid. Thus, on 27 May 1939, the district commissioner of Nicosia, Leslie Stuart Greening, summoned each one of the editors of the Nicosia newspapers individually and asked them to stop publishing articles referring to Cyprus politics, even if in the form of articles reproduced from [British] newspapers. This episode led to another batch of parliamentary questions on 14 June 1939.47 Meanwhile the Cyprus government was flooded with petitions, signed mostly by agriculturalists and low-wage labourers, requesting the immediate granting of constitutional liberties. On 14 June and 2 August 1939, respectively, Wilfred Paling, Labour MP for Wentworth, and Mathers submitted parliamentary questions asking the British government to comment on the petition campaign.48 On 5 July 1939, the secretary of state for the colonies, Malcolm MacDonald, made a statement to the House of Commons. While he discredited the petition movement as a grand-scale extortion of signatures in rural Cyprus on behalf of a few well-known agitators, he also informed MPs that ‘newspapers could now use their discretion in publishing material touching on the constitutional question provided that they kept within reasonable and proper limits so as to avoid the disturbances of peace and order and good government’. A whirlwind of articles critical of the Cyprus government immediately appeared in the island’s press.49 Morale sunk among colonial administrators who had worked so hard for so long to quell political ‘agitation’ in Cyprus. The Famagusta district commissioner, R.P.L. Browne, reported that ever since the liberalization of the press, he was ‘finding much difficulty in filling certain vacancies in the

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appointment of Municipal councillors of Famagusta and [. . .] few persons w[ould] dare to accept such an appointment in existing conditions’.50 Many British political leaders and journalists who got involved in the debate on Cyprus’ constitutional future did so on account of political opportunism as it offered them a possibility to criticize the National Government and settle scores with Labour Party renegades. Others felt a genuine aversion for overt authoritarianism or simply opposed it on ideological grounds. Others still responded to the appeals of their Cypriot friends. One of the objectives of the Vassiliades movement was precisely to federate the support of such objective allies or friends, British political figures, ‘non-official’ English settlers in Cyprus and, more generally, ‘independent Englishmen’.51 In the case of settlers, Vassiliades argued with limited success that as residents and therefore taxpayers on the island, they ought to have a say in the administration of the country. British settlers were few in Cyprus, mostly retired officials living in the picturesque little harbour of Kyrenia. We do find the odd British anti-colonial figure among them, such as J.S. Whitehead, a correspondent to the Cyprus Post – a successor to Pusey’s Embros – twice imprisoned in September 1940 for refusing to pay his taxes so long as a ‘voice in the governance of our colony’ was denied him, ‘on the old slogan that “taxation without representation is tyranny”’.52 More often, however, settlers tended to side with the government: thus in a letter to the Manchester Guardian, Philip Newman, an English farmer in Kyrenia, argued that centuries of foreign domination had left Cypriots lacking character, energy and intelligence, which naturally rendered them unfit for representative institutions.53 However, divisions in British opinion on Cyprus crosscut political allegiances. Nothing illustrates better this situation than the Cyprus Committee (not to be mistaken with the above-mentioned Committee for Cyprus Autonomy). This association, created in London in the summer of 1938, with the blessing of the secretary of state for the colonies, set itself the mission to ‘develop the resources of Cyprus and the well-being of the people’, or, more modestly

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perhaps, to forward to the Colonial Office practical suggestions on how to tackle pressing issues such as the irrigation problem.54 Because the committee had decided to create a local subcommittee in Nicosia, headed by D.N. Demetriou, Rupert Forbes Gunnis and Major Lewis Grant, Palmer considered the initiative a ‘political danger’.55 Demetriou was a leading figure in the Vassiliades movement. Gunnis was the wealthy former private secretary of Governor Sir Ronald Storrs, an antiquarian gentleman, the author of an influential book on Cyprus’ villages and monuments, ancient and medieval, a resident in Cyprus and a staunch opponent of Palmer’s regime.56 Major Grant was the correspondent of the Daily Telegraph in Cyprus, in which a reporter, Arthur Merton, after having visited Cyprus himself, had published articles mildly critical of the administration of the island, much to the Cyprus government’s dismay.57 What is more, in the committee’s 15-member administrative council, there was one British resident in Cyprus, Ronimund Van Bissing, and, more importantly, seven MPs, among whom George Mathers, the energetic opponent of the Cyprus regime mentioned earlier; and, as its chairman, George Terrell, a former Tory MP for Chippenham and advocate of the gradual liberalization of the press and the constitution.58 The Cyprus Committee took its role quite seriously, and aggressively lobbied the Colonial Office for the development of irrigation in Cyprus.59 But the association was deeply divided as to the scope of its intervention; some of its members, particularly Capt Alan Graham, preferred to remain within the strict confines of the irrigation problem, while others, such as Terrell and Mathers, occasionally touched on the broader political situation in the island. This opposition climaxed over the question of the institution of a local subcommittee, which Capt Graham opposed, but which Terrell – who had discussed the issue with Demetriou – and the other members, supported and finally imposed. The tensions in the Cyprus Committee did not necessarily reflect the political allegiances of its members; indeed, while most of its members who advocated liberalization in Cyprus were Labour, Terrell and Gunnis, who also criticized the existing regime, were Tories. What

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mattered from the viewpoint of the Cyprus government was that the Cyprus Committee, which according to police intelligence received its information from Demetriou and Pusey, the editor of Embros, could function as an anti-colonial lobby in Britain.60 Pressure on the government in London was therefore recurrent if not constant. On the island itself, a massive petition movement requesting constitutional liberties succeeded the 1937 initiatives of Vassiliades and his political allies. I will now turn to a close analysis of this movement in order to highlight first the political involvement of rural Cyprus in the constitutionalist movement and second the colonial administration’s intelligence-gathering practices.

Grassroots politics: a tidal wave of petitions William Denis Battershill’s appointment as Palmer’s successor had been revealed in the Cypriot press as early as February 1939, creating an atmosphere of messianic hope which gained its full intensity after censorship was lifted in July.61 High expectations were considerably fuelled by the secretary of state’s 5 July 1939 statement to the House of Commons, where he mentioned his instructions to the new governor ‘to review the position regarding [censorship and the island’s constitutional future] and to let [the secretary of state] have his view upon them’.62 On the day of the new governor’s arrival, on 10 August 1939, Greek Cypriot newspapers expressed hopes that Battershill would repeal the education and archiepiscopal laws, put an end to the monopolies on wine and tobacco production, enact labour legislation, solve agricultural indebtedness, develop the irrigation works and, more importantly, grant the Cypriots full constitutional liberties, in other words ‘dispel the [post-]October nightmare’. Above all, however, Battershill’s governorship was expected to redeem the eight-year humiliation sustained by Cypriots. In the words of Eleftheria: It has been represented to the Colonial Office that [the Cypriot people] are unfit for self-government, that they are politically immature and inclined towards corruption. Cyprus has been

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described as a Babylon of races and languages, the Cypriot [Orthodox] Church has been accused of being corrupted, Cypriot newspapers have been vilified as driven solely by the lure of gain while the Island’s politicians were dubbed as being reptilian, loud and intriguing, at least, that is, until they were offered a position in the government! [. . .] But you know for yourself, Your Excellency, that you are called to rule a historic people and not a Levantine throng.63 Not only were these hopes misplaced (see Chapter 3) but the outbreak of war in September postponed any discussion on Cyprus’ constitutional future. What remains to be explored is the colonial authorities’ contention that the 1930s constitutional movement concerned but a small, politically minded elite leaving the peasants, accounting for the island’s overwhelming majority, entirely indifferent. A close examination of the petition movement, which started in the spring of 1939, offers a vantage point to evaluate the political awareness in rural Cyprus as well as review the colonial administration’s intelligence-gathering processes. The three-volume secretariat file labelled ‘Constitutional Liberties: Petitions for the grant of – 1939’ contains 88 petitions submitted between May 1939 and February 1944, emanating from 78 Cypriot villages and towns – most of which are shown in the map below – and totalling 19,587 signatures.64 It is difficult to know precisely how many of Cyprus’ 653 villages and 383,967 inhabitants were involved in the movement, as district commissioners did not forward all petitions to the island’s government.65 It was, nonetheless, a very dense campaign: a total of 27 of these petitions, totalling 5,220 signatures, was received between 10 August and 1 September 1939.66 There are no substantial differences between the petitions as far as content is concerned. All of them were written in katharevousa [formal] Greek as opposed to the Cypriot dialect. They all begin by underlying the ‘utter failure’ of the administrative system in force since 1931. Not only did it reveal itself incapable of safeguarding the island’s social and economic welfare, but it was largely responsible for

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Figure 4.1 Map of the main towns and villages in Cyprus, 1928. Source: B.J. Surridge, A Survey of Rural Life in Cyprus Police, Roads and Customs (Nicosia, 1930), p. 31.

creating a hiatus between an increasingly isolated colonial government and a growingly disillusioned Cypriot community. Indeed, the existing administration was considered ‘suitable for the coloured people of the Black continent only’ and not for civilized and liberal Cypriots, heirs to a venerable history. But the regime in Cyprus also reflected badly on Britain, which claimed to be the champion of liberal and democratic principles. The colonizers were also confronted with their own inconsistencies as their authoritarianism in Cyprus, a ‘peaceful and friendly’ island, was contrasted to their ‘kind and docile attitude towards other hostile, violent and terroristic [sic] countries under British rule (Palestine, India, etc.)’. Only ‘full self-government within the frame of the British Commonwealth’ could ‘bridge the growing chasm between the government and the Cypriot people’.67 The language used in the petitions point to the constitutionalist movement. More specifically, the use of racialized stereotypes to distinguish Cyprus from other colonies and claims to high civilisation carry Aimilianides’ mark. The references to Palestine and India need some elaboration as they make a further case for

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‘imperial consciousness’. The ‘hostile’ attitude imputed to Indians is probably an allusion to the non-cooperation movement (1932– 1934) which the authors of the petition – wrongly – perceived as having successfully led to the Government of India Act of 1935, which instituted almost complete self-government in the provinces.68 The ‘terrorist country’ meant Palestine. The Great Arab Revolt (1936– 1939) was – rightly – perceived as the direct cause for the 17 May 1939 White Paper which seemed to grant the Arabs all of their demands (the restriction of Jewish immigration and a pledge to institute an independent Palestinian state within ten years).69 The designers of the petitions were keen to present the petition campaign as reflecting the will of the labouring poor. All signatories were to specify their occupation in writing. A specimen of five petitions (see Table 4.1) reveals a mainly Greek Cypriot, male and rural profile. Roughly 30 to 40 per cent of the signatories declared to be, or were labelled as, ‘agriculturalists’ (georgos) or ‘workmen’ (ergatis). The graphology of the signatures shows that in numerous instances names and occupations were written by the same hand, the actual signatory affixing a mark next to her/his name. The names of lawyers, merchants, medical doctors, priests, schoolmasters and landowners are extremely rare in the petitions, when not altogether absent. Some of the earlier petitions include a few Turkish Cypriot signatories, the village of Lapithos in the district of Kyrenia being a case in point, where 28 signatures out of the total of 398 were from the Muslim community. A few of the later petitions include women, amounting to 46 out of 177 signatures in the case of Kambos, Nicosia district, where signatures were gathered on 27 November 1942. Finally, it is important to note that all of the petitions include the signatures of the kafetzides, the (generally two) coffee-shop owners of the village, as cafe´s were the place petitions where signed.70 A final remark needs to be made with regard to the timing of submission. The first petition appears to have been submitted on 4 May 1939, namely a mere two days after Palmer left the island on retirement, but four months after the nomination of his successor,

12 August 1939

16 May 1939

8 May 1939

27 May 1939

Akanthou (Famagusta)

Derynia (Famagusta)

Aghios Georghios (Kyrenia)

Yermasoyia (Limassol)

109

70

116

390

71

Workmen: 21; Agriculturalists: 7. Other declared occupations (numbering 1 to 3 persons per trade) include barbers, grocers, tailors, shoemakers, coffee-shop owners, joiners, carpenters, chauffeur, confectioner, shepherds, gardener Workmen: 53; Agriculturalists: 171. Other declared occupations (numbering 3 to 19 persons per trade) include carpenters (19), shoemakers, grocers, barbers, shepherds, tailors, butchers, priests, chauffeurs and coachmen, coffee-shop owners, fishermen Workmen: 27; Agriculturalists: 39. Other occupations (numbering 1 to 16 persons per trade) include barbers, tailors, coffee-shop owners, carpenters, chauffeur, shepherds (8), gardeners (16), employee, joiner, messenger Workmen: 12; Agriculturalists: 18. Other declared occupations (numbering 1 to 11) include: barbers, coffee-shop owners, carpenters, chauffeurs and coachmen, shepherds, gardeners (11), joiners, landowner (1), rural constable (1), shoemakers, jewellers, bakers, cook (1) Workmen: 38; Agriculturalists: 32. Other declared occupations include ten carpenters

Source: SA1 738/1939/1– 3: Constitutional Liberties. Petitions for the grant of.

31 July 1939

Date of No. of submission signatures Occupation of petitioners

Sample of petitions from six villages, 1939.

Limnia (Famagusta)

Village (district)

Table 4.1

1,200

1,744

1,100

Total population of village

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Battershill, was made public (3 February).71 In fact some petitions were very explicit with regard to their addressee: Only now, after a period of 8 years, on your Governorship, can our voice, which was choked with a muzzle anything but appropriate to British methods which certain persons who lived among this people so long without trying to learn their loyal and worthy of better treating feelings, considered advisable to apply. They came and have gone ignoring and misapprehending the real feelings of Cypriots who encircle Your Excellency with so much love and affection as their father and true saviour.72 Petitioning the authorities was not new in rural Cyprus. Katsiaounis notes that it was a time-honoured practice dating from the Ottoman era: schoolteachers or scribes gathered signatures in villages for petitions protesting against high taxes.73 But petitions submitted from 1939 onwards were the first to forward uniquely political claims. This at once awakened colonial suspicions.

A barrage of suspicion: official deconstruction of the movement’s legitimacy The colonial authorities were quick to identify the Vassiliades movement as the prime movers in the petition campaign. According to a secret police report: In some cases different villages have submitted separate petitions, obviously typed on the same typewriter and identical except for the name of the village, which has been inserted subsequently. In each District the petitions have been organized by small groups of agitators, among whom the most prominent have been Messrs. D.N. Dimitriou and George Vassiliades of Larnaca, Messrs. K.P. Rossides and A. Gavrielides, advocates, of Famagusta, Mr. Odyseus Tsangarides, Municipal Councillor, Nicosia, who has been responsible for the organization of all the

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petitions in Kyrenia District, and certain others including Mr. Lefkios Zenon, the notorious agitator of Limassol.74 The official records’ conspiratorial tone was meant to discredit attempts at presenting the petition campaign as a popular initiative. Yet, leaders of the constitutionalist movement never really hid their role: Ioannis Klerides had openly stated, in a 14 June 1939 letter to the Manchester Guardian, that he had been actively involved in drafting the petitions and collecting signatures.75 Colonial authorities also focused on the methods employed, which according to them ‘verged upon intimidation. In Nicosia persons with business interests were threatened with boycott if they refused to sign.’76 They also questioned the villagers’ capacity to understand the contents of the petitions, the sophistication of which they contrasted with the villagers’ alleged practical and material concerns. The Famagusta district commissioner thus wrote: As the expression ‘constitutional liberties’ has hardly any meaning for a villager, he was told that it meant some of the things that he would like to have, such as free grazing and fuel rights in the forests with free grants of land to those needing it, things that would lend excitement to the village’s life and give him an opportunity of scoring off those he did not like, i.e. elections of Mukhtars [government-appointed village headman], azas [‘ancients’, government-appointed councils of Mukhtar], and rural constables, and something that would reduce taxation [. . .]. Those and other similar notions are roughly the sort of ideas formed by a villager who tried to find out what it was all about, but many undoubtedly did not take that trouble even. They signed because they saw others signing or because they had to do what they were told.77 Colonial officials finally underscored the campaign’s numerical weakness. The district commissioner of Larnaca thus remarked that in the village of Athinaiou, ‘out of total population of 2500 (1175 males) only 477 signed’.78 Sometimes social composition was

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invoked to dismiss the petitions as a nonevent. ‘It should be appreciated’, wrote the district commissioner of Nicosia, ‘that a large number of the signatures are from people of very little importance who will sign, and sign willingly, anything placed before them’.79 Centralized at the colonial secretary’s office, the district commissioners’ reports served in the drafting of the governor’s recommendation to the Colonial Office to the effect that no observations should be made on the general question of political liberties.80 As A.B. Acheson, the assistant undersecretary of state at the Colonial Office, commented: [T]hese petitions do not represent any genuine movement among the great mass of Cypriot people. But [. . .] [t]hey enable us to conjecture with some accuracy what methods would be employed under a system of elections to obtain votes. [. . .] They indicate the corrupt and unscrupulous character of the persons who are now leading the agitation, and the fruitful soil which the Cypriot people offer to them – partly on account of ignorance and lack of education, and partly on account of the inherent tendency, firmly implanted in them by generations of oppression, to hunt with the hare and run with the hounds.81 The reconstruction of the petition’s trajectory inside the colonial bureaucracy highlights the instrumental role of district commissioners in colonial policymaking. However, in formulating their recommendations, district commissioners relied on the information provided by their own subordinate staff. Our attention must therefore turn to these sources of intelligence. Upon receipt of the petitions, district commissioners requested their Cypriot district and assistant district inspectors in the villages concerned to question the villagers on their motives for signing. A district inspector sent to enquire about a petition from the village of Omodhos reported that it had been circulated by a ‘certain Nicolas Athinou of Omodhos and Panayis Haholiades [. . .] round the coffee shops and the people who signed knew the contents of it i.e. that it was for political liberties [sic]’.82 By contrast, another district

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inspector, enquiring on a petition from the village of Yermasoyia, stated, in contradictory fashion, that ‘only few of the signatories understood the contents of the application. The others were signing [. . .] after having been convinced by the instigators that it was for political liberties i.e. to appoint [sic] Mukthars, Azas, R[ural] C[onstable]s, Mayors, Members of the Leg[islative] Council and to celebrate their national holidays as in the years prior to 1931’.83 As these two examples show, neither the intentions nor the political awareness of the signatories could be established with certainty. Enquiries into the numerical importance of the campaign were equally inconclusive. A report on a petition from the village of Dhoria, Limassol district, thus reads: The petition in question was circulated in the village by Aristis N. Perzikis of Dhora. It seems that he put the signatures of 45 illiterate persons shown in the petition and they affixed their marks. Might probably Aristis N. Perzikis put the signatures of some of these illiterate persons in their absence and affixed their mark too [sic]. 6 persons[,] i.e. 9, 14, 15, 16, 61, 63 and 64 are under age, 14 – 15 years old [. . .]. No 29 is not a Dhora man. He originally comes from Anoyira working as a labourer at Dhora. He spent the most part of the year at his village Anoyira. No 130 although is a Dhora man he is residing at Trozimo for the last 20 years where he is an aza. No 165 is a stranger going from one village to another in the district and selling goods. No 13 and 179 [?] are unknown in the village. No 87 is a deaf and No 90 is a blind man, please [sic].84 This passage highlights the challenges social practice posed to official representations of the village as a circumscribed administrative unit. The organizer of the petition, Perzikis, was accused of appending the signatures of 45 illiterate villagers, possibly in their absence,

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although the assistant district inspector expressed his uncertainty about this. Seven (and not six as reported) signatories were said to be underage and two disabled. More to the point, four were considered village outsiders, one of whom was presented as ‘a stranger going from one village to another in the district and selling goods’. Evidently, this ‘stranger’, Kyriakidis, was a gyrologos or planodios (peddler). Although not always popular among local shopkeepers, peddlers functioned as a permanent channel of information (and gossip) between villages and communities and their visits were highly anticipated.85 They were viewed as outsiders to the village only by the colonial authorities who, through the land registry and survey department, linked identity to land ownership. One important aspect of the petition campaign was the evolution of the terminology used by signatories to describe their occupations. Whereas in earlier petitions, people described themselves using specific occupations – tailor, carpenter, shoemaker, etc. – in later ones they opted for the more generic terms of ‘worker’ or ‘agriculturalist’. This indicated a left wing turn behind the petition movement. The omissions, contradictions and uncertainties in these reports may have resulted from a variety of factors, from a self-serving twisting of information by a subordinate staff trying to validate their superiors’ impressions to the intentionally misleading testimonies by villagers suspicious of official intrusiveness. Our discussion of the petition campaign must therefore serve a broader discussion on intelligence-gathering practices in Cyprus.

Intelligence-gathering in Cyprus We have seen in Chapter Two that district and assistant district inspectorates were created in late 1934 to early 1935 in order to replace the mudirs. The breakdown of the inspectors per district is listed in Table 4.2. Each assistant district inspector was responsible for supervising 20 to 30 villages. Their official tasks involved being constantly informed as to the needs of villagers, promoting the cooperative effort and the development of irrigation, and maintaining education and public

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113

Breakdown of subordinate staff per district, 1934.

District District Inspectors Assistant District Inspectors Total

Nicosia– Kyrenia

Famagusta – Larnaca

Limassol Paphos Total

3 7

2 6

1 4

1 4

7 21

10

8

5

5

28

SA1 960/1934: District and Village Administration. Proposed Changes in- Governor’s Memorandum. Governor’s confidential dispatch, 18 December 1934, §7.

health facilities.86 Unofficially, they were to become familiar with villagers, perhaps even befriend them, thus contributing to the quotidian legitimation of the colonial state. In the words of the Paphos district commissioner, Richard St John Ormerod Wayne, ‘[u]nless they make friends they cannot obtain the information that is required of them’.87 District inspectors were to be, then, the ears and eyes of the state. In 1940 the situation could not have been further from this ideal. Occasional accusations in the press that district inspectors and their aides were intentionally ‘distorting the views of the people’ were compounded by the administrative officers’ own distrust of their subordinate staff.88 For Battershill, they offered a ‘dismal picture’. Commenting on the district inspector for Famagusta, Joseph Elia Josephides, Battershill wrote that ‘[t]he Commissioner must see that he gets out into the villages and does the proper duties of a D[istrict] I[nspector] which certainly is not to sit in an office (. . .) [w]ith regard to the others, it is plain that they should never have been appointed to their present posts’. Yet, of the eight assistant district inspectors regarded as lost cases, six were still working as colonial civil servants in 1946, three of whom in the same post.89 These incompetent – by the standards of British officials – staff members were to work in close collaboration with the governmentappointed village headmen, or mukhtars, and their council of azas. Since 1931, the 2,600 mukhtars and azas had been invested with significant powers. They maintained the registry of births and deaths,

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assisted the government in collecting taxes, authorized transactions of immovable property, certified ownership of cattle but also coordinated police activity in their villages.90 Realizing the need to secure their absolute loyalty, Palmer instituted special rewards for them, first the ‘silver badges’ (a replica in silver of the brass badges worn by mukhtars while they were on duty) to mark the government’s ‘appreciation of especially good work done by individual Mukhtars’, and then the ‘Certificates of Honour’.91 Naturally this led to abuses of power, prompting Nearchos Klerides, secretary of the Cypriot schoolteachers’ cooperative fund and a co-founder, along with Aimilianides, of the scholarly Society for Cypriot Studies, to denounce what he termed the muktarocracy: Most of the times mukhtars are also grocers, coffee-shop owners, or both, sometimes [the mukhtar ] even runs the local post office, and it is very rare to find a mukhtar of a large village who is not involved in all of these, especially in commerce. [. . .] Every villager knows that if he does not get along with the mukhtar, the latter will retaliate through the allocation of the school taxes and through the rural constabulary; hence, the rural constable will overlook the damage done to [the villager in question] [. . .]; [the villager] will need a certificate for the physician and it will be refused to him; he will need a birth certificate for his child and he will have to pay, whereas he would have gotten it free of charge had he been [the mukhtar’s] friend-client; he will commit a minor offence and not get away with it; he will unwittingly infringe the law and be reported, and so on.92 Muktars often collided with cooperative societies or trade unions that posed a threat to their power, and sometimes used the information they delivered to colonial authorities to protect their own vested interests.93 A keen observer of his environment and times, Wayne, the Paphos district commissioner, remarked that ‘[u]nhappily, the view prevails that more is to be got out of the English by telling them what they like to hear [. . .]. Mayors, Mukhtars and others for whom an absolute regime is more convenient than one in which a greater

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variety of people have to be propitiated, assure one that everybody is really quite satisfied’.94 Making a profound impression at the Colonial Office, this candid admission of unawareness on the part of the second most senior and best Greek-speaking administrative officer bespeaks a crucial weakness in the regime’s information flows.95 In the face of the unreliability of subordinate district staff and village authorities, the administration relied on much more conventional intelligence, mostly collected by the police. Inside the police, the hub of intelligence gathering was the criminal investigation department, which had existed in some form since 1910, for the detection of serious crime (murder, rape, arson, burglary, violent robbery, firearms smuggling, etc.).96 Shortly after the foundation of the Communist Party of Cyprus in 1926, the police department set up a systematic index of party members, who were assigned a number prefixed with the word ‘Red’. On 25 January 1932, the colonial secretary of Cyprus, Herbert Henniker-Heaton, requested from the chief commandant of police that ‘complete personal police records may be kept of persons responsible for or suspected of serious anti-Government activity and propaganda. There should be one dossier for each such person and the dossiers should contain full particulars of each person’s antecedent activities, speeches, movements, etc., and should be kept up to date’.97 In other words, the index was extended to nationalists, likewise attributed a number prefixed with the word ‘Green’. Non-commissioned officers (NCOs) attached to the criminal investigation department were often dispatched on undercover work to monitor the activities of ‘Reds’ and ‘Greens’, with uneven success in the face-to-face society of Cyprus.98 Around the police gravitated a nebula of more or less official informers, chief among whom were the rural constables, posted in the villages and charged with guarding the fields and woods, and fining trespassers and shepherds illegally grazing their flocks in privately owned fields or tree-planting areas (a similar task was performed by foresters, forest rangers and forest guards). Rural constables depended on the mukhtar, who officially and regularly submitted a report on their performance which determined their professional advancement. In other words, their reliability as sources of information actually

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depended to some extent on the dependability of the mukhtars. Occasionally, reports of embezzlement and even of political disloyalty surfaced, but otherwise rural constables rarely acted on their own. They usually formed an informational nexus along with the mukhtars and the subordinate district staff (district and assistant district inspectors, many of whom were former police officers).99 Less obvious was the shadowy world of paid informers. This system was an established practice, in Cyprus and elsewhere in the British Empire – in Mauritius, for example – particularly for the detection of crime, and a profitable business for informers as rewards usually ranged from £1 to £5, a non-negligible sum considering, for instance, that a government messenger received £48 a year.100 A somewhat unsettling illustration of the appeal of rewards is the case of Petros Toffi of Akrotyri who, for £3, assisted the police in arresting Aresti Toffi of Akrotyri – presumably a relative – who was charged with murder and, if convicted, likely to receive the death penalty.101 Another instance concerns the case of Petros Nikolaidis, a Cypriot student in Athens, whom the intelligence service of the General Staff of the Hellenic Army reported was a paid informer of the British administration who spied on the activities of the Cypriots established temporarily or permanently in Greece.102 The press in Cyprus makes occasional reference to ‘squealing’ (χαφιεδισμóς, hafiedismos) to the authorities.103 Cypriots then competed in providing information, which they considered a tradable commodity in their interactions with colonial authorities, and this rivalry influenced the reliability and quality of intelligence-gathering practices. This does not mean that the colonial authorities were systematically misinformed. But although plentiful, the data received was far from exhaustive. The colonial authorities sought to redress the inconsistencies in the available information with their own interpretation. As the case of the petition campaign suggests, they interpreted the politicization of rural Cyprus as an eminently top-down process, in which peasants themselves played little or no part. What was true in the Indian context explored by the Subaltern Collective applies to Cyprus and it is next to impossible to find articulated subaltern political discourses in the archives. What can be attempted instead is to reconstitute, albeit in a sketchy way,

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the potential vectors of politicization in rural Cyprus, those very spots that remained blind to colonial scrutiny.

Vectors of politicization The organizers of the petition campaign collected signatures at the village coffee-shops. Many authors have noted that coffee-shops functioned as a platform linking a village to the wider region.104 Coffee-shops (kapheneion in Greek, kahve or kahvene in Turkish) were usually a single room with sparse furniture, ‘consisting of a few wooden tables not infrequently grimed with dirt, a large number of chairs, a cupboard where are kept cups, glasses, and packets of cigarettes, and a slate on which is chalked up the number of cups of coffee to the debit of customers’. The cafe´, Surridge writes in his Survey of Rural Cyprus, was the centre of village life: Vendors of fruit, wine, grain and fuel, hucksters with donkeycarts containing cloth, the local Police Trooper and Forest Guard on their rounds all call there; the Tax Collector sits there at the receipt of custom; in the evenings there is talk of prices, rain, crops, birth and death. It is the habit of the villager to visit the cafe´ in the evening after his work. In some villages visits are paid in the morning before work. To the casual observer there always appears to be a certain number of men at any hour of the day [. . .] some [of whom] are labourers who have been unable to find work on that particular day and are waiting in case anyone requires a labourer.105 In his meticulous report, Surridge indicated that in 1929 there were 1,433 cafe´s in the island for 641 villages and a total population of 310,715. Table 4.3 aims to establish a ratio of persons per coffee-shop around 1930. Although it is based on Surridge’s figures, it singles out the male population since cafe´s, just like in Greece and in Turkey, were exclusively meeting places for men. Coffee-shops were also powerful vectors of politicization. They were the place where villagers were exposed to ideas, problems,

118 Table 4.3 ca. 1930. District Nicosia Larnaca Limassol Famagusta Paphos Kyrenia Total

CYPRUS IN THE 1930S Coffee-shops in Cyprus: number and ratio of persons per cafe´, No. of villages

No. of cafe´s

Male population (1929)

Persons per cafe´ (avg.)

196 59 111 95 134 46 641

397 177 203 308 206 142 1,433

47,020 17,279 27,980 32313 20977 10,396 155,965

118 97 238 105 102 73 122

Sources: Surridge, A Survey of Rural Life in Cyprus, 1930, p. 23 and The Cyprus Blue Book of Statistics for the Year 1930, p. 180.

debates on issues that concerned, but also stretched beyond the confines of, their village. Bryant highlighted the key role of ‘interpretative authorities’, figures such as the village schoolteacher who typically discussed the weekly news on the porch of the village cafe´. Instead of reading newspapers usually written in a language (katharevousa or Ottoman Turkish prior to the 1930s) virtually incomprehensible to the villager, they often related – and commented according to their own specific leanings – the events in the vernacular. In listening to these mediated reports and partaking in the ensuing discussions, villagers inserted themselves ‘into several concentric circles of community – Paphiote [from the district of Paphos], Cypriot, Greek, Greek-Orthodox – while finding those identities idealized through a language from which [they were] excluded’.106 In time, coffee-shops turned into veritable political clubs, and Peter Loizos noted that after the Second World War, most villages had both a left wing and right wing one.107 The local cafe´ was also the physical frontier of colonial rule, alternatively a point of entry and a tight border. A ‘platform’ whereby news from the outside world was funnelled into the village, the coffee-shop was also the stage where ritualized interactions with the outside world took place, a stage at once linked from, yet different from, more private spheres, such as the

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guest-room of local Turkish Cypriot houses or the Greek Cypriot church, or alternative associations, such as the trade unions, the cooperative societies or the local sports club.108 No matter how active a district commissioner might be, he could not materially spend too much time in every single village in his district. Hence Wayne, by the accounts of his superiors one of the most energetic district commissioners in Cyprus, wrote in 1939 that throughout the previous year, he had paid a total of 186 visits to villages, visiting all 135 villages in the district ‘at least once’, adding that ‘owing to the slowness of communications it is difficult to average more than four or five villages a day’.109 The hour or so the district commissioner spent in the village would necessarily follow a specific agenda. In expressing their complaints, villagers would presumably give priority to their more pressing needs, namely rural indebtedness, the cost of living or the consequences of drought. Desiring to see these matters addressed, they would likely avoid compromising their position by raising any ‘purely’ political matter. Privately, British officials seem to have been aware of the shortcomings of this ritualized form of interaction with the villagers. Thus David Athelstane Percival, district commissioner of Larnaca, wrote of his work: It is a job for the large, picturesque & lazys [sic] & I don’t feel at home. Especially this business of ‘visiting villages’. I find this difficult. You wander in & sit down with a crowd in the local coffee-shop and make (or more often fail to make) irrelevant small-talk, varied by a number of stale and un-grantable applications or complaints. As the result of which you are supposed to write airily about the ‘tone’ of the village & the ‘satisfactoriness’ or otherwise of the mukhtar.110 This testimony highlights the discrepancy between what administrative officers were expected to know about the population under their jurisdiction, and the speculations this expectation often led them to. Naturally it would be simplistic to infer that the contact colonial authorities established with villagers was entirely superficial

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or to assume that what remained hidden from official eyes and ears was invariably ‘political’ in nature. But awareness of a series of interactions between villagers themselves and villagers and the outside world did not necessarily secure access to the substance of these interactions.111 The social fabric of the village often remained impenetrable to colonial scrutiny. In commenting on the signatures to the petitions that had been circulated in their area of jurisdiction, the district staff took care to distinguish between those that genuinely belonged to village natives as opposed to outsiders; a telling illustration of this was the dismissal by the Limassol assistant district inspector, Mehmet S¸evket, of the signature of the peddler Kyrakidis, who he presented as a ‘stranger’. This approach implicitly considered villages as closed, hermetic units, barely interacting with surrounding villages and even less so with urban centres. This representation was not entirely misguided. A study carried out by the committee on the maintenance of village roads in 1935 showed that although most villages were accessible by wheeled traffic – at least in the dry season – from the district’s main towns, some villages, particularly in the districts of Limassol and Paphos, remained unreachable in this regard.112 The relative isolation of certain villages sometimes generated isolationism. Anthropologist John G. Peristiany observed that the first car reached Alona, in the Troodos mountain range, only in 1928.113 In this group of villages, there developed a strong communitarian identity, voluntarily distinguished from the rest of the island, constantly reinforced by the fact that inter-village marriage was infrequent and that ‘[h]owever advanced the internal segmentation of public opinion, the village always attempt[ed] to present a united front to strangers’.114 To this communitarian identity can be added a strong mutual suspicion – and sometimes contempt – between townspeople and villagers; a schoolteacher newly posted to a Paphos village thus wrote an article in the press, eloquently entitled ‘A life stalled for centuries’, comparing villagers to a ‘wild tribe living in the desert’, composed of ‘dirty’ individuals whose ‘eyes revealed a childlike innocence and curiosity underneath of which lay guile and insidiousness’.115

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This contrast is, of course, to a large extent a rhetorical construction; villages were indeed far from being hermetically sealed. As administrative units, they could disappear, incorporate or merge with one or more neighbouring villages, according to needs defined in terms of budgetary availability for the maintenance of roads, school buildings and other facilities. Hence, in 1930 colonial authorities identified 641 villages in the island, 653 in 1935, and 617 in 1950.116 More significantly, marriage strategies created an intricate web of alliances between adjacent villages.117 Furthermore, more accessible villages gradually morphed into a periurban periphery, as over-indebted and dispossessed young villagers moved to the city to work as labourers, seasonally or permanently.118 Beyond economic necessity, the conservative Cypriot elite, interestingly echoing colonial discourse, denounced rural depopulation as ‘the tragedy of astyphilia’, or ‘love of the city’. The young generation’s urge to embrace the city’s ‘pleasures of dubious value’ instead of cultivating their fathers’ fields was at the root of moral decay and the rise of criminality.119 Anthropologists have stressed the gradual entanglement of urban and rural communities in less apocalyptic language. Vassos Argyrou, whose research is based on villages in Nicosia, Paphos, Limassol and Larnaca, noted that ‘[t]he prestige of a doctor or a lawyer reflected on his family back in the village as well. One’s name was significantly enhanced if he could claim an educated son with an important job in the city’.120 Sometimes, doctors or lawyers commuted between village and towns.121 * The aim of this chapter was to highlight the avenues to what can be termed mass politicization in Cyprus during the 1930s. There were two such avenues and each resulted in an ‘opening up’ for the island: the exploitation of the pluralistic nature of British politics ‘unsealed’ the island internationally; and the canvassing of the villages of the island opened up the latter to ‘national’ politics and created possibilities for the emergence of pan-Cypriot solidarities. The driving force behind mass politicization in Cyprus in the 1930s was the ‘constitutionalist movement’; a ‘movement’ in name only that

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was, in fact, a tactical alliance of Greek and Turkish Cypriot nationalists, communist sympathizers, villagers and townsmen, who only shared the notion that they were unofficial members of a ‘syndicat des me´contents’ (union of the discontented). A number of factors accounted for the ‘movement’s’ success in clearing the avenues to mass politicization: the fact that it was headless and that its political platform remained vague allowed it to cast a wide net. The fact that it always displayed itself in loyalist colours allowed it to obtain the active support from certain British political circles. No matter how much colonial authorities tried to downplay it, the constitutionalist movement (1937– 1939) was, in everything but name, a silent revolution. It was a revolution that failed, no doubt, in its immediate goal, namely to obtain from the British government a new constitution for Cyprus. Indeed, Cypriots would not see such an offer until 1946. This failure, however, was a Pyrrhic victory at best for the colonial administration: the silent revolution had opened up avenues of mass politicization and these were exploited, almost immediately, by two movements which no longer cared to appear loyal. The first of these was the nationalist, which regrouped around the GreekOrthodox Church.

CHAPTER 5 THE ORTHODOX CHURCH AND THE DISPLACEMENT OF THE PUBLIC SPHERE

Relations between the Autocephalous Greek-Orthodox Church of Cyprus and the colonial authorities had been brittle from the very beginning of British rule in 1878. The 1931 uprising did nothing to improve them.1 Two bishops, Nicodemos of Kitium and Makarios of Kyrenia, held morally and politically responsible for inciting the revolt, were deported for life. Shortly after, the colonial authorities in Cyprus envisaged to legally intervene in ecclesiastical affairs in order to definitively terminate the high clergy’s pretence at ‘ethnarchy’. This term, loosely translated from Greek as ‘leadership of the nation’, itself derived from the Turkish ‘millet bası’, was bestowed during Ottoman times upon Cyprus’ archbishops, thereby acknowledging their religious as well as their temporal and civil powers over the Christian ‘nation’ or millet.2 While British colonial rule put an end to the official administrative cooptation of the clergy, the latter were still recognized by many Orthodox Cypriots as the natural political leaders of the community. It was this continuing social practice that British authorities sought to change in the 1930s. An increasingly tense tug-of-war between the colonial authorities and the Orthodox clergy began in 1933 regarding the filling of the archiepiscopal throne after its incumbent, Kyrillos III, passed away. In investigating

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the ‘Archiepiscopal Question’, as it was labelled in the press, this chapter shows how the Orthodox Church managed to entrench itself as the main hub of nationalist politics by the end of the decade.

On the election of an archbishop: the discursive deadlock between church and state A central passage in Governor Sir Reginald E. Stubbs’ Memorandum, which was analyzed in Chapter Two, concerned the fate reserved for the Cypriot political leadership: ‘At the same time as we endeavour to breed up good leaders for the people[,] we must take steps to crush the bad ones. Of these, there are two species – the Communists and the Church.’ The former, according to Stubbs, had been suppressed with the prohibition of the party; as to the latter, it is worthwhile reproducing here much of Stubbs’ thoughts: It is an astonishing thing that in this country, where the Churches stand empty all the year except at Easter and Christmas and an occasional Saint’s holiday, the Church still has such power. It is notorious that it is corrupt through and through. The village priests are mere ignorant peasants, not even understanding the language of their liturgy [. . .]. The revenues of the monasteries and the Sees are squandered in the support of concubines and bastards of the monks and bishops, or occasionally diverted to the use of their illegitimate relatives. [. . .] In Turkish times the Archbishop was the only spokesman of the Greek people with the authorities so of course anybody who did not do what the Church told him had no chance of getting his case considered favourably by the authorities, and the influence thus acquired has persisted. Also, of course, as the largest landlord in the country[,] the Church can bring much pressure to bear on its tenants. In my opinion, if the influence of the Church were removed, Philhellenism [sic] would die out very quickly. [. . .] As regards the Church, [nationalism] is a case not of loving Greece but of hating England, because English rule means the gradual termination of the power of the

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Church. [. . .] If [the Archbishop] continued to give trouble, I should be inclined to take stern measures to draw his teeth. I should advise appointing a Commission to enquire into the financial position of the Church and its administration of its estates. [. . .] Then as a result of the Commission two courses of action would probably be found desirable: a) To place the temporalities of the Church under independent Commissioners, as in the case of the Turkish religious trusts (Evcaf) b) To acquire and distribute to the peasantry considerable part of the Church lands.3 These thoughts were laid out merely one month before the archbishop passed away. Kyrillos’s demise brought the confrontation between church and state to a head.The archbishop died of pleurisy on 16 November 1933 at the age of 74.4 On account of his bishopric’s seniority among Cyprus’ three dioceses, the bishop of Paphos, Leondios Savvas, assumed the role of locum tenens (acting archbishop) of the archiepiscopal throne. Under the terms of his mandate, he was charged with convening a Holy Synod with his counterparts Makarios of Kyrenia, exiled in Athens, and Nicodemos of Kitium, exiled in Jerusalem, in the shortest possible time, and proceeding with the election of a successor to Kyrillos.5 This, however, had very little chance of happening as the colonial authorities steadfastly refused to allow the return of the two deported bishops; in a rather univocal understanding of the situation at hand, Stubbs thus stated that the high clergy ‘and their supporters within and without the Church desire[d] their return [. . .] in order that they may continue their political activities and pursue (with renewed authority, were one of them to be elected Archbishop) their work of sedition’.6 In the face of colonial obduracy, Leondios and the two exiled bishops decided to postpone the election until these ‘uncanonical restrictions’ were lifted. At a meeting in March 1935, they formally stated their position in what was later referred to in the press as the ‘Jerusalem Pact’.7

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The deadlock between the colonial authorities and the Orthodox clergy resulted from two different understandings of the role of the church in Cyprus. According to the colonial authorities’ univocally political representation of the situation, the Orthodox clergy remained dangerously evasive since, as religious leaders, they constantly blurred the boundaries between the realms of the sacred and the temporal and persisted in impinging on the latter. And in post-1931 Cyprus, the colonial administration’s priority was order, and this redefined ‘reason of state’ called for a clear-cut allocation of roles. By contrast, the three bishops appealed to a different level of legitimacy. The practical impossibility of holding an election was attributed to the fact that, although exiled, Makarios and Nicodemos maintained their full-fledged episcopal prerogatives, both ‘synodal’ and ‘pastoral’, guaranteed by the ecclesiastical law of the Eastern Orthodox Church, namely the resolutions of the seven ecumenical councils applying to all Eastern Orthodox Churches.8 Uncanonical elections would compromise the church’s divine legitimacy and vicarage. In other words, the order of legitimacy to which the locum tenens appealed was at once deterritorialized (it applied to all Eastern Orthodox Churches), timeless (it was rooted in the venerable resolutions of the seven ecumenical councils), and immaterial (or divine). This legitimacy was in contrast to the state decree, which was territorial (confined to the colony of Cyprus), circumstantial (linked to one event, the 1931 uprising), and material (i.e. human made and thus revocable). The bishops’ advocacy of ‘Enosis’ was unmistakably political. Yet, it is important to take seriously the theological style in which such political claims were couched. As Bourdieu pointed out in his analysis of the ‘economy of symbolic goods’, it is the polysemy of ecclesiastical language that made it a legitimate symbolic means of exchange between clergy and laity.9 In other words, the polysemy of the clergy’s discourse as opposed to the monosemy of the colonial administration’s is what granted the clergy some room for manoeuvre and negotiation at different levels, the local and – as we shall later see – the international legitimacy of its position.

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Engineering a consensus: the displacement of the public sphere Judging from its frequent and in-depth coverage in the press, the question of the election of a new archbishop quickly generated intense debates at least among the learned Greek Cypriot elite. While some influential newspapers, such as the Nicosia-based conservative dailies Phoni tis Kyprou (Voice of Cyprus) and Neos Kypriakos Phylax (New Cyprus Guardian), unambiguously supported the stand of the three bishops, a large number of smaller but active journals, including Paphos and Chronos (Time), adopted an increasingly critical tone as the election dragged on.10 Chronos stated that the resolution of the issue should not depend on the ‘personal whims of the two exiled bishops’ who insisted on their position ‘out of stubbornness, caprice or individual interest’; consideration should be given to the church, understood not merely as the clergy, but in its broader sense of the ‘totality of the believers, the clergy and laity who constituted its body’. Here Chronos, a Limassol-based newspaper edited by literary man Dimitris Demetriades, used a definition of the church rooted in Orthodox theology according to which the church was ‘the Body of Christ’, irreducible to the institution or its clergy, and comprising all of ‘the sinners’ who, ‘coming together, form the infallible Church’.11 This shows that contrary to its unsophisticated, colonial representation as a ‘political engine’, the church structured the Orthodox community in a polyvalent sense.12 This was further illustrated in the national-agrarian Paphos (published in the eponymous city in the southwestern part of the island) which said the protracted archiepiscopal vacancy would prolong the squandering of the church’s budget as ‘thousands of pounds were given by the members of the church committees to their friends, family, or koumbaroi (best men)’, instead of being used for the main purposes of the church, such as provision of land to the landless, philanthropy and education. An archbishop of ‘tried competence and value’ would remedy this deplorable situation.13 The debates revealed and, in turn, fed in an increasing conflict between two parties in the church: The intransigents rallied around

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the locum tenens and Bishop Makarios of Kyrenia, exiled in Athens; the moderates around Bishop Nicodemos of Kitium, exiled in Jerusalem, who favoured exploring alternative routes to speed up the archiepiscopal election. This latter trend had the support of the Nicosia-based Eleftheria (Freedom), the most widely diffused daily among the Greek Cypriot community. Nicodemos was depicted as a ‘politic and patriotic man’, willing to ‘sacrifice’ his own candidacy for the throne, and acquiesce to being represented in Cyprus by a bishop from a sister Orthodox Church for the holding of a Holy Synod. The vacancy was likely to cause ‘damage of tragic dimensions’, the newspaper said.14 Nicodemos himself went on to denounce the ‘policy’ of ‘the Locum Tenens and those who agree with him [. . .]’,15 and accused him of intentionally delaying the archiepiscopal elections.16 Finally, he stated that he did not feel bound anymore by the Jerusalem pact to indefinitely postpone the elections as his fellow bishops were not doing, he believed, their utmost to search for an alternative settlement.17 Considering the vivacity of the debate, it is all the more remarkable to notice the formation, in late 1936, of a consensus among bishops around the idea of a quick settlement. According to this plan, bishops from one of the Orthodox patriarchates – Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch or Jerusalem – would represent bishops Makarios of Kyrenia and Nicodemos of Kitium, who both agreed to forfeit their own candidacy, at the Holy Synod that would proceed with the election of the archbishop.18 This turnabout emerged as a result of the pressure exercised by influential men involved in the management of the church as an institution whom it is necessary to identify in order to understand the progression of the Archiepiscopal Question. Male Orthodox Cypriots were involved in a very practical sense in the management of ecclesiastical affairs. Indeed, two-thirds of those serving on the financial committees of the church, whether parochial or diocesan, were bishop-appointed clerics and one-third were laymen indirectly elected by male Orthodox Greek Cypriots. Their role was to manage church property and revenues – and the emoluments of clerics – within the jurisdiction of their committees. Most of the lay members of the committees were representatives of

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the social elite, as specific provisions of the 1914 Charter of the Church of Cyprus precluded the ‘propertyless’ and the indebted from standing for election.19 Moreover, lay members of a specific committee were often linked to their counterparts on other church committees, and the specific medium of this connection appears to have been the press. Thus, Ioannis Klerides, the lawyer and campaigner for constitutional liberties mentioned in chapter four, was the president of the archbishopric throne committee in Nicosia (the throne committees were the diocesan equivalent of church committees); he contributed numerous articles to Eleftheria siding with the bishop of Kitium. As legal adviser to the archbishopric, and therefore to the bishop of Paphos, Leondios, in his capacity of locum tenens, Klerides was in contact with the owner and editor of Phoni tis Kyprou, Kyrillos Pavlides, who was also an adviser to Leondios. Moreover, the owner of Paphos, the lawyer Loizos Philippou, was himself a member of the church committee of the Paphos diocese and therefore in close contact with the locum tenens in his capacity of bishop of Paphos. Finally, one of the most influential contributors to his newspaper, Christodoulos A. Galatopoulos, a nationalist lawyer who had been jailed for four years for his activities during the 1931 uprising, had also been a co-owner of the Limassol-based Chronos, and was reported to be one of the locum tenens’ chief advisers.20 While debating the Archiepiscopal Question, these men gradually managed to seize full control of the church committees, thereby setting themselves in a position to continue to exert influence in one of the few areas of societal importance untainted by the colonial state. The medium through which they achieved this was financial pressure. In the mid-1930s, the finances of the church – which drew its revenue from the lands it leased to farmers, the licences it provided for marriages and divorces and the fees collected by the church courts – were by most accounts in a dire situation, apparently because of the large amount of money it had lent but was never repaid and the failed commercial activities of some monasteries (mainly Machaira).21 In the case of the throne committees of the dioceses of Kyrenia and Kitium, whose bishops had been deported, de facto authority passed

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into the hands of their respective leaders. However, in the case of the throne committees of the bishopric of Paphos and archbishopric, which were both under Leondios’ presidency, this ‘transfer’ did not occur without incident. Hence, at a meeting of the archbishopric’s throne committee on 28 January 1937, there was major opposition to the insistence of the locum tenens to postpone the elections indefinitely. The committee passed a resolution to the effect that ‘the members of the Holy Synod be requested to expedite the solution of the Archiepiscopal Question [. . .]’. The locum tenens, who was chairman of the Holy Synod, refused to sign this resolution. Later, a secret police report noted that on 7 April 1937 the committee ‘decided to discontinue the sum of £120 per annum, as stipend to the Locum Tenens and all travelling and other expenses paid to [him] from the funds of the Archbishopric’. Subsequently, the bishop of Paphos was forced to announce publicly his intention to confer with the deported bishops.22 Control over the church gave these elites extensive social reach over the whole Greek Cypriot community. Through the committees, they were in a position to influence the island’s 900 clerics in Cyprus’s four dioceses and 463 parishes who officiated at more than 600 churches and some 82 monasteries. Such influence was probably reinforced since the ecclesiastical calendar and the ecclesiastical map of Cyprus both framed the life-rhythms of Greek Cypriots at least to the same extent as their interactions with the civil authorities. More practically perhaps, the committees were in charge of managing the church’s vast immovable property, amounting to five per cent of all arable land leased to farmers.23 The important element to bear in mind here is that the politicization of the Archiepiscopal Question did not so much stem from the intrinsic rationale of the clergy’s discourse, but rather from the framing and constitution of the Church Question as a ‘question of society’ by the learned elite, notably the lay members of the church committees, and the press. As ‘public bodies’ situated between the various levels of the church hierarchy on the one hand and the network of local conservative notables on the other, the church committees remained under public scrutiny in the local press. Hopes and questions which, prior to 1931, were formulated in ‘political

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terms’ that challenged the way the island was governed were now couched in ‘ecclesiastical terms’, the political implications of which were nonetheless never out of sight. During the 1930s, the Church of Cyprus became therefore, in other words, a displaced and autonomous public sphere, an Ecclesia, in its ancient Athenian sense. What secured this new public domain’s independence was the protection that the locum tenens, Leondios Savvas, managed to secure from a powerful ally: the Church of England.

The church’s international connections On 22 November 1933, a mere six days after the archbishop died, the locum tenens wrote to Cosmo Gordon Lang, archbishop of Canterbury from 1928 to 1942, and head of the Church of England, ‘remind[ing] His Grace that he preside[d] over the movement for closer relations between the Orthodox and Anglican churches’ and appealing for his intercession in favour of the return of the exiled bishops. Lang received similar appeals from Meletios (Metaxakis), the patriarch of Alexandria, the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople, and Archbishop Germanos of Thyatira, the Ecumenical Patriarch’s apocrisary – or representative – at Lambeth Palace.24 All three prelates were personally known to Lang. They had taken part (with the exception of the ecumenical patriarch) in the seventh Lambeth conference of Anglican bishops in 1930. Among them, Meletios Metaxakis stands out above the others. Not only did he play a major role in the institutional development of the Church of Cyprus, but he occupied virtually every major position in the Eastern Orthodox Church and contributed decisively to its rapprochement with the Anglican Church. In 1910, he was elected bishop of Kitium and played a leading role in the revision of the charter (katastikon) of the Orthodox Church of Cyprus in 1914. Soon after he was appointed archbishop of Athens – the leading see in the Church of Greece and, in 1920, partook in the sixth Lambeth conference, which, in its resolution 19, provided for the creation, within the Church of England, of the Eastern Churches Committee. Elected ecumenical patriarch in 1921, he saw to it that the Holy Synod of Constantinople

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officially acknowledged the validity of the Anglican orders, an example that was followed by the patriarchate of Jerusalem and the archbishopric of Cyprus (under Kyrillos III).25 His apocrisary at Canterbury, Archbishop Germanos, remained all along deeply involved in the ecumenical movement of the Anglican Church. Germanos established a close relationship with Canon Dr John Albert Douglas, who became in 1933 the honorary general secretary of the Church of England’s council on foreign relations.26 ‘The Church of England was [thus] the only Western Church with whom the Orthodox seriously discussed the question of reunion’, and this created a solid web of solidarities between Anglican clerics and their Greek-Orthodox counterparts.27 This context sheds light on Lang’s increasing involvement in the Cypriot archiepiscopal question. And, as the Colonial Office’s care to keep Lambeth informed of developments in Cyprus shows, Lang’s views on the matter could not be easily dismissed. In the 1930s, Lang was a popular and influential archbishop, generally believed to have been instrumental in the resolution of the British abdication crisis and the passing of the Abdication Act in December 1936, which cleared the way for the accession of George VI.28 Hence, through the AngloOrthodox ecumenical movement and bearing in mind that 26 Anglican bishops sat in the House of Lords, the Church of Cyprus had some leverage within the British power structure and could influence political decisions made in Britain that affected Cyprus. The Cyprus government was determined to circumscribe the extensive reach of the Church of Cyprus and envisaged from early using legal measures to do so. ‘We know here what we are dealing with’, wrote Governor Palmer at one instance; ‘the Archbishop of Canterbury does not’.29 Legal intervention in the archiepiscopal election was to be Palmer’s grand oeuvre. The Cyprus government wanted to secure at least two things: the exclusion of all three Cypriot prelates – Makarios of Kyrenia, Nicodemos of Kitium and Leondios of Paphos – from the candidacy, and the exigency that ‘the candidates shall either be British subjects or shall undertake to become British subjects if elected’.30 In order to justify these plans, the governor and his administration in Cyprus meticulously presented the

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Archiepiscopal Question as a secret conspiracy between the Church of Cyprus and the government of Greece to keep Enosis alive. Exiled in Athens, Makarios was said to entertain very close relations with the Cypriot Brotherhood, presided over by Achilleas Kyrou, the editor of the conservative Athenian newspaper Estia and member of a prominent nationalist family that had close contacts with the Greek government: Kyrou’s brother Alexis had been the Greek consul in Cyprus and was said to have played a crucial role during the 1931 uprising.31 The activities of the bishop of Paphos were easier to monitor, as he resided on the island, and police reports frequently disclosed his regular contacts with the Greek consul in Cyprus, Loudovikos Skarpas, who was said to ‘be endeavouring to persuade the Locum Tenens to settle the Archiepiscopal Question because the Consul ha[d] instructions from his Government to support an immediate solution’.32 Skarpas openly stated in his report to the Greek foreign ministry that he considered the Greek consulate and the Church of Cyprus as two powerful vectors of Enosis in Cyprus and advised the Greek government to assist the Cypriot Church in settling the Archiepiscopal Question.33 As for the bishop of Kitium, who, of ailing health, resided in the Monastery of the Cross in Jerusalem, he was said to be in contact with the Larnaca-based lawyer and president of the Kitium throne committee Zenon Pierides, while Pierides was himself in contact with Klerides.34 After the bishop of Kitium’s death on 13 September 1937, it was reported that Bishop Leondios of Paphos and the Greek consul Skarpas spent the latter part of October in Athens and engaged in negotiations with the bishop of Kyrenia. An agreement was reached for the settlement of the Archiepiscopal question whereby the bishops of Kyrenia and Paphos forfeited their candidacy for the vacant throne, ‘and steps were taken to carry out a revised scheme for securing the election of the bishop of Trebizond’, Chrysanthos Philippidis. Phillipidis was the patriarch of Constantinople’s apocrisary in Athens, and the British Embassy portrayed him as a ‘deeply learned scholar’ and a ‘strong nationalist (and indeed almost xenophobe, or at any rate Anglophobe, though the informant was not prepared to admit this).’ Palmer and his aides

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were convinced that he was ‘the candidate of the Greek government who could be relied on to foster the cause of Greek nationalism’.35 Palmer and his staff took at heart to ‘expose’, one by one, all of the threads linking the Cypriot political and religious ‘nebula’ to the Greek government, and subsequently challenged the sincerity of the motives of intervention of the neighbouring Greek-Orthodox Churches. At numerous instances, the Cyprus government stressed that the Greek government was financially supporting the patriarchates of Constantinople and Alexandria and was thereby in a position to use their intercession in order to keep the enosist cause alive. Reminding the Colonial Office that ‘the whole policy of [the Cyprus] Government in fact for the past three years [1933–1936] at least has been designed’ to ‘turn the thoughts of the Cypriots away from the connexion, real or imagined, with Greece’, Palmer stated that ‘no intervention should be allowed by any foreign Government or any foreign Patriarchate, even, for example, by the Ecumenical Patriarch’.36

Erastianism or separation: the ambiguities of colonial legislative intervention In legislating for the archiepiscopal election, Palmer found the requisite support, albeit reluctantly offered, at the Colonial Office. The authorities in London, who took pride in respecting and protecting religious traditions throughout the British Empire, justified the Cypriot exception invoking strategic priorities. In 1936, as discussions resumed about converting Cyprus into a naval base, Arthur Dawe, the head of the Colonial Office’s Pacific and Mediterranean Department, noted that ‘cut[ting] at the root of this seditious movement’ was crucial since the British government intended to convert Cyprus into an important ‘defence base’.37 In fact, the first proposal for a law to deal with the Archiepiscopal Question actually originated in the Colonial Office. This proposal, officials at Downing Street believed, would find its ‘legitimacy’ in its very radical nature. Hence, a grand design for the ‘Reformation’ of the Cyprus Church was conceived, which would link both the

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election and the issue of church property within a ‘comprehensive measure which would bring the Church under State control’. This would also secure once and for all the colonial administration’s ‘say in the appointment of Bishops and other dignitaries as well as in the appointment of the Archbishop’. In other words, the Colonial Office advocated a thoroughly Erastian system, in reference to Thomas Erastus, a 16th-century follower of Swiss Reformation leader Huldrych Zwingli, who was credited with advocating state intervention in religious matters.38 Although the Colonial Office’s vision seemed unpractical to Palmer and his advisers, who decided not to implement it, the ‘reformation design’ in fact granted them the moral right to legally intervene in ecclesiastical affairs. The Cyprus government argued for the promulgation of three different laws, each one dealing with a specific feature of the Church of Cyprus. First, the law on the election of the archbishop (which would become known as the Berat law) should contain a permanent clause requiring official approval of the archbishop-elect by the colonial government. In Ottoman times, the ‘Berat’, roughly translated as ‘liberty’, referred to the sultan’s official recognition of the archbishop and his suffragans and defined their administrative, judicial and protective powers and prerogatives.39 Second, in order to deal efficiently with the issue of ethnarchy, another law was proposed, the object of which would be to revise the ‘ex-officio duties, or rights, appertaining to the [office of] Archbishop’, essentially in an attempt to ‘divorce the Church as much as possible from secular affairs, qua the Central Government of the Country’. This supplementary law would further make it compulsory for ‘all persons who may be appointed to any Office, Committee, or other public body recognized by Government on the island’ to be British subjects. Thirdly, and finally, another law (which had clearly been outlined in Stubbs’ Memorandum) would impose a governmental audit of the properties and finances of the Church of Cyprus. This last bill probably emerged as the combined consequence of public demand for the auctioning off of church property, on the one hand, and, on the other, of reports according to which the church directly financed various nationalist undertakings, whether it be the

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relief of ‘patriots who suffered as a result of the 1931 disturbances’ or funding the agents going around the villages to collect petitions for the restoration of constitutional liberties (see Chapters Four and Six).40 The colonial administration’s proposal contained elements for a clear separation of State and church, with regard to the temporal and civil responsibilities of the latter; but on the other hand, it still maintained elements of Erastianism, as the nominations of the archbishop and the bishops were to be officially approved by the government. The Cyprus government’s proposal resided on a narrowly selective understanding of the Berat. In effect, in Ottoman times if the Berat allowed the state to control the hierarchy, it also guaranteed in exchange their secular and civil responsibilities and privileges.41 Neither completely ‘separationist’ nor exactly ‘Erastian’, the colonial administration’s project aspired to separate the church from politics rather than from the state. The laws were promulgated hastily: on 27 September 1937, the Church Audit Law was passed.42 An attempt at a settlement of the Archiepiscopal Question by the remaining two Cypriot bishops, Leondios of Paphos and Makarios of Kyrenia, goaded by the throne committees and the Greek consul, induced the Cyprus Government to hasten the promulgation of the Berat law, the most important of the three contemplated church laws. On 10 November 1937, Governor Palmer informed the Colonial Office that bishops Makarios of Kyrenia and Leondios of Paphos had agreed on the candidacy of the bishop of Trebizond.43 The Holy Synod would take place in Cyprus with the bishop of Trebizond operating as Makarios’ representative while the bishop of Sinai would represent Kitium, whose prelate was deceased.44 Undermining these plans, on 12 November 1937 Palmer promulgated the Archbishop’s Disqualifications Law which prevented the two remaining Cypriot prelates as well as any non-Cypriot native (hence any non-British subject) from becoming candidates, and then the Governor’s Approval (or Berat) Law before receiving the secretary of state’s official authorization. Thus on 13 November 1937, Embros, one of Cyprus’ two English-language newspapers, published both the locum tenens’ encyclical calling for the election of an archbishop and the government new laws, which had been

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promulgated in the space of a few hours.45 Because expediency and urgency had prevailed in their promulgation over any form of legitimacy, be it pastoral, theological or ecclesiastical, the church laws were intrinsically vulnerable to multilevel attacks.

Holy wrath and official malaise By so drastically precluding any intervention from abroad on behalf of the Orthodox Churches, the colonial government eliminated the possible emergence of a theological rationale that would give the appearance of some sort of religious legitimacy for its intervention. To the already problematic question of the articulation between state legality and church canonicity, the laws, by setting British nationality as a non-negotiable prerequisite for candidacy to the throne, introduced a further complication related to the varying, and potentially conflicting levels of allegiance of Greek-Orthodox clerics. In fact, the immediate interests of the Church of Cyprus appeared secondary; indeed, Palmer maintained that the government should not ‘burn [its] fingers by trying to reform an institution which is spiritually dead, regards [the British] as “Barbari [barbarians],” and is bound hand and foot to the chariot of Hellenism and political intrigue’. Finally, the perennial nature of the laws appeared as an attempt to transform tactics rooted in identifiable circumstances into a long-term strategy. By excluding the whole Orthodox community (except for Orthodox British subjects, namely Cypriots), the Cyprus government found itself in the awkward position of searching for and drawing lists of, suitable, that is politically acceptable, candidates.46 This precipitous action exposed the colonial government to the combined ire of religious, administrative and political circles. On the religious side, the locum tenens argued that the law’s provision requiring the archbishop-elect to obtain the approval of the government was uncanonical because it interfered with the invocation of the Holy Spirit under which archiepiscopal elections took place. Ultimately, the question of the Holy Spirit would become the uncompromising point for all clerics involved in the issue (and a matter alternatively of consternation, amusement and irritation

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among Colonial Office bureaucrats). The bishop of Trebizond, in his own memorandum, stated that, from the standpoint of Orthodox doctrine, the election and the enthronization of an archbishop are two stages of one unique and indivisible operation [. . .] [The election] is a is a religious act performed under the invocation of the Holy Spirit; the enthronization is its continuation, necessary and immediate [. . .]. No secular authority is allowed to intervene through any administrative decree between these two moments of one same indivisible operation.47 The archbishop of Canterbury supported this view himself and communicated with the archbishop of Thyatira to the same effect.48 The reason why the Holy Spirit constituted such a fundamental issue in the Anglican– Orthodox connection was because it was at the heart of the doctrinal meeting point between the Greek-Orthodox Churches and the Church of England.49 In order to conciliate the colonial administration’s agenda, on the one hand, and the theological prerequisites for a canonical election, on the other, the Orthodox prelates and their supporters in the Anglican hierarchy – headed by the lord bishop of Gloucester – proposed reforming the law to create a ‘panel system’ – or katάlogo6 – whereby the governor would be presented with a list of candidates before the election wherefrom he could strike out undesirable names, thus relieving the Cyprus government from awkwardly intervening at the moment of the invocation of the Holy Spirit while preserving government control of the process.50 Although these efforts were to no avail, the Anglican Church’s interest in the Church of Cyprus remained lively. Thus the Anglican bishop of Jerusalem, Francis Graham Brown, who had been consecrated by Archbishop Lang, visited Cyprus where he conferred with the locum tenens; while the bishops of Gloucester and Gibraltar (the latter was a former archdeacon in Cyprus) and Canon J.A. Douglas called on the British ambassador in Athens in the spring of 1940, pleading for the respect of the church charter in any future legislation.51 The Anglican solidarity illustrated a conflict of agendas between two

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institutions, the Anglican Church and the colonial administration, differently involved in the Greek world. On the administrative side, the involvement of the Anglican Church seems initially to have cast doubt on the Colonial Office itself, as the secretary of state wrote: It is all most unsatisfactory. This is a time when we have a very friendly political atmosphere in Athens, and when in view of German threats it is most important that we should not offend the Orthodox church countries such as Romania, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia. I feel that [the governor] ignores all these wider political considerations and ignores too the fact that we have a Bench of Bishops in the House of Lords and is determined to embarrass the secretary of state. I feel I have no option but to pass these drafts and hope that the governor will not go on ignoring my views. It is most unsatisfactory. Despite all their misgivings however, the Colonial Office officially endorsed the governor’s positions, especially in the face of third parties, chief among which was the Foreign Office, where the tendency to be attentive to ‘Greek’ claims would naturally be even more acute. The British ambassador in Athens thus understood that the Cyprus Church laws would constitute a dangerous example for the Italians in the Dodecanese and the Turks in Istanbul. If such a ‘domino effect’ occurred, could it not turn the whole Orthodox population of the Mediterranean against British interests? Could Britain afford this, given the circumstances in the larger region at the time? The tone of the exchanges between the colonial authorities and the Foreign Office would harden as tensions increased in the eastern Mediterranean. In a dispatch to the foreign secretary, the ambassador in Athens further complained that: Although the Cyprus Church question is closely connected with the latent, but real, difficulty in Anglo– Greek relations which arises from the fact that in Cyprus we govern a population of Greek race, and although experience shews [sic]

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that troublesome political issues, ramifying widely through the middle and near east, are liable to be raised whenever a secular power legislates for an Orthodox church, I was not given an opportunity to comment on these aspects of the question before the present laws were promulgated [. . .]. But I feel it to be my duty to apprise you of the criticisms which are already, as I gather, being directed against the two laws in moderate and responsible Greek Orthodox circles.52 Under pressure from different institutions, religious and secular, in the British power structure, the Colonial Office delayed for almost a year the authorization of the enactment of the Berat law. The reasons why it finally did were twofold: the Colonial Office was thereby asserting its independence with regard to other branches of government; at the same time, it endorsed the governor’s analysis of the Orthodox Church as a standing danger in Cyprus although of course it resented his lack of diplomatic tact.

A bishop, a trial and the fabrication of a leader Meanwhile, in Cyprus, resistance to the Cyprus government’s policy took a new turn and gathered momentum as the church appeared strengthened and legitimized in its struggle. In the summer of 1939, there was genuine hope among the clergy and the learned elite that an understanding could be reached amicably with the colonial authorities. Indeed, it was announced that Palmer was to be replaced as governor by Sir William Denis Battershill. As we have seen, Battershill had been a popular Cyprus colonial secretary between 1935 and 1937 and his disagreement with Palmer’s authoritarian methods was common knowledge. However, the messianic expectation expressed in the press before his arrival was quickly dissipated when he refused to meet Bishop Leondios, the locum tenens, soon after he assumed his new duties.53 This downturn seemed to legitimize Leondios’ more confrontational approach, which he resumed instantly.

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Closely watched by the colonial state, the locum tenens multiplied his tours and speeches around the island, attracting increasingly larger crowds. By late November 1939, Battershill could write that no intelligence report would be complete without reference to the prelate’s activities, which consisted mainly in speeches and sermons delivered by himself or by his preachers – Makarios Macheriotis, Iacovos Pavlou and Kyprianos Kyriakides – either to schoolchildren or church congregations. One of the bishop’s signature moves was to dedicate religious services (mainly in the form of a Te Deum) to the king of Greece, Prince Paul (the heir to the Greek throne), the exiled bishops of Kitium and Kyrenia, and the Greek army, navy and air force. The church further encouraged and presided over the foundation of religious clubs – such as Agapi (Love) in 1938 or the Orthodox Christian Union of Youths in late 1939 – and catechism schools for children (excluding the children of Cypriot government officials), which organized lectures and excursions ostensibly to teach them church doctrine, but in reality, as colonial authorities suspected, to assist the dissemination of nationalist sentiment.54 That they perceived Leondios as an efficient Enosis proselytizer can be inferred from the tone of exasperation in some of the governors’ writings. Battershill, fresh from his experience in Palestine, stated that he was ‘quite impossible’ and ‘in many ways a very pale edition of Haj Amin’.55 In these conditions, the colonial administration’s efforts aimed at restricting as much as possible Leondios’ audience. To this end, the colonial government imposed a restraining order on him in April 1938, using Crime Law 30 of 1935, and subsequently prosecuted him on more than 20 charges of ‘subversive’ speeches and actions in a variety of villages, mainly in the district of Paphos.56 Exactly a year later, on 3 April 1939 (which was Holy or Great Monday in the week before Easter in the Western and Eastern church calendars), after being tipped off by a Cypriot informer, a party of 14 policemen raided the Archbishopric looking for guns and seditious writings. This action during Holy Week, and the fact that priests were body searched, rather shocked Orthodox feeling, especially as it was said that the policemen had opened the vestry (skevofylakion), a room where sacred garments and utensils are kept

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and to which only officiating clerics have access.57 The locum tenens denounced what he presented as a lack of respect ‘unworthy even of the Ottomans’ to the ecumenical patriarch, the patriarchs of Jerusalem, Alexandria and Antioch, the archbishop of Athens, the patriarchs of Romania and Serbia and the leaders of the autocephalous churches of Georgia, Albania, Poland, and, of course, the archbishop of Canterbury.58 The pinnacle of the confrontation between Leondios and the colonial authorities was reached in May 1939 when the former was summoned to court in Limassol for what would become a mammoth, three-day trial (15 – 17 May). Leondios Savvas was charged under clauses 14 and 15 of the Prevention of Crime Law (No. 30 of 1935), on seven counts of disturbing or threatening to disturb the peace in the districts of Paphos, Limassol, Larnaca and Nicosia, between 22 May 1938 and 30 April 1939, through actions, words or publications seeking to promote Enosis, anti-British feeling or to reassert the archbishop’s (or acting archbishop’s) ethnarchy (or ‘national leadership’ over the Greek Cypriot community). He was subsequently convicted and sentenced to remain for one year, starting on 18 May 1939, within the strict confines of the municipality of Paphos, which he was prohibited from leaving without the written authorization of the local police commandant. Some features of the trial need to be highlighted as they touch the heart of the conflict (and perennial misunderstanding) between the church and the colonial authorities. First of all, on the organizational level, the locum tenens’ defence team comprised the most prominent lawyers and political activists of the time: from Limassol came Criton G. Tornaritis, Alekos Zenon (a former volunteer in the Greek army during the Balkan wars), Lefkios Zenon (a former member of the short-lived Radical National Union of Cyprus, or EREK, and a key figure in the village petition movement) and Pheidias I. Kyriakidis (who had led the march to Government House in October 1931); from Nicosia, there was Vias I. Markides (co-director of the Neos Kypriakos Phylax); Paphos was represented by Christos Galatopoulos (who served one of longest sentences in jail for his active role during the 1931 disturbances) and Sotiris Markides (also a veteran of the Balkan wars); George

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S. Vassiliades came from Larnaca; Andreas Gavrielides (also a former member of the EREK and an active participant in the village petition movement) from Varosha; and Savvas T. Christis, president of the Kerynia bar, former Kerynia municipal councillor, and co-founder and vice-president of the Society for Cypriot Studies, was also present. In other words, the defence team was made up of representatives of the entire Cypriot political spectrum, from diehard nationalists such as Gavrielides, to left wing sympathizers such as Kyriakides, and ‘crossover’ personalities such as Vassiliades and Galatopoulos. The lawyers sought to give an unmistakable political significance to their cross-examination of the public prosecution’s witnesses – eight of 12 of whom were policemen – and to the examination of their own witnesses. For instance, they constantly pressed the policemen (all of whom were Greek Cypriots), who provided incriminating evidence about the locum tenens’ nationalist speeches into defining themselves until they acknowledged before the court their own links with Greek culture. Likewise, when Justice Thomas Crowe Spenser Wilkinson, who was presiding in the absence on leave of Justice Walter Dupre´, inquired into the relevance of the defence’s questions to the witnesses, Galatopoulos replied to the effect that since it was the ‘ethnarch’ sitting in the dock, the defence was entrusted with ‘a great national responsibility’. Indeed, the ‘ethnarch’, by virtue of the ‘ecclesiastical canon’, was ‘elected by the people’ and entrusted, according to the powers entrusted him by the Berat, with the duty to ‘defend the autonomy of the Church and of national education’. Although Leondios was not, technically, the archbishop-ethnarch, Galatopoulos aptly resuscitated the millet system and clearly portrayed the church as a ‘state within the state’, with its own leader, its own rules and regulations, and its own electoral system. Nonetheless, the replies the locum tenens’ lawyers elicited mainly from their own witnesses (a medical doctor, a merchant, two clerics and two schoolteachers) were not defiant towards the colonial authorities, but on the contrary were designed to simultaneously convey a feeling of (Greek) national pride and of loyalty to Britain. One of the defence witnesses, none other than an

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OBE recipient, D.N. Demetriou, thus defined himself as ‘Greek, Cypriot, and a British subject’. When asked by solicitor Alekos Zenon how he managed to conciliate these various allegiances in his conscience, Demetriou replied: ‘admirably’. Finally, another important feature of the trial was Leondios himself. In his various interventions he did not refrain from using flowery and grandiloquent language in a court that was, by most accounts, packed from the early hours of each day of the trial with journalists, scholars, clerics and ‘some women’. During the crossexamination of a prosecution witness, Leondios erupted declaring that he ‘preferred to go to prison rather than abandon so cowardly the defence of Cyprus’ youth and of their education’. Similarly, in his closing speech, he likened himself to ‘tiny David facing mighty Goliath’ and to Antaeus, a giant in various north African and Mediterranean mythologies, including, of course, the Greek, who grew stronger every time he fell. Naturally, the locum tenens did not forget to mention that he was, ‘by tradition, the Ethnarch’, and that he had sworn, at the time of his enthronization as bishop of Paphos in 1930, ‘to uphold and protect the national and sacred traditions of the Greek Cypriot people’, particularly by supporting education. Nonetheless he underscored – using language strikingly similar to that of Demetriou – that he did not wish to provoke the government because he was Greek and a British Cypriot subject, and that no Greek could harbour anti-British feelings. The newspapers reported that the locum tenens’ words moved those present in court, and that even Justice Wilkinson acknowledged his eloquence, although he believed the bishop tended to get carried away by it.59 The whole image of the locum tenens had been carefully prepared. When he arrived at court on the first day of the trial, Leondios was accompanied by 200 clerics, forming an imposing procession with their black robes and kalimavkia (cylindrical hats) as they made their way through the crowd of Limassolians, local shopkeepers who had closed their stores for the occasion, and villagers from the wider region who had flocked in the surrounding streets in the early morning; the crowd in fact reached such proportions that on the following day the police had to cordon off the square where the court

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was situated. A government report said that during the proceedings of the trial: badges exhibiting flags of the Greek Army and Navy were worn by schoolboys in the streets near court. Large crowds gathered in the streets and every appearance of the Bishop and his attendant priests was met with cheering and applause. Occasional cries of ‘Zito Enosis’ (Long Live Union) were heard among the crowd. Bouquets tied with blue and white [the colours of the Greek flag] ribbons were prominent on the day of the return of the Locum Tenens to Paphos (17 May). On his return to Paphos the Locum Tenens preached two sermons in which he declared that Greek education was in danger as was also the independence of the Church, and said: ‘if the necessity arises, sacrifice even your lives’.60 Leondios’ trial was an important turning point because it encompassed most dimensions of the conflict between church and state. First and foremost of these was the clash between law and tradition, and more specifically the attempts of the church to define and keep beyond the reach of the law a traditional sphere, a repository of Greek Cypriot identity that it presented as timeless, as existing before and bound to outlive British rule; conversely, the state’s main objective of the trial was to assert, in the words of a judge, the ‘primacy of law over tradition’.61 In these three days, an important and very subtle debate took place around notions such as faith, national identity, political allegiance and civic duty, which the defence explicitly presented as compatible and the prosecution as irreconcilable. Secondly and consequently, the trial and the search of the Archbishopric illustrated a contest over space, the concrete borders between the reason of state and sacred sanctuary. The stakes for the church to preserve or at least to make a strong public case for the inviolability of this sanctuary were extremely high; indeed, under Leondios’ leadership, the Church of Cyprus systematically laboured to present itself as the hearth of the eternal values and the Greek

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essence of the Cypriot Hellenophones. Characteristic of this stance is a statement by the locum tenens – one of those that led him to court – according to which the Greek Cypriots’ ‘national anthem is Christ has risen [a Greek-Orthodox greeting on Easter Sunday]; the national centre of the Cypriots is Athens, their religious centre is Jerusalem, their ecclesiastical centre is Constantinople’. Finally and more prosaically, from the viewpoint of the defence team this time, the trial was a showcase of political unity and communicational skills, all mobilized for the purpose of presenting the bishop as a national leader. There is no doubt that the trial was political although this was not entirely the defence’s doing; indeed, the very purpose of a preventive law is to give the state the latitude to try and confine individuals not for what they actually did but for what it was anticipated they might do. The defence did not seriously expect to exculpate Leondios, but it did use the tribune of the courtroom to foster sympathy for and allegiance to the locum tenens within the Greek Cypriot community.

The church’s social outreach and the legitimation of the leader Around 1935– 1937, the colonial authorities had contended that the issue of the archbishopric’s vacancy left the overwhelming majority of the population indifferent, which was another way of saying that the peasantry cared little for the political implications of the Archiepiscopal Question. However, in spite of its singular form, the Archiepiscopal Question was in fact a polyvalent question. Though the church’s financial strain and the involvement of political leaders were thoroughly reported, documented and monitored by the colonial authorities, the religiousness of the issue was seldom mentioned which may have led the Cyprus government to underestimate the pregnancy of such feeling, or at least of the ritual importance, of the Church of Cyprus, including among the ‘silent’ peasant majority. Though it is difficult to have any precise idea of church attendance, it is useful to recall that aside from the ritual passages of

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baptism, marriage and death, the church was at the centre of ‘perhaps thirty’ Cypriot feasts of obligation a year, and of the services in honour of ‘a number of saints’ in particular villages. One key figure in the church’s influence in the village was the papas, the ‘pope’ or priest. Surridge wrote of the latter in his Survey of Rural Life in Cyprus: He is usually a man with little schooling chosen for his office by his fellow villagers and he carries on his ordinary works in addition to his priestly duties. Having a working knowledge of the church services, on Sundays and feast days, at baptisms, weddings and funerals he plays his part. He is treated with a certain amount of deference due to his office but such influence as he may have is reduced by the fact that he is born and brought up among his flock. He remains to-day the patcher-up of local quarrels and a general counsellor but his influence tends rather to diminish.62 Notwithstanding his ‘declining influence’, the papas, as a local patcher-upper, was also an interface between the hierarchy and the village. Indeed, strongly rooted in the village, from which he originated and where he was ‘chosen’, the papas was, by virtue of the ecclesiastical charter of Church of Cyprus (article 122), constitutionally and financially linked to the local bishopric: indeed, his allowance was paid by the parochial church committee which was itself audited by the archbishopric throne committee.63 In Leondios’ words, ‘the local bishop – and not the Synod – ha[d] the absolute right to appoint or dismiss the clerics of his diocese and [. . .] the Church demand[ed] of its clerics obedience [. . .]’.64 The papas then was as dependent on the local metropolitan (bishop), as he was on his co-villagers. Another way through which the hierarchy could exert its influence in rural Cyprus was through their sermons in parochial churches. An official report thus rather mischievously underscored ‘the effect of [the locum tenens’] personality and preaching over women, who are said to be particularly moved by his undoubted powers of oratory’.65 All of these avenues of the religiously defined interaction between church and laity may have been conducive of

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ideas and allegiances where the difference between ‘religion’, ‘identity’ and ‘politics’ was permanently – and no doubt to a large extent intentionally so on the part of the hierarchy – blurred. An instantiation of collusion between religion and politics emerged in late November 1938, when the locum tenens proclaimed new elections for the archiepiscopal throne committee. When these occurred, the only remaining supporter of the government among its lay members – the Mayor of Nicosia Themistoklis Dervis – was defeated and thereupon the committee, with personalities such as Ioannis Klerides, Georgios Mylonas and Miltiades Koureas, was fully opposed to the government. The account given by the governor of this event appears contradictory since prior to the elections he wrote that these would be of great importance as much would depend on the committee’s views in the Archiepiscopal Question; yet after the elections, he dismissed them as ‘comparatively unimportant affairs’ which only served to show ‘how credulous are those people who think and say that the Cypriot leopard has changed his posts [sic] since 1931 – for in every case the party slogans at these elections were progovernment and anti-government (Enosis)’. Soon after, Palmer was forced to acknowledge ‘a great change of atmosphere in the towns and it [was] beginning to affect the villages’. The governor believed that this was due to the Cypriots’ ‘versatility’, ‘instability’, or lack of ‘firm principles or convictions ethical or otherwise’. By the summer of 1939, the colonial authorities readily acknowledged that the church, particularly in the wake of the trial of the locum tenens, had become highly popular.66 As Italy declared war on Greece in October 1940 and was subsequently pushed back by the Greek army, the governor noted a ‘spirit of excitement bordering on hysteria’ among Greek Cypriots. The locum tenens was reported to have proclaimed a truce with the Cyprus government, ‘apparently bec[oming] pro-British overnight’ while displaying a ‘sudden burst of activity and energy’ leading people to believe ‘that he is indeed their Ethnarch and he has definitely emerged as a leader during the past month’. This popularity would have declined, it was reported, ‘if it had not been for the fact that it was felt locally that the Anglican Church was in

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some respects supporting the locum tenens’ view’. But the colonial administration had no means to combat it, as the locum tenens, in his speeches, aptly combined Greek nationalist feeling with his exhortations for the British army, at a time when the colonial authorities themselves were actively working to constitute the Cyprus Regiment. In fact, to the Colonial Office’s astonishment, Battershill went as far as to write that he felt, along with the British ambassador in Greece, that the Greek government should be directly approached in order to settle the ‘Question’.67 However, plans to solicit the help of either the Greek government or sister Orthodox churches were shelved in the wake of the German invasion of Greece in April 1941.68 * In dealing with the thorny ‘Archiepiscopal Question’, the consistent and in fact unique objective of Palmer’s administration was to curb the Cypriot Church’s influence on local politics. This goal was motivated by a concern to pre-empt the (re)formation of a PanCypriot non-official authority, likely to federate and mobilize the entire Greek Cypriot community. But the authorities’ singlemindedness never considered or allowed any room for the sincere consideration of the religious and theological aspects of a debate – which inevitably remained mostly opaque to them – a consideration which might have rendered their forceful intervention more legitimate. Consequently, the church emerged reinforced, and not diminished, towards the end of the 1930s. The causes entrenching the church’s power were multiple, but three of them appeared to have been decisive: the assumption of church control by the lay leadership, the determination of the ecclesiastical hierarchy in the face of repression, but more importantly, the successful appeal to non Cypriot religious authorities – Anglican and Orthodox – whose reaction firmly instilled doubt in British official circles with regard to the wisdom of the measures taken by the Cyprus government. This was of course of special importance in a rapidly deteriorating context in the Eastern Mediterranean, where Greece appeared as one of Britain’s unique allies in face of Italian, and later German, threats.

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As a rule, the British government was cautious in its dealings with religious authorities in the colonial empire. On the few occasions it did interfere, it was when it perceived that these authorities fostered sedition within the dependency. A useful parallel can be drawn, in this regard, between the churches of Cyprus in the 1930s and of Malta in the 1910s. In the fortress-colony of Malta, where the Catholic faith ‘was at the heart of Maltese life just as the church was at the centre of the village’, the British authorities were also preoccupied with ‘priestly influence’, and particularly clerical involvement in favour of self-government, the preservation of the Italian language and against interreligious marriages (mainly between Catholics and Protestants). There, as in Cyprus, the British authorities toyed with the idea of directing the nomination of bishops; there, as in Cyprus, they excluded the priests from all existing representative institutions; and there, somewhat similarly to the case of the locum tenens in Cyprus, they contributed to the creation of a ‘national martyr’ with the arrest and conviction in 1917 of the nationalist political leader Enrico Mizzi, who was a close collaborator of Canon Panzavecchia.69 In both cases, the initiatives of the colonial state essentially backfired. Mobilizing powerful international religious networks, the Church of Cyprus (understood as both the ecclesiastical hierarchy and its lay advisers) managed to make a strong case for its inviolability and, conversely, for the illegitimacy of the state’s intervention in its affairs. It thus won an important contest on the articulation between the ‘private’ and ‘public’ spheres, probably the most important contradiction underpinning colonial and authoritarian regimes. Throughout colonial rule, the church’s main strength resided precisely on the dual role it assumed: as an institution, the church’s activity was ‘public’; but it presided over a matter, the Cypriots’ faith, which it successfully presented as private and, thereby, to be preserved from state intervention. The Church of Cyprus succeeded in remaining a niche, ostensibly religious in nature, but which could at any time function as a protected locus for political mobilization. As suggested in this chapter, the entrenchment of the church as a political niche came at the expense of the ecclesiastical hierarchy’s

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autonomy or independence. A further reason for this may have been the increasing power of the left and the locum tenens’ sympathy for its ideas which tended to upset the conservative leadership of the throne committees. Born in a poor Limassol village in 1896, Leondios had attended his hometown’s first socialist meetings in 1919.70 Throughout his life, he remained sensitive to the fate of poorer Cypriots, met with the trade union committees and earned the support of left wing activists, a fact illustrated by the extensive coverage that Anexartitos, the mouthpiece of the clandestine Communist Party, gave to the Archiepiscopal Question. And while Leondios’ brand of nationalism remained quite detached from practical concerns, a fact which was resented by the conservative lay leadership of the throne committees, his left wing sympathies were simply too much to bear. Indeed, at the same time that the church (as an institution) was consolidating its power, trade unions were fast developing, under the unrelenting efforts of clandestine communists.

CHAPTER 6 THE LABOUR QUESTION: POLITICAL STAKES IN A BATTLE OF DENOMINATIONS

With the combined effects of the world economic crisis following the 1929 crash and a three-year drought, Cyprus’ mainly agricultural economy entered in the early 1930s a phase that contributed to reshape the island’s social outlook. Heralding this transformation, the local press gave increasing publicity to a socioeconomic actor which hitherto had aroused little interest: the ‘labour force’. A noteworthy characteristic of the coverage of what was soon branded the ‘labour question’ was the unanimous sympathy, notwithstanding the ideological orientation of different newspapers, for what was presented by all as the ‘labour class’ (ergatiki taxi) or the ‘working world’ (ergatikos kosmos). During this time, appeals to the island’s colonial government for the enactment of social legislation to protect the workers against the vagaries of life and the arbitrariness of their employers became a permanent fixture in the press.1 Meanwhile trade unions were applying for registration at a quickening pace while their claims, repeatedly submitted to the island’s authorities in the form of written petitions, were gradually standardized. Remedying the economic difficulties plaguing the island was one of the purposes of the Financial Commission sent to Cyprus by the Colonial Office in March 1934. Yet, as we have seen in Chapter Two,

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the central part of the financial commissioner’s report, published in 1935, was devoted to the problem of agricultural indebtedness; other industries were only briefly referred to, and no measures were proposed to palliate their difficulties. Indeed, the concern of the press for the labour question was not shared by the colonial authorities. As one could read in the administration’s official 1936 Annual Report on the Social and Economic Progress of the People of Cyprus, ‘there [was] no “labouring class” in the generally accepted sense of the term though one is gradually being created by the mines. The vast majority of the workers are employed either by small agriculturalists or by master craftsmen. Factories are very few and any such institution as the socalled “factory system” is unknown. In short, conditions are oriental rather than occidental’.2 This chapter aims to interpret the dynamics between the labour movement, namely the identification of workers from various professional extractions with a standardized set of common goals to be secured through collective action, its depiction by the Cypriot public sphere and the denial of its existence by the colonial authorities. Building on the analysis of two strikes – the miners’ strike at Mavrovouni (Nicosia district) and the female spinners’ strike at Famagusta – the chapter’s main argument deals with the political stakes of using, or avoiding at all costs, all-encompassing terms related to the expanding group of wage-earners in Cyprus in the 1930s. The reason the colonial authorities adopted a passive approach towards the labour question was that they perceived it as a threat to their sociopolitical project for the preservation of a rural and agricultural society, which has been outlined in Chapter Two. But this passive approach, translated by the absence of any labour legislation, created a niche, a public space, or, as Frederick Cooper and Ann Laura Stoler termed it, ‘an interstice of power structure’, where politics could re-emerge in post-1931 Cyprus.3 Indeed, the labour movement became a labour question, generating an intense rivalry in the Cypriot public sphere itself between different understandings of the place of the working class within society.

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The gradual transformation of a rural economy: Cyprus’ socioeconomic outlook in the 1930s In the 1930s, ‘Cyprus [was] essentially an agricultural country and the majority of the population consist[ed] of peasant proprietors or tenants farming their own lands or on their own accounts’. This exact statement can be found in all official colonial documents, from the annual surveys of Cyprus’ economy between 1928 and 1936 to Sir Ralph Oakden’s financial and economic report.4 Reproduced verbatim time and again, it defined, for the colonial state, social normality in Cyprus. Cypriots were said to be mostly peasant proprietors or tenants farming their own lands (averaging five hectares per capita or less) or on their own account, although larger farms known in most Ottoman and post-Ottoman territories as ciftlik still existed. The main crops cultivated on these lands were wheat, barley, oats and, above all, carobs, representing a good 33 per cent of the total export value of agricultural products in 1933. The production of wine, especially in the Limassol area and its krasochoria (wine villages), was also of consequence and the growing of vines was undertaken partially with the assistance of cooperative societies. Other important products included olives, for local consumption, and, for the export market, potatoes, tobacco, citrus fruit and, with respect to livestock, mules. Cyprus’ main market was Britain which easily absorbed between 25 and 30 per cent of the island’s exports of agricultural products, although countries of the eastern Mediterranean, such as Greece, Egypt (accounting for 14.9 per cent of the total export trade), Palestine and Syria, but also Germany and Italy, bought Cypriot products.5 Beyond agriculture as such, the island’s economic activity also relied on domestic manufacturing production, including shoemaking, furniture-making, weaving and the production of linen, lace and embroidery. The island’s economy was characteristically rural since perhaps 80 per cent of working Cypriots practised their occupations from their villages. Thus the 1931 census reported that of the 347,959 Cypriots, 134,279 of both sexes were returned as practising occupations (73.31 per cent of males, 26.69 per cent of

Breakdown of occupations in Cyprus, 1931.

Source: Report of the 1931 Census, p. 15.

Agriculture Farmers and cultivators, ploughmen and agricultural labourers, gardeners, shepherds, muleteers Craft industry Boot and shoe-makers, carpenters, masons, mason labourers, tailors, lace-makers, weavers, dress-makers, bakers, blacksmiths Service industry Chauffeurs, clerks and employees, professors and teachers, domestic servants, barbers, clergy of all denominations, waiters Trade Commission agents and merchants, grocers and fruiterers, cafe´ proprietors, butchers, hawkers (peddlers). Labour (Other, in mines and quarries) Total

Occupation

Table 6.1

3,197 113,867

5,674

12,098

24,094

68,804

Number of persons

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females); of these, 115,211 were involved in one of the occupations – most likely ‘rural’ in the majority of cases – listed in Table 6.1 (a simplified version of the corresponding table in the census). The vast majority of the active population (128,817 out of 134,279) was self-employed, although this statement needs to be qualified as ‘[m]any farmers and cultivators possessing small holdings work[ed] for part of the year on their own holdings and for the rest of the year as employees of other persons’.6 Although we do not have the precise figures for the 1930s, we can draw some conclusions with regard to the professional outlook of the island’s main communities on the basis of the 1946 census, keeping in mind that ‘religion’ in the official documents was synonymous with ‘ethnicity’. In 1946, 40 per cent of the total working population classified as either ‘Greek’ or ‘Turkish’ was still involved in agriculture. The craft industry was more important within the Greek Cypriot community (19 per cent of the community’s working population), than within the Turkish Cypriot community (16 per cent), while Turkish Cypriots showed a marked predilection for public service (five per cent) compared with the Greek Cypriots (two per cent).7 Since most of the crops produced on a large scale were destined to be exports, the economy, already vulnerable because of the rampant agricultural indebtedness and a severe irrigation problem, was further undermined by a serious decline in cereal production and the collapse of world prices for agricultural commodities. As the immediate product of the difficult economic situation of the 1930s, there emerged a significant ‘class of landless ex-proprietors’, who resorted to offering their labour in the mines operated mainly by two large companies, the Cyprus Mines Corporation (working the cupriferous deposits at Skouriotissa and Mavrovouni) and the Cyprus and General Asbestos Company (working the asbestos deposits near Amiandos in the Troodos mountains). Both companies employed an average daily labour force of 2,000 Cypriots, though many of these worked seasonally at the mines, employing the rest of their time as agricultural labourers. In the early 1930s, some 150 smaller companies also attracted dispossessed or impoverished peasants,

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while the public works or railway departments of the colonial administration employed 3,485 Cypriots, mainly in the maintenance of roads or that of government buildings. The cost of living in Cyprus naturally depended on both geographical and occupational factors, but overall, according to the official statistics reproduced in Table 6.2, it generally improved until 1939, when the price of staple products such as olive oil, cereals, sugar, coffee and starch increased significantly.8 These statistics need to be handled with the usual precautions. By definition, the ‘cost of living’ is calculated solely on the basis of the average retail prices of all the chief staple articles (hence, on the average daily expenses) of use or consumption and not – a crucial item in a peasant’s budget – of the interest rate on loans (still in the vicinity of 10 per cent in the mid-1930s). Moreover, it does not take into account the widespread practice of autarchy or subsistence farming. Beyond the structural causes – drought, fall of international commodity prices – accounting for the island’s economic difficulties, Table 6.2 Average cost of living for a family of five in Cyprus, 1932 – 1940 (in pounds). Year 1932 1933 1934 1935 1936 1940

Town/ Village Nicosia Town Villages Nicosia Town Villages Nicosia Town Villages Nicosia Town Villages Nicosia Town Villages Nicosia Town Villages

Average income

Average cost of living

Differential

35 34 35 34 35 34 46 37 46 37 52 49

44 33 42 32 42 32 40 31 44 34 58 46

29 þ1 27 þ2 27 þ2 þ6 þ6 þ2 þ3 26 þ3

Sources: Annual Reports, 1933– 1936 and Cyprus Blue Book of Statistics, 1940.

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the Greek Cypriot press and some exporters blamed the existence of monopolies or quasi-monopolies as determining factors in the uprooting and ‘proletarianization’ of the peasantry. The discontent was particularly directed at the British Cyprus Wine and Spirits Company (known then and today as KEO, the Kypriakή Etair1ίa Oinopn1ymάtvn); indeed, the export of Cypriot wine to Britain was ‘controlled by licence, with the object of securing the maintenance of prescribed standard quality. Only one such licence, ha[d] been issued – to the British Cyprus Wine and Spirits Company – who thus have a monopoly of the export trade to England.’9 The emergence of a landless agricultural class – a freelance workforce operating part-time as miners, agricultural labourers or builders – unsettled the established social equilibrium and official certainties. Scott Atran, who noted a similar phenomenon in Palestine, wrote, in terms that could easily apply to Cyprus, of a ‘residual peasantry [. . .] compelled to work in towns, yet [who] continue to live in villages because they could not afford to live in towns. Neither wholly proletarian nor peasant, neither socially urban nor rural, the semi-proletarianized Palestinian villager was well on the way to becoming a “Partner of the Wind” (Shrik el-Hawa).’10 These outsiders, and their attempts at rebuilding an identity of their own, constitute the backbone of this chapter.

Two strikes: social justice vs public order Mavrovouni was, since the early 1920s, one of the main cupriferous sites operated by the Cyprus Mines Corporation (CMC), founded in 1916 and run by the Mudd family of Los Angeles. In a little less than five years (from 1922 to 1926), the CMC managed to ‘rank in the matter of output high in the order of the world’s pyrites workings’. The ties of its American management with the local British colonial authorities far exceeded the sphere of formality and, in the aftermath of the First World War, the CMC’s president, Harvey Seeley Mudd, was reportedly in a position to discuss the official status of Cyprus with the British undersecretary for the colonies and to advise him against ceding the island – ‘the only part of the British Empire that

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contained large deposits of pyrites’ – to Greece. In its Annual Reports, the Cyprus government officially and explicitly acknowledged its ‘debt’ to the ‘mining industries’ (chief among which the CMC) ‘for their cooperation in creating special relief works in order to alleviate unemployment’.11 The CMC management owed this privileged position to its local socioeconomic power. Within a few years, the company became the island’s most important employer after the Cyprus government, commanding a daily average labour force of more than 3,000 miners, organized in three eight-hour shifts and producing in 1933 211,494 tons of ore. The company’s operation completely changed the landscape around the mines, as it established in Mavrovouni the foundations of an agglomeration with dwellings, shops, cafe´s and a ‘hospital with complete modern equipment under the charge of a qualified British doctor’.12 Until 1933, wages in the mines were generally acceptable to the workers: at 31 copper piastres [cp.] (£0.17) per day (for men working underground; men working on the surface received 22 cp. [£0.12], and women, who worked only on the surface, 12 cp. [£0.06]). However, the early 1930s signalled a change of course: by 1936, wages had dropped to 29 cp. per day (£0.161 for underground miners, and £0.13 for male and £0.05 for female surface workers). From 1933 to 1936, the price of bread had risen from £0.0874 to £0.11 a kilo, when it was estimated that a ‘family of five’ consumed 22.22 kg of bread weekly.13 Already vulnerable to cyclical recessions, the miners’ status became even more precarious, a situation illustrated by the Mavrovouni strike in the summer of 1936. Late on Sunday, 30 August 1936, a group of disgruntled miners appointed a seven-member committee, comprising both Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, to draft a list of claims to be submitted to the CMC management. On Monday, 31 August, the committee read a memorandum listing 16 core demands in front of some 500 of their colleagues on the morning shift. These demands included a standard salary increase, the establishment of a system of workers’ compensation insurance and the relaxation of the system of surveillance by foremen. After agreeing to the proposed memor-

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andum, the miners dispersed quietly. The next day, when the CMC management refused to grant the miners’ demands and instead invited the displeased among them to ‘look for a job elsewhere or to return to their villages’, some 1,500 workers went on one of the most contested strikes of the 1930s.14 On the very first day of the strike, many of the miners were arrested, while the police actively sought out the ‘ringleaders’. After having spent eight days in custody, all seven members of the committee, plus two of their colleagues, were put to trial at Nicosia district court. Six of the defendants were Greek Cypriot, the remaining three Turkish Cypriot. They were charged with four counts of violating law 54 of 1932, by having ‘organized and participated in a public meeting and a public procession’ without the prior written authorization of the Nicosia district commissioner. The court sentenced the miners to a one-year bond of £10. There is no evidence that the convicted miners were sacked; but according to Lavender, the CMC’s historian, the company could have easily replaced them, as the management was tailed by ‘[h]ungry crowds’ of dispossessed farmers in dire need of a job.15 Two years after Mavrovouni, in June 1938, spinners at a factory in the city of Famagusta went on strike. If the CMC can be said to embody, by Cyprus’ standards, the ‘capitalistic firm’ par excellence, the Famagusta Cotton Factory, on the other hand, fitted much more into the ‘paternalistic type’, owned and run by self-made man Panayiotis Ioannou, a wealthy Greek Cypriot merchant and landowner and, before the 1931 uprising, member of the municipal council, benefactor of the city’s Greek Cypriot schools and a leading participant in the constitutional movement analyzed in Chapter Four. In contrast to the CMC management, Ioannou’s relation to the colonial authorities was less congenial since he was a committed Enosist. He was personally known to his spinners, all of them exclusively Greek Cypriot women. The exact number of his female workforce is unknown, but it must not have exceeded 30.16 On 30 May 1938, a deputation of these spinners went to the district commissioner’s office, stated that they had gone on strike and deposited a memorandum listing their demands, which ranged from

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a salary increase to one week’s dismissal notice, free medical care and more polite behaviour on the part of the management. The district commissioner then met with Ioannou, who said that the only concession he was ready to make was to reduce the workday to 11 hours in the summer and eight and a half in the winter (from sunrise to sunset). Furthermore, he declared that any spinner who was not prepared to work for the existing wages and the new working hours could leave; he added that he was prepared to shut down the factory if he could not get staff on these conditions. On 6 June, the district commissioner received a document entitled ‘Joint Communique´ of the Labour Trade Unions of Masons, Barbers, Tailor Employees, Carpenters, Shoe-maker employees, Shop Tenants and Blacksmiths’, claiming to represent ‘almost the whole labour class of Varosha [Famagusta]’. The document stated that the union committee had ‘adopted the claims [of the female labourers]’ and were ‘determined to strengthen their struggle’. Having summoned them to his office, the district commissioner proceeded to lecture the signatories of the document, ‘emphasi[zing] the necessity of being very careful to avoid inflaming the public feeling and their own responsibility in that connection [and] announc[ing] [his] firm intention of not tolerating any nonsense’.17 Meanwhile, the situation at the factory was deteriorating rapidly, with the striking spinners picketing in front of the premises and using force to prevent their colleagues from crossing the picket. Thirteen women were arrested and tried at the Famagusta district court on 19– 20 July 1938. They were charged with ‘creating a disturbance and assaulting the present workers at the mills’. Four of them were found guilty on counts of both assault and disturbance and sentenced to prison terms ranging from three to ten days; seven spinners were bound over for the sum of £10 ‘to keep the peace and be of good behaviour for the period of one year’ while two defendants were declared innocent. All of them were sacked from the factory.18 The Mavrovouni and Famagusta strikes, notwithstanding their differences, share a similar pattern: both started with a labour dispute, which was immediately covered by the press and ended in a

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court trial. In other words, a conflict in the private sector was elevated to the status of a political struggle for social justice by either the press or the trade unions, before being reduced by public authorities to a penal matter to be settled in court. The publicity surrounding the two cases illustrates the curiosity for a phenomenon not wholly anticipated by either the Cypriot elite or the colonial authorities. Here was a movement which mobilized sections of the population hitherto not considered capable of acting in unison (Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots), or not expected to take a public stand at all (women); it was a movement that cut across communal or gender boundaries and induced groups of individuals to push forward, collectively and publicly, in defiance of colonial laws, with a sophisticated set of common goals that contrasted with the modesty of the claims in previous strikes. Cooperation between the two communities was not unheard of, particularly in the intercommunal villages. In fact, Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots lived peacefully in well over a third of Cyprus’ 641 villages in the early 1930s.19 But it seems that Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots had rarely shared, under British rule, a common vision of a fair social order as encapsulated in the memorandum that the miners’ committee read out to the workforce. Even more uncommon was the mobilization of women. One main difference between the two strikes concerns the presence of trade unions. At the time, Nicosia’s district commissioner, the hardnosed Leslie S. Greening, consistently refused to grant permission to the miners to form a trade union, ‘after investigations which showed that the organizers were not miners at all’;20 the Famagusta spinners, on the other hand, were supported by the local trade union committees. The extent to which the presence of trade unions gave a wholly different shade to a strike may be seen in the involvement of the public authorities: in the miners’ strike, where trade unions were absent, the matter was dealt with solely by the police and the colonial court; in the Famagusta case, where trade unions played an active part, the court was only the last stage in a longer process in which the executive branch of the colonial government, in the person of the British district commissioner, was

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actively involved. The differences in the treatment of each strike were also to be found in the media coverage they received: indeed, in the late 1930s, the Greek Cypriot press became the locus of an increasingly polarized contest between conflicting understandings of the labour movement. Eleftheria enthusiastically endorsed the miners’ strike and conveyed its approval of its intercommunal aspect by reporting at length on the ad hoc constitution of a fund set up by the miners to pay for the medical expenses of one of their ‘Ottoman’ (i.e. Turkish Cypriot) colleagues, Ahmet Necip, who had injured himself. The newspaper went to some length to prove the strike was ‘authentic’, quoting a Greek Cypriot worker who reportedly said that ‘the miners spontaneously and unanimously shared the desire to go on strike’ and ‘were not persuaded to do so by anyone’.21 The Famagusta strike was a wholly different matter. Eleftheria thought that the fact that it was entirely led by women was ‘a most unusual phenomenon in Cyprus’ that ‘call[ed] for special attention’. But they underscored that the labourers could not ‘at heart foster any hostile or militant spirit against their employers [and] that their only demand [was] for employment under more humane conditions in keeping with the spirit of Christianity’. Moreover, the article praised the district commissioner for his ‘laudable endeavour [. . .] to discourage strikes as a means of expressing labour grievances’ and ‘exhorted patience and restraint’ pending an investigation of the whole labour question by the government ‘who should not be harassed by continuous agitation and demands during this period of study and meditation’.22 This difference of perspective is imputable to the presence of trade unions in the Famagusta strike. Indeed, Eleftheria manifested a marked preference for unorganized labour agitation, the spontaneity of which seemed to guarantee its ‘authenticity’, rather than for an organized labour movement that not only appeared to be dispensing with, but actually challenged, the established figures of authority (the church and the community’s most prosperous families) and diverted the community’s attention from the sacrosanct nationalist cause.

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Protecting or empowering the workers? The labour question in the public sphere However, in the second half of the 1930s, other newspapers contributed to transforming the ‘labour movement’ into a ‘labour question’. Labour, along with the Archiepiscopal Question examined in the previous chapter, constituted one of the only matters of societal importance that could be featured and commented on in the press, and the absence of any labour legislation garnered much media attention for this increasingly political issue. By 1939, terms such as ‘working-class’, ‘labour question’ and ‘worker’ had found their way into the Greek Cypriot press as valid denominations in issues involving wage-earners of all professions. For example, in December 1935, Konstantinos A. Konstantinides’ Nicosia-based daily Neos Kypriakos Fylax (New Cypriot Guardian) stated: The shoemakers’ strike draws again the attention to the ‘labour question.’ Hundreds of ‘technicians’ in Nicosia work 12– 14 h a day in their shacks to earn an insignificant wage, barely sufficient to buy the family’s dry bread. [. . .] This condition of the poor wage-earners moves the entire society deeply and for this reason we recommend the enactment of laws to protect the working world of the island, which is at the mercy of fate.23 The semantic shift that leads us here from the ‘shoemakers’ to the ‘working world’ through ‘the poor wage earners’ is pregnant with meaning; and for the press in general, and in opposition to colonial authorities, the defining criterion of this ‘labour class’ was not the occupation of its constitutive members but rather their shared socioeconomic predicament. Instead of resorting to repression, the colonial government needed, according to Neos Kypriakos Fylax, to take ‘radical [legislative] measures’ to protect vulnerable workers. Newspapers and trade unions thus managed to engineer a consensus around the existence of a problem, the labour question, which eluded the colonial administration’s control. But the political stakes behind the ‘labour

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question’ went even further. Neos Kypriakos Fylax thus went on to observe: The prohibition of child labour, the regulation of working time, [the provision] of sickness and accident insurance, as well as [the introduction] of old age pensions are the indispensable prerequisites set by the International Labour Organization in order to improve the worker’s daily wage. When one thinks that these measures were recommended by conservative representatives of purely bourgeois governments, one cannot understand the hesitation towards their piecemeal introduction in Cyprus.24 Hence the labour question was a reality so incontrovertible as to induce ‘bourgeois governments’, hardly prone to revolutionary methods, to contemplate social measures. Implicitly, Neos Kypriakos Fylax suggested that it was important for established governments to deal with an issue that could otherwise be exploited by politically motivated elements. Indeed, the paper was even more conservative than Eleftheria. Its owner-editor, Konstantinides, was trained as a theologian, was a long-time collaborator of the diehard enosist and political deportee (1921) Nikolaos Katalanos, and, as we have seen in the previous chapter, a very close adviser of Leondios, bishop of Paphos and locum tenens of the Archiepiscopal See. It was the implicit fear that established authorities might be challenged that led Eleftheria to state that the workers ‘are not always in a position to help themselves’ and that ‘if going on strike is a sacred right and the main means of self-defence, it has to be exerted as a last resort, if it is to retain its credibility or avoid provoking unnecessary damage to the employers’.25 Hence, behind expressions of solidarity for the welfare of the working world hid the concern to tackle the labour question without jeopardizing the existing social order. The rationale of the legislation should thus serve less to promote the interests of the miners, than preserve existing equilibriums and avert social conflict.

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However from 1938 onwards, Anexartitos (Independent), a Nicosia-based daily founded by left wing Greek Cypriot journalist Lysandros Tsimillis, took on the labour question in a tone that contrasted with the paternalism of Eleftheria and Neos Kypriakos Fylax. Whereas these titles championed arbitration and conciliation between the workers and the employers, Anexartitos insisted instead on the absolute need to protect the workers from the ‘greedy appetite and vindictive dispositions of the employer’. The incompatibility of interests between the workers and ‘the employer’ (the singular form suggested a homogenized and inimical social category) became the newspaper’s basic premise. Since there was nothing to be expected from the employer, workers had only themselves to rely on; they should organize themselves into trade unions and use these as instruments of warfare to persuade the colonial authorities to enact all-encompassing social legislation, the primary object of which would be to safeguard the workers’ interests, through the institutionalization of collective bargaining agreements. Trade unions were presented as the only efficient, hence legitimate, means of struggle for the workers’ cause; and, in blatant opposition to Eleftheria, Anexartitos overtly condemned spontaneous outbursts of discontent within the ‘labour class’ or even disagreements within individual trade unions. Not only were wage earners of all professions urged to create trade unions, but Anexartitos advocated the federation of existing unions into what would become the Pancyprian Federation of Labour, i.e. precisely the type of centralized labour organization dreaded by the colonial authorities.26 Making self-organization its watchword, the newspaper quickly claimed exclusivity over the representation of the workers’ movement. ‘There are indications’, a 1939 secret police report stated, ‘that the newspaper Anexartitos is seeking to constitute itself a sort of Labour organ [sic] in order to direct the progress of the labour movement’.27 Even though some other newspapers appeared to be philergatikoi, or worker-friendly, Anexartitos contended that most of them were in fact harming the workers’ cause particularly – as in the case of Neos Kypriakos Fylax, which became its favourite target –

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when they undertook to voice the individual complaints of workers over the heads of their trade unions, thus compromising considerably the unity of the ‘movement’. In this contest for control over the ‘labour question’ in the Greek Cypriot public sphere, Anexartitos distinguished itself from other newspapers in three ways: first, its articles were often written in demotic (or vernacular) Greek, as opposed to the customary katharevousa (or formal) Greek, clearly indicating an intention to speak the language of the worker. Secondly, it presented workers not as passive victims in need of the establishment’s attention and protection, but as active agents in the struggle for the improvement of their own living conditions; and finally, it adopted an increasingly combative tone against the colonial government which it accused of being lukewarm, if not overtly hostile, to the labour question. During the first two years of its publication, the newspaper’s prey was ‘the employer’; the government was depicted as a potential ally and was repeatedly urged to enact legislation protecting the workers.28 This, as we will see in the last section of this chapter, changed drastically in 1940, when the Colonial Office dispatched a labour adviser to Cyprus.

Educate, agitate: trade unions and communists The press interest in the labour question was principally motivated by two concomitant evolutions: on the one hand, the increasing frequency of strikes involving workers from different industries; on the other, the growing number of registered trade unions submitting gradually standardized demands to the island’s authorities in the form of written petitions and memoranda. In 1935 there were only two registered trade unions in Cyprus. Their number increased to six in 1937 (with 367 members) and reached 46 (2,544 members) in 1939. What is more, these trade unions worked closely with one another and displayed a consistent spirit of solidarity during strikes. In fact, solidarity soon gave way to actual union: on 6 August 1939, the first Pan-Cypriot Labour Conference – presented as a prelude to the foundation of the Pancyprian Federation of Labour – gathered

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101 delegates from registered trade unions at the Chatzihambi theatre of Varosha (Famagusta district). They issued a 16-article declaration covering social as well as political matters, from the institutionalization of collective bargaining to the holding of universal elections and freedom of the press.29 Anexartitos was no doubt an active defender of, and also an active agent in, the unification of all trade unions and the standardization of their demands. It published numerous articles under the headlines of ‘Education and organization of the workers’ or ‘mutual societies and education’. ‘Educating’ the workers was understood in the very Marxist sense of developing their class consciousness and their corresponding responsibilities. Within a few months after it was first published in late 1938, Anexartitos surpassed Eleftheria to become the most widely diffused newspaper within the Greek Cypriot community, selling an average of 6,000 copies per day. The newspaper’s editor sought to make the title available in every corner of the island, even down in the mines. On 12 March 1939, journalist Lefteris Giannides reported that one of Anexartitos’ newsvendors was summoned to the police station where he was reprimanded for reading aloud or explaining to the Mavrovouni miners the contents of one of the newspaper’s articles dealing with their predicament.30 The contributors to the newspaper came from a variety of political backgrounds, and, in fact, Giannides had also worked with the much more conservative Neos Kypriakos Phylax and Eleftheria. Nonetheless, the more prolific among them – who either wrote articles or submitted the text of speeches they made in local clubs – were communists; Anexartitos was therefore the legal facade for the underground Communist Party, which constituted the driving force behind the island’s main strikes, the organization of the trade unions and the unions’ efforts towards federation. As we have seen in previous chapters, communists had been clearly identified, in the wake of the 1931 uprising, as one of the main threats, along with nationalists, to colonial authority. As a result, the Communist Party of Cyprus was prohibited by order-in-council in 1933. In 1936, a law regulating immigration was enacted, forbidding the entry of communists to Cyprus.31 Yet, despite the administration’s unabated

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monitoring of their activities, communists managed to regroup and organize their banned party. For example, Christos Savvides, who authored the speech on ‘mutual societies and education’ mentioned above, had studied in Moscow, before returning to Cyprus to secretly rebuild the prohibited party, of which he was general secretary from 1932 to 1935. A tailor, he founded the tailors’ trade union in Limassol. A Communist Party document written in 1948, entitled Criticism and Self-criticism of the Central Committee, asserted that the most proactive agents of unionization in Cyprus were Greek Cypriot clandestine communists, such as the builder Andreas Phantis, who set up the Nicosia builders and workers’ trade union, or the teacher Fifis Ioannou, who organized the first trade union of teachers. Many strikes during the period were encouraged by communists. After a strike by masons in Varosha (Famagusta district), the police reported that six persons were convicted at the district court and sentenced to terms of imprisonment running from 28 days to nine months; of these, two were ‘known communists’. A leading force at the time was the strong-minded and free-thinking Ploutis Loizou Savvides (better known as Ploutis Servas), a brother of Christos Savvides. Servas was present at the foundation of the island’s first communist party in 1924. Later, he went to study political science in Moscow and, in succession to his brother, was general secretary of the underground party from 1935 to 1941. In its ruthless 1948 criticism of Servas, the party, which had renamed itself the Progressive Party of Working People (AKEL) in 1941, still acknowledged the leading role he took in the reorganization of the party and the development of ‘our’ trade union movement. In late February 1937, Servas’ house was raided and a prohibited communist paper was seized. Thus, the Nicosia district commissioner was not exaggerating when he wrote in 1939 that most trade unions had ‘fallen into the hands of communists’.32 Cypriot communists in the late 1930s were all young and of modest to very modest origin; they were mostly builders, tailors or impoverished peasants who were very superficially conversant with Marxist doctrine. ‘What was the Communist Party of Cyprus then [in the 1930s]?’ asked the author of the 1948 Self-criticism document,

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but ‘a small group of leftists almost wholly deprived of any theoretical education or party-led revolutionary experience, displaying all kinds of petty bourgeois shortcomings and influences’.33 Perhaps because of their rather elastic understanding of ‘communism’, these Cypriots did not hesitate to cooperate with more established and traditional authorities; hence the cooperation, explored in Chapter Four, between the communist-inspired Committee for Cyprus Autonomy and people like Vassiliades; hence, also, Servas’ articles on rural indebtedness published during the spring and summer of 1937 in Eleftheria.34 ‘Elastic’, however, should not be translated as ‘ignorant’. There are in fact numerous indications that suggest that the underground Communist Party was firmly implanted in the international communist oikoumene. At least three important members of the party who resided in London – Evdoros Ioannides, Ezekias Papaioannou and Evanthis S. Nicolaides – had been identified by Scotland Yard as members of the London district committee of the Communist Party of Great Britain, thereby perpetuating the links that had their origins in the instructions of the first congress of the Comintern (according to which communist parties in metropolitan countries were obliged to support anticolonial movements). As mentioned in Chapter Four, Papaioannou and Ioannides were the founders of the Committee for Cyprus Autonomy; Nicolaides was the editor of the London-based Greek Cypriot communist paper Vema (Tribune). Nicolaides and Papaioannou had also taken part in the Spanish Civil War – during which the latter was seriously wounded – along with 40 other Cypriots from London and the United States, 13 of whom never returned. The temporary cooperation with conservative newspapers, it should be pointed out, occurred after the Comintern in the early 1930s had swapped the ‘class against class’ strategy for the ‘popular front’ policy in the name of antifascism. It is also against this background that the several appeals to Britain’s democratic ideals by Cypriot communists in the name of antifascism should be understood.35 By educating and agitating, local communists sought to create a public domain for the quasi-proletarianized Cypriot ‘workers’;

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together with the trade unions and journalists – particularly the contributors to Anexartitos – they assisted in the formation of a public sphere where an actual debate took place about important societal matters, involving persons of various political shades, and inconspicuously reintroduced a dose of criticism against government policy. To follow up Frederick Cooper’s analysis of the labour movement in colonial Senegal, the larger goal of left wing politicians was to smash the rigid classification established by the colonial authorities that distinguished only between ‘paysans and e´volue´s’ and to force into and legitimize in the island’s sociology the position of a new actor, the worker. The means they deployed to raise the awareness in the island – speeches at local cafe´s or clubs, public readings of press articles – were not so different than those mentioned by E.P. Thompson in his seminal analysis of The Making of the Working-Class in England during the eighteenth century.36 The colonial authorities were aware that communists continued to operate in Cyprus after the banning of the party. Yet, their recognition of the importance of an ‘external influence’ on the party seems to have come rather late, when, around November 1939, Governor Battershill reported the discovery of local ‘pencil manuscripts’ combating Trotskyism and defending Stalin’s policies.37 Indeed, under Palmer, his predecessor, the colonial administration had officially acknowledged the communist influence behind the trade union movement but systematically downplayed its importance. The reason for this was that Palmer and his aides had invested all of the administration’s efforts and resources into a wholly different policy, namely the fight against nationalism; labour in these circumstances constituted for them a dangerous diversion.

Agricultural development vs labour organization The idea of adopting an official labour policy in response to the bubbling activity in the press was met with strong reservations by the Cyprus government. According to Governor Palmer:

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In Cyprus it is exceedingly difficult to differentiate between ‘labour questions’ or ‘labour agitation’ of a genuine type or founded on any real grievance, and the political ends or purposes for which manufactured labour agitation [was] very commonly used as a cloak.38 Labour, according to Palmer, was a fabrication. His administration rejected what they perceived as the intentional and malignant amalgamation by the Greek Cypriot press of different social realities under the broader notion of labour. Thus, while the 1931 census meticulously grouped the 134,279 men and women employed or self-employed in the private sector into 32 occupational categories (see Table 6.2), only one – accounting for roughly 2.4 per cent of the total – was given the label ‘other labourers in mines and quarries’. Indeed, according to Palmer, the only corps of workmen which could ‘in any real sense be termed “Labour,” and, as such, [were] capable of combination into genuine “Trade Unions” for legitimate purposes’ was ‘a certain proportion of the skilled and semi-skilled Labour employed in the mines’.39 According to this rationale, if no ‘real’ labouring class existed, trade unions were superfluous at best, suspicious at worst. Indeed, ever since the 1931 uprising, the colonial authorities in Cyprus were very distrustful of local demands for collective self-representation. In this context, acknowledging the statements published in the press or the claims of trade unions as to the existence of a labour question entailed the risk of officially establishing them as public, that is political, intermediaries; a telling illustration of this climate was that newspaper articles appealing for the enactment of labour legislation were placed in the press officer’s report under the heading ‘agitation’.40 The official correspondence did not always make clear what exactly it deemed the purpose of ‘labour agitation’ and who precisely it believed its masterminds to be. In his annual report for 1938, the Famagusta district commissioner stated that ‘[a]s to Communists, the Police have had to admit that their registered reds [communists] gave no sign of communistic activity but confined their efforts to furthering the Labour movement in a perfectly

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legitimate manner’.41 However in his official correspondence with the Colonial Office, Palmer never linked the labour question with communism. A probable reason for this is that by the mid-1930s the authorities believed they had overpowered communism; thus, the quarterly or annual reports on the political situation in Cyprus for the years 1937 and 1939 stated that there was little or no communist activity in the island thanks to the vigilance of the police.42 For Palmer and his aides, the driving force behind the labour agitation was to be sought elsewhere, namely, among nationalist agitators. Replying to the assistant undersecretary of state for the colonies, A.B. Acheson, who suggested that the authorities on Cyprus might draw their inspiration for labour legislation from other colonies, the governor stated that ‘there [was] no other Colony in which there [was] anything like the standing danger of “Enosis” and, to some extent “Kemalism”[,] ready all the time to exploit [. . .] anything of the nature of a Labour Department if that Department were outside and above District Administration’.43 The reference to Kemalism, namely the attachment of certain Turkish Cypriots to the nationalist project of Mustafa Kemal Atatu¨rk in Turkey, is one of the very few occurrences where Turkish Cypriots are specifically designated as potential actors of the labour movement; in the overwhelming majority of cases, the latter was considered by the colonial authorities as a Greek Cypriot artefact, and it was this view which gained currency at the Colonial Office in London. Thus, a principal secretary at the Colonial Office, Duncan L.P. Tovey, could write that ‘in the special conditions in Cyprus, there [was] a strong tendency for any labour movement to assume a political aspect: and to a Cypriot politics mean agitation against British rule in favour of the Union of Cyprus to Greece’.44 The administration did all it possibly could to pre-empt the federation of trade unions, be it through speeches directly addressed by the district commissioners to the workers, or by refusing to allow the formation of trade unions in the mines, where an increasing number of people were working.45 This equivalency drawn between trade unionism and nationalism probably accounts for the fact that the colonial authorities did not linger over the very specific features of labour discontent, namely its

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intercommunal and cross-gendered aspects, which distinguished labour unrest from the Greek Cypriot, male, bourgeois perspective of nationalist enosist activism. But such imperviousness on the part of the colonial authorities was not necessarily due to its misapprehension of labour discontent; rather, they thought the labour question threatened to drain the energies and resources allocated for their two main policies, namely the development of agriculture, on the one hand, and the strengthening of district administration, on the other. We have already seen how the colonial authorities construed the island as essentially an agricultural country. The measures advocated by Sir Ralph Oakden in 1935 for its financial and economic improvement were primarily focused on the issue of agricultural indebtedness. ‘The labour problem which is of most immediate concern’, Governor Palmer commented, ‘is the settlement of the [agricultural] debt question, because 9/10 of the miners are really farmers, and if it were not for debt could command almost any wages’. Labour, according to this rationale, was the abnormal outgrowth of an unhealthy agricultural system; and miners were first and foremost indebted farmers who were compelled to sell their mortgaged land to honour their debts. In these circumstances, dealing with labour meant, above all, grasping this ‘genuine’ identity of miners; thereupon, the administration’s attention and resources should be focused not ‘downstream’, i.e. on the miners who were the consequence of the problem, but ‘upstream’, i.e. on the nature of the problem which was agricultural indebtedness.46 Thus, the colonial government’s activities in the agricultural domain were nothing short of a panacea for Cyprus’ political problems: not only would it preserve the peasant from the nefarious influence of the nationalist urban agitator, but it would also offset the latter’s devious schemes that were hidden behind the facade of ‘labour’. Indeed, the reasons behind the thorough involvement of the colonial administration in the agricultural sector were the same as those commanding their noninvolvement in the labour sector. In both cases, the attention of the colonial administration was directed at potential leverages. In the first case, agriculture, the objective was to sever the leverage of the creditor on the debtor; in the second, labour, the idea was to avoid

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strengthening the leverage of the trade union on the worker. The logic was always the same, namely, to sever, freeze or merely contain intra-Cypriot power relations that could elude the reach of the colonial administration. Concurrently, Palmer considered a labour policy which would rely on a central labour department as a deadly threat to the administration’s grip on the country; as we have seen in Chapter Two, he sought to strengthen British rule through decentralization and the empowerment of district commissioners. In his own report, Oakden, stressing the crucial importance for the Cyprus government to commit itself to undertake a resolute policy of agricultural development, had intimated that this policy should involve the whole administration and not the agricultural department alone: ‘there should be the closest possible co-operation between diverse Departments – for instance, between the Commissioners, the Agricultural Department, the Public Works Department and the Registrar of Cooperative Societies – with the object of furthering any schemes of development’.47 This suited Palmer perfectly. ‘If we have competent commissioners’, he wrote, ‘it is they who are in the best position to advise government as to facts and all the complicated circumstances, political or otherwise, that play their part in affairs the press may designate labour’.48 On the whole, Palmer’s position illustrated to a certain extent what Gervase Clarence-Smith, following Gyo¨rgy Luka´cs, has called ‘romantic anti-capitalism’, namely an opposition – rather than a well-formulated body of propositions – among colonial administrators to the ‘unholy trinity of proletarianization, urbanization and industrialization’.49 In spite of the forceful way in which they tried to convey the impression of labour as a ‘standing danger’, the Cyprus government failed to convince the Colonial Office. In the late 1930s, the ‘labour question’ was hardly a Cypriot exception and had become the British government’s ‘daily bread’ in the wake of social unrest in Britain (which had two to three million unemployed between 1931 and 1935) and throughout its empire. Labour troubles in the dependencies, from the Northern Rhodesian copperbelt strikes of 1935 to the Mauritian agricultural labour disturbances of

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1937– 1938, reached an apex with the plantation worker riots in Jamaica in May– June 1938. The riots and other labour disturbances within the empire brought some changes both in the organization and policymaking of the Colonial Office. As an instance of the latter, the advice of the Trades Union Congress, especially as it had repeatedly and ostensibly broken off all relations with communists, was sometimes sought; in fact its general secretary, Sir Walter Citrine, was a member of the royal commission that inquired into the Jamaican riots. Moreover, within the Colonial Office, a social services department was established with G.M. Clauson as its secretary.50 Hence the influence grew of new ‘labour experts’ such as Clauson and J.G. Hibbert, responsible for the labour section in the general department of the Colonial Office; they were in fact constantly involved in the Cypriot ‘labour question’. The impact of this wider imperial context can be inferred from the numerous references in Colonial Office minutes dealing with Cyprus to labour policies prescribed for other colonies, especially the West Indies.51 Thus, officials in the metropolis tended to disagree with Palmer’s theory that Cyprus constituted a sui generis case where ‘models’ and ‘ideas’ brought ‘from outside’ were hardly applicable. The prevailing opinion at the Colonial Office that the labour question could not wait came as a result of pressure exerted on the government by the Labour Party, which had been greatly reinforced in the wake of the 1935 general election. As we have seen in Chapter Four, the Committee for Cyprus Autonomy counted a few Labour MPs among its allies.52 If the need to intervene in Cyprus was unanimously shared, no such consensus existed as to the shape this intervention might take. Broadly speaking, the routes contemplated by the Colonial Office were three: to abstain altogether from interfering, to encourage regional as opposed to central labour organization, or to educate Cypriot trade unionists in Britain to allow them to form their own trade union congress. However, this latter course did not encounter much support at the Colonial Office; in fact, most officials at Downing Street shared to an extent the governor’s concern with regard to the potential politicization of the labour question in Cyprus. Indeed, the only policy the Colonial Office could agree on

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was to ‘temporize’ until Palmer ended his term in Cyprus, since it was believed, and hoped, that ‘his successor may well take a different view’.53 When Palmer retired in May 1939, the Colonial Office found in his successors more tractable interlocutors and talks were opened to appoint a labour adviser. The latter would be detached from the labour ministry, although it was understood that he should not hold any executive functions. Furthermore, his role would be to encourage trade unions in Cyprus to limit their action within the framework of their specific trade and to discourage them from forming any PanCypriot trade union federation; in other words, the labour adviser’s duty would be to see that trade unions remained regionally circumscribed and professionally fragmented. Finally, he would not head an independent department and would only provide technical guidance to district commissioners, who would remain ultimately responsible for the administration of labour.54 The growing intensity of the confrontation between workers and the colonial government – 40 striking public workers were arrested in March 1940 – and, of course, the beginning of the war, which made the Cyprus government extremely sensitive to the question of public order, speeded up the procedure: in May 1940, William Johnson Hull, a third-class officer at the labour ministry, was officially appointed to the position. Hull was charged with a heavy task, namely with helping the governor to draft a legislative programme with the following proposals: the replacement of the existing trade union legislation with a law on the lines of the Leeward Islands Act 16 of 1939; a minimum wage law; a trades disputes (arbitration and inquiry) law on the lines of that enacted in Trinidad; a workman’s compensation law; and a factories law, the inspiration for which could be found in the Jamaica factories law.55 In other words, contrary to Palmer’s wishes, legislation would incorporate to a large degree ‘models and ideas’ imported ‘from outside’. What is remarkable about the debate on labour in Cyprus at the Colonial Office is the absolute centrality of politics. At no point was there any substantial attempt to assess the labour situation as such. Notoriously meticulous when dealing with issues such as agriculture

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or market trends and an avid consumer of statistics on both these subjects, the Colonial Office did not ask the Cyprus government for any systematic survey of other sectors involving the island’s working population. The labour adviser, who was originally supposed to educate Cypriot trade unions, was in fact hired as a technical expert responsible for advising the government on the labour question and on the authenticity, or lack thereof, of any given strike or trade union. The stance of the colonial authorities in this respect, whether local or metropolitan, is reminiscent of the one described by Dipesh Chakrabarty in his seminal essay on the Calcutta jute workers; in both cases, to the ‘official mind, labour conditions deserved investigation only when they posed law and order problems’.56 At first, Anexartitos interpreted the appointment of a labour adviser as a sign that the colonial authorities were ready to acknowledge the existence of a labour problem and act on it; the newspaper went as far as to depict the labour adviser as the advocate of the trade unions in their dealings with the colonial government, a spokesman of the workers assisting them in obtaining recognition and respect as both employees and full members of society. But when the labour adviser explicitly declined to take on any such role, Anexartitos denounced the authorities’ aloofness: Mr Hull [the labour adviser] sees the Cypriot working class and studies its claims not under the Cypriot sky, not inside Cypriot reality, but through the lens of the English mentality, projecting them on the screen of the developed English labour reality. Mr Hull could not escape from the influence of the local official bias which turns against every demonstration of the Cypriot working class.57 For Anexartitos, the disillusion brought about by the labour adviser meant that the last link between an estranged and suspicious government and an increasingly dissatisfied working class was broken. Changes were thus to be instigated by the workers themselves who, organized into trade unions, became bearers of a new social project. Systematically encouraging the various and eventually

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successful attempts at establishing the Pancyprian Federation of Labour (PEO) (November 1941), Anexartitos was also the only Cypriot daily to add the granting of political rights to the workers to the usual requests for the enactment of social legislation echoed in other newspapers, or, in Frederick Cooper’s words, to turn the latter into ‘claims for entitlements’; the ‘working class [should] be represented in the administration of the country, and the labour representatives [should] be elected by the people’.58 The extent of the successful social legitimation of a whole vocabulary related to labour is neatly suggested in the petition movement which we analyzed in Chapter Four. The most interesting feature of the petitions is the evolution of the signatures appended to them. As we have seen, signatures were important to the organizers of the movement themselves since they mentioned the signatory’s occupation, admittedly with the intention to show the colonial authorities the genuinely rural and popular origin of the petitions. Importantly, whereas the signatories of the first petitions gave the traditional name of their craft – shoe-maker, weaver, barber – subsequent petitioners used the generic term ‘workman’/ergatis to define themselves. A striking illustration of the efficacy of this new identity is the fact that later petitions included the signatures of Turkish Cypriots and women.59 But it is not immediately relevant whether this movement was spontaneous or, as the colonial authorities believed, not. What is significant is that people throughout the island were involved or involved themselves in a conscious process of constructing a ‘working-class’ allegiance. The divorce between the labour movement on the one hand and colonial authorities on the other reached its full magnitude in 1941. In January, Governor Battershill, departing from Palmer’s policy, informed the Colonial Office – to its surprise – of his intention to create a central labour department, which he would place in the hands of an experienced administrative officer. At the same time, matters were following their own, independent course in the labour and working-class movement. Three months later, on 14 April 1941, 35 delegates – among whom were most of the communists mentioned above but also non-party members such as the editor of

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Anexartitos, Lysandros Tsimillis, Georgios S. Vassiliades (who was, as we have seen in Chapter Four, the protagonist in the constitutionalist movement), the nationalist Lefkios Zenon, and Zenon Rossides and Pheidias Kyriakides – who were both considered nationalists by the colonial authorities but who had manifested their interest in the labour movement – gathered at Skarinou (Larnaca district) and issued the programme of the Progressive Party of the Working People (AKEL), which included a clause calling for the end of British rule on the island.60 * The colonial authorities’ refusal to acknowledge the ‘labour question’ as a problem that required their attention and legislative intervention allowed the press and the public sphere (in the form of workers’ clubs and trade unions) to seize the matter and create a public debate around it. Indeed, the ‘labour movement’ became a ‘labour question’, generating a debate in the Cypriot public sphere between different understandings of the place of the working class within society. This debate contributed significantly to bringing a whole new vocabulary, including notions such as ‘workers’, ‘working class’ or ‘labour’, into common usage. The purpose of this overarching vocabulary, encompassing wage earners of various background, was to defy the usual and official colonial categories (the peasant and the babu) and hence thwart the Cyprus government’s quest for social transparency which, in itself, was considered a prerequisite for the efficient surveillance, hence rule, of Cypriot society. To this extent, the activity of the driving force behind this debate, the communist-led trade unions, was a success. But it was also, partly, a failure. The connection labour activists sought to establish was that a Greek Cypriot female spinner in the Famagusta cotton factory and a Turkish Cypriot male miner in Mavrovouni, for example, would both claim the identity of ‘worker’. Nevertheless, the labour movement during the 1930s, and AKEL subsequently, remained a Greek Cypriot, if not ‘proletarian’, affair. Although Turkish Cypriots individually participated in the movement, the bulk of the community remained uninvolved.

CONCLUSION THE EXPANDING BOUNDARIES OF A FACELESS STATE

Cyprus in the 1930s offered the ideal testing site for a novel, authoritarian form of British colonial governance that was able to fast-track and combine far-reaching social reforms in fields as diverse as agricultural development, education and local government. Although repression of Enosis was its avowed mission and the Greek Cypriot uprising of October 1931 the pretext for its implementation, this new regime drew on political ideas developed in interwar Europe favouring social planning. Premised on authoritarianism, social engineering appeared perfectly suited for Britain’s Mediterranean possessions, owing to political unrest in Malta, Cyprus and Palestine in the 1930s, and the rising challenge of Fascist Italy. While there are indications that British colonial administrators looked to the Italianruled Dodecanese for inspiration, elucidating whether methods developed in Cyprus were deemed transposable to other colonial settings would be very enlightening regarding the transnational processes at work in the manufacture of colonial rule. But notwithstanding possible plans for its generalization on a Mediterranean scale, this unusual regime by British standards was in fact implemented solely in Cyprus, and then for a decade only. Indeed, during and because of the Second World War, the government relaxed its control of society: censorship of the press was partly lifted in May 1939; in February 1941 the colonial

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government announced that elections for municipal councils were to be reinstated and the formation of political parties to be tolerated. As the head of the Pacific and Mediterranean department of the Colonial Office observed in 1944: ‘The impetus given to democratic ideas by the war is likely not only to produce a clamorous demand in Cyprus for the participation of the people in their own government [. . .], but very strong support for [this claim] in this country [Great Britain] and elsewhere.’1 So what was the outcome of this ten-year experiment? The objective of the colonial authorities was to depoliticize Cyprus and make it a loyal, British colony. By the end of the 1930s, far from being politically fragmented, Cyprus had now two movements, nationalist and left wing, striving to forge pan-Cypriot solidarities. Economically insecure, the social groups – particularly the proletarianized agriculturalists – whose allegiance the colonial authorities tried to cultivate were increasingly turning towards the protection of trade unions committed to defending their interests. And finally, thwarting colonial attempts at internationally isolating Cyprus, nationalists and communists had managed to enlist the support not only of Cypriot diasporas but also of British political personalities. Trade unionists, however, had failed to enlist the durable mass support of Turkish Cypriots, who from the early 1940s onwards would create ethnicbased political institutions and trade unions, thereby constituting a third political force in Cyprus. By the mid-1940s, then, Palmer’s ideal polity seemed very elusive indeed and would remain so. Among the many factors accounting for this development, this book has chosen to focus on the consequences of colonial initiatives undertaken in the 1930s. This angle inevitably leaves little room for three, otherwise influential, parameters: Cypriot agency other than in the reactive mode; a more refined analysis of the profile of the various Cypriot social groups involved in the reinvention of politics; and the diffusion, assimilation and use of ideas developed within a broader international context of delegitimization of colonialism. However, the objective of this study was to dissect and analyze the working of the colonial administration in Cyprus in order to draw more general observations about ‘the colonial state’.

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With this caveat in mind, the contention in this book is that the polarization of the political landscape in Cyprus owed much to colonial influence, both circumstantial and structural. At the more circumstantial level, the repressive measures and the deep-seated colonial suspicion of claims to representativeness left no space for political enunciations and forced political dynamics into ‘niches’, namely, the Greek-Orthodox Church and the trade union movement and their international networks, which were both more difficult to control and less prone to negotiation with the colonial power. Additionally, the adoption of ill-conceived or antagonizing legislation – the church and education laws – and the significant delay in implementing more consensual measures, such as debt relief, greatly contributed to the consolidation of dissent: in the seven years that elapsed between the enactment of the 1933 education law and that of the agricultural debtors relief law in May 1940, these political niches had the time to regroup and organize resistance. The more structural influence of colonial rule on the society and politics of Cyprus derived from the transformations of British colonial governance. The bureaucratization of administrative tasks, an increased turnover of British personnel following the unification scheme within the Colonial Administrative Service, a cultivated aloofness among colonial officials, and a consuming preoccupation with the ‘loyalty’ of ‘native’ colonial civil servants, contributed to corrupting the information collected on Cypriot society and the reifying of all official communication. These developments transformed the colonial state into a ‘bureaucratic system of organization’, as defined by Michel Crozier, namely a system that not only ‘does not correct its behaviour in view of its errors; [but which] is also too rigid to adjust without crisis to the transformations that the accelerated evolution of [. . .] society makes more and more imperative’.2 This last observation makes clear that blaming the discrepancy between colonial goals and obtained results on mismanagement by British colonial officials would be teleological and analytically insufficient. This study has worked with a hypothesis which is more counterintuitive and, perhaps, also more heuristic: namely the idea

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that policies backfired in the very process of their implementation, in a development which could be called, paraphrasing Robert K. Merton, an unanticipated consequence of purposive political action.3 This book has argued that the quest for social transparency was a fundamental principle of colonial governance in any given context: its bureaucratic form and the training of officials conditioned the colonial state’s expansionary logic. Yet, this increasing intervention into the island’s social fabric put considerable strain on the working environment of colonial administrators while antagonizing local society at the same time. The fundamental paradox at play here is that the colonial state deracinated itself from Cypriot society at the very time that it became more socially active. This is a process that some historians, among them John Darwin, have already highlighted. Darwin thus describes how ‘the late colonial state’, in its ‘proactive or developmental’ mode, tends to invade new spheres of social and economic life and, in so doing, drives into opposition an increasing number of social groups, some of which had hitherto been loyal.4 But the contention in this book is that what this author designates as ‘the late colonial state’ with its ‘proactive’ tendencies was in germination from the outset, the very moment of its establishment. Whether the colonial state could develop this potential depended on the executive authority granted to colonial administrators. Owing to the October 1931 uprising, British officials in Cyprus were among the first in the British Empire to obtain the authority to unleash the colonial state’s expansionary logic. At the risk of extrapolating the evidence and conclusions presented in this study, some assumptions may be made with regard to their relevance to the ongoing conflict in Cyprus. The island, as is well known, is still divided from the northwest to the southeast, approximately at the level of the 35th parallel, along a line of demarcation which still separates the 838,897 Greek Cypriots, in the South, from the 265,100 Turkish Cypriots, in the North.5 Nowadays, from the point of view of international law, there is only one legitimate Republic of Cyprus: the one established on 15 August 1960 in the aftermath of the island’s independence from British rule and whose jurisdiction theoretically extends over the

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whole territory. Practically, however, the authority of this ‘unitary republic’ is confined to the southern 66 per cent of the territory; the remaining northern 33 per cent being under the jurisdiction of a joint Turkish Cypriot and Turkish authority, which proclaimed itself the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) on 15 November 1983. Thus, while the Republic of Cyprus is internationally ‘valid’ or ‘legal’, it is considered locally illegitimate by a significant part of the island’s population. Conversely, even though the TRNC is legally ‘invalid’ and internationally recognized solely by Turkey, it nonetheless constitutes the only available public administration, i.e. legitimate state, for the inhabitants of Northern Cyprus.6 Hence the ‘state’ in Cyprus takes, de facto if not de jure, the plural form, and these two ‘quasi-states’ have an internationally restricted independence, while their respective citizens are bearers of a ‘hyphenated identity’, either Greek Cypriot or Turkish Cypriot and never simply ‘Cypriot’.7 In other words, Cyprus as a republic epitomizes the impossibility of the emergence of a nation-state able to exert a legitimate sovereignty over all Cypriots, subsuming their ethnic divisions under a common Cypriot authority warranting a common Cypriot citizenship. One of the many dimensions of the ‘Cyprus Question’, then, involves the state’s legitimacy crisis. Political scientists customarily trace the precariousness of postcolonial state legitimacy and the intensity of ethnic strife to the colonial period. It is usually argued that the ‘collapse’ of ‘legitimate authority’ in much of the postcolonial world is largely imputable to the distorted social, cultural, political and economic situation constituting the legacy of what French anthropologist Georges Balandier called the ‘colonial situation’.8 In many European dependencies, it was not the state as such that gradually lost its legitimacy but the colonizers who controlled it. In fact, independence movements struggled to seize control of the institutions of the colonial state and use them to transform or breakup the colony into one or more nation-states. In Cyprus, the takeover of state institutions by Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot nationalists was sudden, it entailed a purging of pre-independence Cypriot colonial civil servants – with the notable exception of magistrates – and only

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served as a means to incompatible ends: not the creation of one or even two independent nation-states, but the political union of the whole or part of the island with another country (Greece and Turkey, respectively). In other words, the dissociation between state and legitimate political power was total; as the source of legitimate power lay outside Cyprus, the Cypriot state, whatever its form, was considered a temporary – and thus only temporarily legitimate – instrument of public authority. It may be argued that a ‘Cypriot’, ‘Greek Cypriot’ or ‘Turkish Cypriot’ state had never made any sense to nationalists on either side, especially Greek Cypriot enosists, since their political goal had always been unification with their ‘mother country’: by definition the existing – colonial – state had always constituted an obstacle to the realization of this goal. Without resorting to counterfactual history, which is often a byword for political wishful thinking of how many ‘lost’ and ‘missed opportunities’ there were in Cyprus, the crosspolitical and intercommunal alliances forged during the constitutionalist campaign in the 1930s culminating in a full constitution drafted by the Committee for Cyprus Autonomy come to mind. But the abolition by the British of all channels of communication between rulers and ruled encouraged rival parties, essentially the Greek-Orthodox Church and the trade unions, to vie for political power beyond the state. Colonial obduracy, then, condemned to failure the various political settlements proposed after the Second World War.9

NOTES

Chapter 1

Introduction: A Revolt and the Consolidation of Authoritarian Rule

1. The National Archives of the UK (TNA): Public Record Office (PRO) Colonial Office (CO) 67/243/1: Cyprus. Report on the disturbances of October 1931. Part 1, ‘Resume´ of a speech delivered by the Bishop of Kitium Nicodemos Mylonas on 20 October 1931 at the sports ground and at “Enosis” Club, Limassol (as reported by the Local Commandant of Police)’, enclosure 4 to governor’s official dispatch No. 80, 11 February 1932. 2. CO 67/240/13: Cyprus. Riots in Cyprus. Political events leading up to the disturbances, Governor, secret dispatch 22 October 1931, emphasis added. 3. Robert Holland offers a vivid description of the revolt in Nicosia, see his Britain and the Revolt in Cyprus, 1954– 1959 (Oxford, 1998), pp. 1 – 5. 4. CO 67/243/1: Cyprus. Report on the disturbances of October 1931. Part 1, Governor, official dispatch No. 80, 11 February 1932 to the secretary of state for the colonies. 5. Diplomatic and Historical Archives, Hellenic Ministry of Foreign Affairs, YPEJ 1935 A/8/8 Kύpro6. Genikά Zhtήmata, D. Antoniadis, secretary of the Greek consulate in Larnaca, official dispatch to the Directorate of Political Affairs, European division, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 19 January 1935. 6. CO 67/242/8: Cyprus. Letters patent making further provision for the administration of the Government of Cyprus, 1931– 1932. Secretary of state’s confidential dispatch, 2 November 1931; same file, secretary of state’s code telegram No.

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7.

8.

9. 10.

11.

12.

13. 14.

NOTES TO PAGES 4 –8 172, 12 November 1931; same file, The Cyprus Gazette (Extraordinary), No. 2176, 13 November 1931, enclosure to governor’s official dispatch No. 459, 13 November 1931; same file, The Cyprus Gazette (Extraordinary), No. 2177 of 16 November 1931, enclosure to governor’s confidential dispatch, 19 November 1931; same file, secretary of state’s confidential telegram No. 122, 18 November 1931; CO 67/243/1: op.cit. Governor’s official dispatch No. 80, 11 February 1932, §63; same file, The Cyprus Gazette, No. 2223, 10 June 1932, Supplement No. 1, ‘A Law to Amend the Newspaper, Book and Printing Presses Law, 1930’, pp. 2 – 3 (380 – 381); The Cyprus Gazette, No. 2248, 28 October 1932, Supplement No. 1, ‘A Law to Regulate the Holding of Assemblies, Meetings and Processions’, pp. 1 – 3 (743 – 745). Habermas, Ju¨rgen, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry Into a Category of Bourgeois Society (Cambridge 1999), p. xvii. See also Calhoun, Craig, ‘Introduction: Habermas and the public sphere’, in C. Calhoun (ed.), Habermas and the Public Sphere (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 1 – 50, here 6. Pollis did not herself use the expression ‘modern technologies of power’ but the case she makes regarding the social impact of instruments of rule is quite similar to later analyses by Foulcaudian social scientists who do use this terminology. See, for example, Cohn, Bernard S. and Nicholas B. Dirks, ‘Beyond the fringe: the nation state, colonialism and the technologies of power’, Journal of Historical Sociology i/2 (1988), pp. 224– 229. Barry, Frederick W., Report on the Census of Cyprus, 1881. With Appendix [Command Paper 4264] (London, 1884). Pollis, Adamantia, ‘Intergroup conflict and British colonial policy: The case of Cyprus’, Comparative Politics v/4 (1973), pp. 575– 599; idem, ‘Colonialism and neo-colonialism: determinants of ethnic conflict in Cyprus’, in P. Kitromilides and P. Worseley (eds), Small States in the Modern World: The Conditions of Survival (Nicosia, 1973), pp. 45 – 80. Kitromilides, Paschalis, ‘Greek irredentism in Asia Minor and Cyprus’, Middle Eastern Studies xxvi/1 (1990), pp. 3 – 17, here 5. See also, idem, ‘The dialectic of intolerance: Ideological dimensions of ethnic conflict’, Journal of the Hellenic Diaspora vi/4 (1979), pp. 5 – 30. And, idem, ‘Imagined communities and the origins of the national question in the Balkans’, European History Quarterly xix/2 (1989), pp. 149– 192. Katsiaounis, Rolandos, Labour, Society and Politics in Cyprus during the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century (Nicosia, 1996). The mobilization of clientelistic relationships is also the subject of Hubert Faustmann’s ‘Clientelism in the Greek Cypriot community of Cyprus under British rule’, Cyprus Review x/2 (1998), pp. 41 – 77. Bryant, Rebecca, Imagining the Modern: The Cultures of Nationalism in Cyprus (London, 2004). These developments have been thoroughly analyzed by George Georghallides in his A Political and Administrative History of Cyprus, 1918– 1926: With a Survey on the Foundations of British Rule (Nicosia, 1979). For the evolution of Turkish

NOTES TO PAGES 8 –13

15.

16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

21.

22. 23. 24.

25.

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Cypriot nationalism in the interwar period, see Nevzat, Altay, Nationalism Amongst the Turks of Cyprus: The First Wave (Oulu, 2005), pp. 338–356. Georghallides, George S., Cyprus and the Governorship of Sir Ronald Storrs: The Causes of the 1931 Crisis (Nicosia, 1985), pp. 695–699 (this a verbatim quotation of Storrs’ 22 October 1931 dispatch); Kelling, George Horton, Countdown to Rebellion: British Policy in Cyprus, 1939– 1955 (London, 1990), p. 13; Holland: Britain and the Revolt in Cyprus, p. 9; Yiangou, Anastasia, Cyprus in World War II: Politics and Conflict in the Eastern Mediterranean (London, 2010), p. 12. Ve´ronique Dimier offers a compelling critique of so-called ‘liberal’ British imperialism by showing how this label corresponds much more to a selfrepresentation on the part of the British colonial authorities within the broader economy of inter-imperial rivalry, particularly with France. See her Le gouvernement des colonies: regards croise´s franco-britanniques (Brussels, 2004). All quotations in CO 67/243/1: op.cit. Governor, official dispatch No. 80, 11 February 1932, to the secretary of state for the colonies. My emphasis. Guha, Ranajit, ‘The prose of counterinsurgency’, in R. Guha and G.C. Spivak (eds), Selected Subaltern Studies (New Delhi, 1988), pp. 45 – 86, here p. 47. Holland: Britain and the Revolt in Cyprus, pp. 4 – 5. Bodleian Rhodes House Library, Oxford University, Brit. Emp. s. 562, Additional Chancellor Papers, Sir John Eugene Clauson, letter to Sir John Chancellor, 18 October 1917. For an example in postcolonial Tunisia, see Camau, Michel and Vincent Geisser, Le syndrome autoritaire: Politique en Tunisie de Bourguiba a` Ben Ali (Paris, 2003), p. 48; for an example in French Senegal, Sudan, Dahomey, Guinea and the Ivory Coast, see Cooper, Frederick, ‘Our strike: equality, anticolonial politics and the French West African railway strike of 1947– 1948’, Journal of African History xxxvii/1 (1996), pp. 81 – 118, here 83. Naturally Britain’s imperial tradition was at least three centuries’ old in 1930 but colonial rule in its bureaucratic form, according to John W. Cell, emerged in the first quarter of the nineteenth century. See Cell, John W., British Colonial Administration in the Nineteenth Century: The Policymaking Process (London, 1970). Barthes, Roland, The Semiotic Challenge (Berkeley, 1994), p. 5. For discussions on the ethnographic colonial state, see Dirks, Nicholas B., Casts of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India (Princeton, 2001), p. 17. Stoler, Ann Laura, ‘Colonial archives and the arts of governance’, Archival Science ii/1– 2 (2002), pp. 87 –109, here 91. Lang, R. Hamilton, ‘Cyprus’, Macmillan’s Magazine xxxviii (1878), pp. 325– 347. Luke, Harry, Cyprus under the Turks, 1571– 1878: A Record Based on the Archives of the English Consulate in Cyprus under the Levant Company and After (London, 1989 [1921]), p. 2. An example of this can be seen in Georghallides, George S., ‘British rule in Cyprus, 1878–1960: A short reappraisal’, Pacific Quarterly iv/2 (1979), pp. 144– 157. The Ottoman period in Cyprus has long remained rather unexplored. This has changed in the last ten years. See Aymes, Marc, ‘Un grand

190

26. 27.

28. 29. 30. 31.

32.

NOTES TO PAGES 13 –16 progre`s – sur le papier’. Histoire provinciale des re´formes ottomanes a` Chypre au XIXe sie`cle (Leuwen, 2010); Hadjianastassis, Marios, ‘Crossing the line in the sand: regional officials, monopolisation of state power and “rebellion”: The case of Mehmed Ag˘a Boyacıog˘lu in Cyprus, 1685– 1690’, Turkish Historical Review ii/2 (2011), pp. 155– 176; Hadjikyriacou, Antonis, ‘Society and Economy on an Ottoman Island: Cyprus in the Eighteenth Century’, unpublished PhD thesis (School of Oriental and African Studies, London, 2011); Michael, Michalis N., Matthias Kepler and Eftihios Gavriel (eds), Ottoman Cyprus: A Collection of Studies on History and Culture (Wiesbaden, 2009). For instance, the Ottoman land code was only replaced in 1945. See Pavlides, Stelios, ‘A new land law for Cyprus’, Journal of Comparative Legislation and International Law xxx/3– 4 (1948), pp. 40 – 46. For detailed accounts of the Cyprus tribute, see Georghallides: A Political and Administrative History of Cyprus, pp. 375– 424; Varnava, Andrekos, British Imperialism in Cyprus, 1878– 1915: The Inconsequential Possession (Manchester, 2009), pp. 127–131. Georghallides: Cyprus and the Governorship of Sir Ronald Storrs, pp. 53 – 56. Storrs, Ronald, Orientations (London, 1937), p. 553. See among others, Georghallides: Cyprus and the Governorship of Sir Ronald Storrs, and Katsiaounis, Rolandos, H Diaskeptikή, 1946– 1948: Me anaskόphsh th6 periόdoy 1878 –1945 (Nicosia, 2000), pp. 17 – 38. On the conceptual conundrums involving the moral justification of British colonial rule in Cyprus, see the collective volume edited by Yiannis Papadakis, Nicos Peristianis and Gisela Welz (eds), Divided Cyprus: Modernity, History and an Island in Conflict (Bloomington, 2006) and particularly the essay by the editors, ‘Introduction: modernity, history and conflict in divided Cyprus: An overview’, pp. 4 – 5 and that of Rebecca Bryant, ‘On the condition of postcoloniality in Cyprus’, pp. 47 – 65. For similar questions in other contexts involving British colonial rule in Greek-Orthodox settings, see Gallant, Thomas W., Experiencing Dominion: Culture, Identity and Power in the British Mediterranean (Notre Dame, 2002), pp. 15 – 55 and Rappas, Alexis, ‘Greeks under European colonial rule’, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies xxxiv/2 (2010), pp. 201– 218, here p. 204. During his official visit to Cyprus in 1907, Winston Churchill, then serving as undersecretary of state for the colonies, famously stated that he found it natural that Cypriots, ‘who are of Greek descent, should regard their incorporation with what may be called their mother-country as an ideal to be earnestly, devoutly and fervently cherished’. Varnava: British Imperialism in Cyprus, p. 184. For imperially-minded ‘scientific’ investigations seeking to debunk the cultural filiation between ancient Greece and Cyprus, see Given, Michael, ‘Inventing the Eteocypriots: Imperialist archaeology and the manipulation of ethnic identity’, Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology xi/1 (1998), pp. 3 – 29, and, same author, ‘Star of the Parthenon, Cyprus me´lange: Education and representation in colonial Cyprus’, Journal of Mediterranean Studies vii/1 (1997), pp. 59 – 82.

NOTES TO PAGES 16 –20

191

33. Brit. Emp. s. 347, Reminiscences of Sir Charles Belcher, Former Colonial Judge, unpublished and undated typewritten manuscript. For his remarks about Greek-Cypriots, see p. 279; on Turkish-Cypriots p. 261. 34. Heussler, Robert, Yesterday’s Rulers: the Making of the British Colonial Service (Syracuse, 1963), p. 82; Kirk-Greene, Anthony, Britain’s Imperial Administrators, 1858– 1966 (London, 2000), p. 276; Tidrick, Kathryn, Empire and the English Character (London, 1990), p. 4; Nicolson, I.F. and C.A. Hughes, ‘A provenance of proconsuls: British colonial governors, 1900– 1960’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth Studies iv/1 (1975), pp. 77 –107. 35. According to the classic definition of a bureaucracy by Max Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretative Sociology Vol. 2 (Berkeley, 1978 [1922]), pp. 956– 1005. 36. Arendt, Hannah, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York, 2004), pp. 275– 280; Herzfeld, Michael, The Social Production of Indifference: Exploring the Symbolic Roots of Western Bureaucracy (Chicago, 1993), p. 19. Karl Mannheim underlined the tendency of any bureaucracy to transform a political problem into a question of administration, see Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge (London, 1966 [1929, in German]), p. 104. 37. Bouleti, Eleni, ‘The Muslim community on Cyprus and British colonial policy, 1878– 1915: The significance of the Cyprus Evkaf in the colonisation process’, Cyprus Review xxiii/2 (2011), pp. 39 – 56; Nevzat: Nationalism Amongst the Turks of Cyprus, p. 213. 38. CO 67/243/1: op.cit. Governor, official dispatch No. 80, 11 February 1932, to the secretary of state for the colonies. My emphasis. 39. Storrs: Orientations, p. 605. 40. Hyam, Ronald, ‘Bureaucracy and trusteeship in the colonial empire’, in J. M. Brown and W. Roger Louis (eds), The Oxford History of the British Empire: Vol. IV; The Twentieth Century (Oxford, 1999), pp. 255– 279. 41. Brit. Emp. s. 347, op.cit., pp. 277– 278. 42. The Colonial Office List, 1948: Comprising Historical and Statistical Information Respecting the Colonial Empire, Lists of Officers serving in the Colonies, etc. and other Information (London, 1948), pp. 394 (Acheson) and 430 (Dawe). See also Kelling: Countdown to Rebellion, p. 10. 43. Markides, Diana and George Georghallides, ‘British attitudes to constitutionmaking in post-1931 Cyprus’, Journal of Modern Greek Studies xiii/1 (1995), pp. 63 – 81, here 67 – 68. CO 67/242/7: Proposal for a Royal Commission on Cyprus. Assistant Undersecretary of State Parkinson’s minute, 3 November 1931, §4. 44. CO 67/242/7: op.cit. ‘Note on the question of the appointment of Royal Commission on Cyprus’, memorandum of the Mediterranean department, Colonial Office. 45. CO 67/279/6: Cyprus. Visit of a Cypriot Delegation to London, 1937. A.R. Thomas, Colonial Office, 27 July 1937, note on a meeting of the same day between A.J. Dawe, head of the Pacific and Mediterranean department, G.S. Vassiliades,

192

46.

47.

48. 49.

50. 51. 52. 53.

54.

NOTES TO PAGES 20 –22 member of Cyprus’ Advisory Council, and self. See also CO 67/274/6: Cyprus. Municipal Corporations (Amendment) Law 1937. J.B. Williams, Colonial Office, minute, 17 January 1937. For the question of Gibraltar, see Norrie, Caroline, ‘The last rock in the Empire: Evacuation, identity and myth in Gibraltar’, Oral History xxxiv/1 (2003), pp. 73 – 84; For the tensions created by fascist Italians in Malta, see Baldoli, Claudia, ‘The “northern dominator” and the mare nostrum: Fascist Italy’s “cultural war” in Malta’, Modern Italy xiii/1 (2008), pp. 5– 20; For the revolt in Palestine, see Kra¨mer, Gudrun, A History of Palestine: From the Ottoman Conquest to the Founding of the State of Israel (Princeton, 2008 [2002, in German]), pp. 264– 295. Pratt, Lawrence R., East of Malta, West of Suez: Britain’s Mediterranean Crisis, 1936– 1939 (Cambridge, 1975), p. 99. See also Holland, Robert and Diana Markides, The British and the Hellenes: Struggles for Mastery in the Eastern Mediterranean, 1850– 1960 (Oxford, 2006), pp. 190– 191. CO 850/85/5: Appointments and Transfers in Palestine, Malta and Cyprus, 1937. Arthur Dawe, Colonial Office, Memorandum, 21 October 1936. There is a fundamental ambiguity regarding the colonial state. From an international legal perspective, a colonial state is not really a state since it enjoys no other sovereignty than that of its metropolitan end. And yet practically it is a state since it never simply implements metropolitan directives but conducts its own policy, often quite autonomously. Because of this ambiguity, earlier treatises would refer to a colonial ‘government’ instead of a colonial state. See Reinsch, Paul S., Colonial Government (Norwood, 1902); and Wight, Martin, British Colonial Institutions, 1947 (Oxford, 1952). Cohn, Bernard S., Colonialism and its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India (Princeton, 1996); in the same vein, Dirks: Casts of Mind. For a critique of culturalist approaches to the colonial state, see Cooper, Frederick, Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, History (Berkeley, 2005), p. 143. Bayly, Christopher, The Birth of the Modern World, 1780– 1914: Global Connections and Comparisons (Oxford, 2004), p. 253. See Sumit Sarkar’s powerful critique of this trend which he detected among the later generation of the Subaltern Studies Collective: ‘The decline of the subaltern in Subaltern Studies’, in S. Sarkar (ed.), Writing Social History (Delhi, 1997), pp. 82 – 108. An example of a study highlighting the developmental virtues of a strong colonial state can be found in Lange, Matthew, ‘Embedding the colonial state: A comparative-historical analysis of state-building and broad-based development in Mauritius’, Social Science History xxvii/3 (2003), pp. 397– 423. David A. Washbrook’s attempt at restoring the agency of Indian colonial subjects seems to lead him to understate the power of the colonial state. See his ‘From comparative sociology to global history: Britain and India in the prehistory of modernity’, Journal of the Economic and Sociological History of the Orient

NOTES TO PAGES 22 –29

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xl (1997), pp. 410– 443. On the contrary, David Cannadine’s analysis of the ‘domestic-imperial’ analogies seems to rely on an intentional ‘weakening’ of the colonial state. See his Ornamentalism: How the British Saw their Empire (Oxford, 2001), pp. 3– 6. 55. For a comparable discussion see Kearney, Michael, ‘Borders and boundaries of state and self at the end of empire’, Journal of Historical Sociology iv/1 (1991), pp. 52 – 74.

Chapter 2 The Three Pillars of Arcadian Cyprus: Experiments in Social Engineering 1. Jenkyns, Richard, ‘Virgil and Arcadia’, Journal of Roman Studies lxxix (1989), pp. 26 – 39, here 35. 2. Dipple, Elizabeth, ‘Harmony and pastoral in the Old Arcadia’, ELH xxxv/3 (1968), pp. 309– 328, here 312. 3. The ‘official mind’ here alludes of course to the famous book by Ronald Robinson, John Gallagher and Alice Denny, Africa and the Victorians: The Official Mind of Imperialism (London, 1961). However, unlike these authors, the expression here does not only refer to the Schumpeterian notion that imperialism can be explained through the surviving aristocratic reflexes among the British ruling class unaffected by democratic evolutions. It also refers, perhaps more prosaically, to the mode of thinking administrators developed through bureaucratic institutions. On this understanding of the concept, see Hyam, Ronald, ‘The Colonial Office mind, 1900– 1914’, in Norman Hillmer and Philip G. Wigley (eds), The First British Commonwealth: Essays in Honour of Nicholas Mansergh (London, 1980), pp. 30– 55. 4. Low, D.A, Lion Rampant: Essays in the Study of British Imperialism (London, 1973), pp. 39– 81, here 41– 53. 5. Scott, David, ‘Colonial governmentality’, Social Text xliii (1995), pp. 191– 220, here 206. 6. Surridge, Brewster Joseph, A Survey of Rural Life in Cyprus (Nicosia, 1930). 7. Sant Cassia, Paul, ‘Property in Greek Cypriot marriage strategies, 1920– 1980’, Man xvii/4 (1982), pp. 643– 663, here 645. 8. ‘Awίketo o Oik. epίtropo6 metά th6 kyrίa6 toy’, Eleftheria, 18 April 1934; and ‘Epί thn anaxώrhsei toy’, ibid., 15 August 1934; Oakden, Sir Ralph, Report on the Finances and Economic Resources of Cyprus (London, 1935), p. 5. 9. CO 456/57: The Cyprus Blue Books of Statistics for the Year 1934, p. 67. 10. Thirgwood, J.V., Cyprus: A Chronicle of Its Forests, Land and People (Vancouver, 1987), pp. 143– 157; Given, Michael, ‘Maps, fields, and boundary cairns: demarcation and resistance in colonial Cyprus’, International Journal of Historical Archaeology xvi/1 (2002), pp. 1 – 22, here 2, 13 and 17.

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NOTES TO PAGES 29 –33

11. Oakden: Report, p. 59. 12. CO 67/254/4: Cyprus: Political Situation, 1934. ‘Memorandum by Sir R.E. Stubbs’, 16 October 1933. 13. CO 67/251/7: Cyprus. Setting Up of an Advisory Council, 1933. Governor Stubbs, semi-private letter to the secretary of state for the colonies, 18 August 1933. 14. Oakden: Report, p. 112, and Surridge: Survey, p. 46. 15. Scott, James C., Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven, 1998), pp. 5 and 89. 16. The Cyprus Civil List, 1934, p. 6; The Colonial Office List, 1935, p. 747. 17. For Sir Henry Blackall, who served under Palmer first as legal adviser in the northern provinces of Nigeria and then as Attorney General of Cyprus (1934 – 1936), the governor ‘was a most autocratic individual [...] disposed to treat the Cypriots as if they were primitive Nigerian natives’. See Brit. Emp. s. 447, Sir Henry Blackall Papers, handwritten commentary on a letter addressed by himself to H.T. Allen, Colonial Office, 4 July 1935. For a convoluted, but eloquent enough comment on Palmer’s authoritarianism, see the following memoirs of a former administrative officer of Cyprus: Stanley, Robert, King George’s Keys: A Record of Experiences in the Overseas Service of the Crown (London, 1975), pp. 107– 108. Examples of the use of the term ‘Palmerocracy’ in the existing literature abound. See, for example, Katsiaounis, Rolandos, H diaskeptikή, 1946– 1948: Me anaskόphsh th6 periόdoy 1878– 1945 (Nicosia, 2000), p. 40. 18. Richter, Heinz, ‘Benevolent autocracy, 1931– 1945’, in H. Faustmann and N. Peristianis (eds), Britain in Cyprus: Colonialism and Post-Colonialism, 1878– 1960 (Mannheim, 2006), pp. 139–145, here 140– 141. 19. Adorno, Theodor W., Etudes sur la personnalite´ autoritaire (Paris, 2007), p. 73. 20. CO 67/283/16: Cyprus. Appointments to the Executive Council, 1938. H.H. Duncan, minute, 22 June 1938. 21. CO 67/290/17: Cyprus. Ioannis Kyriakides v. Sir Herbert Richmond Palmer (libel action), 1938– 1939. J.B. Williams, Colonial Office, minute, 27 June 1938. 22. Marwick, Arthur, The Explosion of British Society, 1914– 1962 (London, 1963), pp. 75 – 76; idem, ‘Middle opinion in the thirties: Planning, progress and political agreement’, English Historical Review lxxix/311 (1964), pp. 285– 298, here 287, 293–295. Vickerstaff, Sarah and John Sheldrake, The Limits of Corporatism: The British Experience in the Twentieth Century (Brookfield, 1989), pp. 31 – 35; Thorpe, Andrew, Britain in the 1930s: A Deceptive Decade (Oxford, 1992), pp. 20 – 38, 82; Pratt, Lawrence R., East of Malta, West of Suez: Britain’s Mediterranean Crisis (Cambridge, 1975), p. 94; Hamilton, Alastair, The Appeal of Fascism. A Study of Intellectuals and Fascism, 1919– 1945 (London, 1971), pp. 257– 290; Traverso, Enzo, A feu et a` sang: De la guerre civile europe´enne 1914– 1945 (Paris, 2007), p. 322; Mazower, Mark, Dark Continent: Europe’s Twentieth Century (London 1999 [1998]), pp. 1 – 38. 23. Gottlieb, Julie, ‘The marketing of megalomania: Celebrity, consumption and the development of political technology in the British Union of Fascists’, Journal of Contemporary History xli/1 (2006), pp. 35 – 55, here p. 35.

NOTES TO PAGES 33 – 35

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24. Popper, Karl, The Open Society and its Enemies: vol. 1; The Spell of Plato (London, 1974), n. 22, p. 210. 25. Aldrich, Robert, ‘Imperial mise en valeur and mise en sce`ne: Recent works on French colonialism’, Historical Journal xlv/4 (2002), pp. 917– 936; Meredith, David, ‘The British government and colonial economic policy, 1919– 1939’, Economic History Review xxviii/3 (1975), pp. 484 –499; Malmsten, Neal R., ‘British government policy toward colonial development, 1919– 39’, Journal of Modern History xlix/2 (1977), pp. D1249 – 1287; Lee, J. M. and Petter, Martin, The Colonial Office, War, and Development Policy. Organisation and the Planning of a Metropolitan Initiative, 1939– 1945 (London, 1982), p. 33; Crouzet, Francois, Le conflit de Chypre, 1946– 1949 (Brussels, 1973), p. 66. 26. Storrs, Ronald, Orientations (London, 1937), p. 564; Palmer, Richmond, ‘Cyprus by Sir Richmond Palmer, KCMG, CBE’, Journal of the Royal Central Asian Society xxvi/4 (1939), pp. 599– 618, here 613. For Storrs’ visit to Rhodes and his discussions with Senatore Mario Lago, see ‘L’arrivo di S. E. Storrs, Governatore di Cipro, al Palazzo del Governo’, Il Messaggero di Rodi, 3 September 1927; ‘Le giornate rodie di S. E. il Governatore di Cipro’, Il Messaggero di Rodi, 4 September 1927. Interestingly, the same year when Storrs visited Rhodes, in 1927, the district commissioner of Larnaca threatened the schoolteachers and mukhtars of the villages of Aradippou and Livadia to use ‘Italian ways’ if they continued displaying the national symbols of Greece, see Diplomatic and Historical Archives, Hellenic Ministry of Foreign Affairs, YPEJ 1927/21/3: Kύpro6, Consul of Greece, dispatch No. 230, 22 March 1927, to the Hellenic Ministry of Foreign Affairs, directorate of political affairs, European department. 27. Palmer, Sir Herbert Richmond, ‘Cyprus by Sir Richmond Palmer, KCMG, CBE’, Journal of the Royal Central Asian Society xxvi/4 (1939), pp. 599– 618, here p. 608. This passage is quoted in Papadakis, Yiannis, Nicos Peristianis and Gisela Welz, ‘Introduction: modernity, history, and conflict in divided Cyprus: An overview’, in Y. Papadakis, N. Peristianis and G. Welz (eds), Divided Cyprus: Modernity, History and an Island in Conflict (Bloomington, 2006), pp. 1 – 29, here p. 4. And also in Papadakis, Yiannis, Echoes From the Dead Zone: Across the Cyprus Divide (London, 2005), p. 183. 28. Clarence-Smith, William Gervase, ‘The organization of “consent” in British West Africa, 1820s to 1960s’, in D. Engels and S. Marks (eds), Contesting Colonial Hegemony: State and Society in Africa and India (London, 1994), pp. 55 – 78, here 55. 29. CO 67/279/12: Cyprus: Public Bodies and Public Offices (Appointments) Law, 1937. Governor Palmer, confidential dispatch to the secretary of state for the colonies, 12 March 1937. 30. CO 67/264/10: Cyprus. Constitutional Situation, 1936– 1937. Arthur Dawe, minute, 29 July 1936; CO 67/256/7: Cyprus. Municipal Corporations (Amendment) Law 1934. Extract from governor’s letter to H.T. Allen, 10

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31.

32. 33. 34.

35. 36.

37.

38.

NOTES TO PAGES 35 –37 January 1934; CO 67/284/1: Cyprus. Municipal Corporations (Appointment of Councils) Law, 1938. Governor’s secret dispatch, 6 May 1938. CO 67/255/7: Cyprus. Working of the Advisory Council, 1934. Paul G. Pavlides, letter to the governor of Cyprus, 2 November 1934, enclosure into governor’s official dispatch No. 483, 16 November 1934, and CO 67/264/10: op.cit. Sir Cosmo Parkinson, assistant undersecretary of state for the colonies, minute, 26 October 1936. CO 67/251/7: op.cit. Secretary of state, semi-private letter to Governor Stubbs, 24 August 1933. Governor, official dispatch No. 376, 18 October 1933. Oakden: Report, p. 62. CO 67/259/1: Cyprus. Re-organization of District Administration, 1935. Governor, confidential dispatch, 18 December 1934; CO 67/284/4: Cyprus. Recruitment of Administrative Staff, 1938– 1939. Governor, confidential (2) dispatch, 9 September 1938; Oakden: Report, p. 62. See also ‘Ti grάwei o oikonomikό6 epίtropo6 perί th6 uέsev6 tvn dioikhtώn kai tvn ejoysiώn th6’, Phoni tis Kyprou, 6 April 1935. CO 67/261/1: Administrative Service: Staffing and Proposed Re-grouping of Districts, Governor Palmer, official dispatch to the secretary of state for the colonies, 25 February, 1935. Oakden: Report, p. 42; CO 67/253/8: Cyprus. Administrative Staff: Vacancies, etc., 1934, governor’s secret dispatches, 24 January and 5 September 1934; CO 67/284/1: op.cit. Administrative Memorandum No. 6, enclosure to governor’s secret dispatch, 6 May 1938; CO 850/86/9: Ceremonial, Table of Precedence, Cyprus, 1936. Secretary of state, confidential dispatch to the governor, 3 June 1936; CO 67/303/5: Cyprus. Appointment of a Labour Adviser, 1939– 1940, Governor Palmer, semi-private letter to A.B. Acheson, Colonial Office, 1 March 1939; For Palmer’s characterization of Cyprus as ‘Oriental’, see CO 67/253/8: op.cit. Governor, secret dispatch, 23 January 1934. CO 67/254/4: op.cit. Stubbs, ‘Memorandum’, §11. For the clash between the executive and judiciary branches of colonial government throughout the empire, see Reinsch, Paul S., Colonial Government (Norwood, 1902), p. 363; Rathbone, Richard, ‘Law, lawyers and politics in Ghana in the 1940s’, in D. Engels and S. Marks (eds), Contesting Colonial Hegemony. State and Society in Africa and India (London, 1994), pp. 233– 234; Simensen, Jarle, ‘Jurisdiction as politics: The Gold Coast during the colonial period’, in W.J. Mommsen and J.A. De Moor (eds), European Expansion and Law: The Encounter of European and Indigenous Law in 19th- and 20th-century Africa and Asia (Oxford, 1992), pp. 257– 277, here 269. CO 67/290/17: Cyprus. Ioannis Kyriakides v. Sir Herbert Richmond Palmer (libel action), 1938– 1939, Letter from G.S. Vasisliades, 19 May 1938, to Phanos Ioannides, ex-deputy mayor of Nicosia, compelled to resign for malpractice and resident in London, enclosure to governor’s semi-private letter to A.B. Acheson, Colonial Office, 20 May 1938.

NOTES TO PAGES 38 –39

197

39. For the offensive preface, see Palmer, H.R. ‘Preface’, in M.C. Kareklas, The Criminal Activities of the Hassanpoulia (Nicosia, 1937), p. 3. For the libel action, the claimants’ statements and the colonial authorities’ reactions, see ‘Aperrίwuh h aίthsi6 agvgή6 toy k. I. Kyriakίdoy katά toy kybernήtoy, Anexartitos, 15 April 1939; CO 67/290/17: op.cit. Letter from G.S. Vassiliades, 19 May 1938, to Phanos Ioannides, ex-deputy mayor of Nicosia, enclosure to governor’s semi-private letter to A.B. Acheson, Colonial Office, 20 May 1938; same file, governor, semi-private letter to A.B. Acheson, Colonial Office, 20 May 1938; same file, H.H. Duncan, legal adviser at the Colonial Office, minute 8 June 1938. 40. Oakden: Report, pp. 68 – 69. 41. ‘Pv6 ryumίzetai to dikastikόn sύsthma. Katargoύntai ta tmhmatikά dikastήria’, Eleftheria, 5 October 1935; CO 67/269/14: Cyprus. Courts of Justice Law, 1935. Memorial from the Limassol Bar. Governor, confidential (3) dispatch, 27 February 1936, transmitting memorial from the Limassol Bar, 18 October 1935, signed by C.T. Peristiany, chairman of the Limassol Bar; Dr Achilleas Aimilianides, ‘Eyrύnontai ta dikaiώmata tvn dioikhtώn pro6 symbibasmόn diawόrvn adikhmάtvn’, Eleftheria, 15 August 1936; ‘H epέmbasi6 th6 dioikήsev6 ei6 ta6 ejoysίa6 tvn dikasthrίvn’, Phoni tis Kyprou, 4 March 1939. 42. Oakden: Report, pp. 74– 75; WO 32/2405: Overseas: Cyprus (Code 0(D)). Reorganization of Local Forces. Governor Palmer, secret dispatch, 24 July 1934, enclosure to J.B. Maffey, undersecretary of state, Colonial Office, letter to the secretary, overseas defence committee, War Office, 11 September 1934; same file, Governor Palmer, secret dispatch, 24 July 1934, enclosure to J.B. Maffey, undersecretary of state, Colonial Office, letter to the secretary, overseas defence committee, War Office, 11 September 1934. 43. CO 67/264/10: op.cit. Governor Palmer, secret dispatch, 15 May 1936; CO 67/245/1: Cyprus. Reorganisation of Police, 1932, ‘Particulars of the office of local commandant of police’, enclosure 6 to governor’s confidential dispatch, 16 March 1932; same file, A.E. Gallagher, chief commandant of police, confidential report to the colonial secretary, 22 June 1932, enclosure to Acting Governor Herbert Henniker-Heaton’s confidential dispatch (2), 22 June 1932. The importance of political surveillance in a police officer’s duties is also underlined in WO 32/2405: op.cit. Governor Palmer, secret dispatch, 24 July 1934, enclosure to J.B. Maffey, undersecretary of state, Colonial Office, letter to the secretary, overseas defence committee, War Office, 11 September 1934. 44. CO 67/245/4: Cyprus. Rural Constables Law, 1932. Acting Governor, Herbert Henniker-Heaton, confidential dispatch, 2 November 1932; same file, Law No. 62 of 1932, ‘A law to make better provision for the appointment of rural constables and to regulate their duties and powers’, enclosure to Governor Stubbs’ dispatch No. 555, 28 December 1932; same file, Acting Governor, Herbert Henniker-Heaton, confidential dispatch, 2 November 1932; Oakden: Report, p. 29.

198

NOTES TO PAGES 40 – 43

45. Ministry of Justice and Public Order, Cyprus State Archives (archives of the colonial secretariat), SA1 484/1934: Mudirs. Improvement of The Position of, memorandum by Charles-Henry Hart-Davis, district commissioner of Nicosia, 1934; CO 67/253/8: op.cit. Governor’s secret dispatch, 23 January 1934; ‘Ai uέsei6 tvn moydίrvn. Epikeίtai h katάrghsi6 tvn’, Phoni tis Kyprou, 8 June 1935; SA1 960/1934: District and Village Administration. Proposed Changes in – . Governor’s Memorandum. Governor’s confidential dispatch, 18 December 1934, §7. Same dispatch in CO 67/259/1, op.cit. 46. CO 67/264/10: op.cit. Governor Palmer, secret dispatch, 15 May 1936. 47. CO 67/284/1: op.cit. Extract from Official Report of 24 March 1937, second enclosure to Governor Palmer’s secret dispatch, 6 May 1938. 48. CO 67/284/1: op.cit. Governor Palmer, semi-private letter to A.B. Acheson, Colonial Office, 8 August 1938; CO 67/279/12: Cyprus. Public Bodies and Public Offices, 1937. Governor Palmer, semi-private letter to the assistant undersecretary of state for the colonies, 23 June 1937; the quotation is in CO 67/274/6: Municipal Corporations (Amendment) Law. J.B. Williams, Colonial Office, minute, 17 January 1938. 49. CO 67/264/10: op.cit. Governor Palmer, secret dispatch 15 May 1936; same file, Arthur Dawe, Colonial Office, minute, 29 July 1936; CO 67/284/1: op.cit. Governor Palmer, semi-private letter to A.B. Acheson, Colonial Office, 8 August 1938; CO 67/264/10: op.cit. Governor Palmer, secret dispatch, 15 May 1936. 50. CO 67/284/1: op.cit. ‘A Bill entitled a Law to Provide for a further Suspension of the Holding of Municipal Elections and for the Appointment of Councils’, enclosure to Governor Palmer’s secret dispatch (2), 25 February 1938. 51. CO 67/284/1: op.cit. Secretary of State W. Ormsby-Gore, minute, 25 January 1938. 52. ‘Katargoύntai ai dhmotikaί eklogaί mέxri toy 1940. O kybernήth6 ua diorίzh dhmάrxoy6 kai dhm. symboύloy6’, Eleftheria, 24 March 1934. 53. CO 67/256/7: op.cit. Governor, dispatch No. 489, 21 November 1934, transmitting law 44 of 1934; CO 67/284/1: op.cit. ‘Law No. 1 of 1938. A Law to Amend The Municipal Corporations Laws, 1930 to 1937’, enclosure to governor’s secret dispatch, 23 February 1938; same file, paragraph 13, section 181A(2) of Law No. 1 of 1938, enclosure to Governor Palmer’s official dispatch No. 64 of 23 February 1938. 54. CO 67/264/10: op.cit. Governor’s secret dispatch, 15 May 1936. 55. CO 67/284/1: op.cit. Palmer, semi-private letter to A.B. Acheson, 8 August 1938. 56. Weir, W.W., Education in Cyprus: Some Theories and Practices in Education in the Island of Cyprus Since 1878 (Larnaca, 1952), p. 28. 57. Loizides, Savvas, ‘Peirasmό6 tvn didάskalvn. O parάdeiso6 tvn kybernhtikώn ypallήlvn’, Eleftheria, 29 June 1929. 58. Kefala, Michailina, ‘O kybernήth6 diώrisen ymά6...’ Έreyna gia toy6 Ellhnokyprίoy6 daskάloy6 th6 periόdoy prin apό thn anejarthsίa’,

NOTES TO PAGES 43 – 46

59. 60.

61.

62.

63. 64. 65.

66. 67. 68.

199

in I. Theocharides (ed.), Praktikά toy trίtoy dieunoύ6 kyprologikoύ sy nedrίoy : Tόmo6 G’ neόtero tmήma (Nicosia, 2001), pp. 41 – 51, here 46; Bryant, Rebecca, Imagining the Modern: The Cultures of Nationalism in Cyprus (London, 2004), pp. 125, 146; Atesin, Hu¨seyin Mehmet, ‘The process of secularisation of the Turkish community (1925 – 1975)’, in H. Faustmann and N. Peristianis (eds), Britain in Cyprus: Colonialism and Post-Colonialism, 1878– 2006 (Mannheim and Mo¨hnesee, 2006), pp. 327– 342, here 339. CO 67/243/13: Cyprus. Secondary Education, 1932. Acting Governor Herbert Henniker-Heaton, semi-private letter to secretary of state, 30 November 1932. Cyprus: Report of the Department of Education for the School Years 1930– 31 and 1931– 32 (Nicosia, 1933), pp. 9– 10; Oaken: Report, p. 80; The quotations are taken from Report of the Education of Cyprus for the School Years 1930 –1931 and 1931– 1932 (Nicosia, 1932), pp. 11 – 16 and Oakden: Report, p. 81, §167, respectively. Graebner, William, ‘The unstable world of Benjamin Spock: Social engineering in a democratic culture, 1917– 1950’, Journal of American History lxvii/3 (1980), pp. 612– 629, here 619 and 625. Bude, Udo, ‘The adaptation concept in British colonial education’, Comparative Education xix/3 (1983), pp. 341– 355, here 342; Lee and Petter: The Colonial Office, War, and Development Policy, p. 35. CO 67/249/13: Cyprus. Elementary Education Law, 1933. ‘The Statute Laws of Cyprus No. 18: A Law to Make Better Provisions and to Consolidate the Law in Regard to Elementary Education and to Purposes Connected Therewith’, enclosure to governor’s official dispatch No. 213, 7 June 1933. CO 67/249/13: op.cit. Arthur Dawe, Colonial Office, minute, 19 June 1933. CO 67/243/12: Cyprus. Secondary Education, 1932. Secretary of state’s semiprivate letter to Acting Governor Herbert Henniker-Heaton, 14 November 1932; reply of the latter in semi-private, 2 December 1932. ‘H epίskeci6 toy k. A. Mayhew ei6 ta ekpaideytήria th6 mέsh6 paideίa6’, Phoni tis Kyprou, 30 March 1935; CO 67/259/15: Cyprus. General State of Education in Cyprus, 1935. Arthur Mayhew, ‘Education in Cyprus’, 5 April 1935. See also Oakden, Report, pp. 79 – 84; Weir, Education in Cyprus, p. 31. Transforming the English school into a civil service preparatory school for the civil service did not yield the expected results. See SA1 1438/1937: English school, 1937– 1943. Circular dispatches of A.B. Wright, colonial secretary, No 300, M.P. 1438/1937, 18 December 1937, and H.G. Richards, colonial secretary, No. 524, 28 September 1943. CO 67/271/8: Cyprus. Production of a History of Cyprus for Use in Schools, 1936– 1937. Governor’s confidential dispatch, 4 November 1936. Kaviraj, Sudipta, ‘On the construction of colonial power: Structure, discourse, hegemony’, in D. Engels and S. Marks (eds), Contesting Colonial Hegemony: State and Society in Africa and India (London, 1994), pp. 19 – 54, here 48. CO 67/271/8: op.cit. William Ormsby-Gore, secretary of state for the colonies, minute, 24 November 1936.

200

NOTES TO PAGES 48 –52

69. Strohmeier, Martin, ‘“I’d rather have it in Cyprus than nowhere.” A plan for a British university in the Near East, 1935– 1940’, in H. Faustmann and N. Peristianis (eds), Britain in Cyprus: Colonialism and Post-Colonialism, 1878– 2006 (Mannheim and Mo¨hnesee, 2006), p. 153– 167; Persianis, P.K., ‘The British colonial education “lending” policy in Cyprus (1878 – 1960): An intriguing example of an elusive “adapted education” policy’, Comparative Education xxxii/1 (1996), pp. 45 –68, here 58; idem, ‘H bretanikή apoikiakή ekpaideytikή politikή kai ta sxέdia gia ίdrysh panepisthmίoy sthn Kύpro katά to tέlo6 th6 dekaetίa6 toy 1930 (1935– 1940)’, in I. Theocharidis (ed.), Praktikά toy trίtoy dieunoύ6 kyprologikoύ synedrίoy : Tόmo6 G’ neόtero tmήma (Nicosia, 2001), pp. 31 –39. 70. CO 67/286/2: Cyprus. The Archiepiscopal Question, 1938. Letter of the bishop of Paphos and locum tenens of the Archiepiscopal See, Leontios Savva, to Konstantinos Christofides, schoolmaster at Larnaca, enclosure to Director of Education J.R. Cullen’s letter to the governor, 10 June 1938, itself an enclosure to governor’s secret dispatch to the secretary of state, 17 June 1938. 71. FO 371/22366: Political. Southern. Greece. Governor’s secret dispatch the secretary of state for the colonies, 14 January 1938, enclosure to the undersecretary of state for the colonies’ dispatch, 24 February 1938 to the undersecretary of state, Foreign Office. 72. Persianis: ‘The British colonial education “lending” policy’, p. 51. 73. Persianis, P.K., Church and State in Cyprus Education: The Contribution of the GreekOrthodox Church of Cyprus to Cyprus Education during the British Administration, 1878–1960 (Nicosia, 1978), pp. 210–211; Weir: Education in Cyprus, p. 50. 74. CO 67/274/6: op.cit. A.R. Thomas, Colonial Office, minute, 6 December 1937; Ferguson, James, The Anti-Politics Machine: ‘Development’, Depoliticization and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho (Cambridge, 1990), p. 266. 75. Thorpe: Britain in the 1930s, p. 14. 76. Oakden: Report, p. 12. 77. CO 67/254/12: Report of the Financial Commission, Arthur Dawe, Colonial Office, minute, 28 August 1934; See, for instance, articles published in Phoni tis Kyprou on 8, 15, 29 July and 5, 12, 19 August 1933, 27 January and 3 and 31 March 1934, 11 January, 22 February, 23 May and 7 November 1936. 78. Surridge: Survey, p. 36. 79. Oakden: Report, pp. 104– 131. 80. Georghallides, George, ‘Memoranda by Sir Charles Tyser and Malcolm Stevenson on the constitution of Cyprus’, Epethrίda toy Kέntroy Episthmonikώn Erey nώn vii (1973– 1975), pp. 251– 276, here 255. 81. Oakden: Report, pp. 108 and 130; CO 67/257/16: Cyprus. Cooperative Credit Societies: Appointment of a Registrar, 1934. Secretary of state for the colonies, confidential dispatch to the governor of Cyprus, 19 November, 1934; Surridge: Survey, p. 49; Agkastiniotis, Kyriakos M., O sy nergatismό6: Gέnnhsi6 kai anάptyji6 toy en Kύprv (Nicosia, 1965), pp. 36 – 64.

NOTES TO PAGES 52 –57

201

82. Oakden: Report, pp. 118– 122; CO 67/274/3: Cyprus. Re-Organization of the Agricultural Bank, 1937. ‘A Bill entitled: A Law to make provision for raising an amount not exceeding the sum of one hundred and ninety one thousand six hundred pounds sterling for the purpose of enabling the Agricultural Bank of Cyprus Limited to redeem certain bonds’, enclosure to governor’s confidential dispatch, 17 December 1937. 83. CO 67/309/6: Cyprus. Appointments to the Debt Settlement Board, 1940. Governor Battershill’s confidential dispatch, 9 February 1940. 84. Peristiany, John G., ‘Introduction to a Cyprus highland village’, in J.G. Peristiany (ed.), Contributions to Mediterranean Sociology: Mediterranean Communities and Social Change (Athens, 1963), pp. 75 –91, here 82; Sant Cassia: ‘Property’; Pavlides, Stelios, ‘A new land law for Cyprus’, Journal of Comparative Legislation and International Law xxx/3 –4 (1948), pp. 40 – 46; Hutchinson, Sir J.T. and C.D. Cobham, A Handbook of Cyprus (London, 1907), pp. 77 – 80; Karouzis, George, Land Ownership in Cyprus, Past and Present: With Special Reference to Greek and Turkish Ownerships (Nicosia, 1977), pp. 31 – 39. 85. Apostolides, Alexander, ‘Economic Growth or Continuing Stagnation? Estimating the GDP of Cyprus and Malta, 1921– 1938’, unpublished doctoral dissertation, London School of Economics and Political Science, 2010, p. 108. See also Crouzet: Le conflit de Chypre, p. 80; Surridge: Survey, p. 53. 86. Surridge: Survey, p. 51. 87. Loizos, Peter, ‘Changes in property transfer among Greek-Cypriot villagers,’ Man x/4 (1975), pp. 503– 523, here 511; Sant Cassia: ‘Property’, p. 646. 88. Given: ‘Maps, fields, and boundary cairns’, pp. 2, 6. 89. Brit. Emp. s. 346, Mrs. Vyvien Hart-Davis. Personal Reminiscences, Gold Coast, Fiji and Cyprus, 1908– 1910; 1922– 1935. 90. Storrs: Orientations, p. 553. 91. Scott: Seeing Like a State, p. 48. For a comparison with Greece, see Dertilis, Georges B., ‘Terre et pouvoir politique en Gre`ce XVIIIe – XXe sie`cles’, Annales, E´conomies, Socie´te´s, Civilisations xlviii/1 (1993), pp. 85 – 107. 92. CO 67/250/16: Cyprus. Advocates Law, 1933 and Advocates (Amendment) Law, 1933. Governor Stubbs, official dispatch No. 224, transmitting Law No. 20 of 1933, ‘A Law to Consolidate and Amend the Law Relating to Advocates’, with enclosed legal report, 12 June 1933. 93. Scott: Seeing Like a State, pp. 4 – 5, 88.

Chapter 3 Rituals of Bureaucratic Governance 1. Bodleian Rhodes House Library, Oxford University, Brit. Emp. s. 346: Mrs Vyvien Hart-Davis: Personal Reminiscences, Gold Coast, Fiji and Cyprus, 1908– 10; 1922– 35; CO 850/85/5: Appointments and transfers in Palestine, Malta and Cyprus 1937. Arthur Dawe, minute of 21 October 1936.

202

NOTES TO PAGE 58

2. Storrs, Sir Ronald, Orientations (London, 1937), pp. 555– 556. 3. Claude Delaval Cobham, CMG, district commissioner of Larnaca (1878 – 1902), was the editor of An Attempt at a Bibliography of Cyprus (Nicosia, 1889) and of Excerpta Cypria: Materials for a History of Cyprus (Cambridge, 1908) and translator of Mariti’s Travels in the Island of Cyprus (Cambridge, 1909), the story of Omin Haram and Graziani’s narrative of the siege of Nicosia and Famagusta. Captain Charles William James Orr served as Cyprus’ chief secretary (1911 – 1917) and wrote the influential Cyprus under British Rule (London, 1918); he later became governor of the Bahamas. Harry (later Sir Harry) Charles Luke (formerly known as Lukach), assistant secretary at the chief secretary’s office and later district commissioner of Paphos (1911– 1920), was the author of a Bibliography of Sierra Leone (Oxford, 1925), joint editor of the Handbook of Cyprus (1913), author of Cyprus under the Turks, 1571– 1878: A Record Based on the Archives of the English Consulate in Cyprus under the Levant Company and After (Oxford, 1921), and prefacer of Sir George Hill’s seminal work A History of Cyprus: vol. IV; The Ottoman Province and the British Colony, 1571– 1948 (Cambridge, 1952). 4. The calculation of the average length of stay of British colonial civil servants in Cyprus is based on information drawn from the The Cyprus Blue Books of Statistics for 1879– 1880 (CO 456/2), 1885 (CO 456/4), 1890 (CO 456/7), 1895 (CO 456/9) and The Colonial Office List, 1899– 1920. This analysis leaves asides the governors who cannot be considered as representative of the profile of British personnel in the colony. For the official requirement of fluency of one of the local languages, see Jardine, Douglas J. [assistant secretary at chief secretary’s office], Cyprus Government Standing Orders (Nicosia, 1914). An example of an official knowledgeable in both of the island’s main languages is Charles Henry Hart-Davis, who stayed 13 years in the island. His wife, Vyvien, writes in her memoirs that he was a ‘Greek and Turkish scholar’, Brit. Emp. s. 346: op.cit. 5. CO 850/85/5: Appointments and Transfers in Palestine, Malta and Cyprus. Dawe, 21 October 1936, op.cit. ‘Gentlemanliness’, however impalpable a quality, corresponded to something specific in the minds of the Colonial Office officials. Trying to moderate a governor’s severe criticism of Robert Stephen de Vere, an official who eventually became president of a district court in Cyprus, Sir J. Risley, a top Colonial Office official, wrote: ‘[H]e has a sound knowledge of French and is a gentleman (nephew of Aubrey de Vere the poet to whose Irish estate I think he succeeded); and he has a pleasant and courteous manner which ought to make him persona grata in an international court’. CO 67/215: Cyprus. Despatches (Jul. –Dec.) Offices and Individuals, 1925, minute, 19 September 1925. 6. Kirk-Greene, Anthony, Britain’s Imperial Administrators, 1858– 1966 (London, 2000), pp. 87 – 241 and, ibid., On Crown Service: A History of HM Colonial and Overseas Civil Services, 1837– 1997 (London, 1999), pp. 6 –62. See also

NOTES TO PAGES 58 –59

7.

8. 9. 10.

11.

203

Heussler, Robert, Yesterday’s Rulers: The Making of the British Colonial Service (Syracuse, 1963), pp. 102– 127. Giddens, Anthony, ‘Elites in the British class structure’, in P. Stanworth and A. Giddens (eds), Elites and Power in British Society (Cambridge, 1975), p. 7. See also Tidrick, Kathryn, Empire and the English Character (London, 1990), p. 4; Nicolson, I.F. and C.A. Hughes, ‘A provenance of proconsuls: British colonial governors, 1900– 1960’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History iv/1 (1975), pp. 77 – 107; Cain, P.J. and A.G. Hopkins, ‘Gentlemanly capitalism and the British expansion overseas II: New Imperialism, 1850– 1945’, Economic History Review xl/1 (1987), pp. 1 – 26, here 15. Porter, Bernard, The Lion’s Share: A Short History of British Imperialism, 1850– 1995 (London, 1995), p. 254. Jeffries, Charles J., The Colonial Empire and its Civil Service (Cambridge, 1938), p. 254. For examples of Palmer’s conceptions of Cypriots as Asiatics or Orientals, see CO 67/253/8: Cyprus. Administrative Staff: Vacancies, etc., 1934. Palmer’s secret dispatch, 23 January 1934. See also Brit. Emp. s. 332: Papers of Arthur CreechJones, 1936– 1939, box 43, Education X, Europe, file 1: Cyprus 1936– 7. Governor’s official dispatch, 5 February 1937. For the language requirements, see CO 67/242/9: Cyprus. Probation of Officers With Previous Service in Other Colonies, 1931. Governor Storrs’ dispatch, 21 October 1931; CO 67/291/5: Cyprus. Greek language, 1938. Governor’s telegram, 26 June 1938; CO 67/261/1: Cyprus. Administrative Staff, 1935. Governor’s personal letter to H.T. Allen, assistant secretary, Colonial Office, 22 March 1935; CO 67/253/8: op.cit. Governor’s personal letter to H.T. Allen, 29 December 1933. Aside from the languages, they were also tested on the island’s statute laws and the Cyprus government standing orders. See CO 67/220/10: Cyprus. Examination for Officers Prior to Confirmation of Appointment, 1927. Scheme for the reform of Examinations proposed by Major W.H. Flinn, acting assistant secretary, 12 January 1927. The remark concerning colonial officials’ ‘guts’ or audacity is taken from CO 67/261/1: op.cit. Governor, 22 March 1935. Regarding age requirements, see CO 67/261/1: op.cit. Minute by Thomas Walton Davies, private secretary to the parliamentary undersecretary of state for the colonies, recapitulating the governor’s requests, 18 March 1935. With regard to the preference for officials with some African experience: CO 67/284/5: Cyprus. Administrative Staff: vacancies, 1938. J.B. Williams, minute to A.B. Acheson, recapitulating the governor’s requests, 4 October 1938. One should note that Palmer himself had previously been lieutenant-governor in Nigeria. Concerning the idea of creating a permanent Cypriot administrative service, see CO 67/253/8: op.cit. Excerpt of Sir Ralph Oakden’s Financial Commission, paragraph 102. See also the following memoirs of a former Cyprus administrative officer: Stanley, Robert, King George’s Keys: A Record of Experiences in the Overseas Service of the Crown (London, 1975), p. 79.

204

NOTES TO PAGES 60 – 62

12. CO 850/85/5: op.cit. Lloyd (later Lord), senior official at the Colonial Office and president of the British Council, Minute (undated), 1936. 13. CO 850/85/5: op.cit. Memorandum by Arthur Dawe, 21 October 1936. 14. Interestingly, the Colonial Office would also be attentive to other issues such as religion. Indeed due to the colony’s past (the Latin domination and Catholic persecution of the Orthodox Church), Catholic administrators were handicapped in their applications to Cyprus. See CO 67/218/8: Cyprus. Secretariat Staff, 1926. Alexander Fiddian, establishment officer for the Colonial Office and the Dominions Office, minute, 16 November 1926. 15. My emphasis. CO 67/218/8: op.cit. Arthur Dawe, minute, 17 November 1926. 16. CO 850/85/5: op.cit. Arthur Dawe, minute, 16 December 1936. 17. On the purge, see CO 850/85/5: op.cit. Minute (illegible signature), 16 December 1936. Regarding the Colonial Office’s warning against excessive purging, see CO 67/261/1: op.cit. Sir George John Frederick Tomlinson, KCMG, CBE, assistant undersecretary of state to the colonies, 11 February 1936, ‘strictly private and personal’ letter to Governor Palmer. 18. CO 67/242/9: op.cit. G.E.J. Gent, Colonial Office, minute, 12 November 1931, and Secretary of state for the colonies’ dispatch, 4 December 1931. 19. The Colonial Office List, 1920– 1946 (lacunae 1941– 1945), The Cyprus Blue Books of Statistics, 1925 (CO 456/48) to 1945 (CO 456/67); CO 67/219/10: Cyprus. Estimates, 1927; CO 67/258/19: Cyprus. Estimates 1935; CO 67/298/8: Cyprus. Estimates, 1940. The rise in the education level of British officials appointed to Cyprus corresponds to a structural trend affecting the whole colonial service, a ‘positive upgrading in the intellectual quality of those accepted in the Colonial Administrative Service following the establishment of the Oxbridge [colonial] training courses from 1926’. See Kirk-Greene: Britain’s Imperial Administrators, p. 138. 20. Regulations for His Majesty’s Colonial Service (London, 1923), para 43 and 46, p. 15. 21. CO 67/223/11: Cyprus. Confidential Reports on Officers, 1927. In commenting on the governor’s annual confidential reports on staff of his administration for 1927, Alexander Fiddian, establishment officer at the Colonial Office and the Dominions Office, wrote in the case of Mr Douglas, officer of the land registration and survey department of the Cyprus government: ‘Evidently a sad case!’ adding, in brackets in the margin: ‘married to a village woman’, January 1928. On local marriage impairing colonial administrators’ fair judgment, see CO 850/45/4: Personnel. Concubinage with Native Women, 1934. Secretary of state for the colonies’ circular dispatch. 22. Stoler, Ann Laura, ‘Rethinking colonial categories: European communities and boundaries of rule’, Comparative Studies in Society and History xxxi/1 (1989), pp. 134– 161. 23. Brit. Emp. s. 447: Blackall, op.cit. 24. CO 967/54A : Semi-official Correspondence from Governors: 1) Sir William Battershill & 2) Sir Charles Woolley on military and political situations. Secretary

NOTES TO PAGES 62 –66

25. 26. 27.

28. 29.

30. 31.

32. 33. 34.

205

of state for the colonies’ private and personal dispatch to Governor Battershill, 12 August 1940. Sir Ralph Oakden, Report on the Finances and Economic Resources of Cyprus (London, 1935), pp. 63 – 64, para 102– 104. CO 67/218/8: op.cit. Arthur Dawe, minute, 3 September, 1926. Brit. Emp. s. 364, David Athelsone Percival, Letters Home, Northern Nigeria, 1929– 39, Cyprus 1930– 39, box 2. Letter to his mother, 27 October 1939. Underlined in the text. Similar statements may be found in his letters to his mother, 30 April, 19 May, 20 June, 27 October, 2 and 22 November 1939 and letter to his sister, 6 May 1939. Brit. Emp. s. 347: Reminiscences of Sir Charles Belcher, former Colonial Judge, p. 292. For the range of salaries in Cyprus, see CO 67/236/1: Cyprus. Classification of Offices and Salaries, 1930. On the cost of food, accommodation and servants, see CO 67/253/8: op.cit. Particulars of the Office of Cadet, Cyprus Administrative Service in the Colony of Cyprus; CO 67/222/23: Cyprus. Vacancies: 1) Deputy Treasurer; 2) Accountant in Treasury, 1927, Particulars of the Office of Deputy Treasurer, 14 December 1927. For administrative officers employing Cypriot servants, see Brit. Emp. s. 346: op.cit. and Brit. Emp. s. 347: op.cit., pp. 277– 278. On the comfort of an administrative officer’s life in Cyprus, see CO 67/323/1: Cyprus. Training of Cypriot Medical Staff, 1944– 1945. Information for the Guidance of Officers Newly Appointed to Cyprus, Prepared by the Cyprus Unified Services Association, October 1944. On British servants locked in ‘ivory towers’, see Storrs: Orientations, p. 558. Playing bridge and billiards in the English club: Brit. Emp. s. 364, op.cit. Percival, letters to his mother, 20 June, 5 July, 19 September 1939, and to his sister, 19 May 1940. Colonial wives’ contacts with grocers: Brit. Emp. s. 467: Papers of Sir William Battershill, box 10, file 7, Some Reflections After Nine Years’ absence (1950). On the exclusiveness of English clubs: Arnold, Percy, Cyprus Challenge: A Colonial Island and Its Aspirations; Reminiscences of a Former Editor of the ‘Cyprus Post’ (London, 1956), p. 28. On the lives of officials in Cyprus in the 1930s, see Morgan, Tabitha, Sweet and Bitter Island: A History of the British in Cyprus (London, 2010), pp. 111– 140. Brit. Emp. s. 364, op.cit. Percival, letters to his sister, 8 and 21 March 1940. CO 67/255/20: Cyprus. Vacancy: Colonial Secretary, 1934. Parkinson, semiofficial dispatch to Governor Palmer, 19 November 1934. A relative of Battershill’s enabled me to complement the data, personal correspondence, 16 February 2006. Brit. Emp. s. 467: op.cit., box 4, file 1: letter to his mother, 7 July 1936. Brit. Emp. s. 467: op.cit., box 12: Diary from 1 January to 29 June 1936, entry ‘Sunday 26th Jan.’ 1936. Brit. Emp. s. 467: op.cit., box 12: Diary from 1 January to 29 June 1936, Entries ‘18th June’ and ‘From February 20th to February 29th’, 1936.

206

NOTES TO PAGES 66 – 69

35. Brit. Emp. s. 467: op.cit., box 12: Diary from 1 January to 29 June 1936, entry ‘18th June’ 1936. 36. Brit. Emp. s. 467: op.cit., box 12: Diary from 29 June to 16 September 1936, entry ‘July 25th’, 1936. 37. Brit. Emp. s. 467: op.cit., box 12, Diary from 9 June 1935 to 1 January 1936, entry ‘Monday Dec. 2nd’ 1935. The strong connection between the Nicosia district commissioner and the governor seems to have been rather widely acknowledged, and at the Colonial Office it was believed that ‘on occasion [Montagu] had been suspected of exercising too great an influence on Sir Richmond Palmer’s policy’. CO 67/283/16: Cyprus. Appointments to the Executive Council, 1938 Apr.– Dec., J. B. Williams, minute, 13 June 1938. 38. Brit. Emp. s. 467: op.cit., box 12: Diary from 1 January to 29 June 1936, entry ‘Sunday 26 Jan.’ 1936. 39. Brit. Emp. s. 467: op.cit., box 12: Diary from 1 January to 29 June 1936, entry ‘May 14’ 1936. My emphasis. 40. Brit. Emp. s. 467: op.cit., box 12: Diary from 1 January to 29 June 1936, entry ‘June 18’ 1936. 41. Brit. Emp. s. 467: op.cit., box 12: Diary from 1 January to 29 June 1936, entry ‘23rd May’ 1936. Palmer, on his part, when he requested a successor to Battershill, stated that he wanted the recruitment to be effected from within the existing staff of the Cyprus administration and in so doing made a vague allusion to the need of an ‘opportunity to surmise as to [the] personal views of a new colonial secretary’. See CO 67/279/4: Cyprus. Appointment of a New Colonial Secretary, March –April 1937, Governor Palmer, secret and personal telegram to the secretary of state for the colonies, 2 March 1937. 42. Brit. Emp. s. 467: op.cit., box 12: separate sheets, entry ‘29th April 1937’. See also ‘Apoxairetistήrio6 allhlograwίa toy k. Mpάttersil kai toy syndέsmoy kybernhtikώn ypallήlvn’, Eleftheria, 13 March 1937. ElEini, Roza, Mandated Landscape: British Imperial Rule in Palestine, 1929– 1948 (London, 2006), pp. 314– 379. 43. Brit. Emp. s. 467: op.cit., box 12, separate sheets, entry ‘14 August 1937’. 44. Brit. Emp. s. 467: op.cit., box 12: separate sheets, entry ‘January 27th 1939’. 45. ‘O nέo6 kybernήth6’, Anexartitos, 3 February 1939. 46. ‘O anamenόmeno6’, Phoni tis Kyprou, 5 August 1939. 47. Eleftheria, 10 August 1939. 48. Brit. Emp. s. 467: op.cit., box 12: separate sheets, entry ‘Feb. 2nd 1939’. 49. Brit. Emp. s. 467: op.cit., box 4, file 3: letter to his mother, 18 August 1939. 50. Brit. Emp. s. 467: op.cit., box 12: Diary from 29 June to 16 September 1936, entry ‘18th August 1936’. Emphasis added. 51. Brit. Emp. s. 467: box 10, file 7: Some Reflections After Nine Years’ Absence, unpublished memoirs. Emphasis added. 52. Brit. Emp. s. 562: Additional Chancellor Papers, Sir John Eugene Clauson, high-commissioner [governor] of Cyprus, to Sir John Robert Chancellor, governor of Trinidad and Tobago, 18 October 1917. My emphasis.

NOTES TO PAGES 69 –74

207

53. Zola, Irving K., ‘Medicine as an institution of social control’, Sociological Review xx 1972, pp. 487– 504, here 500. 54. ‘H shmasίa th6 xuesinή6 ypodoxή6’, Eleftheria, 11 August 1939. 55. Ibid. 56. Brit. Emp. s. 467: box 10, file 7: Some Reflections After Nine years’ Absence, unpublished memoirs. See also, Brit. Emp. s. 364: op.cit. Letter from David Athelstane Percival to his mother, 23 May 1939. 57. Brit. Emp. s. 467: op.cit., box 4, file 3: letter from Battershill to his mother, 15 November 1939. 58. Arendt, Hannah, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York, 2004), p. 275. 59. On the total number of civil servants employed by government, see The Cyprus Civil List, 1939 (Nicosia, 1939). On the teachers on government pay, see Report of the Department of Education for the School Year 1933 –1934 (Nicosia, 1935), p. 8. On the labourers contracted by the government, see ‘Oi ergάtai tvn kybern. tmhmάtvn kai h ypό uέspisin ergatikή nomouesίa’, Eleftheria, 21 June 1938. On the estimated total population in Cyprus in 1939, see The Cyprus Blue Books of Statistics for the Year 1940, p. 214. 60. Annual Report on the Social and Economic Progress of the People of Cyprus, 1936 (London, 1937), pp. 28 – 29. 61. For the number of judges in 1932, see The Cyprus Civil List, 1932 (Nicosia, 1932), pp. 54 – 65. For the number of judges in Cyprus in 1939, see The Cyprus Civil List, 1939 (Nicosia, 1939), pp. 46 – 51. C.A. Galatopoulos, a political activist who was imprisoned for his role in the 1931 revolt, expressed his respect for Judge Hamid in his memoir Anέkdoto hmerolόgio gia thn ejέgersh toy 1931 (Nicosia, 1980), p. 620. 62. CO 67/215: op.cit. Governor Sir Malcolm Stevenson’s official dispatch, 25 November 1925. The Cyprus Civil List, 1939, pp. 57 – 58. See also SA4 606 P. 833: Caesar Shellish, MBE. Colonial secretary’s minute, 27 August 1934. 63. The Cyprus Civil List, 1939, p. 110. 64. Cyprus General Orders, 1933: Together With a Table of Distances (Nicosia, 1933), pp. 11 – 17, §85– 111; ‘Civil Service Examinations, 1937 (which did not take place)’, Embros, 1 July 1937. 65. For the number of female nurses in the medical department, see The Cyprus Civil List, 1939, p. 73. For the number of schoolmistresses employed by the education department, see Report of the Department of Education for the School Year, 1933– 1934 (Nicosia, 1935), p. 8. 66. Varnava, Andrekos, British Imperialism in Cyprus, 1878 – 1915: The Inconsequential Possession (Manchester, 2009), p. 225. 67. CO 69/38: Cyprus. Administration Reports, 1920– 1928. Appendix I to Annual Report of the Police Force for the Year Ending 31 December 1924. 68. The colonial authorities employ the term ‘race’. All of the other designations (Greeks, Turks, etc.) are theirs also. See SA1/1111/1928: Question of the Hon. Mr. Hj. E. Hj. Procopi re Recent Appointments and Promotions of Government Officials. ‘Civil establishment of the colony of Cyprus on 1 Jan. 1928’,

208

69. 70.

71. 72. 73.

74. 75.

76. 77. 78.

NOTES TO PAGES 74 –78 enclosure to acting governor’s official dispatch No. 369, 5 October 1928. See CO 67/226/15: Cyprus. Nationalities of Members of the Civil Establishment. Same dispatch and minute by A.J. Dawe, 15 October 1928. These calculations were done by the Greek Cypriot members of the Legislative Council. See ‘To ypόmnhma tvn Ellήnvn boyleytώn’, Eleftheria, 14 September 1929. Greek Cypriot complaints in ‘Kybernhtikά mέtra dia toy6 dhmόsioy6 ypάllhloy6. Ellάtvsi6 th6 misuodosίa6’, Eleftheria, 25 September 1926; ‘Kai uhlykό6 kyanόaimo6’, ibid., 19 October 1927; ‘Kai άllo6 kyanόaimo6’, ibid., 19 January 1929; ‘Kai άllo6 kyanόaimo6’, Phoni tis Kyprou, 17 March 1928; ‘Xrόnia nόso6’, ibid., 28 April 1928; ‘Oi iuageneί6 kai oi Άggloi’, ibid., 16 June 1928. For Turkish Cypriot complaints, see SA1 1380/1914: Alleged Non-Employment of Moslems by Government. Translated articles by Dog˘ru Yol [Straight Path], 11 December 1924 and 5 August 1925; Hakikat [Truth], 28 December 1925; Birlik [Unity], 13 August 1927 and 29 June 1929; Ses [Voice], 26 September 1935. ‘H ewarmogή toy nέoy dikastikoύ diatάgmato6’, Eleftheria, 8 October 1927. The Cyprus Blue Book of Statistics for the Year 1927, p. 139. On the Colonial Office’s reservations regarding the systematic appointment of Cypriots to higher positions in the civil service, see CO 67/240/2: Cyprus. Appointment of Cypriots to Fill Higher Posts in The Government Service of the Colony, 1931. H.R. Cowell, minute, 6 August 1931. To my knowledge, the term ‘Cypriotization’ surfaced during the Second World War. G. Miles uses it explicitly in a minute of 5 January 1945 concerning the training of future higher Cypriot colonial civil servants in Britain (CO 67/329/14: Cyprus. Training of Cypriots Abroad 1944– 1945). Belcher’s quotation in Brit. Emp. s. 347, op.cit. Unpublished typewritten manuscript, p. 262. Storrs: Orientations, p. 599. Storrs’ public thanks to Cypriot civil servants following the uprising: The Cyprus Gazette, 8 January 1932, notice No. 22 ‘Cyprus Civil Service’, and 23 ‘Cyprus Military Police’, p. 11. For the exoneration of Cypriot civil servants from the collective fine, see Georghallides, Georgios S., ‘British policy on Cyprus during 1931’, Praktikά toy prώtoy dieunoύ6 Ky priologikoύ sy nedrίoy tόm. G’, Neώteron tmήma, Mέro6 A’ Istorίa-Gevgrawίa (Nicosia, 1973), pp. 95 –104. For Cypriots employees’ unwavering support to the government, see Storrs: Orientations, p. 551. The Cyprus Civil List, 1937 (Nicosia, 1937), pp. 5, 43, and 55. Georghallides: An Administrative History of Cyprus, pp. 230– 260. CO 67/315/17: Cyprus. Appointment of Mr. P. Paschalis as Crown Counsel, 1942. Governor’s confidential dispatch, 11 October 1942, and confidential saving telegram No. 156, 24 November 1942. We can also mention that Richard St. John Ormerod Wayne, the Cyprus government information and liaison officer in London, secured a post as a BBC announcer translator for Cacoyiannis’ son

NOTES TO PAGES 78 – 80

79. 80.

81. 82. 83.

84. 85.

86.

209

Michael in October 1940, although he emphatically stated that he did so on account of Michael’ merit, and not ‘on account of his father’s position’. See CO 67/306/17: Cyprus. Cypriot Community in London, 1940– 1941. Government of Cyprus information and liaison officer’s secret report to Arthur Mayhew, Colonial Office, 16 October 1940. CO 67/306/17: op.cit. Evdoros Ioannides, H Kύpro6 kai o pόlemo6 (London, 1940), p. 8. CO 67/311/30: Cyprus. Appointments to the Executive Council, 1942– 1943. Governor’s secret telegram No. 544, 7 November 1942. See also CO 67/319/11: Cyprus. Appointments to the Executive Council, 1944– 1945. In ‘top secret’ letter to A.J. Dawe, Woolley wrote on 5 October 1945: ‘there are extremely few Greeks to choose from since most of those whose attainments and standing are such as to render them suitable for appointment, have compromised themselves by enosist activity with one or other of the local parties’ [the nationalist Cypriot National Party (Kypriakό Eunikό Kόmma, KEK) and the communist Progressive Party of Working People (Anoruvtikό Kόmma Ergazomέnoy Laoύ, AKEL)]. Katsiaounis, Rolandos, H diaskeptikή: Me anaskόphsh th6 periόdoy 1878– 1945 (Nicosia, 2000), p. 43. SA1 949/1928: Promotion Board. Minutes of Meeting. Assistant Colonial Secretary Robert Christopher Stafford Stanley, dispatch to Oswald Raynor Arthur, district commissioner of Limassol, 16 September 1940. For examples of Cypriot functionaries sent to Britain to follow in-service training, The Cyprus Civil List for 1925 and 1932. Among others, the local commandant of police Caesar Shellish (a Cypriot of Christian-Syrian origin) attended a two-month advanced training course at New Scotland Yard in 1927; the inspector of Greek schools, Constantinos Christodoulides, had studied education science in England between 1926 and 1928. For the select panel of schoolteachers sent to Britain, see ‘To graweίon paideίa6 proswέrei ypotrowίan ei6 epίlektoy6 didάskaloy6’, Eleftheria, 21 May 1938. CO 67/329/14: Cyprus. Training of Cypriots Abroad, 1944 – 5. Acting Governor’s secret dispatch, 19 December 1944. Cullen’s attempt to formalize the role of the English school as a training facility for Cypriot civil servants; SA1 1438/1937: English School. Director of education’s dispatch to the colonial secretary, 1 December 1937. For the compromise found instead, see ‘Dia ta6 nέa6 kybern. uέsei6 ua protimώntai apόwoitoi th6 Aggl. Sxolή6’, Eleftheria, 23 December 1937. Bhabha, Homi K., ‘Of mimicry and man: The ambivalence of colonial discourse’, October xxviii (1984), pp. 125– 133, here 132. See also Osborn, Emily Lynn, ‘Circle of iron: African employees and the interpretation of colonial rule in French West Africa’, Journal of African History xliv/1 (2003), pp. 29 – 50.

210

NOTES TO PAGES 80 –89

87. Bayly, Christopher, Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social Communication in India, 1780– 1870 (Cambridge, 1999), p. 165. 88. For more thorough discussions on the ‘agency’ of subaltern Cypriot colonial civil servants, see Rappas, Alexis, ‘The Cypriot colonial civil servant: practical agency through uncertain identities’, Cyprus Review xviii/1 (2006), pp. 201– 218; idem, ‘The uncharted world of Cypriot colonial servants and the ideological foundations of British rule’, Cyprus Review xxiii/2 (2011), pp. 57 – 76. For similar discussions in other contexts, Arnold, David, ‘Bureaucratic recruitment and subordination in colonial India: The Madras Constabulary, 1859– 1947’, in R. Guha (ed.), Subaltern Studies IV: Writings on South Asian History and Society (Delhi, 1985), pp. 1 – 53 and Lawrance, Benjamin, Emily Osborn and Richard L. Roberts (eds), Intermediaries, Interpreters, and Clerks: African Employees in the Making of Colonial Africa (Madison, 2006). 89. CO 67/224/18: Dismissal of Ioannis Vassiliou from the Military Police, 1928– 1929. Memorandum by Chief Commandant, Cyprus Military Police, on statements made by No. 3576 Ex-Private Yanni Vassili, Cyprus Military Police in Reds 8 – 7, Colonial Secretariat minute paper (CSMP). No. 566/1927. 90. Regulations for His Majesty’s Colonial Service (London, 1923). 91. CO 67/224/18: op.cit. Gallagher Memorandum. 92. CO 67/224/18: op.cit. H. Bottomley, minute of 16 July 1928. 93. CO 67/224/18: op.cit. G. Hazlerigg, minute of 12 July 1928. 94. CO 67/224/18: op.cit. Alexander Fiddian, minute of 25 July 1928. 95. CO 67/224/18: op.cit. Sir John E. Shuckburgh, 8 August 1928, official despatch to the acting governor, Reginald E. Nicholson. 96. CO 67/224/18: op.cit. R.E. Nicholson, official despatch to Sir J. E. Shuckburgh, 20 December 1928. 97. Merton, R.K. ‘The unanticipated consequences of purposive social action’, American Sociological Review i/6 (1936), pp. 894–904. 98. Thompson, E.P., Whigs and Hunters: The Origins of the Black Act (London, 1990), p. 263. 99. Crozier, Michel, The Bureaucratic Phenomenon (Chicago, 1964), pp. 176– 195. 100. On the rule of colonial difference, see Chatterjee, Partha, The Nation and its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Princeton, 1993), pp. 14 – 34.

Chapter 4 The Constitutionalist Movement and the Avenues of Mass Politicization 1. The leader was said to be Demetrios N. Demetriou, a wealthy Larnaca-based merchant and president of the Cyprus Chamber of Commerce, see CO 67/276/1: Cyprus. Archbishopric of Cyprus, 1937, Part 1. J.H. Ashmore, deputy chief commandant of police, Secret Police Intelligence Report Summary,

NOTES TO PAGES 89 –90

2.

3.

4.

5.

6. 7.

211

18 – 24 March 1937, §4, and CO 67/307/8: Cyprus. Archbishopric of Cyprus. Legislation Enforcing Elections, 1940. Governor Battershill’s secret dispatch, 26 January 1940, §7(a). CO 67/279/6: Cyprus. Visit of a Cypriot Delegation to London, 1937, Part 1. Deputy chief commandant of police J.H. Ashmore, Criminal Investigation Department ‘P’ No. 1722, Secret, 5 June 1937, enclosure to governor’s secret dispatch, 18 June 1937; CO 67/277/15: Cyprus. Administrative and Political Reports for Various Districts, 1937. Monthly report of the district commissioner of Larnaca, §8, enclosure to governor’s secret dispatch, 2 December 1937; and CO 67/279/6: op.cit. Governor’s secret dispatch, 18 June 1937. CO 67/279/6: op.cit. G.S. Vassiliades, D.N. Demetriou, I.K. Klerides, letter to the secretary of state for the colonies, 10 July 1937, §7 – 8, p. 5, and enclosure, same authors, memorial to the governor, 22 June 1937, §5, pp. 1 – 2; same file, same authors, ‘An Outline of The Present Constitutional Conditions in Cyprus. The Position of the Cypriot British Subjects Thereunder’, document left by Cpt. Alan Graham MP to Arthur J. Dawe, head of the Pacific and Mediterranean Department, Colonial Office, 23 July 1937, §11, p. 4. CO 67/279/6: op.cit. Vassiliades, Demetriou and Klerides, 22 June 1937, op.cit. §8, p.5, and same file, same authors, 23 July 1937, §20, p. 9. CO 67/279/6: op.cit. Between mid-May and early June 1937, Vassiliades and the district commissioner, Larnaca, R.C.S. Stanley, engaged in a short and tense correspondence over the request of the former to hold a political dinner. See enclosure 3 into governor’s secret dispatch, 18 June 1937. CO 67/264/10: Cyprus. Constitutional Situation 1936– 1937. G.S. Vassiliades, confidential memorandum, 21 November 1936, opening paragraph. CO 67/279/6: op.cit. Governor’s secret dispatch, 18 June 1937 and enclosure No. 2, J.H. Ashmore, deputy chief commandant of police, CID ‘P’ No. 1722 Secret; same file, Governor’s secret dispatch, 18 June 1937; CO 67/276/1: op.cit. Deputy Chief Commandant of Police J.H. Ashmore’s secret report, 24 February 1937, enclosure to John Michael Montgomery, additional private secretary to Governor Palmer, dispatch to A.J. Dawe, 25 February 1937; CO 67/277/15 Administrative and Political Reports for Various Districts, Report of district commissioner of Nicosia, 5 July 1937, enclosure to governor’s secret dispatch, 6 July 1937; same file, Report of the district commissioner of Famagusta for June 1937, enclosure to governor’s secret dispatch, 8 July 1937. CO 67/279/6: op.cit. Vassiliades, Demetriou and Klerides, 23 July 1937, §14, pp. 5 – 6. For the political associations as a preliminary to the deputation to London, see CO 67/277/15: op.cit. Report of the district commissioner of Famagusta for June 1937, enclosure to governor’s official dispatch, 8 July 1937; For the deputation itself, see CO 67/279/6: op.cit. Governor’s secret dispatch, 18 June 1937; For an early report of the deputation, see same file, governor’s personal and confidential letter to A.J. Dawe, Colonial Office, 26 February 1937; For the composition of the deputation, see same file, J.H. Ashmore, deputy chief

212

8. 9. 10.

11. 12.

13. 14. 15.

16.

NOTES TO PAGES 90 – 91 commandant of police, CID No. 11/37, Criminal Investigation Department, Nicosia, 30 June 1937, Secret, Weekly Police Report (Summary), 24 – 30 June 1937, enclosure to governor’s semi-private letter to A.J. Dawe, 30 June 1937; and G.S. Vassiliades, ‘H ei6 Londi´non meta´basi6 epitroph´6 dia na syzhth´sh ta Kypriaka´ zhth´mata’, Eleftheria, 28 February 1937. ‘Dhmo´sion wro´nhma’, Eleftheria, 25 February 1937; ‘Anagkai´ai Ejhgh´sei6’, Eleftheria, 28 February 1937. CO 67/279/6: op.cit. Demetriou, Vassiliades, Clerides, 10 July 1937, op.cit. and enclosure, same authors, 22 June 1937. CO 67/279/6: op.cit. Governor’s secret dispatch, 30 June 1937 and enclosure I: J.H. Ashmore, deputy chief commandant of police, CID ‘P’ No. 2057. Secret. Demetrios N. Demetriou (Native of the Colony); same file, Ashmore, 30 June 1937, op.cit.; same file, M.S. Duncan MP, letter to the secretary of state for the colonies, 21 July 1937; ‘Why Not the Press?’ Embros, 28 July 1937; CO 67/275/4 Activities of Cypriots in London. Ioannides, Evdoros, The Case for Cyprus (London, 1937), p. 8, enclosure to S.C. Terezopoulos, liaison officer for Cypriots in London, secret and confidential letter to the undersecretary of state for the colonies, 20 December 1937. CO 67/279/6: op.cit. Governor’s secret dispatch, 18 June 1937. CO 67/279/6: op.cit. Governor’s secret dispatch, 18 June 1937; same file, Note by A.R. Thomas, Colonial Office, 27 July 1937, on interview between Dawe, Vassiliades and himself on the same day. This was later confirmed on the same day by the secretary of state for the colonies to the governor. See same file, secretary of state’s code telegram to governor, No. 91, 27 July 1937. CO 67/264/10: op.cit. Governor’s semi-private letter to Arthur J. Dawe, head of the Pacific and Mediterranean department, Colonial Office, 9 October 1936. CO 67/284/1: Cyprus. Municipal Corporations (Appointment of Councils) Law, 1938. Extract from Official Report of 24 March 1937, second enclosure to Governor Palmer’s secret dispatch, 6 May 1938. CO 67/279/7: Cyprus. Visit of Cypriot Delegation to London, 1937, Part 2. Extract from enclosure to governor’s secret dispatch, 17 November 1937; CO 67/274/5: Cyprus. Political Situation, Quarterly Reports, 1937. ‘Secret. The Political Situation in Cyprus from the 1 July to 31 October 1937’, §5, enclosure to governor’s secret dispatch, 17 November 1937, and ‘Eleftheria back on the job: 12-page issue ends 3-month suspension’, Embros, 22 December 1937; CO 67/274/5: op.cit. Deputy chief commandant of police, J.H. Ashmore, Secret Weekly Intelligence Report (Summary), 7 – 13 October 1937, Criminal Investigation Department, 14 October 1937, §4, enclosure to Palmer’s semi-private letter to A.J. Dawe, 15 October 1937; and CO 67/279/7: op.cit. Extract from the report of the district commissioner of Larnaca for September 1937; same file, extract from the report of the district commissioner of Larnaca for September 1937; ‘Social and Personal’, Embros, 25 September 1937. CO 67/279/6: op.cit. A.J. Dawe, 16 July 1937.

NOTES TO PAGES 92 –94

213

17. CO 67/264/10: op.cit. Governor’s personal and confidential letter to Arthur J. Dawe, Colonial Office, 29 September 1936, and enclosure, Proini, 29 September 1936; CO 67/279/6: op.cit. P. Pavlides, G. Vassiliades, N. Nicolaides and M. Zekia, members of the Advisory Council, memorandum submitted to the governor, 6 January 1937; ‘Epi´ tvn dhlv´sevn th6 A.E. toy Kybernh´toy’, parts 1 and 2, Eleftheria, 13 –14 January 1937. 18. CO 67/279/6: op.cit. Governor’s handwritten note, transmitting to A.J. Dawe an article from So¨z, 3 February 1937; CO 67/276/1: op.cit. J.H. Ashmore, deputy chief commandant of police, Secret Police Intelligence Report Summary, 18 – 24 March 1937, §4; CO 67/277/15: op.cit. district commissioner of Larnaca’s monthly administrative report, 1 July 1937, enclosure to governor’s secret dispatch, 17 July 1937. 19. CO 67/279/6: op.cit. Note by A.R. Thomas, 27 July 1937. 20. CO 67/279/6: op.cit. Vassiliades, Demetriou, Klerides, 10 July 1937, §9(f), p. 7. 21. On these earlier attempts at creating intercommunal political parties, see Attalides, Michael, ‘Ta ko´mmata sthn Ky´pro (1878– 1955)’ in G.K. Ioannides (ed.), Ky priaka´: Diale´jei6 laı¨koy´ panepisthmi´oy ar. 2 (Nicosia, 1986), pp. 123– 152. 22. The article ‘H meta´basi6 epitroph´6 ei6 Londi´non. Ana´gkh synergasi´a6 ´ n en Ke´prv stoixei´vn’, Eleftheria, 20 April 1937, is signed tvn de´o synoikv ‘E.I.’. On the other hand, it may have been penned by Eleftherios Ioannides, a journalist and poet from Nicosia. On the Committee for Cyprus Autonomy championing intercommunal solidarity, see ‘H aytonomi´a th6 Ky´proy’, Paphos, 3 June 1937. Paphos, while supporting intercommunal solidarity, clearly distanced itself from the committee’s more radical positions. ‘Gy´rv apo´ to politiko´n me´llon th6 Ky´proy. Poiai´ ai apo´cei6 toy laoy´’, Paphos, 11 March 1937. 23. CO 67/274/5: op.cit. ‘Secret. The political situation in Cyprus from 1 July to 31 October 1937’, enclosure to governor’s secret dispatch, 17 November 1937. For the suspension of So¨z, see CO 67/300/4: Cyprus. Petition against newspaper censorship, 1939– 1940. Acting Colonial Secretary R.C.S. Stanley, memorandum, 10 June 1938, §4, enclosure to governor’s secret dispatch, 3 February 1939. 24. CO 67/281/14: Cyprus. Position of the Moslem Community, 1936. M. Munir, Member of the Executive Council, director of Evkaf, secret report, 12 August 1937, enclosure to governor’s secret dispatch, 27 August 1937. 25. CO 67/235/13: Cyprus. Composition of the Executive Council. Representations re Appointments held by Munir Bey 1930. Ahmet Said, advocate of Paphos bar, memorial to the secretary of state for the colonies, 21 April 1930, enclosure to Governor Storrs’ confidential dispatch, 7 May 1930. See also Ministry of Justice and Public Order, Cyprus State Archives, SA1 517/26: Alleged NonEmployment of Moslems by the Agricultural Department, minute of the press officer and censor of newspaper, H. McLaughlan, to the colonial secretary,

214

26. 27.

28.

29.

30. 31.

NOTES TO PAGES 94 –95 commenting on articles published in the Turkish Cypriot press, 15 February 1933. For the expression ‘anglicized Ottoman’, see Beckingham, C.F., ‘The Cypriot-Turks’, Royal Central Asian Journal xliii (1956), pp. 126– 130, here 129 and, idem., ‘Islam and Turkish nationalism in Cyprus’, Die Welt des Islams: Internationale Zeitschrift fu¨r die Entwicklungsgeschichte des Islams, Besonders in der Gegenwart v/1– 2 (1957), pp. 65 – 83, here 73. For the Turkish Cypriot community’s feelings towards Munir, see McHenry, James, The Uneasy Partnership on Cyprus, 1919– 1939: The Political and Diplomatic Interaction between Great Britain, Turkey and the Turkish-Cypriot Community (New York, 1987), pp. 135 and 154. CO 67/281/14: op.cit. Celal Sefik, advocate, 29 July 1937, attached to Munir’s memorandum, 12 August, Emphasis added. CO 67/247/13: Cyprus. Munir Bey. Conversations with Colonial Office Officials, 1932. A.J. Dawe, Colonial Office minute 29 August 1932. Dawe had expressed the same concern in a 25 July 1930 minute, see CO 67/235/13: op.cit. CO 67/281/14: op.cit. J.B. Williams, minute, 13 November and secretary of state’s secret dispatch, 19 November 1937, §2. CO 67/342/2: Cyprus. Interim Report of the Committee on Turkish Affairs in Cyprus, 1949. Mary L.S. Fisher, Colonial Office, minute, 15 June 1949. It was estimated that Ses was selling an average of 1,000 copies. See The Cyprus Blue Book for Statistics for the Year 1937, p. 218. Ses was published by H.I. Asim, a Famagusta-born former employee of the land registration and surveys department. See SA1 1380/1914: Alleged Non-Employment of Moslems by Government, translated article by H.I. Asim in Ses, 17 August 1935 and translator’s note. It ceased publication upon the editor’s death in 1938. See CO 67/300/4: op.cit. Governor’s secret dispatch, 9 February 1939, opening paragraph. For samples of articles by Remzi against the existing TurkishCypriot institutions, see SA1 517/26: op.cit. Translated articles published in the 16 March, 20 April and 11 May 1933 issues of So¨z. For Remzi’s views about Turkish nationalism, see SA1 517/26: op.cit. Translated article published in So¨z, 16 March 1933; for his role in the creation of Kardas Ocag˘ı, see CO 67/300/4: op.cit. Memorandum by the acting colonial secretary, 10 June 1938, enclosure to governor’s secret dispatch, 9 February 1939, §2; for his relations with the Turkish consul and the funds he received from Turkey, see the same file, Governor Battershill’s semi-private letter to Assistant Secretary of State for the Colonies A.B. Acheson, 15 September 1939, opening paragraph (i); and same file, governor’s secret dispatch, 9 February 1939, §5 – 6. ‘Ses on Turkish Lyce´e: Technical and Academic Education’, Embros, 17 July 1937. McHenry: The Uneasy Partnership, pp. 141, and 149– 150. CO 67/300/4: op.cit. Governor’s secret dispatch, 9 February 1939, transmitting memorandum by Mehmed Remzi protesting against the suspension of his newspaper So¨z, 12

NOTES TO PAGES 95 – 96

32. 33.

34.

35.

36.

37.

215

January 1939, and memorandum of the acting colonial secretary, 10 June 1938. McHenry: The Uneasy Partnership, p. 134; Beckingham, C.F., ‘The Turks of Cyprus’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland lxxxvii/2 (1957), pp. 165– 174, here 170. CO 67/300/4: op.cit. On 30 October 1937, So¨z published the copy of a telegram sent by Necati O¨zkan to Kemal Atatu¨rk on behalf of the Turks of Cyprus on the occasion of the anniversary of the establishment of the Turkish Republic. On 2 November 1937, the newspaper published Kemal Atatu¨rk’s reply addressing Necati O¨zkan as ‘Representative of the Turks of Cyprus’. See ‘Pre´cis’: op.cit. Enclosure to governor’s secret dispatch, 3 February 1939. For Necati O¨zkan’s trial, see CO 67/299/2: Cyprus. Political Situation. February 1939– April 1940. Annual report of the district commissioner of Nicosia, 27 March 1939, §11, enclosure to governor’s dispatch, 5 April 1939. CO 67/282/15: Cyprus. Protest Against the Present Constitution 1938. E. Ioannides, C.J. Peristiany, E. Papaioannou, C. Pantelis, P. Vanieri, G. Minas, D. Paschalis, letter addressed to Malcolm McDonald, secretary of state for the colonies, 31 May 1938; same file, A.R. Thomas, minute, 23 June 1938. Kypriaka Nea sold an average of 350– 450 copies per month and Vema 250– 500 copies every fortnight, according to the British authorities. CO 67/307/1: Cyprus. Anti-Government Propaganda by London-Based Newspapers Vema and Kypriaka Nea, 1940 –1. Report on ‘Cypriot matters’ by William Rogers, Metropolitan Police, Special Branch, 29 February 1940, and CO 67/306/17: Cyprus. Cypriot Community in London, 1940– 1. Wayne, Government of Cyprus Information and Liaison Office, letter to A. Mayhew, Colonial Office, 17 May 1940. For the editors of the newspapers, CO 67/307/1: op.cit. Rogers, 29 February 1940: stating that Vema is printed by CAP press, ‘a concern run by the brothers Alexander and Michael Homatas, Cypriots’. In the same report, Michael is said to have ‘strong communist views’. Both newspapers were banned from Cyprus: CO 67/307/1: op.cit. Bell, 3 January 1940, and same file, governor’s secret dispatch, 15 February 1940. For the expression ‘riff-raff’ attributed to Cypriots, see CO 67/314/17: Cyprus. Committee for Cyprus Affairs. Reports of meetings, 1943. G. Miles, Colonial Office, minute 18 February 1943. For London Cypriots, see also CO 67/307/1: op.cit. Rogers, 29 February 1940; same file, A.B. Acheson, minute, 15 January 1940; Oakley, Robin, ‘The control of Cypriot migration to Britain between the wars’, Immigrants and Minorities vi/1 (1987), pp. 30 – 43, here 31; Katsiaounis, Rolandos, ‘H kypriakh´ paroiki´a toy Londi´noy kai to arxiepiskopiko´ zh´thma th6 Ky´proy, 1928– 1936’, Epethri´da toy Ke´ntroy Episthmo nikv´n Erey nv´n xii (1996), pp. 521– 556, here 521. CO 67/307/1: op.cit. Bell, 3 January 1940 for the poverty of London Cypriots, see ‘H kypriakh´ adelwo´th6 toy Londi´noy kai oi en th Aggl. prvtey´oysh sympatriv´tai’, Eleftheria, 27 May 1936; ‘Pv6 diasy´retai e´n Aggli´a to Kypriako´n o´noma. To kauh´kon th6 Kypriakh´6

216

38. 39. 40. 41.

42.

43.

44. 45.

NOTES TO PAGES 96 – 99 Adelwo´thto6’, Eleftheria, 25 November 1936. For the chronic unemployment within the community, CO 67/307/1: op.cit. A.B. Acheson, minute, 15 January 1940. CO 67/307/1: op.cit. Rogers, 29 February 1940. Katsiaounis: ‘H kypriakh´ paroiki´a toy Londi´noy’, p. 527. CO 67/307/2: Anti-Government Propaganda by London-based Newspapers, Vema and Kypriaka Nea, 1940– 1941. C.S.B. Buckland, Home Office, letter to A. Mayhew, Colonial Office, 31 October 1940. See the following issues of Anexartitos: ‘Sxe´dion synta´gmato6’, 16– 19 ´ rhsin August 1939; ‘Ta ypomnh´mata toy laoy´ pro6 paraxv synta´gmato6’, 11 July 1939; ‘Nomimo´wron ekdh´lvsi6’, 12 July 1939; ´ rhsin smatikv´n ‘Ypo´mnhma tvn katoi´kvn Aigialoy´sh6 dia paraxv eleyueri´vn’, 16 July 1939; ‘O Lao´6 zhta´ syntagmatika´6 eleyueri´a6’, 21 July 1939. Gallagher, John and Anil Seal, ‘Britain and India between the wars’, Modern Asian Studies xv/3 (1981), pp. 387– 414, here 404; Vanderbok, William and Richard Sisson, ‘Parties and electorates from Raj to Swaraj: an historical analysis of electoral behavior in late colonial and early independent India’, Social Science History xii/2 (1988), pp. 121– 142, here 123; Wight, Martin, The Development of the Legislative Council, 1606– 1945 (London, 1946), p. 94; Marsh, Norman S., ‘Book review: The Maltese Constitution and Constitutional History Since 1813 by J.J. Cremona’, Internal and Comparative Law Quarterly xliv/3 (1995), pp. 718– 725, here 720. The 1921 constitution establishing the principle of dyarchy in Malta was suspended between 1933 and 1936, and altogether abolished in 1936. Palmer had previously been governor of the Gambia; the first assistant secretary, Robert Christopher Stafford Stanley, had previously served in Nigeria, while the second assistant secretary, Geoffrey Martin Greenwood, had had previous service in Uganda; the district commissioner of Nicosia, Leslie Stuart Greening had been transferred from Tanganyika, while the district commissioners of Limassol, Oswald Raynor Arthur and Larnaca, David Athelstane Percival had both served in Nigeria. The Cyprus Civil List, 1939, pp. 3 – 11. Aimilianidis, Achilles K., ‘Eley´uero6 ty´po6 en eleyue´ra politei´a’, Anexartitos, 9 July 1939; idem, ‘To sy´ntagma’, Anexartitos, 15 August 1939. Georghallides, George, ‘Introductory Note to “Servitude Preferred” by G.B. Pusey’, Epethri´da toy Kv´ntroy Episthmonikv´n Ereynv´n xi (1981–1982), pp. 290–312; for an article in Embros supporting the regime, see ‘The people’s parliament’, 30 July 1937; for reactions in the Greek-Cypriot press to Pusey’s ´ ton kaly´tera’, support for the government, ‘Na ma6 gnvri´svsi prv Xro´no6, 9 August 1937; ‘Apa´nthsi6 ei6 to “Empro´6”’, Xro´no6, 23 August 1937; ‘Apa´nthsi6 ei6 to “Sai´proy6 Mai´hl”’, Xro´no6, 26 August 1937; ‘To “Empro´6”, oi wi´loi toy kai hmei´6’, Anexartitos, 23 April 1939; for the idea of press as parliament, see ‘Why Not the Press?’ Embros, 28 July 1937.

NOTES TO PAGES 99 –102

217

46. ‘Ne´ai epervth´sei6 ei6 thn Boylh´n tvn Koinoth´tvn peri´ Ky´proy’, Anexartitos, 4 January 1939. 47. CO 67/299/2: op.cit. ‘Secret. The political situation in Cyprus from 1 April to 30 June 1939” §6, enclosure to governor’s secret dispatch, 7 July 1939. 48. Georghallides: ‘Servitude preferred’, pp. 325 and 329. 49. CO 67/293/9: Cyprus. Press Agitation For a New Constitution 1939. Acting governor’s secret dispatch, 14 July 1939, opening paragraph. See also ‘Megalo´pnoa kai megalo´stoma khry´gmata ype´r th6 Ky´proy en th Boylh´ tvn Koinoth´tvn’, Phoni tis Kyprou, 8 July 1939. Also ‘Zhtoy´men pragmatika´6 syntagmatika´6 eleyueri´a6’, Anexartitos, 7 May 1939; ‘Ai aith´sei6 pro6 thn A. Ejoxo´thta dia paroxh´n politikv´n eleyueri´vn’, Anexartitos, 11 August 1939; O. Tsagarides, municipal councillor in Nicosia, ‘Peri´ thn paraxv´rhsin syntagmatikv´n eleyueri´vn. Eish´ghsi6 dhmotikoy´ symboy´loy’, Anexartitos, 14 May 1939; Tsagarides, O., ‘Epistolh´ dhmot. sy´mboyloy Leykvsi´a6 dia to zh´thma syntag matikv´n eleyueri´vn’, Anexartitos, 21 May 1939; Aimilianidis, Achilles K., ‘Zhtoy´men apokata´ stasin tvn syntagmatikv´n eleyueri´vn’, Anexartitos, 7 July 1939; ‘Eklego´menoi kai diorizo´menoi’, Phoni tis Kyprou, 15 July 1939; ‘Ypey´uyno6 symmetoxh´ ma6 ei6 thn diakybe´rnhsin toy to´poy’, Anexartitos, 16 July 1939; ‘’Ena6 lo´go6 perisso´teron’, Anexartitos, 18 July 1939; ‘Ypey´uynoi kai aney´uynoi’, Phoni tis Kyprou, 22 July 1939; ‘Ai atomikai´ eleyueri´ai’, Anexartitos, 23 July 1939; ‘Mo´no ai airetai´ arxai´ bohuhtikai´ kai dia thn kybe´rnhsin kai dia ton to´pon. Ta dida´gmata th6 pei´ra6’, Phoni tis Kyprou, 29 July 1939; ‘Na omilh´sh o lao´6’, Anexartitos, 6 August 1939; Ibid., ‘Zhtoy´men aytodioi´khsin’, 17 August 1939; ‘Zhtoy´men aytodioi´khsin’, Anexartitos, 18 August 1939. 50. CO 67/293/9: op.cit. Acting governor’s secret dispatch (2), 14 July 1939, §2 – 3. 51. Vassiliades, G.S., ‘The value of independent Englishmen in Cyprus’, Embros, 31 August 1937. 52. Bodleian Rhodes House Library, Oxford University, Brit. Emp. s. 365: Fabian Colonial Bureau Papers, box 175, file 1, J.S. Whitehead, letter to the secretary of state for the colonies, 20 February 1941. 53. ‘Agglo6 en Kyrhnei´a gra´wei dia toy6 Ky´prioy6 o´ti steroy´ntai xarakth´ro6, drasthrio´thto6 kai eywyi¨a6’, Eleftheria, 4 February 1939. 54. CO 67/291/14: Cyprus. Activities of the Cyprus Committee, 1938. Cpt. Alan Graham, letter to the secretary of state for the colonies, 22 July 1938, transmitting memorandum and composition of the Cyprus Committee’s administrative council; same file, A.B. Acheson, Colonial Office, minute, 17 August 1938; CO 67/292/1: Cyprus. Activities of the Cyprus Committee, 1938. Rules of the Cyprus Committee, London, p. 1, enclosure to chairman George Terrell’s letter to the secretary of state for the colonies, 14 October 1938. 55. CO 67/291/14: op.cit. Governor’s confidential telegram No. 84, 4 September 1938, to the secretary of state for the colonies; CO 67/292/1: op.cit. Governor’s

218

56. 57.

58. 59.

60. 61.

62.

63. 64.

NOTES TO PAGES 102 –104 personal and private letter to A.B. Acheson, Colonial Office, 17 October 1938; same file, Report from the Criminal Investigation Department, Cyprus Police, 1 November 1938, enclosure to governor’s secret dispatch, 4 November 1938. Gunnis, Rupert F., Historic Cyprus: A Guide to its Towns and Villages, Monasteries and Castles (London, 1936). See also ‘En ne´on bibli´on peri´ th6 nh´soy ma6. H «Istorikh´ Ky´pro6» toy k. Poy´pert Gka´nni6’, Eleftheria, 27 May 1936. For Major Grant’s capacity as correspondent, CO 67/299/2: op.cit. Acting governor’s secret dispatch (2), 23 June 1939, §1(a) and, same file, ‘Secret. The Political Situation in Cyprus from 1 April to 30 June 1939’, §6, enclosure to acting governor’s secret dispatch, 7 July 1939. For Merton’s articles, ‘Ti perilamba´nei to dey´teron a´ruron toy ‘Hmerh´sioy Thlegra´woy’ peri´ Ky´proy’, Anexartitos, 6 January 1939; ‘To prv´ton a´ruron toy Hmerh´sioy Thlegra´woy peri´ th6 Ky´proy’, Anexartitos, 7 January 1939; CO 67/299/2: op.cit. Annual report of the district commissioner of Nicosia– Kerynia, enclosure to governor’s secret dispatch, 10 March 1939 and, same file, Annual Report of the district commissioner of Nicosia, 27 March 1939, §11, enclosure to governor’s secret dispatch, 5 April 1939. ‘Di´kaia h aji´vsi6 tvn Kypri´vn o´pv6 ty´xoyn politikv´n eleyueri´vn’, Eleftheria, 27 July 1939. CO 67/292/1: op.cit. George Terrell, chairman of the Cyprus Committee, two letters to the secretary of state for the colonies dated 14 October 1938; same file: report from the Criminal Investigation Department, Cyprus Police, 1 November 1938, enclosure to governor’s secret dispatch, 4 November 1938; and ‘Colonial Office Note on the ‘Cyprus Committee and Irrigation, January 1939’. CO 67/292/1: op.cit. Report from the Criminal Investigation Department, Cyprus Police, 28 October 1938, enclosure to governor’s secret dispatch, 4 November 1938. ‘O k. Mpa´ttersill divri´suh ei6 thn ue´sin kybernhtoy´ th6 Ky´proy’, Eleftheria, 3 February 1939; ‘O neo´6 Kybernh´th6’, Anexartitos, 3 February 1939; Brit. Emp. s. 467, Papers and Photographic Collection of Sir William Battershill, The Cyprus Gazette, 10 August 1939; ‘O anameno´meno6’, Phoni tis Kyprou, 5 August 1938. CO 67/299/2: op.cit. A.B. Acheson, minute to Sir J.E. Shuckburgh, 13 November 1939; ‘Na omilh´sh o lao´6’, Anexartitos, 6 August 1939; ‘Agglikoi´ ky´kloi wronoy´n o´ti h a´wiji6 toy k. Mpa´ttersill ua shmeiv´sh aparxi´n ne´a6 perio´doy dia thn Ky´pron’, Eleftheria, 23 July 1939; CO 67/293/9: op.cit. Acting governor’s secret dispatch, 14 July 1939. ‘Empisteyuh´te ei6 ton eayto´n sa6 kai ei6 ton lao´n, Ejoxv´tate Kybernhta´’, Eleftheria, 10 August 1939; ‘Ejoxv´tate’, Anexartitos, 10 August 1939. Three files from the Cyprus State Archives, Ministry of Justice and Public Order, titled Constitutional Liberties. Petitions for the grant of – , SA1 738/1939/1– 3.

NOTES TO PAGES 104 –106

219

65. For the number of villages in 1936, SA1 1582/1928/1: Vote (7 B): Improvement of village and other roads. Allotment to commissioner from– Figure advanced in the draft memorandum of the Committee on the maintenance of village roads, submitted to Cyprus’ colonial secretary in 1936. For the island’s population in 1940, see CO 456/63: The Cyprus Blue Book of Statistics for the Year 1940, p. 214. Exemplifying colonial authorities’ habit of not forwarding all petitions is this 1942 dispatch from the district commissioner for Nicosia, transmitting a petition from the village of Kambos, noting that ‘similar petitions have been received from the villagers of Neokhorio, Pano Deftera, Lakatamia, Klirou, Ayios Dhometios and Xeri. I am not forwarding them. Receipt has been acknowledged.’ See SA1 738/1939/3: op.cit. Leslie Stuart C. Greening, district commissioner of Nicosia, dispatch to Cyprus’ colonial secretary, 9 December 1942. 66. CO 67/299/2: op.cit. Report on the political situation in Cyprus from 1 July to 30 September, 1939, §8, enclosure to governor’s secret dispatch (2), 13 October 1939 and minute by A.B. Acheson, 13 November 1939. 67. Quotations extracted from the following petitions: SA1 738/1939/2: op.cit. Petition signed by 130 inhabitants of the village of Koros, Larnaca district, undated; SA1 738/1939/1: op.cit. Petition signed by 71 inhabitants of the village of Limnia, Famagusta district, 31 July 1939; SA1 738/1939/2: op.cit. Petition signed by 52 inhabitants of the village of Afanias, Famagusta district, 20 August 1939; SA1 738/1939/2: op.cit. Petition signed by 230 inhabitants of the village of Marathovounos, Famagusta district, 18 August 1939; SA1 738/1939/2: op.cit. Petition signed by 334 inhabitants of the village of Beyuk Kaimakli, Nicosia district, 23 August 1939. 68. Gallagher and Seal: ‘Britain and India between the wars’, pp. 409– 419; Thorpe, Andrew, Britain in the 1930s: A Deceptive Decade (Oxford, 1992), p. 15; Monroe, Elizabeth, Britain’s Moment in the Middle East, 1914 –1956 (London, 1964), p. 144; Vanderbok and Sisson, ‘Parties and electorates from Raj to Swaraj’, p. 123. 69. Cohen, Michael J., ‘Appeasement in the Middle East: the British White Paper on Palestine, May 1939’, Historical Journal xvi/3 (1973), pp. 571– 596, here pp. 571– 574; idem, ‘Secret diplomacy and rebellion in Palestine, 1936– 1939’, International Journal of Middle East Studies viii/3 (1977), pp. 379– 404, here 379; Atran, Scott, ‘The surrogate colonization of Palestine, 1917– 1939’, American Ethnologist xvi/4 (1989), pp. 719– 744, here 735– 736; ‘Ky´pro6 kai Palaisti´nh’, Phoni tis Kyprou, 15 August 1936; ‘H Agglikh´ politikh´ ei6 Palaisti´nhn kai Ky´pron. Kybe´rnhsi6 kai lao´6, A’ kai B’’, Neos Kypriakos Fylax, 3 and 20 December 1933. 70. SA1 738/1939/1: op.cit. Petition signed by 398 inhabitants of the village of Lapithos, Kyrenia district, 8 May 1939; SA1 738/1939/3: op.cit. Petition signed by 177 of the village of Kambos, Nicosia district, 27 November 1942; SA1 738/1939/2: op.cit. Report of the district inspector on a petition from Omodhos, Limassol district, 12 August 1939.

220

NOTES TO PAGES 108 –113

71. This statement should naturally be taken with precaution for it is based on the petitions that have actually been transmitted to the colonial secretary’s office. The petition mentioned here was signed by 2,113 inhabitants of the town of Nicosia, 4 May 1939, SA1 738/1939/1: op.cit. 72. SA1 738/1939/2: op.cit. Petition signed by 83 inhabitants of the village of Kalokhorio, Limassol district, undated. 73. Katsiaounis, Rolandos, Labour, Society and Politics in Cyprus during the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century (Nicosia, 1996), p. 183. 74. CO 67/299/2: op.cit. ‘Secret. The Political Situation in Cyprus from 1 April to 30 June 1939’, §2, enclosure to governor’s secret dispatch (2), 7 July 1939. 75. Georghallides: ‘Servitude preferred’, p. 327. 76. CO 67/299/2: op.cit. ‘Secret. The Political Situation in Cyprus from 1 April to 30 June, 1939’, enclosure to acting governor’s secret dispatch, 7 July 1939. 77. SA1 738/1939/1: op.cit. Report of the district commissioner of Famagusta to the colonial secretary on a set of petitions, August 1939. 78. SA1 738/1939/1: op.cit. Report of the district commissioner of Larnaca, 12 August 1939. 79. SA1 738/1939/1: op.cit. Report of the district commissioner of Nicosia, 5 July 1939. 80. SA1 738/1939/3: op.cit. Minute by the first assistant secretary, Robert Christopher Stafford Stanley, 18 August 1939, minute by the colonial secretary, Andrew Baksworth Wright, 19 August 1939, minute by the governor, William Denis Battershill, 18 August 1939. 81. CO 67/299/2: op.cit. A.B. Acheson, minute of 28 July, 1939. Emphasis added. 82. SA1 738/1939/2: op.cit. Report of the district inspector on a petition from Omodhos, Limassol district, 12 August 1939. 83. SA1 738/1939/2: op.cit. Report of the district inspector on a petition from Yermasoyia, Limassol district, 27 July 1939. 84. SA1 738/1939/2: op.cit. Report of the assistant district inspector on a petition from the village of Dhora, Limassol, 6 August 1939. 85. Katsiaounis: Labour, Society and Politics, pp. 203– 204. 86. CO 67/372/9: Villages (Administration and Improvement) Law, 1950. Governor Andrew Baksworth Wright, official dispatch No. 32, 9 March 1950. 87. SA1 960/1934: District and Village Administration. Proposed Changes in – Governor’s Memorandum. Wayne, confidential dispatch to the colonial secretary, 10 March 1939. ´ n’, Phoni tis Kyprou, 2 88. ‘Eparxiakoi´ epo´ptai kai kaba´zhde6 dioikhtv December 1939. This newspaper claimed to be founding its arguments on the ‘innumerable letters sent to them from different villages in different districts’. 89. SA1 515/1935: 1) Junior Administrative Staff (including Inspectors and Assistant Inspectors); 2) Chief Clerks of Departments. Confidential Reports on– . Battershill, minute, 25 May 1940; CO 456/68: The Cyprus Blue Book of Statistics For the Year 1946, pp. 153– 167. All of the inspectors and assistant inspectors reviewed by Battershill had been appointed between 1921 (Josephides,

NOTES TO PAGES 113 –115

90.

91.

92.

93. 94. 95.

96.

97.

221

precisely) and 1937, namely before the petition movement, see SA1 515/1935: op.cit. Battershill, op.cit., 25 May 1940; The Cyprus Blue Books of Statistics For The Year 1938, pp. 165– 166 and The Cyprus Civil List, 1939, pp. 11 – 12. CO 67/319/2: A Scheme for the Introduction of Local Government into the Rural Areas of Cyprus by Means of Village and Rural District Councils, 1944– 1945, prepared by L.S. Greening, district commissioner, Nicosia, Government Printer, 3 April 1945. The figure of 2,600 should be considered as a maximum if we consider that there were 653 villages in the mid-1930s (figure given in SA1 1582/1928/1), and that there were one mukhtar and three azas per village. The Cyprus Gazette, 18 January 1935, Notice No. 503, ‘Decoration for Mukhtars’, p. 288; Shemi, M., Index to The Statute Laws of Cyprus (Nicosia, 1939); ‘Aponomh´ metalli´vn kai diplvma´tvn timh´6 ei6 moykta´ra6 th6 eparxi´ a6 Leykvsi´a6’, Eleftheria, 31 December 1937; ‘O Kybernh´th6 metabai´nei sh´meron ei6 La´rnaka dia n’aponei´mh meta´llia’, Eleftheria, 24 June 1939. N. Klerides, ‘Agrotika´ zhth´ mata. Moyxtarokrati´a kai synergatismo´6’, Eleftheria, 21 May 1937. See also ‘Moyxtarokrati´a’, Anexartitos, 7 August 1939, and ‘Ej awormh´6 mi´a6 omili´a6’, Xro´no6, 12 December 1937. ‘Moyxtarokrati´a’, Anexartitos, 7 August 1939, op.cit. CO 67/285/12: Cyprus. Archbishopric of Cyprus, 1938. Part 1. Report of the district commissioner of Paphos, enclosure to governor’s secret dispatch, 1 April 1938. CO 67/299/2: op.cit. Wayne report, 28 March, 1939, op.cit., §7. CO 67/299/2: op.cit. R.W. Barlow, an assistant principal clerk at the Colonial Office thus wrote, on 28 April 1939 that ‘Mr. Wayne’s report [. . .] is about the best I have seen’. Wayne was transferred to Cyprus in 1927: The Cyprus Civil List, 1939, pp. 3 –11. For his language skills, see CO 67/306/17: Cyprus. Cypriot Community in London, 1940– 1941. Wayne, Government of Cyprus Information and Liaison Office, personal and secret letter to Assistant Secretary of State for the Colonies A.B. Acheson, 23 May 1940, where the author states that he reads Greek documents ‘in the text’. See also CO 67/315/5: Cyprus. Post of Labour Adviser, 1941. Governor, confidential code telegram No. 55, 18 February 1941, where it is stated that Wayne is able to ‘broadcast in Greek’. SA1 1033/1907A: Criminal Investigation Department. As to Formation of – High Commissioner King-Harman’s minute to chief secretary, 9 September 1907; same file, approved version of Standing Orders and Regulations of the Cyprus Police, Section 1, p. 39, §71 (listing serious crimes), enclosure to Chief Commandant of Police Captain John Henry Learmonth’s confidential letter to the chief secretary, 19 March 1912; same file, secretary of state’s official dispatch No. 10, 19 January 1910 (approving formation of department). SA1 447/1932: Personal Police Records Instructions to C[hief] C[ommandant] of P[olice] as to – Colonial secretary’s confidential dispatch to chief commandant of police, 25 January 1932.

222

NOTES TO PAGES 115 –118

98. SA1 1168/1931: Incident between the Greek Members of the Legislative Council and Sergeant No. 3613 Costa Theodosiades (Pinkerton). Bishop of Kition, letter to the colonial secretary, 16 September 1931. 99. For a case of embezzlement, see SA1 491/1924: Rural constables. Irregularities by – Chief commandant of police, confidential dispatch to the colonial secretary, 12 June 1930, reporting on embezzlement by rural constable No. F. 31 Andreas Panaghi; for a case of disloyalty, same file, chief commandant of police, confidential dispatch to the colonial secretary, 17 November 1931, recommending the dismissal of rural constable No. Ll. 15 Christoforos Menelaou for (i) using the words ‘It is a shame for me to serve such a Government’ and (ii) throwing away his badge. This occurred during the 1931 disturbances; for the recruitment of district inspectors from within the police force, The Cyprus Civil List, 1939, p. 12. 100. CO 167/909/10: Mauritius. Payment For Police Informers, 1939. Governor Clifford, official dispatch No. 263 to the secretary of state for the colonies, 8 September 1939. For paid informers in the detection of crime in Cyprus, see SA1 995/1909: Rewards For Information. Acting chief commandant of police’s confidential dispatch to the colonial secretary, 27 October 1915, requesting that £5 should be paid to an informant having disclosed that Michalis Kyprianos and Loizos Cholakides were illegally detaining cartridges; same file, chief commandant of police’s strictly confidential dispatch to the colonial secretary requesting that £1 should be paid to an individual having disclosed the hideout of Osman Yallouri Yussuf of Ay Yanni tou Selemano, wanted for the murder of Doudou Halil. 101. SA1 995/1909: op.cit. Chief commandant of police’s confidential dispatch to colonial secretary, 19 August 1920. Usually the name of the informant was written in a sealed envelope enclosed in the chief commandant of police’s letter to the colonial secretary. In the specific case, the envelope was open. 102. Diplomatic and Historical Archives, Hellenic Ministry of Foreign Affairs, YPEJ 1935 A/8/8a , Ekpaidey tika´ Z hth´mata Ky´proy , Chief D. Katheniotis, Hellenic Army General Staff, secret dispatch 2700, 9 October 1934, to the Directorate of Political Affairs, European Division, Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 103. Ioannides, Pygmalion, ‘O xawiedismo´6’, Anexartitos, 21 August 1939. 104. Charalambous, Nadia, ‘Ethnicity and space’, Cyprus Review x/2 (1998), pp. 78–112, here 87. See also Beeley, Brian W., ‘The Turkish village coffeehouse as a social institution’, Geographical Review lx/44 (1970), pp. 475–493, here 485; and Given, Michael, ‘Agriculture, settlement and landscape in Ottoman Cyprus’, Levant xxxii (2000), pp. 209–230, here 214. 105. Surridge: Survey, p. 22. 106. Bryant, Rebecca, Imagining the Modern: The Cultures of Nationalism in Cyprus (London, 2004), pp. 37 – 45 and 146. 107. Loizos, Peter, The Greek Gift: Politics in a Cypriot Village (Oxford, 1975), p. 122.

NOTES TO PAGES 119 –123

223

108. Charalambous: ‘Ethnicity and space’, pp. 97 – 100; Markides, Kyriacos C., Nikita, Eleni S., Elengo, Rangou N. (eds), Lysi: Social Change in a Cypriot Village (Nicosia, 1978), p. 60; Loizos, The Greek Gift, p. 111. 109. 110. CO 67/299/2: op.cit. Annual report of the commissioner of Paphos, Richard St. John Omerod Wayne, 28 March 1939. 110. Brit. Emp. s. 364: David Athelstane Percival. Letters Home. Northern Nigeria, 1929– 1939. Cyprus, 1930– 1939, box 2. D.A. Percival, letter to his sister Alicia, 21 March 1940. See, in the same vein, the memoirs of another colonial official who served as district commissioner in Cyprus: Stanley, Robert, King George’s Keys: A Record of Experiences in the Overseas Service of the Crown (London, 1975), pp. 87 –88. 111. Loizos, Peter, ‘Changes in property transfer among Greek-Cypriot villagers’, Man x/4 (1975), pp. 503– 523, here 511. 112. SA1 1582/23/1: Draft Memorandum by the Committee on the Maintenance of Village Roads Submitted to the Colonial Secretary in 1936. See also Paphos, 9, 16 and 23 September 1937, all articles entitled ‘H esvterikh´ sygkoinvni´a th6 Pa´woy’. 113. Peristiany, John G., ‘Introduction to a Cyprus highland village’, in J.G. Perstiany (ed.), Contributions to Mediterranean Sociology: Mediterranean Communities and Social Change (Athens, 1963), pp. 75–91, here 76. 114. Peristiany: ‘Introduction’, pp. 83 – 84. 115. Talliadoros, Panos, ‘Ski´tsa apo´ ta xvria´ ma6. H zvh´ poy kauysterei´ ´ ne6’, Hmerh´sia Ne´a, 15 July 1932. aiv 116. SA1 1582/23/1: op.cit. Draft memorandum, 1936, and CO 67/372/9: op.cit. Governor Wright, 9 March 1950. 117. Loizos: ‘Changes in property transfer’, p. 513. 118. ‘Astywili´a;’, Hmerh´sia Ne´a, 15 July 1932. See also Sant Cassia, Paul: ‘Property in Greek Cypriot marriage strategies, 1920– 1980’, Man xvii/4 (1982), pp. 643– 663, here p. 650. 119. ‘H tragvdi´a th6 astywili´a6’, Neos Kypriakos Fylax, 25 August 1935. 120. Argyrou, Vassos, Tradition and Modernity in the Mediterranean: The Wedding as Symbolic Struggle (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 32 –33 and 36. 121. Loizos, Peter, ‘The progress of Greek nationalism in Cyprus, 1878– 1970’, in J. Davis (ed.), Choice and Change: Essays in Honour of Lucy Mair (London, 1974), pp. 114– 133, here 118– 119.

Chapter 5

The Orthodox Church and the Displacement of the Public Sphere

1. Georghallides, George S., A Political and Administrative History of Cyprus, 1918– 1926: With a Survey on the Foundations of British Rule (Nicosia, 1979),

224

2.

3. 4. 5.

6. 7.

8. 9. 10.

11.

12. 13.

NOTES TO PAGES 123 –127 p. 271; idem, ‘Church and state in Cyprus, October 1931 to November 1932: “A systematic humiliation of the Autocephalous Church of Cyprus”?’, Epethrίda toy Kέntroy Episthmonikώn Ereynώn xix (1992), pp. 361– 448. Papadopoullos, Theodore, ‘Orthodox Church and civil authority’, Journal of Contemporary History ii/4 (1967), pp. 201– 209, here 205; Georghallides: A Political and Administrative History, pp. 60 –64; Dionyssiou, George A., ‘Some privileges of the Church of Cyprus under Ottoman rule’, Epethrίda toy Kέntroy Episthmonikώn Erey nώn xix (1992), pp. 327– 364. CO 67/254/4: Cyprus Political Situation, 1934. Memorandum by Sir R.E. Stubbs, 16 October 1933. ‘O Kύproy Kύrillo6 o G’, Phoni tis Kyprou, 18 November 1933. See article 2 of the Charter of the Holy Orthodox Church of Cyprus (Katastikόn th6 Agivtάth6 Ekklhsίa6 th6 Kύproy), adopted in May 1914. Tzortzatos, Barnabas, Oi basikoί uesmoί dioikήsev6 th6 Ay tokέwaloy Ekklhsίa6 th6 Kύproy : Metά istorikή6 anaskopήsev6 (Athens, 1974), p. 35. CO 67/252/13: Cyprus. Archbishopric of Cyprus, 1933. Governor’s telegram and secret dispatch transmitting postal censor’s secret report to the colonial secretary, 20 and 24 November 1933. ‘H apάnthsi6 toy Seb. Topothrhtoύ’, Phoni tis Kyprou, 2 December 1933; ‘Ierά Sύnodo6 Kύproy. Anakoinώuen’, Ibid., 9 March 1935; ‘To anakoinvuέn th6 Ier. Synόdoy’, Chronos, 14 March 1935; ‘Ierά Sύnodo6 Kύproy. Anakoinώuen’, Apostolos Varnavas [official journal of the Archbishopric of Cyprus] iii (March 1935), pp. 71 – 72. Meyendorff, John, Byzantine Theology: Historical Trends and Doctrinal Themes (New York, 1979), pp. 80 – 82. Bourdieu, Pierre, ‘Gene`se et structure du champ religieux’, Revue Francaise de Sociologie xii/3 (1971); idem, Raisons pratiques: Sur la the´orie de l’action (Paris, 1994), pp. 200–211. ‘To Arxiepiskopikόn kai to Ekklesiastikόn’, Neos Kypriakos Phylax, 10 February 1935; ‘To Arxiepiskopikόn Zήthma: Apό poίoy6 prokaleίtai diatάraji6 th6 hsyxίa6 toy laoύ’, Phoni tis Kyprou, 7 April 1934; ‘Synomilίai kai synennόhsi6 toy S. Mhtropolίtoy Kitίoy metά th6 A.Q.P. toy Oikoymenikoύ Patriarxeίoy perί eklogή6 Mhtropolίtoy toy Oikoymen: Qrόnoy v6 Arxiepίskopo6 Kύproy’, Phoni tis Kyprou, 24 February 1934; ‘Perί to Arxiepiskopikόn Zήthma. Άrura th6 “Apogeymatinή6” Kvstantinoypόlev6’, Phoni tis Kyprou, 3 March 1934. ‘Ervtώmen ti dέon gέnesuai’; Chronos, 7 January 1935; ‘O Topothrhtή6 perί Ekklhsίa6 kai laoύ’, Chronos, 11 February 1935. See Meyendorff, John, The Orthodox Church. Its Past and its Role in the World Today (New York, 1996), p. 200. Storrs, Ronald, Orientations (London, 1937), p. 553. ‘H Ekklhsiastikή ejέlegji6’, Paphos, 9 March 1934; ‘Poy ystereί ei6 drάsin h Kyp. Ekklhsίa: H anάgkh th6 enopoiήsev6 tvn dynάmevn’,

NOTES TO PAGES 127 –130

14.

15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

20.

21.

22.

225

Paphos, 7 December 1934; and ‘H spoydaiόth6 toy arxiepiskopikoύ. Anάgkh plhrώsev6 toy xhreύonto6 urόnoy’, Paphos, 22 July 1937. ‘Ypόmnhma toy Mhtropol. Kitίoy dia thn lύsin toy Arxiepisk. Zhtήmato6’, Eleftheria, 11 June 1936, and ‘To Arxiepiskopikόn Zήthma Kύproy kai ai ayuentikaί gnώmai toy Mhtropol. Kitίoy. H parάtasi6 dhmioyrgeί tragikά6 zhmiά6. O topothrhtή6 oweίlei n’analάbh prvtoboylίan’, Eleftheria, 20 September 1936. CO 67/267/9: Archiepiscopal Question: Letter of the Bishop of Kitium, Nicodemos, 16 June 1936, to the Archimandrite Makarios of Larnaca, enclosure to acting governor’s secret dispatch, 18 July 1936. CO 67/274/5: Cyprus. Political Situation, Quarterly Reports, 1937. Report on the political situation in respect of the period ending 30 April 1937, §5, enclosure to governor’s secret dispatch, 7 May 1937. ‘To Arxiepiskopikόn eisέrxetai ei6 nέan wάsin’, Paphos, 18 February 1937. ‘To D’ έto6 toy Arxiepiskopikoύ’, Neos Kypriakos Phylax, 17 November 1936. Tzortzatos, Oi basikoί uesmoί, pp. 52 – 53, and SA1 1037/1934: Throne Committees. Election of – , circular of the Archimandrite of Kyrenia – on behalf of the bishop of Kyrenia, 12 October 1934, enclosure to the district commissioner of Nicosia’s dispatch to the colonial secretary, 17 October 1934. Eleftheria, 10 September 1936, op.cit.; ‘H Ejέliji6 toy epeisodίoy sxetikώ6 me ta6 eklogά6 Fanervmέnh6’, Neos Kypriakos Phylax, 1 December 1935; CO 67/276/1: Archbishopric of Cyprus, 1937. Part 1, secret report from the deputy chief commandant of police to the colonial secretary, 24 February 1937, enclosure to the private secretary of the governor’s dispatch to Arthur Dawe, Colonial Office, 25 February 1937; CO 67/284/1: Cyprus. Municipal Corporations (Appointment of Councils) Law, 1938. Extract from report of the district commissioner of Paphos, 18 October 1938, §2, enclosure to governor’s secret (2) dispatch, 21 October 1938; CO 67/299/2: Cyprus. Political Situation. February 1939– April 1940 Governor’s secret (2) dispatch, 15 December 1939, §9. ‘Zhtoύmen ejέlegjin kai logodosίan ek mέroy6 tvn ekklhsiast. Idrymάtvn’, Paphos, 30 July 1936; ‘Enώ dhmoprateίtai h ekklhsiastikή perioysίa’, Paphos, 25 March 1937; ‘Gύrv apό thn ekklhsiastikήn oikonomikήn diaxeίrisin’, Paphos, 22 April 1937; ‘Enώ synexίzetai h ekpoίhsh6 th6 ekklhs. perioysίa6’, Paphos, 27 May 1937. CO 67/276/1: op.cit. Governor Palmer, secret dispatch, 17 February 1937, transmitting secret police report; CO 67/274/5: Cyprus. Intelligence Reports, 1937. Secret report on the political situation in Cyprus in respect of the period of two months which ended 30 June 1937, §9, enclosure to governor’s secret dispatch, 11 July 1937; ‘To Arxiepiskopikόn. H synedrίasi6 th6 Qronikή6’, Paphos, 15 April 1937; CO 67/276/1: op.cit. Governor Palmer, secret dispatch, 4 March 1937.

226

NOTES TO PAGES 130 –133

23. Storrs, Ronald and Bryan Justin O’Brien, The Handbook of Cyprus (London, 1930), pp. 44 – 56; CO 67/286/2: Archbishopric of Cyprus. Part 3, 1938. Schedule to ‘A bill entitled a law to approve a method of procedure for the election of a duly qualified person to the vacant Archiepiscopal Throne of the Autocephalous Greek-Orthodox Church of Cyprus and to provide for certain other matters in connection therewith’, enclosure to the governor’s secret dispatch, 8 September 1938; 22 July 1937, Paphos, op.cit.; Duckworth, H.T.F., The Church of Cyprus (London, 1900), pp. 46 – 47; Surridge, Brewster Joseph, A Survey of Rural Life in Cyprus (Nicosia, 1930), pp. 54 – 59. 24. CO 67/252/13: op.cit. H. McLaughlan, postal censor, secret report to colonial secretary, 22 November 1933, enclosure to governor’s secret dispatch, 24 November 1933; Same file, Archbishop of Canterbury, letter to secretary of state for the colonies, 8 December 1933. 25. ‘O Patriάrxh6 Alejάndreia6 Melέtio6 Metajάkh6’, Phoni tis Kyprou, 3 August 1935; www.anglicancommunion.org/acns/archive/1930/1930-33.htm; www.anglicancommunion.org/acns/archive/1920/1920-19.htm (accessed 1 February 2013). 26. Archbishop Germanos of Thyatira, ‘Progress towards the re-union of the Orthodox and Anglican churches’, The Christian East (Spring 1929), pp. 20 –31 (anglicanhistory.org/orthodoxy/germanos1929.html), and Douglas, Canon J.A., ‘Archbishop Germanos on Anglicanism’, The Christian East (1929), pp. 11 – 20 (anglicanhistory.org/orthodoxy/jad_germanos1929.html). Douglas, Canon J.A., ‘The Orthodox delegation to the Lambeth conference of 1930’, The Christian East xi/2 (1930), pp. 49 – 64 (anglicanhistory.org/orthodoxy/douglas_ce_11.2.html) and ‘The Orthodox principle of economy, and its exercise’, The Christian East xiii/3 (1932), pp. 91 – 98 (anglicanhistory.org/orthodoxy/douglas_ce_11.2.html, all urls accessed 1 February 2013). 27. Soliolova, Tatiana, ‘Sketch of Anglican– Orthodox dialogues in the nineteenth century’, in J. Sutton and W. van den Bercken (eds), Orthodox Christianity and Contemporary Europe (Leuwen and Paris, 2003), pp. 517– 530, here 517. 28. Thorpe, Andrew, Britain in the 1930s: A Deceptive Decade (Oxford, 1992), p. 18. 29. CO 67/286/3: Cyprus. Archbishopric of Cyprus, 1938. Part 4. Copy of governor’s private letter to A.B. Acheson, Colonial Office, 17 October 1938. 30. CO 67/267/9: Cyprus. Archiepiscopal Question, 1935 –1937. Governor’s secret dispatch, 3 December 1935. 31. CO 67/252/13: op.cit. ‘Cyprus. Election of New Archbishop’, Secret Note from the British Legation in Athens, 6 December 1933; Georghallides, George S., Cyprus and the Governorship of Sir Ronald Storrs: The Causes of the 1931 Crisis (Nicosia, 1985), p. 491. 32. CO 67/276/1: op.cit. Secret report of the Deputy Chief Commandant of the Cyprus Police, 24 February 1937, forwarded to Arthur Dawe, principal at the Colonial Office, by John Montgomery, private secretary to the governor of Cyprus, 25 February 1937.

NOTES TO PAGES 133 –136

227

33. Vittis, Andreas, ‘Agglokratίa: Mίa anέkdoth ekuesh toy Έllhna projέnoy Loydobίkoy Skάrpa gia ta έth 1878– 1935’, Episthmonikή Epethrί6 th6 Ky priakή6 Etaireίa6 Istorikώn Spoy dώn, vol. 4 (Nicosia, 1999), p. 140. 34. CO 67/267/9: op.cit. Acting governor’s secret dispatch, 18 July 1936, enclosing letter of the bishop of Kitium to the Archimandrite of Larnaca, 16 June 1936; CO 67/276/1: op.cit. Governor’s secret dispatch, 30 December 1936, transmitting district commissioner of Larnaca’s report on a conversation with D. Zenon Pierides, 30 November 1936, and CO 67/276/1: op.cit. Secret iintelligence report, summary 18 – 24 March 1937, 24 March 1937. 35. CO 67/276/1: op.cit. ‘Bishop of Trebizond, report transmitted by the British Legation to the governor of Cyprus, 31 August 1937, and forwarded to Arthur Dawe, Colonial Office, 13 September 1937 and CO 67/274/5: op.cit. Report on the political situation with respect to the period ending 30 October 1937, §IV(4), enclosure to governor’s secret dispatch, 17 November 1937; CO 67/274/5: op.cit. Report on the political situation with respect to the period ending 31 December 1937, §15, enclosure to governor’s secret dispatch, 21 January 1938. 36. CO 67/286/3: op.cit. Governor’s private and confidential letter to Sir Cosmo Parkinson, assistant undersecretary of state, 16 December 1938 and CO 67/267/9: op.cit. Governor’s secret dispatch, 17 December 1936 and enclosures: Secret dispatch of the British Ambassador in Greece, Sir Sydney Waterlow, to Anthony Eden, 21 November 1936 transmitting a copy of a conversation between Mr. Nicholls and M. Melas on the Cypriot Church Question. 37. CO 67/276/1: op.cit. Arthur Dawe, minute, 30 July 1936. See also ‘H Kύpro6 ua metatrapeί ei6 megάlhn Brettan. Bάsin;’ Neos Kypriakos Phylax, 20 June 1936; ‘H Kύpro6 v6 naytikή kai aeroporikή bάsi6 th6 Megάlh6 Brettanίa6’, Eleftheria, 3 July 1936; ‘H Kύpro6 v6 bάsi6 ei6 thn Mesόgeion’, Paphos, 1 October 1936. 38. CO 67/267/9: op.cit. Secretary of state, semi-official letter to governor, 17 December 1936; CO 67/276/1: op.cit. draft dispatch of the secretary of state to the governor, 16 March 1937. 39. Paphos, 18 November 1937. 40. CO 67/276/1: op.cit. Governor, 4 January 1937 and governor, private and personal letter to the secretary of state, 27 January 1937; CO 67/299/2: op.cit. Extract from monthly report of commissioner, Famagusta, for February 1939, enclosure to acting governor’s secret (2) dispatch, 23 June 1939; and extract from monthly report of commissioner, Paphos, 19 June 1939, enclosure to governor’s confidential dispatch, 17 March 1939. 41. Alasya, Fikret H., ‘Some privileges granted to the Orthodox church of Cyprus by the Ottoman empire’, in T. Papadopoullos and M. Christodoulou (eds), Praktikά toy prώtoy dieunoύ6 Ky prologikoύ sy nedrίoy tόmo6 G’ Neώteron tmήma Mέro6 A’ Istorίa-Gevgrawίa (Nicosia, 1973); Dionyssiou, ‘Some privileges’.

228

NOTES TO PAGES 136 –141

42. The complete title being ‘Law No. 25 to provide for the investigation of the affairs and for the auditing of the accounts of churches and monasteries of the Autocephalous Greek-Orthodox Church of Cyprus in certain cases’. 43. CO 67/276/2: Archbishopric of Cyprus, 1937. Part 2. Governor’s telegram No. 95 to secretary of state for the colonies, 10 November 1937. 44. CO 67/276/2: op.cit. Governor’s semi-official letter to Arthur Dawe, 29 October, 1937, enclosing the Chief Commissioner of Police’s secret report bearing the same date. 45. ‘Towards archiepiscopal elections. Archbishopric calls for voting lists to be furnished during current month. New laws passed to provide for procedure’, Embros, 13 November 1937. 46. CO 67/276/1: op.cit. Governor, semi-official secret letter to the secretary of state, 4 January 1937; CO 67/276/2: op.cit. Governor’s secret dispatch, 19 November 1937. 47. CO 67/285/12: The Archiepiscopal Question, 1938: Translated from French. Bishop of Trebizond’s memorandum, 6 January 1938, enclosure in Ambassador Waterlow’s dispatch to Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, 11 January 1938. 48. CO 67/285/12: op.cit. Locum Tenens’s memorial, 21 December 1937, enclosure into governor’s official dispatch No. 1 to the secretary of state, 7 January 1937; Bishop of Trebizond’s memorandum, 6 January 1938, enclosure in Ambassador Waterlow’s dispatch to Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, 11 January 1938 and Archbishop of Thyatira’s letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, 5 January 1938; idem, 27 January 1938, enclosure to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s letter to the secretary of state, 28 January 1938. 49. Douglas: ‘Archbishop Germanos on Anglicanism’. 50. CO 67/285/12: op.cit. Secretary of state’s note on a meeting of his with the bishop of Gloucester, 18 November 1938. 51. CO 67/307/8: The Archiepiscopal Question. Governor’s secret dispatch, 9 February 1940 transmitting colonial secretary’s minutes of meeting between Locum Tenens and Bishop Graham-Brown and British Ambassador to Foreign Secretary, 24 May 1940. 52. CO 67/285/12: op.cit. Secretary of State for the Colonies William Orsmby-Gore, minute, 23 April 1937. Emphasis in the text; Ambassador Waterlow, private and personal letter to governor of Cyprus, 1 February 1938 and idem, dispatch to the Foreign Secretary, 7 January 1938. 53. Yiangou, Anastasia, Cyprus in World War II: Politics and Conflict in the Eastern Mediterranean (London, 2010), p. 28. 54. CO 67/285/12: op.cit. Police report, 23 March 1938, and ditto, 21 March; CO 67/299/2: Cyprus. Political situation, 1939. Governor’s secret dispatch, 30 November 1939, §6; same file, ‘Political Situation in Cyprus from 1 July to 30 September 1939’, §17, enclosure to acting governor’s secret (2) dispatch, 13 October 1939; same file, governor’s secret dispatch, 15 December 1939, §12; CO 67/277/15: Cyprus. Administrative and Political Reports for Various Districts, 1937. J.D. Montagu, district commissioner of Nicosia, monthly administrative

NOTES TO PAGES 141 –148

55. 56. 57. 58.

59.

60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66.

229

report, 8 February 1937, enclosure to governor’s secret dispatch, 19 February 1937; CO 67/299/2: op.cit. Governor’s secret dispatch, 2 November 1939, §8; same file, governor’s secret dispatch, 30 November 1939, §10. CO 67/297/4: The Archiepiscopal Question, Governor’s semi-official dispatch, 29 December 1939. CO 67/285/12: op.cit. Governor’s secret telegram No. 39, 19 April 1938; CO 67/286/1: Cyprus. Archbishopric of Cyprus 1938. Part 2, Governor’s secret dispatch, 27 April 1938. ‘Astynomikή έreyna en th Arxiepiskopή’, Phoni tis Kyprou, 8 April 1939. CO 67/299/2: op.cit. Extract from the monthly report of the assistant commissioner of Larnaca report, April 1939, §3, enclosure to acting governor’s secret dispatch, 11 May 1939; ‘Astynomikή έreyna en th Arxiepiskopή’, Phoni tis Kyprou, 8 April 1939; ‘Diamartyrίa toy Topothrhtoύ pro6 ton Ypoyrgόn tvn Apoikiώn’, Anexartitos, 3 May 1939; ‘Diamartyrίa toy Seb. Topothrhtoύ toy Arxiep. Qrόnoy pro6 thn A.E. ton Kybernήthn kai ton Entimόtaton Ypoyrgόn tvn Apoikiώn’, Phoni tis Kyprou, 6 May 1939. ‘H A.S. o Topothrhtή6 prosάgetai pro toy dikasthrίoy epί th bάsei toy perί prolήcev6 egklhmάtvn nόmoy’, Anexartitos, 2 May 1939; ‘Ήrxise xue6 ei6 Lemesόn h dίkh toy Seb. Topothrhtoύ’, ibid., 16 May 1939; ‘Esynexίsuh xue6 ei6 Lemesόn h dίkh toy Sebasmivtάtoy Topothrhtoύ’, ibid., 17 May 1939; ‘H xuesinή hmέra th6 dίkh6 th6 A.S. toy Topothrhtoύ’, ibid., 18 May 1939; ‘H ekdίkasi6 th6 ypouέsev6 toy Seb. Topothrhtoύ toy Arxiepiskopikoύ Qrόnoy pro toy dikasthrίoy Lemesoύ’, Phoni tis Kyprou, 20 May 1939; ‘H dίkh toy S. Topothrhtoύ’, Paphos, 18 May 1939. CO 67/299/2: op.cit. Record of incidents connected with the local Greek nationalist movement, §7, enclosure to acting governor’s secret (2) dispatch, 23 June 1939. ‘Katadίkai en Lάrnaki dia ta6 kvdvnokroysίa6 epί th epίskecei toy Topothrhtoύ’, Anexartitos, 5 March 1939. Surridge: Survey, p. 22. Storrs and O’Brien: Handbook of Cyprus, p. 50; Surridge: Survey, p. 22; Tzortzatos: Oi Basikόteroi uesmoί, p. 58. ‘Ierά Mhtrόpoli6 Kyrήneia6 – Anakoinvuέn’, Parάrthma ‘Fvnή6 th6 Kύproy ’, 2 June 1934. CO 67/299/2: op.cit. ‘Secret. The Political Situation in Cyprus from 1 April to 30 June 1939’, §12, enclosure to acting governor’s secret dispatch, 7 July 1939. CO 67/286/3: op.cit. Secret police report, 19 November 1938, enclosure in governor’s dispatch, 25 November 1938; CO 67/297/4: op.cit. Governor’s private and personal letter to Sir Cosmo Parkinson, 29 December 1938; same file, governor’s secret dispatch, 24 March 1939; CO 67/299/2: op.cit. Extract from the report of the district commissioner of Paphos, 19 June 1939, enclosure to acting governor’s secret dispatch, 23 June 1939.

230

NOTES TO PAGES 149 –158

67. CO 67/307/8: op.cit. Governor, ciphered and secret telegram No. 539, 1 November 1940; CO 67/307/8: op.cit. Governor, semi-official letter to A. B. Acheson, most secret, 13 December 1940; CO 67/307/8: op.cit. Most secret letter of the governor to A.B. Acheson, principal at the Colonial Office, 13 December 1940. 68. Yiangou: Cyprus in World War II, p. 51. 69. Frendo, Henry, Party Politics in a Fortress Colony: The Maltese Experience (Malta, 1979), pp. 2, 70– 89, 102, 116– 117, 121, 161– 165, and 206. 70. Servas, Ploutis, Koinή Patrίda (Nicosia, 1997), p. 73.

Chapter 6 The Labour Question: Political Stakes in a Battle of Denominations 1. CO 67/278/6: Cyprus. Activities of the Cypriot Press, June– July 1937. Secret report of the press officer on the ‘surveillance exercised over the newspapers published in Nicosia during the half year ended 30 June 1937’, §8, to the colonial secretary, enclosure to governor’s secret dispatch, 1 July 1937. 2. Annual Report on the Social and Economic Progress of the People of Cyprus (Nicosia, 1936), p. 26. Emphasis added. 3. Cooper, Frederick and Ann Laura Stoler, Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World (Berkeley, 1997), p. 18. 4. Oakden, Sir Ralph, Report on the Finances and Economic Resources of Cyprus (London, 1935), p. 11, §16. And Annual Reports on the Social and Economic Progress of the People of Cyprus (London, His Majesty’s Stationary Office [HMSO]) for the years 1928, p. 18; 1931, p. 11; 1933, p. 11; 1935, p. 11; 1936, p. 12. 5. Oakden: Report, pp. 11 – 26. 6. Annual Report on the Social and Economic Progress of the People of Cyprus, 1933 (London, 1934), p. 11; Oakden: Report, pp. 11 – 26, §16– 48; C.H. Hart-Davis, Cyprus. Report of the Census of 1931 (Taken on April 27 – 28, 1931) (Nicosia, 1932), pp. 14– 16, §46. 7. Census of Population and Agriculture, 1946. Tables (London, 1946), pp. 51 – 67. 8. ‘Apό thn zvή tvn metallvrύxvn. Hm1romίsuia-Syn1rgatikόn Pantopvleίon’, Anexartitos, 17 June 1939; ‘Oi ergάtai tvn kyb1rn. tmhmάtvn kai h ypό uέspisin 1rgatikή nomou1sίa’, Eleftheria, 21 June 1938; ‘Katάlogo6 tvn diatimhuέntvn mέxri sήm1ron 1ίdώn 1n Kύprv’, Anexartitos, 15 September 1939. 9. Oakden: Report, p. 14, §22; ‘Synέnt1yji6 toy di1yuyntoύ toy N.K. Fύlako6 m1tά toy k. Epam1inώnda Xarίlaoy’, Nέo6 Ky priakό6 Fύlaj, 17 November 1936; CO 67/274/5: Cyprus. Political Situation. Quarterly Reports, Jan. 1937– 1938. Secret. The Political Situation in Cyprus from 1 July to 31

NOTES TO PAGES 158 –163

10. 11.

12.

13.

14. 15. 16.

17.

18. 19. 20. 21. 22.

231

October 1937, section 5, §2, enclosure to governor’s secret dispatch, 17 November 1937. Atran, Scott, ‘The surrogate colonization of Palestine, 1917– 1939’, American Ethnologist xvi/4 (1989), pp. 719– 744, here 737. Colonial Reports –Annual. No. 1366. Cyprus, 1926 (London, 1928), p. 17; Lavender, David, The Story of the Cyprus Mines Corporation (San Marino, CA, 1962), pp. 79, 110, 118, 120, 177; Annual Report on the Social and Economic Progress of the People of Cyprus, 1933 p. 19. Lavender: The Story, p. 237; Oakden: Report, p. 21; ‘Epίshmoi plhroworίai dia ta hm1romίsuia tvn m1tallvrύxvn’, Neos Kypriakos Fylax, 13 September 1936; Colonial Reports –Annual. No. 1366. Cyprus, 1926 (London, 1928), p. 18. Annual Report on the Social and Economic Progress of the People of Cyprus, 1933, p. 28. The sum of 540 piastres was equal to £3. Statistics drawn from Annual Report on the Social and Economic Progress of the People of Cyprus, 1933 and 1936, pp. 29 and 28 respectively. For a table of weight conversions, see Colonial Reports– Annual. No. 1366. Cyprus, 1926 (London, 1928), p. 6. ‘H xu1sinή ap1rgίa tvn m1tallvrύxvn toy Mayroboynίoy’, Eleftheria, 1 September 1936. ‘H xu1sinή dίkh th6 1pitropή6 m1tallvrύxvn. Kathgoroύnto όti vrgάnvsan syngkέntrvsin kai parέlasin’, Eleftheria, 11 September 1936; Lavender: The Story, p. 108. CO 67/277/15: Cyprus. Administrative and Political Reports for Various Districts, 1937. Report of the district commissioner of Famagusta for June 1937, enclosure to governor’s secret dispatch, 8 July 1937; Oakden (Report, p. 22) reports that there were 63 cotton ginneries in Cyprus in 1933, employing a total daily labour of 97. CO 67/291/4: Cyprus. Famagusta Cotton Factory. Strike At – , 1938, report of the district commissioner, Famagusta, to the colonial secretary, Cyprus, 7 June 1938, enclosure to governor’s dispatch to the secretary of state for the colonies, 11 June 1938. See also Katsiaounis, Rolandos, H diask1ptikή, 1946– 1948: M1 anaskόphsh th6 p1rίodoy 1878– 1945 (Nicosia, 2000), pp. 60 – 61. CO 67/291/4: op.cit. Extract from the English-language Cypriot newspaper Embros of 21 July 1938. Asmussen Jan, ‘Life and strife in mixed villages: some aspects of inter-ethnic relations in Cyprus under British rule’, Cyprus Review viii/1 (1996), pp. 101– 110, here 102. CO 67/299/2: Political Situation, 1939– 1940. Extract from monthly report on the Nicosia and Kyrenia districts for March 1939 by the commissioner, §1(c), enclosure to governor’s secret dispatch, 20 April 1939. Eleftheria, 1 September 1936, op.cit. CO 67/291/4: op.cit. Resume of leading article in Eleftheria, 6 June 1938, enclosure to governor’s dispatch to the secretary of state for the colonies, 11 June 1938.

232

NOTES TO PAGES 164 –168

23. ‘Ergatikή Nomou1sίan’, Neos Kypriakos Fylax, 3 December 1935. 24. Ibid. 25. ‘Eyoίvna Shm1ίa’, Eleftheria, 27 September 1936; and ‘Ergatikή Nomou1sίa’, ibid., 15 September 1936. 26. See the following articles in Anexartitos: ‘Mόnon h 1rgatikή nomou1sίa ua prostat1ύsh ton 1rgάthn’, 6 June 1939; ‘D1n ypάrx1i 1n Kύprv 1l1yu1rίa organώs1v6 tvn 1rgatώn’, 5 August 1939; ‘Pro6 mίa Pagkύpria 1rgatikή syndiάsk1ch’, 14 July 1939; ‘H orgάnvsi6 o mόno6 trόpo6 p1riwroyrήs1v6 tvn 1rgatikώn symw1rόntvn’, 12– 16 May 1939; ‘Tr1i6 1rgatikέ6 ap1rgί16’, 12 December 1938; ‘Epitrέp1tai h antipolίt1ysh mέsa sti6 1rgatikέ6 synt1xnί16;’, 15 December 1940; ‘Pro6 mίan 1niaίan Pagkύprion 1rgatikήn synomospondίan’, 20– 21 May 1939; ‘Pro6 mίa Pagkύpria 1rgtatikή syndiάsk1ch’, 14 July 1939. See also CO 67/299/2: op.cit. Secret report, §23, enclosure in governor’s secret dispatch, 13 October 1939. 27. CO 67/299/2: op.cit. ‘Secret. The Political Situation in Cyprus from 1 April to 30 June, 1939’, enclosure to governor’s secret dispatch, 7 July 1939. 28. ‘Oi m1tallvrύxoi’, Anexartitos, 12 March 1939; ‘Dia thn aprόskopton orgάnvsin tvn m1tallvrύxvn’, ibid., 1 April 1939; ibid., 6 June 1939, op.cit.; ‘Oi 1rgatikέ6 synt1xnί16 kai to prόblhma tvn anέrgvn’, ibid., 17 January 1940. 29. Ioannou, Michalakis, ‘H 1jέlijh toy syndikalismoύ sthn Kύpro’, in G.K. Ioannides (ed.), Ky priakά 1878– 1955: Dialέj1i6 laϊkoύ pan1pisthmίoy ar. 2 (Nicosia, 1986), p. 114; CO 67/303/5: Cyprus. Appointment of a Labour Adviser, 1939. J.G. Hibbert, minute, 6 December 1939. See also Katsiaounis: Diask1ptkήή, p. 62 and Peristianis, Nicos, ‘To kίnhma th6 arist1rά6 kai h d1ka1tίa th6 bauiά6 diaίr1sh6 tvn Ellhnokyprίvn’, in idem (ed.), O Fίwh6 Ivάnnoy , h arist1rά kai to Kypriakό (Nicosia, 2004), p. xxiv; Also see the following articles in Anexartitos: ‘Ai synt1xnίai L1mesoύ dia ta aitήmata tvn raptergatώn’, 30 March 1939; ‘Ypόmnhma tvn syntexniώn Leykvsίa6 pro6 ton Kybernήthn. Allhleggύh pro6 toy6 barellopoioύ6 kai mhxanotexnίte6’, 6 March 1940; ‘Ai apowάsei6 th6 Pagkύprioy ergatikή6 syndiaskέcev6’, 8 July 1939; ‘Pro6 mίan eniaίan Pagkύprion ergatikήn synomospondίan’, 20 – 21 May 1939; ‘Pv6 ua katastή dynatή h ίdrysi6 Pagkύprioy ergatikή6 synomospondίa6’, 12 June 1939; ‘Xairetismό6 pro6 thn prώthn Pagkύprion syndiάskecin tvn syntexniώn’, 8 August 1939. 30. ‘Apό thn zvή tvn metallvrύxvn. Mόrwvsi6 kai orgάnvsi6 tvn ergatώn’, Anexartitos, 19 June 1939; ‘Svmateίa kai mόrwvsh’, ibid., 23 – 30 June 1939; For the number of copies Anexartitos sold daily, see The Cyprus Blue Book of Statistics for the Year 1938, p. 228; Giannides, Lefteris, ‘Oi metallvrύxoi’, Anexartitos, 12 March 1939. 31. ‘Nomosxέdion perί epoikismoύ. Poioi den ua gίnvntai dektoί en Kύprv’, Eleftheria, 18 April 1936.

NOTES TO PAGES 169 –172

233

32. Archives of Contemporary Social History, Athens (ASKI), Communist Party of Greece (KKE), 371/20/21/18: ‘Kritikή kai aytokritikή th6 K.E. toy AKEL’; For the Varosha strike and the ensuing trial, see CO 67/279/6: Cyprus. Visit of a Cypriot Delegation to London, Part. 1, 1937. ‘Secret. Weekly Police Report (Summary) 24 – 30 June 1937’, enclosure to governor’s semi-official letter to A.J. Dawe, 30 June 1937; For the police raid on Servas’ house, see CO 67/279/6: op.cit. ‘Secret. Weekly Police Report (Summary), 25 February –3 March 1937’, enclosure to governor’s semi-official letter to A.J. Dawe, 5 March 1937; For the district commissioner’s comment regarding trade unions being in the hands of communists, see CO 67/299/2: op.cit. Extract from the annual report on the Nicosia district by the hon. commissioner, Nicosia, dated 27 March 1939, enclosure to governor’s secret dispatch, 5 April 1939. 33. ASKI, KKE 371/20/21/18, op.cit. 34. CO 67/279/6, op.cit. ‘Secret. Weekly Police Report (Summary) 25 Feburary –3 March 1937’, enclosure to governor’s semi-official letter to A.J. Dawe, 5 March 1937 and Secret Weekly Police Report (Summary) 24 –30 June 1937, enclosure to governor’s semi-official letter to A.J. Dawe, 30 June 1937. 35. For Papaioannou and Nicolaides’ membership of the Communist Party, see CO 67/307/1: Cyprus. Anti-Government Propaganda by London-Based Newspapers Vema and Kypriaka Nea, 1940– 1941. Report on ‘Cypriot matters’ by William Rogers, Metropolitan Police, Special Branch, 29 February 1940, enclosure to Home Office dispatch to assistant undersecretary of state of the colonies, 6 March 1940; for the Comintern’s instructions regarding cooperation with anticolonial movements, see Nicholson, Marjorie, The TUC Overseas: The Roots of Policy (London, 1986), pp. 62 – 64. For Nicolaides and Papaioannou’s participation in the Spanish Civil War, see CO 67/306/17: Cyprus. Cypriot Community in London, 1940– 1941. Richard St John Ormerod Wayne, Government of Cyprus Information and Liaison Office, report to A. Mayhew, Colonial Office, 13 January 1941. For the 13 Cypriots who died in the Spanish Civil War, see ‘Oi 13 hrvı¨koί Kύprioi poy έpesan en Ispanίa’, Anexartitos, 23 March 1939. 36. Cooper, Frederick, ‘Our strike: equality, anticolonial politics and the French West African railway strike of 1947– 1948’, Journal of African History xxxvii/1 (1996), pp. 81 – 118, here 83; Thompson, E.P., The Making of the Working-Class in England (London, 1993), pp. 782– 790. 37. CO 67/299/2: op.cit. Governor’s secret dispatch, 14 November 1939, §7 – 8. 38. CO 67/291/9: op.cit. Governor’s secret dispatch to the secretary of state, 6 July 1938, §6. Italics added, ‘real’ underlined in the text. 39. Census, pp. 14 – 15, and CO 67/303/5: op.cit. Governor’s secret dispatch, 3 March 1939, §5. 40. CO 67/278/6: op.cit. June – July 1937, secret report of the press officer to the colonial secretary, 30 June 1937, enclosure in governor’s secret dispatch, 1 July 1937.

234

NOTES TO PAGES 173 –176

41. CO 67/299/2: op.cit. ‘Extract from Annual Report of Commissioner, Famagusta, for 1938’, enclosure to governor’s secret dispatch, 10 March 1939. 42. Respectively CO 67/274/5: op.cit; and CO 67/299/2: op.cit. (annual reports from district commissioners). 43. CO 67/291/9: op.cit. Governor’s semi-private letter to A.B. Acheson, 14 August 1938. 44. CO 67/291/9: op.cit. D.L. Tovey, Colonial Office, letter to F.W. Legett, Ministry of Labour, 5 October 1938. 45. ‘O dioikhtή6 Leykvsίa6 ei6 ta metάlleia. Ai apόcei6 toy dia ta6 syntexnίa6’, Anexartitos, 7 April 1939. 46. Oakden: Report, p. 5, and CO 67/291/9: op.cit. Governor’s semi-official letter to A.B. Acheson, 11 August 1938. 47. Oakden: Report, p. 26, §48. 48. CO 67/291/9: op.cit. Governor’s semi-official letter to A.B. Acheson, assistant undersecretary of state for the colonies, 11 August 1938. 49. Clarence-Smith, William Gervase, ‘The organization of “consent” in British West Africa, 1820s to 1960s’, in D. Engels and S. Marks (eds), Contesting Colonial Hegemony: State and Society in Africa and India (London, 1994), p. 67. Luka´cs, Gyo¨rgy, La destruction de la raison: Nietzsche (Paris, 2006 [1954]), pp. 99 –100. See also Cain, P.J. and A.G. Hopkins, ‘Gentlemanly capitalism and British expansion overseas II: new imperialism, 1850– 1945’, Economic History Review xl/1 (1987), pp. 1 – 26, here 15. 50. Howe, Stephen, Anticolonialism in British Politics: The Left and the End of Empire, 1918– 1964 (Oxford, 1993), p. 90; Thorpe, Andrew, Britain in the 1930s: A Deceptive Decade (Oxford, 1992), pp. 14; Vickerstaff, Sarah and John Sheldrake, The Limits of Corporatism: The British Experience in the Twentieth Century (Aldershot, 1989), pp. 27 – 46; Killingray, David, ‘The maintenance of law and order in British colonial Africa’, African Affairs lxxxv/340 (1986), pp. 411– 437, here 435; Lange, Matthew, ‘Embedding the colonial state: A comparativehistorical analysis of state building and broad-based development in Mauritius’, Social Science History xxvii/3 (2003), pp. 397– 423, here 408; Nicholson: The TUC Overseas, pp. 79 –118, 180, 199, 201– 206 and 223. See also Meredith, David, ‘The British government and colonial economic policy, 1919– 1939’, Economic History Review xxviii/3 (1975), pp. 484– 499, here 484; Lee, J.M. and Martin Petter, The Colonial Office, War, and Development Policy: Organisation and the Planning of a Metropolitan Initiative, 1939– 1945 (London, 1982), pp. 29 – 43; Martin, Ross M., TUC: The Growth of a Pressure Group, 1868– 1976 (Oxford, 1980), p. 239; Malmsten, Neal R., ‘British government policy toward colonial development, 1919–39’, Journal of Modern History xlix/2 (1977), pp. D1249 –1287, here D1279– 1282. 51. CO 67/303/5: op.cit. A.B. Acheson, minute, 5 October 1939 (referring to situation in Mauritius), J. Hibbert, minute, 6 December 1939 (referring to measures proposed for Jamaica, Trinidad and British Guiana); CO 67/315/5:

NOTES TO PAGES 176 –179

52.

53.

54. 55. 56.

57.

58.

59.

235

Post of Labour Adviser. J. Hibbert, minute, 30 January 1941, same official, minute, 17 March 1941 (referring to situation in West Africa and West Indies). CO 67/291/9: op.cit. Governor’s semi-official letter to A.B. Acheson, 11 August 1938; same file, A.B. Acheson, memorandum, 12 August 1938; CO 67/303/5: op.cit. J.B. Williams, minute, 8 February 1939; for the 1935 general election, see Cronin, James E., Labour and Society in Britain, 1918– 1979 (London, 1984), pp. 102– 103; For the activities of the Committee for Cyprus Autonomy, see CO 67/275/4: Cyprus. Activities of Cypriots in London, 1937, S.C. Terezopoulos, liaison officer for Cypriots in London, secret and confidential letter to the undersecretary of state for the colonies, 24 June 1937, transmitting document distributed among the Cypriots in London, and CO 67/275/4: op.cit. Memorandum of the Cypriot Committee for the Autonomy of Cyprus, enclosure to S.C. Terezopoulos, liaison officer for Cypriots in London, secret and confidential letter to the undersecretary of state for the colonies, 24 June 1937. CO 67/291/1: op.cit. A.B. Acheson, memorandum, 12 August 1938; CO 67/303/5: op.cit. G.M.L. Clauson, minute, 23 May 1939; same file, J.B. Williams, minute, 8 February 1939; same file, R.W. Barlow, minute, 17 March 1939. CO 67/303/5: op.cit. Acheson, minute, 23 March 1939, and same file, ‘Particulars of the Office of Labour Adviser Now Vacant in the Colony of Cyprus’, enclosure to acting governor’s official dispatch No. 298, 29 June 1939. CO 67/309/10: Cyprus. Appointment of a Labour Adviser, 1940. Secretary of state’s saving telegram No. 42, 31 October 1940, to governor of Cyprus. Chakrabarty, Dipesh, ‘Conditions for knowledge of working-class conditions: employers, government and the jute workers of Calcutta, 1890 –1940’, in R. Guha and G. Chakravorty Spivak (eds), Selected Subaltern Studies (Oxford, 1988), pp. 179–230, here 191. ‘Ti perimέnoyn oi ergάtai apό ton ergatikόn sύmboylon’, Anexartitos, 15 October 1940; ‘H sύskeci6 toy ergatikoύ sύmboyloy metά th6 Pagkypr. Epitropή6 tvn Syn/ώn’, ibid., 28 January 1941; the quotation is from ‘O ergatikό6 sύmboylo6, oi syntexnίe6 kai ta aitήmata th6 ergatikή6 tάjh6’, ibid., 12 February 1941. For the successful creation of the Pancypriot Federation of Labour, see Crouzet, Francois, Le conflit de Chypre, 1946– 1959: Vol. 1 (Brussels, 1973), p. 138; Cooper, Frederick, ‘Conflict and connection: rethinking colonial African history’, American Historical Review xcix/5 (1994), pp. 1516– 1545, here 1535; The quotation is taken from ‘H epίskeci6 toy ergatikoύ sύmboyloy ei6 ta6 syntexnίa6 Lemesoύ’, Anexartitos, 23 October 1940. SA1/738/1939/1: Constitutional Liberties. Petitions for the grant of – . Petition signed by 398 inhabitants of the village of Lapithos, Kyrenia district, 8 May 1939; same file, petition signed by 398 inhabitants of the village of Lapithos, Kyrenia district, 8 May 1939, including 28 Turkish-Cypriot signatures; SA1/738/1939/3: op.cit. Petition signed by 177 inhabitants of the village of Kambos, Nicosia district, 27 November 1942; same file, petition signed by 177

236

NOTES TO PAGES 179 –185

of the village of Kambos, Nicosia district, 27 November 1942, including 46 signatures of women. 60. For Battershill’s plan to create a central labour department, see CO 67/ 315/5: op.cit. Governor’s secret telegram No. 26, 27 January 1941; for the creation of AKEL, see ‘Ai programmatikaί uέsei6 toy “Anoruvtikoύ Kόmmato6 toy Ergazomέnoy Laoύ”’, Anexartitos, 16 – 17 April 1941, article 12.

Conclusion

The Expanding Boundaries of a Faceless State

1. CO 67/319/1: Cyprus. Establishment of elected councils in rural districts. Minute by A.B. Acheson, Colonial Office, 2 February 1944. 2. Crozier, Michel, The Bureaucratic Phenomenon (Chicago, 1964), p. 298. 3. Merton, Robert K., ‘The unanticipated consequences of purposive social action’, American Sociological Review i/6 (1936), pp. 894– 904. 4. Darwin, John, ‘What was the late colonial state?’, Itinerario xxiii/3– 4 (1999), pp. 73 – 82, here 76 – 77. 5. For the population of the south, see the preliminary results of the 2011 census by the Statistical Service of the Republic of Cyprus, see www.mof.gov.cy/mof/cystat/ statistics.nsf/All/732265957BAC953AC225798300406903 (accessed 19 January 2012). For the population in the north, see Hatay, Mete, ‘Is the Turkish-Cypriot population shrinking? An overview of the ethno-demography of Cyprus in the light of the preliminary results of the 2006 Turkish Cypriot census’, PCC Report 2/2007 (Nicosia, 2007), pp. 29 – 30. In the same report, Hatay provides an indepth analysis of the political stakes in censuses undertaken in the TRNC. 6. Navaro-Yashin, Yael, ‘Affect in the civil-service: a study of a modern statesystem’, Postocolonial Studies ix/3 (2006), pp. 281– 294, here p. 290. An in-depth analysis of this issue is also provided by Constantinou, Costas M. and Yiannis Papadakis, ‘The Cypriot state(s) in situ: cross-ethnic contact and the discourse of recognition’, Global Society xv/2 (2001), pp. 125–148. 7. For the ‘quasi-states’, see Constantinou, Marios, ‘Reasons of state and the constitutional logic of quasi-stateness: The postcolonial contradictions of Cyprus’s integration in the European confederation’, Postcolonial Studies ix/3 (2006), pp. 295– 311, here p. 298. Concerning the restrictions on Cyprus’ independence, it is perhaps useful to remind that three treaties were signed prior to the declaration of the Republic of Cyprus in 1960: The Treaty of Establishment between Britain and Cyprus providing that the former shall retain two sovereign base areas on the island; The Treaty of Alliance between Cyprus, Greece and Turkey providing for the permanent stationing of Greek and Turkish troops on the island, and the Treaty of Guarantee between Cyprus, Britain, Turkey and Greece, ‘giving all the latter countries rights of intervention in the Republic of Cyprus either jointly or singly, if the independence, territorial integrity, security or

NOTES TO PAGES 185 –186

237

constitution of the Republic of Cyprus were threatened’. Attalides, Michael, Cyprus: Nationalism and International Politics (Edinburgh, 1979), p. 53. See also Kadriztke, N. and W. Wagner, ‘Limitations of independence in the case of Cyprus’, in P. Kitromilides and P. Worseley (eds), Small States in the Modern World: The Conditions of Survival (Nicosia, 1976), pp. 97 – 123. On the concept of ‘hyphenated identity’, see Constantinou, Costas M., ‘Aporias of identity: Bicommunalism, hybridity and the ‘Cyprus problem’, Cooperation and Conflict xlii/3 (2007), pp. 247– 270. For the impossible emergence of a ‘Cypriot’ identity, see Loizos, Peter, ‘How might Turkish and Greek-Cypriots see each other more clearly?’ in V. Calotychos (ed.), Cyprus and its People: Nation, Identity, and Experience in an Unimaginable Community, 1955– 1997 (Boulder, 1998), pp. 35 – 51, here p. 36. 8. For the collapse of legitimate authority in postcolonial states, see Zartman, I. William (ed.), Collapsed States: The Disintegration and Restoration of Legitimate Authority (London, 1995). For the ‘colonial situation’, see Balandier, Georges, ‘La situation coloniale: approche the´orique’, Cahiers internationaux de sociologie xi (1951), pp. 44 – 79. See also his update, ‘La situation coloniale: ancien concept, nouvelle re´alite´’, French Politics, Culture and Society xx/2 (2002), pp. 4 – 10. 9. On the failure of post-Second World War political settlements, see Katsiaounis, Rolandos, H diaskeptikή, 1946– 1948: Me anaskόphsh th6 periόdoy 1878– 1945 (Nicosia, 2000); Holland, Robert, Britain and the Revolt in Cyprus, 1954– 1959 (Oxford, 1998); and Hatzivassiliou, Evanthis, To Kypriakό zήthma, 1878– 1960: H syntagmatikή pty xή (Athens, 1998).

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INDEX

Acheson, A.B., 20, 110, 173 acquiescence, 5, 32, 35 Advisory Council, 29, 35, 36, 77, 89, 90, 91, 92 agency, 11, 22, 182 Agricultural Bank, 26, 29, 52 Aimilianides, Achilleas, 2, 98, 105, 114 AKEL (Progressive Party of the Working People), 169, 180 archbishop of Canterbury, 131, 132, 138, 142 authoritarianism, 17, 31, 59, 101, 105, 151 Battershill, Sir William Denis, 64 – 71, 103, 108, 113, 140, 141, 149, 171, 179 Berat Law, 135– 140, 143 bishop of Kitium, 1, 3, 129, 133 bishop of Kyrenia, 3, 133 bureaucracy, 17, 55, 84, 85 – 87, 110 bureaucratization, 56, 63, 64, 71, 87, 183 Cacoyiannis, Panayiotis, 36, 77, 78 cafe´. See coffee-shop censorship, 4, 8, 92, 95, 103, 181 Church of England, 131, 132, 138

coffee-shop, 26, 42, 43, 96, 106, 114, 117–119 colonial governance, 12, 181, 183 colonial state, 6, 8, 12, 13 –18, 21– 23 Committee for Cyprus Autonomy, 78, 90, 92, 93, 96, 97, 101, 170, 176, 186 communism, 97, 170, 173 Communist Party of Cyprus, 93, 115, 168, 169 cooperative credit societies, 29, 51, 52 criminal investigation department, 39, 89, 115 Dawe, Arthur James, 20, 21, 41, 45, 51, 60, 63, 82, 83, 91, 95, 134 deputation (1937, to London), 90 – 92, 160 Dervis, Themistoklis, 66, 148 disloyalty, 9, 10, 41, 116 Dodecanese, 21, 34, 139, 181 English school, 45, 79 ethnarchy, 123, 135, 142 Evkaf, 17, 52, 77, 93 – 95 Executive Council, 31, 36, 77, 78, 93

INDEX Famagusta Cotton Factory, 160–162, 180 fascist, 33, 34, 181 Galatopoulos, Christodoulos A., 2, 129, 142– 143 Gunnis, Rupert, 66, 102 Hart-Davis, Charles-Henry and Vyvien, 40, 54 human expertise, 5, 19 imperial consciousness, 106 indebtedness, 26, 29, 50, 51, 94, 103, 119, 153, 156, 170, 174 information flows, 23, 63, 88, 115 intelligence-gathering, 21, 23, 39, 87 – 89, 103– 104, 112– 117 intermediaries, 54, 78, 172 Ioannides, Evdoros, 90, 93, 96, 97, 170 Kareklas, Michael, 37, 73, 81, 82 Kemalist, 95 – 96 Klerides, Ioannis, 37, 76, 90 – 92, 96, 109, 114, 129, 133, 148 Lang, Cosmo Gordon. See archbishop of Canterbury Legislative Council, 1– 4, 6, 7, 9, 14, 15, 17, 19, 29, 35, 41, 57, 67, 75, 77, 89, 92 Leondios (Savvas, bishop of Paphos, locum tenens of the archiepiscopal throne), 123– 151 loyalty, 5, 41, 49, 56, 75 – 87, 94, 114, 116, 143, 183 Makarios, bishop. See bishop of Kyrenia Malta, 20, 59, 60, 98, 150, 181 Metaxakis, Meletios, patriarch of Alexandria, 131 moneylenders, 7, 11, 25, 26, 51

253

Montagu, James Drogo, 66 – 67 mudir, 40, 112 mukhtars, 3, 39, 40, 109, 113– 116, 119 Munir, Mehmet, 36, 70, 77, 78, 93– 95 Mylonas, Nicodemos. See bishop of Kitium Nicolaides, Evanthis, 96, 170 Oakden, Sir Ralph, 25 – 29, 36, 38, 46, 50, 52, 62, 154, 174, 175 O¨zkan, Necati, 92, 96 Palestine, 20, 67, 105, 106, 141, 154, 158, 181 Papaioannou, Ezekias, 96, 97, 170 petition campaign, 103– 112 petition movement. See petition campaign Pritt, Denis Nowell, 40, 90, 91, 96 proletarianization, 51, 158, 175 Pusey, George Blount, 99, 101, 103 racial hierarchies, 31, 99 Remzi, Mehmet, 92, 95 romantic anti-capitalism, 175 schoolteachers, 7, 18, 43, 44, 72, 79, 99, 108, 114, 118, 120, 143 self-government, 68, 103, 105, 106, 150 Servas, Ploutis, 169– 170 settlers, 92, 101 social engineering, 23, 24, 25, 30, 33, 44, 54, 55, 181 Storrs, Sir Ronald, 2, 4, 8, 9 – 12, 14, 15, 18, 19, 20, 34, 54, 57, 66, 75, 76, 81, 102, Stubbs, Sir Reginal E., 25, 29 –30, 37, 54, 64, 124, 125, 135

254

CYPRUS IN THE 1930S

Surridge, Brewster Joseph, 25 –26, 29, 50, 51, 53, 105, 117, 118, 147 throne committees, 129, 130, 133, 136, 147, 148, 151 Thyatira, Archbishop Germanos of, 131, 132 Trebizond, Archbishop Chrysanthos of, 133– 138

Tsimillis, Lysandros, 97, 166, 180 Vassiliades, George, 37, 89 – 94, 101–103, 108, 143, 170, 180 Wayne, Richard St. John Omerod, 113, 114, 119