Economics of Cyprus: A Survey to 1914 9780773593107

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THE ECONOMI CS OF CYPRUS AS ur v e yt o1 9 1 4

DI AMONDJ ENNES S

7i S ECONOMICS

F CYPRUS A Survey to 1914 • .00

DIAMOND JENNESS

McGILL UNIVERSITY PRESS Montreal, 1962

© Copyright Canada 1962 McGill University Press PRINTED IN CANADA

PRE FACE I have revived in this book an interest of my younger days, when a classical education and a fertile imagination cast a mysterious radiance over the ancient Greek world, luring me to trace the rise of its glory and the stages by which that glory slowly faded away. Chance, however, led me into another field, and only recently did I find the leisure and (through the generosity of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation) the means to spend several months in an outpost of that ancient world, Venus' fabled isle of Cyprus. By then I was too world-worn to recapture the youthful vision. The wondrous lands inhabited by demi-gods had vanished, the mystic radiance had become a hard, cold light, and my eyes saw only mountains and plains, crops and flocks, toiling peasants and parched fields. So the long-delayed quest resolved into this sober economic study, which attempts to show how man has used one small Mediterranean island throughout the centuries, what changes he and it have undergone during the five thousand years they have been associated, and what successes have attended his efforts to win a satisfactory livelihood from its somewhat meagre resources. The subject proved more complicated and difficult than I had anticipated. Three continents ring Cyprus, and peoples from one or other of them have claimed sovereignty over the island since the second millenium before Christ. Only at rare intervals has it created its own history, or possessed an identity distinct from that of some neighbouring region to which it owed its laws and its currency. The student of Cyprus should therefore familiarize himself not only with the history of Europe as a whole, but with the special histories of every country in the eastern Mediterranean. That is a task for a whole lifetime, however, not for three or four short years. Necessity thus forced me to limit my studies. Since ancient writers, despite their many references to Cyprus, failed to leave us any clear or coherent picture of its economic and social conditions during the pm-Christian era and the first millenium A.D., I have not searched their works exhaustively, but have leaned heavily on Sir George Hill's four-volume History of Cyprus. The fog that surrounded the island previous to 1200 A.D. lifted a little v

PREFACE

during the Crusades, and it continued to lift during subsequent centuries; but only about 1850 did it clear sufficiently to provide us with a few firm statistics. We may glean much more information than was available for classical and Byzantine times, but innumerable gaps and hiatuses still make the record very uneven, throwing a bright light on some topics while others equally important remain in deep shadow. If then the reader should feel a certain lack of balance in the narrative covering these centuries, he will perhaps condone it because our sources of information are so scattered and fragmentary. Hill's monumental history proved a useful guide through this second millenium A.D. also; but more valuable for my special enquiries have been the narratives of numerous travellers, the scholarly studies of Oberhummer in Germany and of Gaudry and Mas Latrie in France, and the reports submitted by various English consuls to the Foreign Office in London during the second half of the nineteenth century. The British regime from 1878 to the present day is well documented, but I have purposely limited my study to its earlier period that ended with the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. Several reasons dictated this limitation. In the first place, by 1914 Britain had firmly established her administrative pattern in Cyprus and laid the foundations for all later economic expansion, despite the dislocations caused by two world wars in one of which the island became an important military base. Secondly, to carry the study down to the present day would have necessitated the discussion of some very controversial and still unsettled problems—for example, the use of Cyprus as a NATO base, the campaign for union with Greece, and the rise of a trade-unionism permeated and in part controlled by a strong communist movement—problems which a contemporary student cannot discuss adequately or impartially until they have passed into history. I am deeply indebted for valuable comments on the first three sections of the book to the 1956 staff of the Department of Agriculture in Cyprus, especially to its Director, Mr. W. Allan, and its Assistant Director, Mr. W. Hirst; also to the Conservator of Forests at that period, Mr. D. F. Davidson. Dr. P. Dikaios, the Director of the Cyprus Museum, kindly allowed me to use the excellent library of his institution during the winter of 1955-56,

PREFACE

when I was living on the island; and after my return to Canada Miss Helen Wills, Librarian of the Geological Survey of Canada, diligently sought out and borrowed for me numerous rare books on Cyprus scattered in various libraries on the American continent. Finally, I would like to thank the Social Science Research Council of Canada which gave me a grant in aid of publication from funds provided by the Canada Council. I would also like to express my general thanks to the McGill University Press. Ottawa,

DIAMOND JENNESS

1962

vii

J AKE OF CO UE TS Preface Illustrations INTRODUCTION

The Geographical Background of Cyprus . PART I

Prehistoric, Classical, and Byzantine

1

Cyprus

BYZANTINE PERIOD: 330-1192 A.D.

6 8 12 17 17

PART II

French Lusignan Regime: 1192-1489

23

PART III

Venetian Regime: 1489-1571

43

PART IV

Turkish Regime: 1571-1878

54

PART V

British Rule: 1878-1888

118

PART VI

British Rule: 1889-1914

162

NEOLITHIC PERIOD: ca. 3700-2500 B.C.

.

BRONZE AGE: ca. 2500-1000 B C. EARLY IRON AGE: ca. 1000-58 B.C. ROMAN PERIOD: 58 B.0-330 A.D.

APPENDICES

The Carob Tree

193

II

Stone-walled Terraces

194

III

Growth of Agriculture as Shown by Tithes, 1879-1897

196

Imports and Exports Excluding Coin and Bullion, 1879-1913

197

Local Revenues and Expenditures, 1879-1913

198

VI

Agriculture from 1890 to 1914 .

199

VII

Sponge-fishing

210

IV

V

BIBLIOGRAPHY

211

INDEX

213 ix

II LLLUSTI \TION7' PHOTOGRAPHS

Facing page 24

I A Vendor of Carob Pods II a. A Typical View along the Northern Coastline b. A Sand Dune Kept in Check by Carob Trees . . III a. Winter Wheat Growing b. An Old Olive Tree IV A Terraced Hill Slope V a. A Stone Sheepfold b. A Shepherd and his Two Helpers VI Cow and Ass Drawing a Plough VII A Wooden Plough VIII a. Threshing Wheat on a Dirt Floor b. Winnowing Wheat IX Cypriot Camels X A "Persian" Well XI Mechanization in a Grain Field XII Planting Potatoes XIII A Water Vendor in Nicosia XIV Kalokhorio Dam XV Reforested Mountain Slopes and an Official Guest House XVI Nicosia, Capital of Cyprus

25 56 57 88 89 120 121 136 137 152 153 168 169 184 185

MAPS Frontispiece Map of Cyprus I Relief Map of Cyprus 2 II Ancient Towns and Their Medieval and Modern Successors 16 HI Sugar Plantations during the Lusignan Regime . 28 IV Carriage Roads in 1878 when Turkey Vacated Cyprus 136 V Carriage Roads in 1881 137 138 VI Carriage Roads in 1904 VII Forest Lands of Cyprus between 1884 and 1896. 146 xi

ILLUSTRATIONS

FIGURES 1 Population changes from the fourteenth to the twentieth 64 century 2 Percentage division of the cultivated land in 1844.

65

3 Grain production from 1500 to 1950

67

4 Increase in the number of acres planted to cotton in 84 consequence of the American Civil War of 1861-64 5 Cotton production from 1500 to 1950

85

6 Silk production from 1680 to 1913

88

7 Vegetation zones

108

8 Grain production from 1879 to 1889

130

9 Cereal prices per bushel 10 Growth of trade between 1850 and 1890

131 156

11 External trade from 1879 to 1913

157

12 Direction of trade in 1891 and 1907

171

13 Growth of population, revenues, and local expenditures from 1879 to 1913 173 14 Carob exports

179

15 Exports of citrus fruits and pomegranates from 18891912 179 16 Umber exports

184

17 Exports of gypsum from 1885 to 1910

185

APPENDIX VI

1 Prices of exported wine per gallon from 1886 to 1904 201 2 Cotton exports from 1883 to 1913

206

3 Exports of silk cocoons from 1878 to 1913 . . . • 206 4 Exports of cheese, wool, and hides

208

5 Values of livestock exports from 1893 to 1913 . • 209 xii

INTRODUCTION

THE GEOGRAPHICAL BACKGROUND OF CYPRUS Nature has placed Cyprus near the heart of the Levant, equidistant 350 miles from the modem cities of Ankara and Cairo. The island covers a rather small area, only 3,572 square miles, but its peculiar shape makes it seem much larger. From east to west its greatest length is about 140 miles, and its greatest breadth from north to south about 60 miles. A steep range of limestone mountains, the Kyrenia Range, borders the northern coastline, reaching in Mt. Kyparisso a height of 3,357 feet, while in the southwest a massif of predominantly igneous rocks attains in Mt. Olympus (or Troodos) an altitude of 6,403 feet. East and west between this massif and the Kyrenia Range—from the sea at Famagusta to the sea near Morphou—runs a wide and fertile plain, the Mesaoria, enfolding Nicosia, the capital of the island, at its centre. The mountains of Turkish Caramania parallel Cyprus' northern coast across a strait that in one place is no wider than 40 miles; and roughly parallel to the island's southern coast, but 240 miles away, lies Egypt, for two thousand years a gateway to southern Asia. Both these countries, Turkey and Egypt, ruled Cyprus for several centuries, Turkey in recent times, Egypt before the Christian era. Cyprus' easternmost tip points 60 miles across the sea to Syria, homeland of the Phoenicians, who colonized parts of southern Cyprus during the first millenium before Christ. Several hundred miles to the west lie the islands of the Aegean Sea, from which Greek settlers had come to Cyprus five hundred years before the Phoenicians. The coastline today cannot differ greatly from its form five thousand years ago. Geologically recent fluctuations in the relative levels of land and sea have left their mark in raised beaches at various places along the shore line; but these fluctuations were comparatively slight, and including as they did both subsidences and 1

IJ

PAPHOS

Mt. t3000,

401 3 ' s x

MORN! OL' 0. 11.

LI\IASSOL

Kl

LARNACA

1

I 12

I

0

Scale In Silk:

1000.3000 Fl.

Under 1000 Ft.

12

24

Over 5000 Ft.

13000.5000 Ft.

RELIEF MAP OF CYPRUS

I

1000

THE GEOGRAPHICAL BACKGROUND OF CYPRUS

elevations, may have evened themselves out. Burdon states that the salt lakes at Larnaca and Akhyritou originated within the period of human occupation, and some of the sand dunes around the coast even within the Christian era.1 The late bronze-age city of Engomi, near Famagusta, was built on a large sand dune that dammed back an extensive lagoon, long since drained and converted into farm land: in the years of its prosperity the city's walls probably touched the sea, whereas today they lie nearly two miles from it.2 These and similar changes in the form of the coastline may seem of relatively minor importance, but we should remember that every fall in the sea level, however temporary, necessarily increased the gradients of the rivers and streams and strengthened their powers of erosion. The island receives but scanty rainfall, ranging annually from 12 inches to 14 inches on the plains to 35 inches to 40 inches in the mountains, and practically the whole of it comes in the winter months. The rivers and streams that it feeds are very short, and none of them perennial, though in the earliest period of man's occupation of the island the longest of them, the Pedieos, may sometimes have flowed in its bed throughout the summer. The rain that falls on the mountains, especially on the northern Kyrenia Range, which is built largely of porous limestones, either penetrates deep below the surface and re-emerges in sudden springs, or races down the steep slopes, fills the beds of streams that are usually dry during six to eight months of the year, and sweeps on in destructive floods —except where man is now controlling it by catchment basins, or diverting it into mazes of irrigation channels. Earthquakes supplement the devastating work of the rivers by intermittently blocking some of the channels with landslides and by fissuring the underground rocks to change the courses and outlets of the subterranean streams. The rivers themselves swing from bank to bank in the wide, shingle-filled beds, and at every flood those that flow through farm lands carve huge gashes in the fields that line their courses. Nature alone shaped the major outlines of the island's surface, but man, by destroying the original cover of forest and woodland, has forced her to mar some of the details of her handiwork. The disfigurement is most noticeable in the flood plains of the Yialias 1 Cyprus, Water Supply and Irrigation Department, The Underground Water Resources of Cyprus, a report by D. J. Burdon (Nicosia, 1952), p. 10. Can the "Akhyritou" of that passage be in error for "Akrotiri," the salt lake near Limassol which probably developed at the same time as Larnaca Lake? 2 Ibid., p. 9; Sir George Hill, History of Cyprus (Cambridge, 1940), I, 12.

3

THE ECONOMICS OF CYPRUS

and Pedieos Rivers, where the surface, composed of amazingly fertile sediments—in places several metres thick—washed down from the enclosing mountains, has been so gouged and gulleyed that its appearance no longer resembles that of prehuman times. To the westward, on the extensive terra rossa and rendzina soils, sheet erosion is inflicting even greater damage than gulley erosion; over substantial areas of the plain it is wearing down the fields to the subsoil, and from the subsoil to the parent rock. In the mountains, finally, where once grew stately pines and cedars, deforestation and subsequent erosion have produced large areas of rocky wastes that in some places cover a third or more of the land available to the villages.$ The scouring and gouging and gulleying of the land, though most conspicuous perhaps on the central plain and its surrounding slopes, has taken place in all districts and still continues. Near Geunyeli northwest of Nicosia, and perhaps elsewhere, one may see instances of stream capture that must have occurred since the removal of the woodland cover and the ploughing of the unprotected earth: for here the beating of the rain on the naked, upturned ground, and the runoff of the water in fast flowing rills and streams, have washed away much of the surface soil and channelled the land in all directions until some of the gulleys have cut back their heads far enough to intersect and divert other watercourses. Man's denudation of the land did not originate this process, of course, but merely accelerated it. Long before he set foot upon the island, the Palaeomylus River, which had been draining only a few slopes, apparently, on the north side of the Kyrenia Range, cut back right through that range to capture another stream that was draining some southward-facing slopes. Not deforestation alone, but the faulty agriculture that succeeded it, hastened the ravages of erosion. In the treeless, southern foothills of the Kyrenia Range, where the beds of sandstone are tilted on edge over a distance of perhaps forty miles, wind and rain have exposed parallel bands of more resistant rock, separated from one another by narrow strips of shallow soil. Here, every winter for countless generations, farmers have ploughed the undulating strips against the contours because it gives them longer furrows, 8 Cf.: "Around Ayia Anna in the Larnaca district, the limestone hills, now largely derelict, are rich in ruins of a contour-terraced cultivation developed in a more prosperous era." Cyprus, Land Utilization Committee, Report of the Land Utilization Committee, 1946 (Nicosia, 1946), pp. 15-16.

4

THE GEOGRAPHICAL BACKGROUND OF CYPRUS

although each rainstorm claws the broken surface and washes down a perceptible amount of its soil. In places they have tried to hold back the vanishing soil with a stone wall, a thorn-bush break, or a scattering of poplar trees. But such remedies are temporary only. Nature presses her attack relentlessly, and already considerable areas of once fertile land have degenerated into barren wastes of useless shale.* s Ibid., pp.

27-28.

5

PART I

PREHISTORIC, CLASSICAL, AND BYZANTINE CYPRUS NEOLITHIC PERIOD: ca. 3700-2500 B.C.

The Greek colonists who landed on the northern and eastern coasts of Cyprus sometime during the second millenium before Christ found the island already occupied by a people that has remained nameless. Yet it was relatively late in human history that man reached Cyprus, for archaeologists have discovered as yet no traces of palaeolithic or mesolithic remains, only neolithic settlements that date back nearly six thousand years. During these six thousand years of human occupation erosive forces and the deliberate works of man have so transformed the island's surface that its earliest settlers would hardly recognize it were they to revisit it today. When they first arrived, roughly 3700 B.C., they found it clothed in virgin forests, not the dark, dense forests of northern lands, but open woods with trees spaced rather far apart, as regulated by the dry Mediterranean climate. Troodos and Aleppo pine probably dominated the upper slopes of the mountains as they do today, but amid the pines there flourished stands of oak and Cyprus cedar—the latter now rare and sternly protected—and, growing as an understory, smaller oak and arbutus. The Aleppo pine, the oak, the cypress, the wild olive, the plane, the alder, and the juniper may have been the dominant trees on the lower mountain slopes and in certain parts of the lowlands; but the carob and clumps of such shrubs as terebinth and myrtle would also have contended for the soil up to about two thousand feet.'. The wide plain that runs across the middle of the island probably supported a continuous covering of open woodland and scrub, except in those swamp areas, most numerous near the coast, where winter floods spread their waters uncontrolled and filled the 1 As to the question whether or not the carob tree was indigenous, see Appendix I.

6

PREHISTORIC, CLASSICAL, AND BYZANTINE CYPRUS

dips and the hollows.2 Absent from the landscape were certain trees now fairly conspicuous on this plain, among them the stone pine, which is helping to reclaim the sand dunes, the eucalyptus, and the acacia. The first was introduced, apparently, in Roman times; the other two reached Cyprus from Australia less than a century ago. At the time of the first settlements there grazed within the woods a special variety of wild sheep, today reduced in number to about three hundred; hares, which are still numerous; and deer, whose antlers have provided man all over the world with excellent tool handles. There were also goats and pigs on the island, for their bones have been found with those of sheep in a neolithic settlement near Khirokitia, just off the Nicosia-Limassol road, which was occupied sometime between 3700 and 3400 B.C. But whether these animals were wild or domesticated we do not know. The neolithic inhabitants of Khirokitia and elsewhere seem to have been farmers as well as hunters or shepherds, for their homes contained flint sickles for cutting grain, and querns for grinding it; without ploughs, however, their agriculture must have been just gardening, a mere scratching of the ground with hoes and digging sticks. Most of the neolithic villages lay near perennial springs or streams in the foothills of the northern and southern mountains, facing the sea, yet far enough from it to be safe from piratical raids, and also from some of the mosquitoes that bred on the marshy flats. Their inhabitants seem to have avoided the central plain, perhaps, as some writers think, because it was too heavily wooded, although its dense scrub, thickets, and marshland may have been greater impediments than its woodlands. They must have disliked the mountains too, except for hunting and perhaps grazing their flocks, for they rarely built permanent homes at heights more than one thousand feet above sea level. Archaeologists have discovered several score neolithic sites during the last half-century, and new 2 "It is by no means certain that forests ever clothed the wide plain, if by `forests' is meant close stands of timber trees with a more or less closed canopy. There were doubtless good and extensive stands of woodland and even forest in the higher rainfall zones, but the vegetation cover of the plains may have been very variable, with some form of woody vegetation predominating. This may have been open woodland or scrub, or scrub woodland and thicket, with occasional tall trees and patches of woodland." W. Allan, Director of Agriculture, Cyprus, personal communication. 3 See P. Dikaios, Khirokitia (Oxford, 1953) for the description of various artefacts and their use.

7

THE ECONOMICS OF CYPRUS

ones are coming to light almost yearly. If all were occupied contemporaneously, they would indicate a very considerable population; but without doubt they mark successive settlements, since the Neolithic era in Cyprus lasted for at least a thousand years. Of external trade relations during this era few traces remain. The economy of the island was geared to mere subsistence, for the aborigines' hoes and digging sticks did not favour extensive cultivation, and their harvest of grain must have been quite small. Apart from wheat, their main food was probably meat, supplemented by a little fish and various fruits and vegetables. Cheese would have become an important item in the diet once sheep and goats were domesticated, as they doubtless were, if not at Khirokitia, at least before the Neolithic era ended. However, we can merely speculate on this subject because, apart from animal bones, no identifiable traces of food have been unearthed from any neolithic site. BRONZE AGE: ca. 2500-1000 B.c. Although neolithic man doubtless opened up many small tracts in the island's forests, he did not radically change its landscape. About 2500 B.C., however, a new era dawned. A report may have spread through Anatolia, or Syria, that the precious metal, copper, could be found in Cyprus, for new settlers flocked over from the mainland, bringing with them tools and weapons of bronze, together with horses, oxen, and ploughs. Rather surprisingly, they also brought camels, for one was sacrificed in a tomb at Katydhata, about five miles south of Morphou Bay:4 but these animals could hardly have survived many centuries, since neither archaeology nor written history reports them on Cyprus again until far into the Christian era. The newcomers, with horses and oxen to draw their ploughs, could turn over much larger acreages of land than their predecessors could cultivate with simple hand tools. They required more acreage, too, not for themselves, but for their horses and oxen, which could not thrive, like the sheep and goats, on the island's indigenous pastures and low-growing shrubs, but needed seed grasses such as wheat and barley, the principal food of horses in Homer's world. The Bronze Age, therefore, inaugurated a more intensive assault on the forests. Although the majority of the population still 4

8

E. Gjerstad, Studies on Prehistoric Cyprus (Uppsala, 1926), p. 75.

PREHISTORIC, CLASSICAL, AND BYZANTINE CYPRUS

inhabited villages in the foothills, an ever increasing number cleared out sites and built their homes on the still wooded central plain, where the soil was deeper and the plough could range more widely. As time went by, they exploited more and more the copper deposits in the Troodos Mountains, trading both metal and ores to lands across the sea, and their mining operations too made inroads on the forests by consuming large quantities of wood fuel in smelting the ores. Finally, sea trade introduced another destructive factor, shipbuilding, for which the island could supply three excellent timbers, pine, oak, and cedar.' Toward the end of the Bronze Age Cyprus may have exported timber, for a record from the fourteenth century B.C. states that it was sending valuable wood to Egypt .° Even at that early period then it may have become, as it was later, one of the principal shipbuilding and lumber-exporting regions in the eastern Mediterranean; and Homer may have possessed a reasonable basis for his story that a king in Cyprus, Cinyras, promised Agamemnon fifty ships for the expedition against Troy.' It may be true that "we should not think of bronze-age trade, or indeed that of later ages, in terms of present-day volumes. The tiny ships of those days did not consume much timber; and what was to Bronze Age and even later peoples a rich source of timber or other produce might well be negligible in present-day terms."' Nevertheless, man has always destroyed far more timber than he has used or carried away, and there is no reason to believe that Cypriot woodsmen of the Bronze and early Iron Age gave more thought to conservation, or were less wasteful in their methods, than their contemporaries in neighbouring Lebanon, who stripped that country's mountains of its magnificent cedar forests. Agricultural, mining, and shipbuilding activities brought about a profound change in the island's economy. It ceased to be one of ' Cyprus "is rich in wine and oil, and uses home-grown wheat. There are mines of copper in plenty at Tamassos, in which are produced sulphate of copper and copper-rust, useful in the healing art. Eratosthenes talks of the plains as being formerly full of wood run to riot, choked in fact with undergrowth and uncultivated. The mines were of some little service, the trees being cut down for the melting of copper and silver; and of further help was shipbuilding, when men sailed over the sea without fear and with large fleets. But when even so they were not got under leave was given to those who would and could cut them down to keep the land they had cleared in full possession and free of taxes." Strabo in C. D. Cobham, Excerpta Cypria (Cambridge, 1908), p. 3. Sir George Hill, History of Cyprus (Cambridge, 1940), I, 43. Treeless Egypt had long obtained most of its timber from Syria and perhaps Crete. 9 Ibid., p. 68. S W. Allan, personal communication.

9

THE ECONOMICS OF CYPRUS

mere subsistence based mainly on the hunting and breeding of sheep, goats, and pigs. Instead it rested solidly on agriculture, on the cultivation of the soil with the hoe and the ox-drawn plough, and the production of so much food that a considerable proportion of the population could now devote its energy to industry and commerce alone.° Prosperity grew with the centuries, the population increased, and a few villages blossomed at last into real cities, of which the largest, Engomi, known to the Egyptians and Hittites as Alashiya, was a celebrated commercial port in the period 15001000 B.c. The ships that carried copper overseas brought home ivories and gems from Egypt and fine pottery from the Aegean. For the first but not the last time in its history Cyprus had become a crossroad in the trade of the civilized world. Colonization followed trade. While Cypriot merchants were establishing an outpost at Ras Shamra, on the Syrian coast near Latakia, Achaean traders and refugees from the Aegean, fleeing the continual invasions and strife that culminated in the Trojan War and the Dorian invasions, streamed in larger and larger numbers to the safety of distant Cyprus until they were powerful enough to impose their Greek language, and to a large extent their Greek culture also, on its non-Greek inhabitants. Homer's poems mirror the life of these Aegeans, and from his Iliad and Odyssey we can gather some idea of their diet and land practices, which they also imposed, we may presume, on the Cypriots they overran at the close of the Bronze Age. One important change had taken place since the Neolithic era. Only princes and wealthy people could now afford meat daily. To the common man, then as now, it was a luxury, to be enjoyed on special occasions only. The staple food of the peasant and labourer was a cake or thick porridge made from either wheat or barley and flavoured with leeks or garlic, cheese or curds. Supplementing this diet were various fruits and vegetables. Of the latter Homer mentions only two, beans and chick peas, which may have been 0 "The plough was certainly in use, but I doubt if all, or even a large proportion of the land was so cultivated. It would be a relatively rich cultivator who could afford a plough and oxen: this is the case today. Probably much of the land was still hand-cultivated. Even today a significant proportion of the land of Cyprus is still cultivated with the hoe. "Did a large proportion of the population devote its energy to commerce and industry alone? It depends on what we mean by a large proportion. It may have been a relatively small proportion supported by the `normal surplus' of a large number of subsistence or near subsistence cultivators—independent peasants, serfs, or workers on the estates of temple gods or tenants of the temple gods. Industrial workers may also have been part-time farmers, as many are today." W. Allan, personal communication. 10

PREHISTORIC, CLASSICAL, AND BYZANTINE CYPRUS

ground and cooked in the same way as the cereals. Figs and grapes were the most important fruits, but pears, apples (? crab apples) and pomegranates flourished in the garden of Alcinous. That garden, Homer says (Odyssey VII), was irrigated, and we can be sure that in Cyprus also fields were now irrigated, particularly since the island had been under the suzerainty of those skilled irrigationists the Egyptians during the latter half of the second millenium B.C. The water wheel, however, was yet unknown. Homer does not mention carobs, and his heroes did not eat the fruit of the olive, although they prized its oil as an unguent. Seymour, from whom I have gathered most of these facts, conjectured that the Aegeans may have known the wild olive only, and that it remained for later generations to cultivate a larger and more edible variety.10 It is extremely hazardous even to guess at what may have been the population of Cyprus about 1000 B.C., when the Bronze Age was ending and tools of iron were coming into daily use. Judging from the extent of its ruins, Engomi alone contained several thousand inhabitants, and it was not the only city in Cyprus at that period. Perhaps 150,000 would not be an excessive estimate of its total population.11 Now 150,000 people whose staple foods were wheat and barley would have required four or five times that number of cultivable acres to provide for their own needs, and for the needs of their oxen and equines.12 To furnish these acres the lowlands must have to T. D. Seymour, Life in the Homeric Age (New York, 1908), Chaps. 12-13. 11 More generous is another estimate. "For the similarly prosperous period of the Late Bronze Age we might, perhaps, though it is the merest guess, take 200,000 as a possibility, followed by a marked decline to perhaps half that number for the Iron Age." R. Gunnis, Historic Cyprus (London, 1936), p. 8. 12 Cf. Cyprus, Census of Population and Agriculture, 1946, by D. A. Percival (Nicosia, 1946), p. 65, which upholds an earlier estimate of 70 donums (23 acres) as the minimum holding required to maintain in the plains and coastal areas a farmer and his family of five persons. Mr. Allan comments on this, however: "I do not think that the land requirement should be calculated on the basis of modern European requirements in a cash economy. I have studied many African tribes whose economy is perhaps not very far removed from that of the bronze-age cultivator. Even where the plough is in fairly general use and cattle are numerous the area cropped per head of population is very rarely more than one acre. This supplies their requirements and leaves a `normal surplus.' If we assume that two acres per head of population were required, that fertility could be maintained on a basis of one year's cultivation to two years fallow, and that there were about 2,000 square miles of cultivable land, the island could have supported a population of slightly more than 200,000. The population-carrying capacity on a basis of subsistence may have been greater than this, since less than two acres per

11

THE ECONOMICS OF CYPRUS

been largely denuded of their woods,18 while even the mountains would have carried many scars inflicted by axes and fires. The larger the areas of bare land, the more scope there would have been for the forces of erosion to pursue their work. Streams and rivers running in full spate would have eaten into their unprotected banks and carried heavy loads of silt seaward. It may well be, indeed, that Engomi declined and was at last abandoned, not so much from political causes as because the Pedieos River, unchecked by dams or an extensive network of irrigation channels, rapidly pushed forward its delta, silted up its harbour, and finally severed the city altogether from the sea. Thus during the Bronze Age the face of the island gradually changed. Over wide areas of lowland, where neolithic man had found virgin forests, there now waved fields of wheat and barley, or the land lay fallow awaiting the next crop. Wherever the soil proved infertile or too saline, wherever it lost its fertility or became eroded to the bare rock, it was abandoned to the shepherds, or deserted altogether and allowed to reclothe itself with scrub. And all the time the processes of erosion kept working. It was not man alone who aided them but nature herself; for she had formed the core and crest of the northern Kyrenia Range from a limestone that readily dissolves in the carbonic acid of rainwater, leaving sinkholes and caverns that collapse in the course of years and scar the two faces of the range with deep gullies even without the help of running water.14 EARLY IRON AGE:

ca. 1000-58 n.c.

With the transition to the Iron Age, the fortunes of Cyprus became more and more closely linked with those of its neighbours to both east and west. The Achaean immigrants, who are credited with founding the city of Salamis, Engomi's successor, may have head may have sufficed, the better lands might have been worked on an alternate crop and fallow system, and there was probably a certain amount of irrigation and possibly more cultivable land than there is today. " Oberhummer believes that the lowlands were still predominantly wooded in the first half of the last millenium, and only in the fifth and fourth centuries B.c. became largely cleared through the expansion of industry and the need for more land. E. Oberhummer, Die Insel Cypern Munich, 1903), p. 248. 14 Cf.: "From Mr. Cawley's observations on the northern range limestones he was convinced that the gullies were not due to water erosion, but to solution and to geological structure." Cyprus, Proceedings of a Conference on Land Use in a Mediterranean Environment (Nicosia, 1947), p. 16.

12

PREHISTORIC, CLASSICAL, AND BYZANTINE CYPRUS

been responsible also for the division of the island into a number of kingdoms modelled on those around the Aegean. During the eighth century B.c. Phoenicians settled in the town of Citium (near Larnaca), and probably also at Amathus and other places on or near the southern coast;5 and two centuries later a combined Cypriot and Phoenician fleet fought and was defeated by a fleet from Egypt, which reimposed for a few years the suzerainty she had lost at the end of the Bronze Age. Achaemenid Persia wrested control from Egypt, and a contingent of 150 Cypriot ships attached to the Persian forces for the invasion of Greece fought ingloriously at Salamis in 480 B.c. against the Athenian fleet. Later, with the help of Athens, which saw in Cyprus an emergency source of wheat, Salamis and some other philhellenic kingdoms on the island tried to throw off the Persian yoke; but they met with little success until Alexander the Great appeared and joined their fortunes with his. In the struggles for power among Alexander's successors, Cyprus fell for a third time under the rule of Egypt, and only in 58 B.c. did it become a Roman colony. Ancient writers have little to say concerning the effect of these events on the island's economy. The introduction of the potter's wheel at the beginning of the Iron Age must have stimulated the ceramic industry and with it foreign trade, because during the seventh and sixth centuries B.c. Cypriot pottery, especially female statuettes, were exported to Rhodes in considerable quantities and thence diffused throughout the Aegean.1° Shipbuilding continued to flourish, and with it, apparently, the shipment overseas of timber, of which there is a hint in the book of Ezekiel (xxvii. 6). Textiles are mentioned in a list of fifth- and fourth-century exports; presumably they were of wool, since the island's flax yields a poor fibre owing to the inadequate rainfall, and cotton, which became so important a crop in Cyprus later, had not yet established itself in the eastern Mediterranean.17 Agriculture had evidently expanded, 15 Mitchell says that they exploited the copper mines at Tamassus (near modern Politiko) and established permanent settlements at Idalium (Dhali), Lapethus (old Lapithos or Lambousa), Larnaca and other places. H. Mitchell, The Economics of Ancient Greece (Cambridge, 1940), p. 302. '°Hi11, I, 95; Dikaios, Guide to the Cyprus Museum (Nicosia, 1953), p. 38. 17 During the Hellenistic period "Cyprus, most of the Phoenician towns, and Damascus manufactured not only common woollens, but carpets of various colours and tapestries adorned with fantastic animals." J. Toutain, The Economic Life of the Ancient World (London, 1930), p. 126.

13

THE ECONOMICS OF CYPRUS

because in these same two centuries, despite a rising population,18 the island exported grain and mustard to Athens on several occasions." This expansion could have been produced, and doubtless was, in two ways: by extending the area under cultivation and by increasing the average yield per acre. One may conjecture, therefore, that more land was deforested and brought under the plough; also that more crops were grown under full or partial irrigation, through the digging of shallow wells to tap the underground water, through the construction of aqueducts, and through the building of small dams and cisterns to retain some of the winter and spring runoff so that it might be distributed over the adjacent fields. Simple works of this character lay well within the competence of the Cypriots, as is evident from the great aqueduct, capable of supplying 120,000 persons, that linked the city of Salamis with Kythrea spring,20 and from the numerous cisterns for collecting rainwater that were dug in the limestone rock at Vomit, the fifth-century palace near Xeros in Morphou Bay, and at Amathus, the capital of another ancient kingdom on the south coast. Intensive agriculture such as now prevailed must have called for definite farm practices to avoid the rapid exhaustion of the cultivated land. Already in the Bronze Age, probably, farmers had learned to follow a grain crop with one or two years of fallow, and to let sheep and goats wander over the fallow and enrich it with their droppings; but whether in the pre-Christian period some strewed their fields with manure from the sheep-folds, and alternated the grain crop with a crop of vetch that would help to restore the soil's fertility, we do not know. 21 18 Cf.: "No figures of value have come to light about the population of Cyprus before the late 15th century . . . Sober authorities place the population in classical times at 300,000 to 400,000." Census of Population and Agriculture, 1946, p. 3. W. Allan comments: "A population of 400,000 is not altogether improbable, but the great majority would be living at or very near a bare subsistence level." Personal communication. 10 Some of the wheat may have been grown in Egypt, not in Cyprus, although it was carried in Cypriot vessels. 20 "Traces of the main channel of what appears to me to be the third century aqueduct can still be seen today near the spring at Kythrea. The level of these remains does not appear to be above that of the spring. I have traced them several miles eastwards towards Salamis, so I think that they are certainly the ruins of the original aqueduct to that place." D. F. Davidson, Conservator of Forests, Cyprus, personal communication. 21 "The main factors responsible for increasing the human-carrying capacity of the land may have been improved crop varieties ... (and also livestock) as a result of selection over many centuries, and a greater range of crops and increased irrigation, rather than any very significant change in field practice." W. Allan, personal communication.

14

PREHISTORIC, CLASSICAL, AND BYZANTINE CYPRUS

Early writers say nothing about the form of land tenure. Nevertheless, we may reasonably presume that whatever it may have been in preceding centuries, by the time of Christ all the better farm land was divided into estates, some small and some large, as in most other countries that were under the domination of Rome; that the smaller ones were cultivated by families of free peasants, each aided by one or two slaves, and the larger ones either by slaves working under the supervision of slave or ex-slave bailiffs, or by tenant farmers who paid a money rent and/or a proportion of the produce. We glimpse the progressive deterioration of the forests during this period in a brief remark by the Greek naturalist Theophrastus: "In Cyprus at any rate the kings do not cut down the cedar trees, but preserve them and husband them, influenced in part by the difficulty of transporting them."22 His words suggest that the cedars had disappeared from all low-lying regions and survived in the higher mountains only. With them, we may surmise, had gone the finest of the readily accessible pines, which were almost equally prized for timber, and which also yielded resin and turpentine. All through the early Iron Age Cyprus continued to export copper and probably a little vitriol, which was widely used in the ancient world for tanning skins black; but whether it extracted any iron from its considerable deposits of pyrites is doubtful. Its miners seem to have recovered small quantities of gold, most of it probably in the treatment of copper ores;23 and they worked the chrysotile asbestos at Amianthus, in the Troodos area, using its thread mainly for lampwicks, although later writers affirm that the people of classical times manufactured an asbestos cloth in which they wrapped the corpses of important people before cremating them. The Cypriots mined also the gypsum outcrops near Larnaca and exported that mineral to Greece, where it was employed for making stucco, and sometimes for fulling woollen cloth;24 doubtless they themselves used it for the same purposes, the more prosperous among them coating both the outside and the inside of 22 23

Trans. from the Greek text given in Oberhummer, p. 248. Cf. Giovanni Mariti. Travels in the Island of Cyprus. Trans. by C. D. Cobham (Cambridge, 1909), pp. 13, 87, 90-91. Hill (III, 800) remarks "It was discovered in 1934-35 that many of the `gossan' outcrops contain gold in payable quantity. During 1936 gold was discovered at nearly all mining sites. The production figures, in kilograms, for the years 1934-39 are 407, 214, 653, 736, 910, 510." " Mitchell, pp. 183, 203.

15

PAPHOS

• Old Paphos KOUKLIA

• New Paphos

• SØ XEROS Tama suS

Amathas •

•

LIMASSOL

POLITIKO

EPISKOPI

Curium •

Amianthus • AMIANDOS

Vouni

•

Lambousa • • LAPITHOS

atium •

Idalium DHALI

•

ANCIENT TOWNS

FAMAGUSTA

ANCIENT : Lower Case MEDIEVAL and MODERN : Capitals Scale : I inch c 12 miles

AND THEIR MEDIEVAL AND MODERN SUCCESSORS

LARNACA

•

• Salamis Engomi •

PREHISTORIC, CLASSICAL, AM) BYZANTINE CYPRUS

their stone or adobe houses with gypsum plaster. In this same period, or even late in the Bronze Age, we may presume that the islanders learned to construct limekilns such as still dot the Kyrenia Mountains, and to make as good mortar and cement as did the Greeks of the mainland. ROMAN PERIOD: 58 n.c.-330 A.D. Roman legions greatly enlarged the western civilized world and at the same time knit it more closely together. They made the Mediterranean an undivided sea through which men and goods could travel in comparative safety from Spain to the Crimea, from Britain to Arabia. Their unification of the area, however, robbed Cyprus of the strategic importance it had possessed in earlier centuries, so that most writers of the first millenium A.D. pass it over in silence. That millenium began auspiciously, even though the Romans ruthlessly plundered the island when they took over its administration. The new masters gave it peace and, with their usual passion for engineering, dissected it with better roads than it had ever known before. One crossed the central plain from the east coast to the west; a second, much longer, encircled the island; and several short ones ran north and south to link and feed the other two. Every main road had its solid bridges of stone or brick wherever they were needed, and aqueducts brought water to at least three of the larger cities: Salamis, Citium, and Paphos. Throughout the island there was great building activity, as the ancient quarries at Lambousa, Kyrenia, and elsewhere bear witness. Fine public edifices adorned the cities; the forum at Salamis was one of the largest in the empire. The copper mines may have languished through competition from mines in Spain and France, but trade flourished, Rome replacing Athens, apparently, as a market for surplus grain. So prosperous was the island that thousands of Jews migrated to it, swelling the colonies they had established there during the pre-Roman regime: but in 115 A.D. these Jews revolted, and half the island's population perished—one writer says 240,000 persons—before it found tranquility again.25 BYZANTINE PERIOD: 330-1192 A.D. Rome declined, and her empire broke into two parts, an eastern and a western. Cyprus fell to the eastern half, the Byzantine Em25

Hill, I, 241-3.

17

THE ECONOMICS OF CYPRUS

pire, and for eight hundred years endured "Dark Ages" that have left us very few memories. Once more it was depopulated, this time by a famine that followed several years of drought. A series of earthquakes shook the island, shattering the city of Salamis, which a tidal wave then engulfed. Even if we discount the reports of later writers that this succession of disasters, all of which occurred during the first half of the fourth century, caused the island to be uninhabited for thirty or more years,28 we can be certain that it forced out of cultivation large areas of land that had long been under the plough. For another three hundred years, however, Cyprus enjoyed comparative peace, although raids by Isaurian pirates just after 400 underscored the decline of its shipping and foreshadowed the devastating incursions of the Saracens later. In 671 the Byzantine emperor, Justinian II, tried to remove all the inhabitants to Cyzicus on the Sea of Marmora, and though the exiles were repatriated seven years afterwards, it must have taken many years to rebuild the abandoned homes, reclaim the neglected fields, restore the olive orchards and the vineyards, and repair the dams and irrigation channels. Indeed much of the land must have remained permanently derelict and reverted to scrub or forest,27 because the Saracens, who twice already in that century had overrun and sacked the island, now resumed their intermittent raids and extracted, or shared with the Byzantine emperor in Constantinople, a considerable tribute. It was Cyprus' misfortune that the collapse of the Roman Empire and the rise of Mohammedanism made it once more what it had been two thousand years before, a frontier between a Greek and a Syro-Egyptian world that contended with each other for the mastery of the eastern Mediterranean.28 That struggle assumed a different aspect at the end of the first millenium A.D., when the Seljuk Turks began their expansion and western Europe, rousing itself from the lethargy of the Dark Ages, diverted its surplus energy into the Crusades. The island then became a " Cf. S. Lusignano, Chorogralia e Breve Historia Universale dell' Isola di Cipro (Bologna, 1573), p. 89; Florio Bustron, "Chronique de l'fle de Chypre," Mélanges Historiques (Paris, 1886), V, 44. 27 Goats would have checked much regrowth of pines, oaks, and other true forest trees. 28 An Arab writer, Muqaddasi, who compiled a description of Syria in Baghdad about 985 A.D. remarked that Cyprus "is full of populous cities, and offers the Muslims many advantages in their trade thither, by reason of the great quantities of merchandise, stuffs and goods, which are produced there. The island is in the power of whichever nation is overlord in these seas." Cobham, Cypria, p. 5. One suspects this writer in an Abbasid caliphate, however, of special pleading. Syria at this time was independent of Baghdad, and Cyprus had been recaptured by Byzantium.

18

PREHISTORIC, CLASSICAL, AND BYZANTINE CYPRUS

strategic springboard in the struggle for the Holy Land, and its defenceless inhabitants, pillaged by Byzantines and Crusaders alike,29 found no respite from their sufferings until 1192, when the latter had been expelled from the Holy Land and a French count, Guy de Lusignan, bought Cyprus as a fief to compensate himself for his "Kingdom of Jerusalem" which he was unable to defend. Thus Cyprus, which under Roman rule had so hopefully entered the Christian era, drifted throughout the twelfth century in a fog of misery. The island had been bled white. Most of its flourishing cities had been destroyed or reduced to petty villages,S° many coastal farm lands abandoned and their inhabitants driven inland, not a few into the mountains. The copper mines that had once brought wealth and prosperity declined after the collapse of the Roman Empire and finally closed altogether,81 not to re-open until the twentieth century. Shipbuilding, which was declining even in Roman times, shrank soon afterwards into insignificance, because the lowland forests had vanished and the more accessible mountains had been stripped of their best pines, oaks, and cedars.82 The excellent roads and aqueducts left by the Romans had fallen into decay, and the population been reduced to such misery that an archbishop of Cyprus about 1100 could write, with pardonable exaggeration, that "their food was such as the Baptist ate, they went naked to the day, sheltered only in caves; the fruits of their labours were taken from them."38 Nevertheless all was not deep shadow. Once the fury of an invasion was spent, it made little difference to the humble peasant whether his new lords spoke Arabic, Greek, or French. New and 29 Corrupt Byzantine commanders "under pretense of protecting the coasts and islands, ... levy from the Cyclades and both mainlands, and equally from Crete and Cyprus, wheat, barley, pulse, cheese, wine, meat, oil, coins and anything else the islands possess." Hill, I, p. 302. 39 Old Lapithos (Lambousa) had been replaced by New Lapithos two miles inland; Salamis first by Constantia, then by Famagusta; Cilium, by Larnaca; Amathus, by Limassol; Curium, by Episkopi. A new village, Kouklia, was springing up near the site of ancient Paphos, which had been superseded in the pre-Christian era by New Paphos, now Paphos. See Map on page 16. S1 Mas Latrie believed that the calamities of the fourth century brought about their abandonment. Louis de Mas Latrie, Histoire de l'Ile de Chypre sous le Regne des Princes de la Maison de Lusignan (Paris, 1852), I, 83. Others have speculated that mining ceased owing to the exhaustion of wood fuel in the vicinity, or through inability to cope with water and ventilation. 32 Yet a little timber still went abroad. Oberhummer quotes from an Arab source which states that about the year 820 A.D. 50 cedar and oak trees were cut down and conveyed to Jerusalem. Oberhummer, p. Ø. 33 Hill, I, 303. By "food such as the Baptist ate" the archbishop meant the pod of the carob. Cf.: "In most parts of the island is a tree producing

19

TITE ECONOMICS OF CYPRUS

old alike scorned him as an underling, an essential breadwinner whom they might oppress but could not dispense with. The Crusader kings from the West, to whom the Cypriots were as alien as the Mohammedans, made no attempt to impose on them the traditional feudal system of France, with its delicately balanced pattern of rights and obligations. They maintained the system unchanged in their relations with their own French followers, the knights and clergy, among whom they divided most of the good agricultural land, including the villages that worked it for a livelihood;84 but they left the Cypriots themselves in much the same state as they had found them. Not every peasant was tied to an estate: many—what proportion we do not know—possessed small plots of their own and were free to move about the island at will, though still obliged to render certain services to their king or overlord. As far as one can piece together the story from the meagre records, the vast majority of the native population continued to cultivate the same fields as before, under nearly the same conditions of peonage. Furthermore, slow changes had taken place during the Roman and Byzantine regimes which, insignificant as they appeared then, bore important fruit later. The ox-driven or donkey-driven water wheel, introduced probably in Roman times, extended the area of irrigable land.35 Presses with wooden screws, such as still operate on the island, increased the yield of oil from the olive groves; and flour mills driven by water or wind released a considerable amount of labour for other tasks.80 Though the lowlands had been denuded of their forests, the carob flourished in all the foothills and provided an extra food source for man and beast whenever the grain harvest failed. It furnished also a valuable fuel which, in the form of either wood or charcoal, must have been in steady demand by a horn-shaped fruit, generally called St John's bread, from an opinion that the Baptist, while he continued in the desert, lived on this fruit." Cobham, Cypria, p. 247. 34 'These [Nicosia, Baffo, Limissol and Famagusta] remain cities; the rest are villages, of which there may be 850. The latter were divided among the Court, the clergy, and the nobles, who draw from them large revenues." Cobham, p. 166. Cf. Mas Latrie, I, 48-50; III, 255 et seq. 35 There were still 4,830 water wheels on the island in 1946. 36 Byzantine rulers established four mills at Kythrea to grind all the wheat required by the surrounding population. These water-driven mills were seized on at least three occasions, in 1232, in 1680, and again in 1765 to starve out hostile forces in Nicosia. Destroyed in 1232 also were some windmills in Nicosia: but these machines are rarely mentioned in the literature and seem never 'to have been numerous, probably because the

20

PREHISTORIC, CLASSICAL, AND BYZANTINE CYPRUS

the dwellers on the treeless plain.87 There was also the silkworm which, smuggled into the West from China about 552 A.D., quickly established itself in Syria and doubtless spread soon afterwards to Cyprus, since it reached Sicily in the tenth century.88 Trees of the white mulberry were then planted in some of the towns and villages, and the raising of cocoons and the weaving of silk became a recognized industry. So too did the growing and weaving of cotton, which is said to have been fostered by Arab overlords, presumably in the twelfth or thirteenth century.39 Even the sugar cane may have been grown on the island before the Byzantine period ended, although its intensive cultivation did not come until later. Finally, one must not forget the camel, which seems not to be mentioned until the fourteenth century, but may actually have been introduced (or re-introduced) during the Saracen invasions.40 Besides its use as a pack animal (it carried much of the wheat that was ground at Kythrea), it furnished a useful textile material that, woven into the cloth called camlet, found a ready market both at home and abroad, especially in Egypt. Clearly then the fates had set the stage for a new era. Western Europe too had undergone a change. The darkness of the first millenium had lightened, and a new urban civilization with a less parochial outlook was demanding in larger quantities such exotic luxuries as silks, spices, dyes, perfumes, ivories, and precious stones. The Crusades brought into the Levant not only French, German, and English nobles and their retainers, but merchants and adventurers from Italy and Spain, avid to profit from the new trade channels that suddenly opened to their view. The struggle for the Holy Land stimulated rather than discouraged a lively commerce with the Arab world. Consequently, when the town of Acre fell to winds are too uncertain. D. Christodoulou, Land Consolidation Officer of the Department of Agriculture, Cyprus, believes that they were never used for drawing water, but only for grinding corn. Cf. Mas Latrie, I, 190, 285; Cobham, p. 351; H. C. Luke, Cyprus Under the Turks (Oxford, 1921), p. 47. 37 It remained for later generations to exploit the carob still further by making its pod one of the island's chief exports. 38 .1. B. Bury, History of the Later Roman Empire (London, 1923), II, 332; Mas Latrie, I, 84. Oberhummer, p. 285. Hill remarks that cotton seems to be first heard of in Cyprus in the fourteenth century. Hill, III, 817. Yet the fact that Sanudo, who wrote between 1306 and 1321, reported that considerable quantities could be obtained in Cyprus suggests that the plant had been introduced there many years before. A. S. Atiya, The Crusade in the Later Middle Ages (London, 1938), p. 124. 4° Oberhummer, p. 393. For its introduction during the Bronze Age see page 8.

21

THE ECONOMICS OF CYPRUS

the Egyptians in 1291, and the Crusaders lost their last foothold on the Syrian coast, Cyprus, ably governed by its earlier Lusignan kings, became the leading entrepot in the Levant and its capital, Nicosia, the principal money market. Italian captains carrying arms and slaves from the Black Sea to Venice and Genoa, called in at Limassol, Larnaca, and Famagusta to take on food and water, and to load some of the island's own products as well as goods brought there for transshipment. All ships and all wares, be they what they may, and come they from what part of the sea they will, must needs come first to Cyprus, and in no wise can they pass it by, and pilgrims from every country journeying to the lands over sea must touch at Cyprus. And daily from the rising of the sun to its going down are heard rumours and news. And the tongues of every nation under heaven are heard and read and talked; and all are taught in special schools.41

The change went deeper still. Although in the early centuries of the Christian era Arab traders had carried Italian coins and pottery to southern India and had brought back Asian spices to the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, yet the countries of the Orient remained hardly more than dreamlands to the citizens of the Roman Empire. By the thirteenth century, however, Italian merchant houses were well acquainted with the caravan routes that led into Central Asia, and even possessed a little authentic knowledge of the mighty kingdom of Cathay into which they vanished. True, the Mohammedans had interposed their own variegated civilization across all the trade routes. But the Mohammedans themselves were enterprising merchants, only too eager to serve as intermediaries between the West and the Far East; for they relied on their geographical position, and on the profits they reaped as middlemen, to maintain their own prosperity. So not just the eastern Mediterranean, but the whole Eurasian world was in movement, and one of the main currents swirled about Cyprus 42 41 L. von Suchen, a Westphalian priest who visited Cyprus between 1336 and 1341, in Cobham, p. 20. Cf. Mas Latrie, Vol. III, p. 557, n. 1. 42 Mas Latrie, I, 507-12.

22

PART II FRENCH LUSIGNAN REGIME: 1192-1489 Throughout the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, then, the island enjoyed a prosperity it had not known for a thousand years. Contemporary chroniclers, it is true, hardly noticed this: their ears were attuned to tales of war and court intrigues, and they rarely mentioned or even thought about the common workers who supplied the daily bread, or the sheep and goats that furnished the meat and cheese. Nevertheless, while Italian merchants in Famagusta were tallying their wares and counting their sequins; while the French king and his nobles were jousting and banqueting in Nicosia, or with falcons, tame cheetahs, and a long supply train of camels, were riding out to the mountains to hunt hares and wild sheep; on numberless large estates and tiny holdings throughout the island thousands of serfs and freemen were toiling in unwonted peace and tranquillity to raise food for themselves and their overlords, and commercial crops that the latter could sell overseas. The Knights Templars, that powerful and wealthy international order with commercial connections and credit facilities in England, France, the Low Countries, and Germany, led the way in exploiting the island's land resources and building up a thriving export trade. They and, after their suppression in 1311-12, their successors and heirs, the Knights Hospitallers, who by the fifteenth century had acquired no fewer than forty-one Cypriot villages with all the surrounding fields, favoured the production of wheat, cotton, olive oil, a special wine called commanderia, and particularly sugar cane, from all of which they obtained a revenue nearly as great as the king's.1 In the fourteenth century the island was exporting carob pods to the Bosphorus for animal food,2 and less than a hundred years later her largest customer, Venice, was demanding the same fruit in bulk for use in sweetmeats. By that time every Mediterranean power seemed to be hammering at Cyprus' gates, each contending with the others for control of her commerce and possession of her wealth. Louis de Mas Latrie, Histoire de l'lle de Chypre sous le Regne des Princes de la Maison de Lusignan (Paris, 1852), I, 191. 2 F. B. Pegolotti, La Pratica della Mercatura, ed. A. Evans (Cambridge, Mass., 1936), p. 81. 23

THE ECONOMICS OF CYPRUS

When the Moslem world, in pre-Lusignan and early Lusignan times, contributed cotton and sugar cane to the island's economy, it introduced a number of other food plants, some of which, e.g., spinach, still retain their Arabic names. Thenceforward cabbages, onions, and other vegetables abounded; oranges, lemons, and citrons blossomed and bore fruit wherever water was plentiful, and in one place, Episkopi, an attempt was made to establish bananas, although even today this fruit can maintain only a precarious foothold. Among the many vegetables that flourished at Kythrea was the cauliflower, which Europe transplanted from Cyprus, where it may have been indigenous, in 1604 A.D.3 Yet it is not until the sixteenth century, when the French Lusignan dynasty had gone its way, that we obtain a detailed list of the island's fruits and vegetables. A Hebrew merchant in Famagusta then catalogued a formidable number, and although a few of his items were imported, about 80 per cent of them must have been products of the island itself. There were "eating olives" as big as walnuts, pomegranates in great quantity, grapes, peaches, onions and leeks "finer than in Italy and costing twice as much," cabbages, and cauliflowers ("for a quattrine one can get almost more than one can carry"); also green stuff of every kind—beetroot, spinach, carrots, mint, marjoram, parsley, rue, and other herbs, plentiful and cheap; also pulse of all kinds, peas, lentils, white kidney beans, beans, rice, millet and the like; six walnuts for a quattrine, the same for a quince, "but these are small"; apples "scarce and poor," pears, no medlars, sorbs, or almonds, but an abundance of citrons, lemons, oranges, capers, pistachios, dates, breadfruit (sic), and figs.* Although no contemporary writer has described the farming methods of the Lusignan period, without doubt they coincided very R. Gunnis, Historic Cyprus (London, 1936), p. 308. C. D. Cobham, Excerpta Cypria (Cambridge, 1908), pp. 75 ff., condensed from Elias of Pesaro (1563). A contemporary writer also included almonds among the native products. S. Lusignano, Chorograiia e Breve Historia Universale dell' Isola di Cipro (Bologna, 1573), pp. 36 f. They may indeed have been indigenous, for the old Greek writer Athenaeus mentions that they grew on the island. E. Oberhummer, Die Insel Cypern (Munich, 1903), p. 296. Cf.: "Apples, pears, cherries, walnuts, filberts and medlars are found in the hill villages. These are said to have been introduced into the island in the time of the Lusignan kings." AP 1892, IX, C. 6764, p. 19 (see editor's note below). Editor's note: The parliamentary papers, Great Britain, Parliamentary Papers, Accounts and Papers (London, 1856-1914) are cited as AP throughout the book. The page numbers given in the references are those of the original Hansard set which was hand numbered by the binder. 3

4

24

PLATE I A VENDOR OF CAROB PODS WEIGHS HIS MERCHANDISE.

PLATE II A. TYPICAL VIEW ALONG THE NORTHERN COASTLINE. A WIND-BLOWN ALEPPO PINE CLINGING TO A HEADLAND LOOKS ACROSS A NARROW VALLEY TO A SECOND HEADLAND, AND THAT TO OTHER HEADLANDS BEYOND. A MOUNTAIN STREAM ENTERS THE VALLEY, BUT DRIES UP BEFORE IT REACHES THE SEA. A TRACTOR IS PLOUGHING THE CURVING FORESHORE. B. A SAND DUNE KEPT IN CHECK BY CAROB TREES.

7)iumond le

Diamond Je.

FRENCH LUSIGNAN REGIME : 1192-1489

closely with those outlined by numerous travellers from the fifteenth century onward, still observable in districts little touched by modem techniques. As in earlier centuries, the principal crops were wheat and barley: they were planted on cultivable land in every part of the island, both in open fields and in orchards of carobs and olives. The farmer (serf or freeman) turned up the soil about November with his ox-drawn wooden plough, and broke it, not with a harrow, but with a heavy board to which he added his own weight. He sowed by hand, using seed held back from the last harvest or supplied by his overlord; and he immediately ploughed the seed under before it could be devoured by birds. In April or May, when the grain ripened, he reaped it, and then carried the sheaves to the hard-trodden patch of ground that served as a threshing floor, where oxen dragged over them a heavy frame of planks, studded with flints on the underside, that separated the grain from the chaff but left it dark with grit and dirt, as Pliny had noticed more than a thousand years before. Thereafter for eighteen months the field remained fallow, grazed over by sheep and goats, whose droppings helped to restore its fertility. Occasionally, however, the farmer ploughed it again at the onset of winter and planted vetch to renew some of the nitrogen in the soil and provide fodder for his stock: then during the following summer he again left it fallow, and in the second winter sowed it once more to grain.5 By this rotation he would have harvested some 111/2 bushels of wheat per acre, which compares favourably with the average yield today in the big wheat-growing countries of Australia, Russia, Canada, and the United States.° The new crops, cotton and sugar cane, required more moisture than either wheat or barley to furnish good yields. Consequently they hardly affected the regime of the dry lands that comprised about 85 per cent of the cultivable area, though they profoundly altered that of the irrigable lands. Sugar cane was a winter crop that took the place of a grain; cotton, a summer one that needed a hot sun to mature its pods. The latter was therefore planted in 5 Gaudry, who visited Cyprus in 1853, recorded that cereal lands commonly lay fallow for from one to three years. In a later passage, however, he modified this statement, saying that while farmers sometimes followed the old method of fallows, often they alternated, growing wheat one year and vetch or cotton the next. They sowed the vetch in February and harvested it at the end of May or beginning of June. A. Gaudry, Recherches Scientifiques en Orient (Paris, 1855), pp. 90, 154, 156. e Cyprus, Proceedings of a Conference on Land Use in a Mediterranean Environment (Nicosia, 1947), p. 35.

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THE ECONOMICS OF CYPRUS

April or May at the end of the wheat harvest, and picked in September or October. This gave the following two-year or three-year rotation, which was subject, no doubt, to frequent modifications, particularly as regards the length of the fallow. WINTER SUMMER WINTER SUMMER WINTER

Sugar cane, wheat, or barley

Fallow with grazing

Vetch or fallow

Cotton

Fallow; or sugar cane, wheat, or barley

Sesame or chick peas could have been substituted for cotton, which was not grown in every district. Some farmers may have preferred a three-year rotation to a two-year one because it gave the land more rest, even though it withdrew a large amount from cultivation every year. Any collection and spreading of manure was probably unsystematic, and artificial fertilizers were as yet unknown.7 We owe to the eighteenth century traveller, Mariti, such details as we possess concerning the cultivation of cotton. What he observed at that later period doubtless held good for earlier centuries. Cotton is of two kinds, one is produced in village lands irrigated by streams or torrents, this is the finer kind, and in greatest request: the other is grown on land which is watered only by the winter rains. 7 Instead of revising the last three paragraphs to meet W. Allan's criticisms, the author includes that critic's comments: "I should doubt if a rotation of cereals, vetches, fallow and cereals was in general use. The area under vetches may have been relatively small and the common system simply cereals alternating with one or two years of fallow. Average yields of wheat may have been 111 bushels per acre, but the evidence for this must be slight. Present yield levels are about 14 bushels per acre for wheat and 22 for barley. In passing it might be noted that we have no reason to suppose that the agricultural production of Cyprus is not greater today than it has ever been in the past, in spite of many centuries of cultivation and erosion. "The assumption that 15 per cent of the cultivable area was irrigated is at first sight rather startling, considering that today, after an extensive program of water development and the sounding of boreholes, only 17 per cent is irrigable in any manner and only about 6 per cent is perennially irrigable. It is probable, however, that springs were more abundant and the area under cultivation considerably less than today. "The rotation noted {under the headings "Summer" and "Winter" above] may have been used on a few estates but would be far from general practice. Sugar cane may have been grown as a plantation crop more or less continuously on the same land, as it is in cane-producing countries today. I do not know whether it was ratooned—i.e., cut back and allowed to grow again in each of several years before replanting with new cane cuttings—or grown as an annual crop. Ratooning is the common practice

today."

26

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They begin to sow the seed in April: they might do so earlier, but then the blade would appear just when the locusts begin their ravages: the young shoots would be devoured, and they would be obliged to sow over again. Hence the delay. They prepare the soil for sowing cotton just as we prepare our cornfields in Tuscany, and sow the seeds, three or four together, in holes at equal intervals, burying them in the furrow like beans. As soon as the plants are above the ground they keep the strongest and pull up the rest. In June and July they hoe lightly round the plants, and root out all the weeds between them. The crop is gathered in October and November, but it requires time to free the cotton from the husk, and extract the seed, so that the first shipments are not ready until the February or March following.8

During the Lusignan regime sugar cane was far more valuable commercially than wheat or cotton, and it became the main winter crop wherever water was abundant—in such places, for example, as Morphou, Lefka, Akhelia, Kouklia, Paphos (Baffo), Lapithos, and most of all at Episkopi and Kolossi. Even Kythrea, whose spring had once supplied water to the Roman city of Salamis, raised sugar as well as cotton among its wheat and vegetables. Cyprus sugar enjoyed the reputation, indeed, of being the best in the Levant.° How much was produced each year during the Lusignan period we do not know, but we have two estimates from the sixteenth century, when its cultivation was declining, the one of 1,950 cantars, the other of 2,250 cantars, neither of them very impressive.10 In 1394 a pilgrim recorded a sugar refinery in a castle near Larnaca," and a century later there was another at Episkopi that employed 400 persons. About that time the Episkopi plantations were experiencing a good deal of trouble over their water supply, which was a monopoly of the king; and in 1486 the royal officers actually diverted the channels until the Episkopi canes died of drought. The managers of the estate then had to import new canes from Syria, since none were purchasable on the island itself.12 8 Cobham, Mariti's Travels, pp. 111-12. Gaudry, a hundred years later, reported that the cotton raised on the island was Gossypium herbaceum Lin., a biennial inferior to the American varieties. In most localities farmers were alternating it with wheat, but they cultivated it continuously on soils yearly replenished by floods. Gaudry, p. 160. ° Pegolotti, p. 364. Most of the crop from the estates of both the king and the Knights Hospitallers was sold to the Venetian firm of Martini. Oberhummer, p. 283. 10 Mas Latrie, III, 497, 535. The cantar weighed about 504 pounds avoirdupois. "Cobham, Cypria, p. 28. 12 Sir George Hill, History of Cyprus (Cambridge, 1948) III, 816. Oberhummer, p. 283 et seq.

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Nearly every Lusignan farmer raised a certain number of vegetables—broad beans, haricot beans, colocasia,J3 cabbages, onions, etc.—both for his own use and for the local market. He grew them in spring and summer if he could irrigate any part of his land during that period; otherwise, he planted them in November or December to catch the winter rains. Another plant very important to him was sesame, which was a summer crop like cotton and relatively tolerant of drought. Its oil served for both light and cooking, especially on feast days of the Greek Orthodox church when the use of olive oil was forbidden. We may assume, though we are not explicitly told, that barley was cut twice for fodder, once in February while it was still young and green, and again in May after it matured. In good years the entire crop went to feed stock; but whenever the wheat harvest had been poor and flour for bread was in short supply, the common people resorted to barley bread. This happened, for instance, in 1308-09, when a "red blight" destroyed the wheat harvest and food became so scarce that the government was obliged to import grain." The farmers' chief adversaries were drought and locusts. The latter periodically devastated the island, especially its central plain, stripping it of every green blade and leaf "so that you would fancy a fire had blasted the ground."1G People regarded the insects as a visitation of God, and when they did not throw up their hands in despair, they prayed for a gale of wind to blow the plague out to sea, or carried in procession some sacred image and supplicated heaven to save the crops. In 1411 locusts swarmed so terribly, we learn, that they attacked and choked to death a priest who had gone outdoors to curse them. The last king of the Lusignan dynasty sought help abroad: he sent two Armenians to Persia to obtain a certain holy water that would attract the "birds of Muhammad", the Iocusts' deadliest enemy!10 When that remedy failed, the islanders revived an earlier one that had been encouraged by a less gullible king: they gathered the eggs of the locusts and buried them 13 A tuber that took the place of the potato. 14 Hill, II, 237. In Greece barley was considered only half as nourishing as wheat. M. Michell, The Economics of Ancient Greece (Cambridge, 1940), p. 132. 13 Cobham, Mariti's Travels, p. 74. 10 Hill, III, 646. The "bird of Muhammad" was a gray starling, which in Anatolia commonly followed the locust swarms, killing the insects with one stroke of its beak. In 1881 the district of Sivri-hissar, in Anatolia, reported that immense flocks of these birds had completely cleared the region of the plague. AP 1881, IX, C. 3091, p. 4. Cf. also AP 1882, IX, C. 3385, p. 6.

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THE ECONOMICS OF CYPRUS

in pits. This egg-gathering method, when properly carried out, was fairly effective. Indeed mankind found no better until the nineteenth century, when an ingenious Italian residing in Larnaca devised a way to supplement it by trapping the migrating insects before they could fly.17 More difficult to combat even than locusts were the droughts, which occurred at unpredictable but all too frequent intervals. The only protection was irrigation, which itself depended on the vagaries of the precipitation, and in any case was not possible over most of the island. Water from springs and from flowing streams could be carried by canals and aqueducts to farm lands in the vicinity; but perennial springs were neither abundant nor large, and no surface stream deriving from the winter's precipitation maintained its flow throughout the summer. More numerous than the streams, and also more reliable, were the wells from which donkeyor ox-driven wheels could draw up water into small cisterns and irrigation channels. Scores of such wells, dug by Cypriots of earlier generations, dotted the central plain and the coastal flats; and the Lusignan regime added many more. It constructed also a number of aqueducts. One ran from the mountains south of Nicosia to the heart of the city, where a great fountain joined its waters to those of the numerous wells that irrigated the local vegetable gardens and citrus orchards. Another high aqueduct conveyed water to the preceptory of the Knights Hospitallers at Kolossi, and still another supplied the needs of the neighbouring sugar plantation and refinery at Episkopi. At Kiti, near Larnaca, the eighteenth-century traveller Mariti noted "a large and deep well of excellent water, the work of Chiarione de Lusignan. One can go down to the bottom of it.... Beyond the village is a stone bridge of several arches, with sluices, no longer in repair, which during the rains allowed the water to flood the fields, and turned it again into the river, when they had been watered enough."" Fifty years later a fantastic Spaniard who travelled under the pseudonym of Ali Bey remarked that, "judging by the remains of aqueducts which are found everywhere, even in the driest parts, I suspect that in ancient [? Lusignan] times there existed a general system of irrigation. One can see too that there must have been 17 Along their line of march he dug pits faced with slippery vertical screens so arranged that the insects slid down them into the pits and could not escape. For a more detailed description see R. H. Lang, Cyprus (London, 1878), pp. 248-50. 18 Cobham, Mariti's Travels, p. 80.

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good roads and paths. But few traces of such remain, and the present roads are in the worst possible condition."10 Doubtless many wells that are functioning now were dug in Lusignan times, although it is seldom possible to determine their exact age. Equally ancient, perhaps, are some of the low stone walls and earth embankments that convert many gentle slopes today into great terraces, terraces broad and level enough to soak in most of the winter rain before it can stream off them and channel or carry away part of the topsoil in its flow." Often a hedge of thorn-bushes, or a row of wild asphodel, consolidates the embankment; and after heavy showers small pools of water may gather behind it. One often sees, too, around the twisted stem of some centuries-old olive tree, a circular rampart of earth, not more than a foot high, that directs earthward instead of outward every drop of rain that falls within its circumference. The older examples of these and similar waterconservation devices may well date back to the Lusignan age: for government and society were efficiently organized, and labour abundant and cheap, during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Yet even in that golden epoch unpredictable floods ravaged both the farm lands and the cities. One terrible deluge on 10 November 1330 drowned, it is said, three thousand persons in Nicosia and two thousand in Limassol, besides destroying large numbers of animals, particularly horses.2' We hear very little about the daily food of the Cypriot peasant during this period. A king dines on asparagus salad; and salads, or at least raw vegetables, were probably as popular with all classes then as they are today. Bread, vegetables, and goat's cheese, s,tpplemented by olives, figs, and other fruits in their season, must have been the staple foods of the common people. We read that the faithful serf of an imprisoned nobleman who had been condemned to a diet of bread and water secretly slipped lumps of 19

Cobham, Cypria, p. 410. These terraces vary in width from 10 to 100 yards, thereby contrasting with the narrow terraces from 3 to 6 yards wide on steep slopes, whose purpose is to provide and conserve soil rather than water. (See Appendix II.) The two types intergrade, of course, according to the slope of the ground and the relative importance given to soil conservation as against moisture. Both functions are performed in about equal measure by the straight or half-moon shaped walls of stone that bank up the earth around individual grapevines, olive trees, and carob trees on the steep sides of ravines. 21 Florio Bustron, "Chronique de l'Ile de Chypre," Mélanges Historiques (Paris, 1886) V, 284. For variant accounts of this disaster see Hill, III, 306; and for this and other inundations in Cyprus see Oberhummer, pp. 210 et seq. 29

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THE ECONOMICS OF CYPRUS

chicken meat between the bread and doctored the water with wine. Certainly wine was so cheap that even the very poor could afford it, but the meat of animals was beyond their reach, except on special feast days. Nor could fish have played an important role, since fish have never been plentiful in Cyprus' waters. Birds fell into another category, for partridges and other game fowl were sufficiently numerous to occasion royal hunting parties, while the small but fat-breasted songbirds, mainly blackcaps and other warblers, that raided the figs and grapes in the late summer were snared and eaten by the thousands. In the thirteenth century, indeed, the Knights Templars organized a regular export of pickled warblers to Italy, and the traffic they then initiated continued right down to the eighteenth century and perhaps even into the nineteenth.22 Although Lusignan Cyprus produced fruits of many kinds, it has left us no figures that would reveal their relative abundance. Dates and bananas were surely scarce, because the former, which had established themselves in Cyprus as early as 300 E.C., seldom ripen on their palms, while such bananas as do ripen are small and scrubby.2 a Only occasionally could either these or the citrus fruits have entered into the diet of the common people. The same was true, probably, of apples and pears; fruits that demand a temperate climate and could have been grown, as today, only in the Troodos Mountains, in the villages of shepherds and charcoal burners, and in the peasant hamlets near monasteries, which were oft. n built in remote and solitary places. Figs were fairly plentiful, perhaps, but if they resembled the dried ones now marketed in Cyprus, they were inferior to Turkish and Italian figs.24 Olives, reportedly, were excellent, and olives and bread, like cheese and bread, made a normal meal; but there was less agreement about the olive oil that was shipped abroad whenever there was a surplus. The Hebrew merchant who settled at Famagusta in the sixteenth 32 "They have also in the Island a certaine small bird much like unto a Wagtaile in fethers and making .... They take great quantities of them, and they use to pickle them with vineger and salt, and to put them in pots and send them to Venice and other places in Italy for present of great estimation. They say they send almost 1200 jarres or pots to Venice, besides those which are consumed in the Island, which are a great number." Cobham, Cypria, p. 72; cf. also p. 213. 23 Cotovicus (1599) remarked that "it is only people of the poorest class who use them for food." Cobham, Cypria, p. 189. 24 Pliny, the only classical author who mentions Cyprus' figs, apparently, says that they made excellent vinegar! Pliny, Natura! History, xiv, 16.

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century declared that it was very bad, and that most people replaced it in the kitchen with sesame oil, despite the latter's higher price.25 Olive trees seem to have been fairly plentiful in every part of the island except the mountains, and also the eastern Mesaoria, where they may have competed too greatly with grain. Some Egyptian troops who were besieging Kyrenia Castle in 1460 hacked down five hundred at nearby Kazaphani—a serious disaster, since olive trees do not bear until they are six or seven years old. Fortunately the marauders Ieft standing in the vicinity other trees which even today, after five hundred years, still flourish and bear fruit. Our chroniclers, who are so reticent about olives, are hardly more communicative about grapes. The Westphalian pilgrim who visited Cyprus about 1340 tells a slightly fanciful story of a great vineyard in the vicinity of Paphos that belonged to the Knights Templars: In this same province of Paphus is the vineyard of Engadi: its like is nowhere found. It is situated in a very high mountain, and measures two miles in length and in breadth, girt on all sides with a lofty rock and a wall; on one side it has a very narrow entrance, and within it is quite level. In this vineyard grow vines and clusters of many different kinds, some of which produce grapes of the bigness of plums, others small grapes like peas, others again grapes without stones, or grapes in shape like an acorn, all transparent, and grapes and clusters of many other kinds are seen therein. It belonged to the Templars, and more than a hundred Saracen captives were daily therein, whose only task was to clean and watch that vineyard, and indeed I have heard from many of experience that God had made for the use of men no fairer or nobler ornament under the sun. And so we read of it in the Song of Songs 'my beloved is unto me as a cluster (of Cyprus) in the vineyard of Engadi.' Concerning the little Engadi and the city of Nymocinum. Not far from Paphus is the city of Nymocia. Near Nymocine is another vineyard called the little Engadi, in which grow vines of many different kinds, which a man cannot gird with his arms. But they are not tall, nor do they produce much fruit.26 Grapes flourished in many parts of the island, not just between Paphos and Limassol. Part of the crop went to make raisins," but Cobham, Cypria, p. 75. Ibid., p. 19. "It produces the raisins called zabib, large, black and fine fruit, dried naturally by the sun." Ibid., p. 166; cf. also p. 199. These two records slightly post-date the Lusignan era, but the industry had probably been established for some time. 25 26 27

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most of it was converted into wine, which, carried by merchants and pilgrims to foreign countries, enjoyed a fair reputation, especially the brand called commanderia Y8 Yet opinions concerning its merit varied curiously. Some connoisseurs disliked the flavour of the pitch that lined the jars in which it was stored. One German pilgrim declared that the wines of Cyprus "smell well, are wholesome and very strong, and unless largely mixed with water are hardly fit to drink;" whereas a more robust fellow-countryman maintained: "And were a man to drink a whole cask he would not be drunken, but it would burn and destroy his bowels. Yet many hold it wholesome to drink this wine neat on an empty stomach."20 The Venetians in any case appreciated it, and imported large quantities. According to one account also, it was the Sultan's craving for commanderia, and his determination to control the source of supply, that inspired the Turkish conquest of Cyprus in 1571! Modern brands of what is still called commanderia enjoy a certain popularity in Cyprus and abroad, but they differ considerably in taste one from another and also, one suspects, from the ancient wines which bequeathed them their name. Wool seems to have been the commonest textile, with the new material, cotton, running in second place. A large percentage of the cotton crop, either raw or as fabric, went to Venice. Both hemp and flax were grown in the Lusignan period, but only in small quantities;S0 and although mulberry trees had spread into many districts and silk-weaving was gaining prominence as a cottage industry, production had not yet reached any very high level. A notable revenue-earner, however, was the cloth called camlet, which the Cypriots manufactured from either camels' hair or goats' hair and exported to Syria and Egypt as well as to Italy and France. During the years 1373-1464, when Genoa ruled the town of Famagusta, no woman was allowed to leave the place without the governor's permission, because "men cannot live in that city but for the 28 The name was taken from the "great Commandery" or domain of the Knights Templars west of Limassol that grew the finest muscat grapes and specialized in making this branch of wine. Cobham, Mariti's Travels, p. 92. 29 Cobham, Cypria, pp. 16, 20. 89 According to Sanudo, flax was sold in abundance around 1300 at the khans of Alexandria and Damietta, but nowhere else outside Egypt. A. S. Atiya, The Crusade in the Later Middle Ages (London, 1938), p. 124. Hemp has never been an important crop in Cyprus, but the island produced 1,000 cantars in 1540, shortly after the end of the Lusignan regime. Mas Latrie, III, p. 535.

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women who spin and prepare wool for the camlet, for they have hardly any other means of living."31 The Egyptians who invaded Cyprus in 1426 and carried away its king imposed an immediate ransom and a yearly tribute that included 20 pieces of camlet 40 pics (90 feet) long for the sultan's personal dress, and 400 pieces of the same length for his treasury.82 Cyprus looms must have operated at full capacity to meet this annual levy. It was therefore a severe blow to the island's economy when Turkey took over the Egyptian tribute in 1571 and refused to accept any camlet whatever, on the ground that she did not need it. I have mentioned the entrepot traffic in oriental spices, dyes, drugs, and perfumes, which stimulated the preparation of similar products from the raw materials, both introduced and local. The flora of Cyprus has always been rich in aromatic and medicinal plants: to name but a few, it has thyme, marjoram, saffron,33 mint, anise, mandrake, colocynth, and sumac, in addition to such resins as storax, colophony, and ladanum.34 The export of sumac leaves for tanning hides, which seems to have begun at this time, continued right down to the twentieth century. It was during the Lusignan period, probably, that the Cypriots obtained the henna tree, which they cultivated around their homes. When Gaudry visited the island in 1853, the tree had become very rare,3b but the orange-red dye derived from its leaves was still used for staining human hair and, by Moslems, the palms and fingernails. Venetian dandies, who ruled the island after the Lusignans, 81 Cobham, Cypria, p. 22. 32 Mas Latrie, III, 75. B3 Only the western Mediterranean species of thyme, Thymus oficinalis, is used today in medicine and in the kitchen, not the Cyprus species, Thymus capitatus. There is also a question whether the plant called by Italian writers zaffarano was what we call saffron today; it may have been the "bastard saffron" or safflower, Carthamus tinctorius, which gives a reddish dye. The Venetian census of 1540 recorded that Cyprus was producing half a cantar of zajjarano. Mas Latrie, III, p. 535. 34 "Here are merchants from every part of the world, Christians and infidels. There are stores, great and precious, for the aromatic herbs of the East are brought here raw, and are prepared by the perfumer's art. The island itself abounds in dyes and perfumes, so that the stores of Nicosia are a source from which such drugs flow over the world." Felix Faber (1483) in Cobham, Cypria, p. 41. Cf. the list given by Cotovicus in 1599: "ladanum, frankincense, storax, manna, scammony, saffron, coriander, sesame, sumach, mastic, rhubarb, colocynth, thyme, majoram, hyssop, with many other plants of singular virtue in medicine .... The powder called Cyprian, so fragrant and so much valued in Italy, is made of sweet smelling herbs, or (as some say) of a certain green dew which falls on stones and plants and is dried to whiteness." Ibid., p. 200. 36 Gaudry, p. 177.

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applied it to the coats of their horses; their successors, the Turks, not to horses, but to white greyhounds and horned cattle.88 A Lusignan monarch set up two dye works in Cyprus, one in Nicosia and the other in Famagusta; but how they were organized, and what dyes they manufactured, is unknown. A surprising number of vessels put in at one or other of Cyprus' harbours during the long summer, and the majority seem to have taken on board water, wine, and wood. The last was in part just firewood—cypress, olive, carob, and sometimes thyme. It included occasionally, however, a little timber, which suggests that woodhungry Egypt still counted on satisfying some of her requirements from Cyprus, even though she ravaged the island more than once and spread fires far and wide. One chronicler asserts that Mt. Akamas ("unburnt") received its name because it was the only forested district that escaped the Saracen conflagrations;87 but he exaggerated, without doubt, because in 1466 the last Lusignan king, James II, offered to contribute six galleys and eight hundred knights for the war against the Turks, and stated that he was building another ship for the same purpose. Whether the forests held their own at this time, or continued to shrink, is therefore uncertain, but the latter seems the more probable. Livestock abounded in all parts of the island, but it is not until Venetian times a century later that we are given any indication of the animal population and a precise figure for the oxen. The more prosperous farmers used oxen for the heavy work of ploughing and threshing; but they neither milked them nor ate their flesh, considering it wrong to demand food from work animals. Their favourite meat was kid, not beef, and they obtained their cheese from the milk of goats, animals that did not work but grazed with sheep outdoors throughout the whole year. Oxen, on the other hand, were stall-fed during the summer months with a mixture of barley or oats and crushed straw, because the island lacked pastures suited to their needs 8S About 1300 Cyprus even imported, doubtless from Egypt, the Indian buffalo; but the animal did not thrive in its new and rather arid environment, for it is rarely mentioned again and died out completely in the seventeenth or eighteenth century. Cobham, Mariti's Travels, p. 12. See E. Miller and C. Sathas (Fr. trans. from Gk. text), Leontios Machairas' Chronique de Chypre (Paris, 1882). Cf.: "Nothing remained unburnt except Mt. Acamas." Trans. from Mas Latrie, II, 530. 38 S. Lusignano, Chorogra/Jia e Breve Historia Universale dell' Isola di Cipro (Bologna, 1573), p. 86; Gaudry, p. 155. 36 87

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Camels must have been fairly plentiful, since they performed most of the long-distance transport and carried loads that were too heavy, or too bulky, for donkeys: they were in effect the island's railroads. Knights rode horses, for which they often imported food; but a queen did not hesitate to escape her enemies on a fast mule, and the breeding of fine mules may have originated with the Lusignans. Pigs rarely enter the picture—they may not have been very plentiful: but sheep and goats ranged everywhere, as numerous perhaps as they are today. One can still find remains of the old stone folds in which they were impounded each night; ancient folds made of thom-bushes, of course, have vanished without trace. Many of the common people kept chickens, pigeons, and bees, the last a race peculiar to the island, less ill-tempered than the Italian bee. Pliny the Elder speaks of the rich honey of Cyprus, and also of its beeswax, which was used in medicine. We have considered hitherto only farm and forest products, and a few wild plants from the waste lands. Added to them now was salt, whose production and export the Lusignan crown retained as its personal monopoly, thereby setting a precedent which has been followed by all later governments. Most of the chemical came from near Larnaca, where winter rains inundated a broad plain and converted it seasonally into a shallow lake. Its standing water then became saline from the underlying sea-infiltrated sands, and, when it evaporated in mid-summer, left behind a bed of salt several inches thick, which could be broken up and piled on the lake's margin.49 There was a similar lake near Limassol, but it produced a poorer grade of salt and seems to have been worked only intermittently. Cyprus had used and even exported its salt in classical times, for Pliny says that the island's product ranked highest among all salts obtained from sea water; but it was not until the Lusignan era that the chemical became a major revenue-producer. Its chief market then was Venice, which stored it in great depots from which it flowed out to some of the inland towns of Lombardy. There survives a Latin letter of 1301 in which a Venetian merchant complains of a rise in the price of Cyprus salt and speculates gloomily that this might lead to disturbances in the hinterland of Venice. 89 Writers from Lusignan times onward have discussed the origin of this salt. I have accepted the opinion of Burdon, which is based both on geological considerations and on the ratio of sodium chloride to bromine in the lake water. Cyprus, Water Supply and Irrigation Department, The Underground Water Resources of Cyprus. a report by D. J. Burdon (Nicosia, 1952), p. 10.

37

THE ECONOMICS OF CYPRUS

That city was not entirely dependent on the Cyprus product, for it was obtaining salt from elsewhere in Italy, and also from the Black Sea; but Cyprus must have supplied a large proportion if fluctuations in its price could evoke such grave repercussions.40 By Lusignan times, then, the face of Cyprus had undergone an immense change. During the Bronze and Classical Ages its prosperity had rested on the export of wheat whenever the harvest was bountiful, of ships, and timber, and more than all else, of copper. Under the Lusignans too its prosperity rested on an agricultural base, as it probably always will; and in good seasons it still produced enough wheat to satisfy its own needs and leave a little for export. But now two new crops, sugar and cotton, competed with wheat and barley for tenancy of the best farm lands, and outstripped both of them in the export market. At the same time new fruits such as oranges and peaches were supplementing the ancient olives, figs, grapes, and pomegranates; and new vegetables such as cabbage and spinach were growing alongside the indigenous cauliflower, beans, and peas. All these introduced plants greatly enriched and diversified the island's agriculture. Though the forests had shrunk and shipbuilding almost ceased, though Cyprus no longer exported timber in any quantity or carried its trade in its own bottoms, its export of wine had expanded and two new industries had sprung up, drug- and dye-processing and silk manufacture: the last employed local raw materials just as shipbuilding did, but operated on dozens of feudal estates and in numberless small homes, thus benefiting a much wider population than shipbuilding could ever touch. The world no longer clamoured for the island's copper and iron, and only the marketing of a little vitriol awakened memories of the once famous mines; yet salt from Larnaca Lake brought in an equally handsome revenue at very low cost, and the lake was virtually inexhaustible. Clearly Cyprus had taken a long stride forward, or at least in a new direction. And the impulse had come, not from an upsurge of energy in the population itself, nor from any new discoveries or inventions such as brought about the transitions from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age and from the Bronze Age to the Iron: it came partly from the vigour and acumen of the ruling European minority, but mainly from a widening of human contacts, and the interactions 40 Mas Latrie, II, pp. 99 f. In his footnote Mas Latrie says that the increase in the price of Cyprus salt of which the writer complained was probably due to the increase in the population of the island after the loss of Syria.

38

FRENCH LUSIGNAN REGIME : 1192-1489

of different and in many respects opposing civilizations. These interactions had given birth to new needs, new desires, and new fashions. While the Arab world sought timber, slaves, and weapons from western and northern Europe, the West demanded cane sugar to supplement its more costly honey, flowery silks and cottons to brighten its drab linens and woollens, fragrant spices to give a tang to its meats, rare perfumes to grace its lords and ladies (and to substitute for baths), and sweet-smelling incense that would float in clouds before the images of the saints and the Holy Virgin. Two well defined routes brought these goods from the Orient to the Levantine area: one followed the Red Sea north to Egypt and Alexandria, the other crossed the desert from the head of the Persian Gulf to Antioch and Aleppo. Cyprus lay astride both of these routes: she occupied a position that allowed her to take in with one hand and give out with the other. In the process she had taken some things to her own bosom, e.g., silk, cotton, sugar cane, and from within herself she had drawn other resources hitherto latent: salt, wine, certain perfumes and dyes, which she added to the world's stores. It was her ruling Latin minority that reaped most profit from this flourishing trade, for the Greek-speaking majority remained illiterate underlings of their French overlords, sternly controlled and denied all contact with the world beyond their shores. They could become artisans and petty tradesmen in the island's towns and villages, but, with rare exceptions,41 they were allowed no share in its administration or in its export and import trade. Their Lusignan rulers themselves did not deign to dabble in external trade, but left it to a few French refugees from Syria who settled in Famagusta after the fall of Acre in 1291, and to foreigners, especially Italians, who lived and conducted their affairs in relative isolation, operating much as European merchants operated a few centuries later in the treaty ports of the Far East.42 Some of these foreigners and refugee Frenchmen acquired great wealth on their own account;43 others represented powerful trading and banking 41

Mas Latrie, I, xiv, 49.

42 Ibid., pp. 186, 284 f., 513. 43 Cf.: Famagusta "is the richest

of all cities, and her citizens are the richest of men. A citizen once betrothed his daughter, and the jewels of her head-dress were valued by the French knights who came with us as more precious than all the ornaments of the Queen of France. A certain merchant of this city sold to the Sultan a royal orb of gold, and thereon four precious stones, a ruby, an emerald, a sapphire and a pearl, for six thousand florins; and anon he sought to buy back that orb for a hundred thousand florins, but it was denied him." Von Suchen (1336-41) in Cobham, Cypria, p. 19.

39

THE ECONOMICS OF CYPRUS

establishments located in the city states of northern Italy, establishments such as the Martini of Venice, who monopolized the traffic in Cyprus sugar, and the Bank of St. George of Genoa, which exercised de facto control over the city of Famagusta from 1373 to 1464. So when a Lusignan king or noble, or a prelate of the Roman Catholic church in Cyprus, needed money for any purpose, he borrowed it from one of these merchant princes, pledging as security the next year's taxes or crops, or the silver and gold plate in some monastery» The prosperity of the Latin nobles and merchants seeped down to the body of the population during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and the number of Cyprus' inhabitants steadily increased. No Lusignan monarch ever thought of taking a census, but some modern authorities estimate that in the fourteenth century the population was greater than it had been at any earlier period, amounting perhaps to as much as 400,000.45 The great mass of the people were Greek-speaking descendants of the old inhabitants. Probably less than 10 per cent were French, although there had been a large influx of French Crusaders and their followers when Syria fell into Moslem hands. Unfortunately neither the expansion of the island's resources nor the growth of its population increased its military potential, or protected it from the calamities that now began to rain on it from the outside world. Although the people as a whole stood aloof from the intrigues and crusading adventures of their French masters,46 who were alien to them in manners, in religion, and in speech, yet 44 About 1365 Frederic Cornaro, a Venetian merchant who owned the big sugar plantation at Episkopi and also kept a palace on the Grand Canal, lent the Lusignan monarch, Peter I, 50,000 ducats for his Holy War. Mas Latrie, III, 815. More than once, when their treasury was in debt, the Lusignan kings paid off their obligations by deliveries of sugar. Ibid., II, 88. 445 Cyprus, Census of Population and Agriculture, 1946, a report by D. A. Percival (London, 1949), p. 3. Hill thinks that in the best days of Frankish rule the population had reached something like half a million, a figure it did not attain again until 1952. Hill, III, 787. On the other hand, D. F. Davidson, the Conservator of Forests in Cyprus, writes: "Judging from the ruined village sites I have seen in the mountains and foothills, the parts of Cyprus with which I am most familiar, the population in the fourteenth century cannot have been as great as 400,000. Most of the ruined settlements of that period are very small and poor in construction." Personal communication. 40 Mas Latrie remarks that the French race increased in Nicosia and in all the seaports where they lived by preference; that, without mingling with the rural population they penetrated into the interior of the island, and that the chief barons possessed considerable properties in the country districts. Mas Latrie, I, 391.

40

FRENCH LUSIGNAN REGIME : 1192-1489

foreign intercourse drew upon them repeated epidemics of bubonic plague, twice and even three times in a single generation. The Black Death alone (1347-50) carried off, reputedly, more than half the population." Despite its ravages, commerce continued to flourish until the local rivalry between those two city-states, Genoa and Venice, exploded into open strife.48 The Genoese then devastated a large part of the island, sacked Nicosia, and, seizing the port of Famagusta, held it defiantly for nearly a hundred years. They gained little profit from their banditry, however, because the Lusignan monarchs, encouraged by Venice, steadfastly refused to funnel Cyprus' foreign trade through the enemy-occupied port, and because the trade itself fell away sharply through the nibbling raids of Catalan pirates, who began to infest the Levant about 1340. Thus one catastrophe after another assailed the island from the middle of the fourteenth to the end of the fifteenth century. They aroused a plaint from a writer who witnessed the period's close: "As soon as the war ended a plague broke out and continued for thirteen months. Locusts appeared when the plague ended: they caused heavy loss of grain and summer vegetables, so that a great scarcity of everything beset the country."4° He was lamenting conditions about the year 1400. Later, in 1424 and again in 1425, the Egyptians pillaged the coastline, in long delayed revenge for the destruction of Alexandria by a Lusignan king sixty years before. Success in these two raids encouraged them the following year to stage a full-scale invasion, which wrecked the ports of Limassol and Larnaca and reduced the whole island to a state of vassalage. Lusignan monarchs continued to occupy the throne for half a century longer, but only through the payment of an annual tribute; and in 1489 even the monarchy was extinguished by Venice, which accepted for itself the obligation of the tribute and incorporated the island in its own dominion. So the wheel of fortune turned full circle. The early Lusignan kings had lifted the island from a morass of misery to a height of unprecedented prosperity; the later ones saw it sink into another morass more wretched than the one from which it had emerged. 47 Plague broke out again in 1393, 1409-10, 1419-20, 1422, 1470 and frequently later. 48 "Their selfish motives led to ruinous war on the soil of Cyprus; and, to add to the troubles of the ill-fated island, its nobles became disunited and the central administration was unable to control them." Atiya, p. 473. 411 Trans. from Bustron, "Chronique . . ." Mélanges Historiques, V, 355-56.

41

THE ECONOMICS OF CYPRUS

Between the middle of the fourteenth and the end of the fifteenth century the population diminished by at least 60 per cent, yet the exactions of the ruling class hardly slackened. To escape them, many peasants abandoned their fields and fled to the mountains, or swelled the ranks of the indigent in the towns; others took the first steps toward the priesthood, steps which, though seldom completed, exempted them and their families from all feudal obligations.60 The aqueducts and irrigation canals which had watered the now neglected fields fell into decay, and unchecked floods produced malarial swamps and marshes. Foreign visitors noted the pestilential air of Larnaca, Limassol, and New Paphos. When the last was destroyed by an earthquake, the survivors sought a healthier site on the bluff at Ktima. As for the stronghold of Famagusta, the Italian traveller Martoni, who visited the town in 1394 while it was still held by the Genoese, remarked: "The city of Famagusta is large, as large, I reckon, as the city of Capua .. . but a great part, almost a third, is uninhabited, and the houses are destroyed, and this has been done since the date of the Genoese lordship.... the air of the city is very bad; at all seasons of the year there is mortality, and men die in great numbers, of the Genoese far more than of the Greeks."b1 The trade of the city had collapsed, its merchant princes had scattered to other lands, and its hinterland had become an immense mosquito-ridden swamp whose traces are still visible in the Kouklia and Akhyritou reservoirs. It was therefore merely the wraith of a city that the Genoese surrendered to the last Lusignan king, just twenty-five years before both it and all the island fell into the hands of the Venetians. a° Mas Latrie, I, pp. 206-207. Mas Latrie has recorded a royal proclamation of 1468 that sought the recovery of runaway serfs and the punishment of persons harbouring them. Ibid., III, pp. 192-93. 51 Cobham, Cypria, p. 22.

42

PART III VENETIAN REGIME: 1489-1571

Venice seized Cyprus for two reasons: she wanted a monopoly of its commerce, and she needed it as a military outpost against the aggressive Turks. It injured her own interests to permit disorders and unrest, or to so harass the peasantry as to lower production and trade. We hear, indeed, of a riot at Nicosia in 1550, when the townsfolk demonstrated against the export of wheat in a time of scarcity; and the Tyrolian traveller Martin von Baumgarten, whose homeland had long since thrown off the shackles of feudalism, condemned the administration as harsh and ruthless: all the inhabitants of Cyprus are slaves to the Venetians, being obliged to pay to the state a third part of all their increase or income, whether the product of their ground, or corn, wine, oil, or of their cattle, or any other thing. Besides every man of them is bound to work for the state two days of the week wherever they shall please to appoint him: and if any shall fail, by reason of some other business of their own, or for indisposition of body, then they are made to pay a fine for as many days as they are absent from their work. And which is more, there is yearly some tax or other imposed on them, with which the poor common people are so flayed and pillaged, that they hardly have wherewithal to keep soul and body together.

Mas Latrie, the French historian of Cyprus, condemns the Venetian administration as roundly as Baumgarten.= Yet it cannot have been wantonly oppressive, because the population, which had declined disastrously from the mid-fourteenth to the end of the fifteenth century, slowly but steadily climbed upward again. The upswing showed itself in the surveys and censuses that Venice instituted at various intervals, censuses that inevitably lacked the detail and accuracy we expect from censuses today, but which nevertheless gave the authorities in Venice a reasonably clear picture of the island's economic and military situation. They tell us that the number of inhabitants grew from roughly 150,000 at the ' Baumgarten (1508) in C. D. Cobham, Excerpta Cypria (Cambridge, 1908), p. 55. Cf. also the account of Cotovicus (1599) in Ibid., p. 198. 2 Louis de Mas Latrie, Histoire de Pile de Chypre sous le Rebgne des Princes de la Maison de Lusignan (Paris, 1861), III, pp. 823-24. 43

THE ECONOMICS OF CYPRUS

end of the fifteenth century to almost 200,000 by 1540, a figure that held steady or perhaps increased before the Turks took possession of the island thirty years later. About 85 per cent were either serfs (parici) or free peasants (francomati), the latter being half as numerous again as the serfs. There was but one city of any size, Nicosia, which in 1540 counted some 20,000 inhabitants. Famagusta, the chief port, counted 8,000, and Paphos, the third largest town, 2,000. The great mass of the population was scattered throughout the island in over eight hundred small villages.3 Some of these villages contained probably a hundred houses, some only four or five. Between them stretched open farm lands, woods, or mountains; for Cypriot peasants did not build isolated homes, but dwelt in communities. Nature had made them a gregarious people like other Mediterraneans, and they did not relish solitude, which indeed was very dangerous in an age when pirates infested every sea, and war or civil strife frequently ravaged the land. Instead of living separately on their farm lands, therefore, they grouped together in villages; and every morning, however distant their fields, they walked or rode to them from the village, then returned to it at dusk to rest there in safety through the hours of darkness. This had been their custom for centuries, and it is still their custom today. Man is a sociable creature, as Aristotle says; and the companionship the village offered, as well as its greater security, more than compensated, no doubt, for the time and energy spent in daily travelling. Agricultural production kept pace with the increasing population, but trade languished. Its depression was not the fault of the Venetians, who controlled or contested with the Turks all the sea lanes in the eastern Mediterranean and who exploited the island to the best of their ability. Rather it resulted from an unpredictable change in world geography, which robbed Cyprus of its position as an important entrepot on a main trading route. For no sooner had Venice consolidated her power in the eastern Mediterranean than Spanish and Portuguese navigators discovered new sea routes 8 From the Venetian period, as from the Lusignan that preceded it and the Turkish that followed, we have inherited several discrepant estimates of Cyprus' population. The author has accepted as comparatively accurate, however, the two rather detailed "censuses" that have come down to us, one, compiled before 1500, Mas Latrie believes, by the Cyprus administration itself or by a special official sent out from Venice, the other drawn up by a Francis Attar around 1540. They have been published in Mas Latrie, III, pp. 493-513, 519-536.

44

VENETIAN REGIME : 1489-1571

around the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn, which bypassed the Moslem world and the Red Sea. On the far side of the Atlantic, too, the same navigators opened up two immense continents whose riches had never been tapped by European and Asiatic merchants. Their discoveries degraded the Mediterranean, which for four thousand years had been the principal highway for the commerce of western civilization, into a mere inland sea; and in that sea they reduced Cyprus to an isolated outpost confronting a hostile Turkish empire, which had no great desire to maintain Egypt and Syria as middlemen between Europe and eastern Asia. It is true that considerable quantities of spices from the Orient still arrived at Alexandria and Aleppo, and thence passed westward through the Mediterranean to compete with spices brought around the Cape; but now most of the vessels that carried them came from France, which was on friendly terms with Turkey; and they bypassed Cyprus because it was no longer either an international financial centre or an international trading mart. Other vessels too generally avoided the island's shores,' so that few except Venetian ships ever entered its ports of Famagusta, Larnaca, and (after the middle of the century) Limassol, vessels that brought little but military supplies and took on board chiefly local products, particularly such as could be marketed in Venice.5 Famagusta, which had replaced Nicosia as the administrative capital and was strongly fortified against an ever impending attack by the Turks, engaged in very little commercial activity. Most of the export trade therefore passed at first through Larnaca, or, as it was then called, Salines; but during the sixteenth century Limassol became the more important for all products except salt because of the shorter road haul, since it was the Limassol district that produced most of the island's sugar and carob pods, as well as a large percentage of its cotton and wine. At one period no Venetian vessel was allowed to leave Navigators of the classical period, who lacked astronomical instruments and steered by the sun and the stars, consistently hugged the coastlines and whenever possible anchored at night in a sheltered haven. Consequently ships sailing from the Levant to Italy, such as the one that carried the Apostle Paul to Rome, skirted the southern shores of Cyprus and commonly put in at Paphos. By the fifteenth century, however, captains possessed compasses and astrolabes, and their ships, stouter and better rigged, could sail against contrary winds. Hence they no longer needed to hug the coast, but could boldly steer a direct course over the open sea. 6 Hill says there was a lively trade also with Asia Minor and Syria; but he gives no details. Sir George Hill, History of Cyprus (Cambridge, 1948), III, 818.

45

THE ECONOMICS OF CYPRUS

Cyprus until it had called at Limassol to take on wine, water, and wood.° The changed orientation of the island destroyed its chief commercial crop, sugar; for Portuguese merchants, resentful of the Venetian monopoly of the Levantine trade, introduced the cane into Madeira, whose output soon began to displace the Cyprus product in the markets of western Europe. Thereafter sugar production on the island, never especially favoured by either soil or climate, slowly but steadily declined. The census taken about 1500 recorded a crop of 2,000 cantars of first quality (prima cotta) sugar, whereas the census taken some forty years later recorded only 1,500 cantars. Lusignano, writing in 1573, listed seven villages that still grew sugar cane, and said that other places cultivated it also, but that the total production was small because it was cheaper and more profitable to grow cotton.' The island was still raising sugar cane in 1605,8 but discontinued it entirely very soon after that date. Sugar was the only fatality, however. In general, agriculture, and industries based on it, flourished under the peaceful conditions imposed by Venetian rule. Wells and irrigation channels that had fallen into decay were brought into use again, and within fifty years there was a marked increase in the production of wheat, barley, oats, and many other products. The export of carobs attained considerable magnitude; an attempt was made to grow Øet;8 and cotton cultivation, stimulated by the insatiable demands of a western Europe which was tired of homespun wool and linen, underwent a real boom. So too did the manufacture of textiles from cotton, silk, and wool, particularly of the cloths called camuca and samite. Such are the generalizations we draw from the two censuses previously mentioned, on the reasonable assumption that they represent the average production around 1500 and 1540 respectively, not the production of specific years. In Table 1 are some of their relevant figures, and in Table 2 some modern figures to compare with them. 8 Florio Bustron, "Chronique de 1'lle de Chypre," Mélanges Historiques (Paris, 1886), V, 29. T S. Lusignano, ChorografJia e Breve Historia Universale dell' Isola di Cipro (Bologna, 1573), p. 37. 8 W. F. Sinclair (trans.), P. Teixeira's The Travels of Pedro Teixeira (London, 1902), p. 134. ° Lusignano, p. 36.

46

VENETIAN REGIME : 1489-1571

TABLE 1 PRODUCTION IN VENETIAN TIMES* PRODUCT wheatt barley oats vetch (rovi) broad beans haricot beans lentils chick peas flax flax-seed sesame olive oil wines carobs cheese wool hides cotton sugar prima cotta -zamburot molasses honey silk textiles-ciambelotti - samiti - camuche - cadini oxen

CA. 1500 990,290 moza 1,254,907 „ 20,000 „ 20,000 „ 30,000 „ 20,000 „ 15,000 „ 5,000 „ 25,000 „ 25,000 „ 3,000 350 cantars 100,000 ? - 0 cantars 3,50 200 velli ? 7,00 - 0 cantars 2, 000 250 250 300 1,000 ducats 600 pieces of 40 pies 800 200 150 22,510 head „

CA. 1540 1,400,000 moza 1,600,000 „ 34,000 „ 100,000 „ 100,000 „ 30,000 „ 5,000 „ 80,000 „ 40,E „ 6,000 850 cantars 200,000 ? 200,000 cantars? 850 cantars 300 „ 5,000 „ 20,000 „ 1,500 „ 450 „ 850 „ 400 3,000 ducats 200 pieces 2,800 „ 1 ,000 „ 350 „

* Mas Latrie, III, 497-98, 534-36. That author states that the moza, moggia or muid of Cyprus in Lusignan and Venetian times was equivalent to about 73 litres (Ibid., p. 191, n. 5; p. 498, n. 3): that the cantar or quintal equalled 225 kilograms (Ibid., Vol. II, p. 499, n. 8); or the same, approximately, as the Aleppo cantar of 504 pounds avoirdupois still used in Cyprus for measuring carobs. A pic, today 2 feet, was then 27 inches according to Cobham. Cobham, Cypria, p. 262. What the figures for wine represent is not clear. The earlier census reads: "vini, metri 400', the sono somme 100 mila," metri being some old measure of capacity for liquids (Mas Latrie, III, 188); and the later census, "vini, some . 200,000." Mas Latrie himself was uncertain whether the figure for carobs represented cantars, and the same uncertainty attaches to the 200 velli ("hides") in the 1500 census. $ Hill quotes from Silvester Minio yields of 1,500,000 "bushels" of wheat and 2,500,000 of barley for the year 1539. Hill, III, 815. $ Of the two sugars zamburo was the darker and less pure. Mas Latrie, I, 222-23; Vol. III, p. 88, n. 2.

47

THE ECONOMICS OF CYPRUS

TABLE 2 VENETIAN AND RECENT PRODUCTION* PRODUCT

CA. 1500

CA. 1540

wheat barley oats vetch (rovi) sugar olive oil carobs cotton honey oxen

990,290 bushels 1,254,907 „ 20,000 „ 20,000 2,250 cantars 350 „ — 7,000 „ 300 22,510 head

1,400,000 bushels 1,600,000 „ 34,000 „ — 1,950 cantars 850 „ 200,000 ? 20,000 cantars 400

—

„

1945-59 YEARLY AVERAGE 1,845,755 bushels 2,225,678 „ 191,318 „ 233,426 „ nil 7,356 cantars 167,509 „ 1,181 „ 145f „ 33,482f head

* The columns for 1500 and 1540 are the same as in Table I. The figures in the third column have been taken from Cyprus, Department of Agriculture, Annual Report, 1954 (Nicosia, 1955). This report uses the Cyprus term kite for bushel and gives the weights of some of the products in okes (180 okes equal 1 Aleppo cantar of 504 pounds avoirdupois). i Figure is for 1954 only. 1 Figure is for 1954 only. The 1954 census recorded 34,718 cattle, but this included 1,236 dairy cows.

The exact value of the measure moza in Table 1 is not clear.10 Hill follows various reports issued by the British administration in interpreting it as one English bushel;1 and although no other authority for this equation could be found, it seems so plausible that it has been adopted in Table 2 and in the graph of Figure 5. 10 The word mow comes from the old Roman measure of capacity, modius, which spread widely throughout Italy and the eastern Mediterranean, but, in the Middle Ages at least, varied greatly in value from one region to another. If Mas Latrie, who reckoned the Cyprus mom at 73 litres, meant litres of the metric system, then it would equal about two English bushels; but if he meant cyprus litres, each of which equals 24 English quarts, then it would be equivalent to over six bushels. Since a bushel of wheat weighs around 21 okes, the latter value would coincide with De Vezin's, who wrote in 1790: "The mom contains eight caffisis (Persian Kafrz, a bushel-measure) and each caffisi weighs between 16 and 17 okes (taken at 441 lbs. English) according as the weigher is more or less tired, or the grains are heavier ... . They turn and shake the measure, press the wheat down with all their might, then heap up as much as they can on the top in the shape of a sugar-loaf. The mom costs now ten piastres." Cobham, Cypria, p. 372. A Cyprus mom equal to 6 English bushels, however, seems incredible, for it would make the production of wheat and barley in 1500 three times as great as the average of the period 1945-49, when the farm population had doubled and the island was moderately prosperous. Moreover, De Vezin's own estimate of the cereal production of his day, 250,000 moms of wheat and 500,000 of barley, would be altogether out of line with another estimate only twenty-five years later, but it would coincide very closely with this later estimate if the mom could be interpreted as one bushel. 11 E.g., AP 1892, IX, C. 6764, p. 7.

48

VENETIAN REGIME : 1489-1571

A writer in a recent agricultural census of Cyprus has attempted to compare the agriculture of Venetian times with that of the present day. He writes: So far as tree crops are concerned, it seems that olives were then practically non-existent and carobs less than one-half of the present number, but that vines were considerably more than now. the agriculture of that time was not essentially different from that of today. The main crops, as now, were cereals with vetches as rotation crop grown on unirrigated land, and cotton, broad beans, haricots and sesame for summer crops. Vines and carobs were the main tree crops. Grazing flocks existed on much the same scale as now, as can be deduced from the weight of skins. The only crop of importance that has dropped out is sugar cane. Its disappearance suggests a measure of desiccation since the Venetian period; it is also noticeable that there is some decline in wheat yields, and that the crops which show decreased production are the more heavily irrigated summer crops, cotton and haricots. It may be a fair inference that the extent of land under flood irrigation was larger than now, or at least not smaller.12 Not every statement in this appraisal seems justified by the figures in Table 2. There appears little doubt that carobs and grapes were the main tree crops in the earlier period, but the Venetian statistics are too uncertain to support the theory that the former have doubled in quantity within the last two or three centuries while the number of grapevines has declined. Moreover, it seems a trifle exaggerated to claim that olives were practically non-existent in 1540, when the island produced 850 cantars of oil, the yield of between 150,000 and 200,000 trees. This number is insignificant, to be sure, compared to the 1,500,000 trees that are harvested today; yet the doubling of oil during the first half-century of Venetian rule indicates a steady replanting or regrafting of olive trees after the ravages and destruction of the previous half-century, a replanting that the Venetian senate deliberately fostered by offering a premium of one gold sequin for every new tree. Again, the decrease in cotton production since the Venetian period surely reflects the bitter competition of other cotton-growing countries rather than any change in the island's rainfall, for which there seems to be no other evidence: sugar-cultivation too, we saw, became unprofitable and ceased on account of similar competition. The yield of wheat may have declined a little in modern times,13 1" - Cyprus, Census of Population and Agriculture, 1946, a report by D. A. Percival (London, 1949), pp. 76 f. 13 This might be indicated if the moza equalled 73 metric litres, i.e., two bushels instead of the one bushel reckoned in Table 2.

49

THE ECONOMICS OF CYPRUS

and the extent of land under flood irrigation may well be smaller now than formerly; but we need not invoke a hypothetical desiccation to explain these changes. Rather we should remember that considerable areas of former wheat land have been diverted to such crops as maize, tobacco, and citrous fruits, while the reforestation of the mountain slopes, and the draining-off of much larger quantities of water for industrial and domestic purposes, have diminished the runoff in winter and spring and checked a considerable amount of flooding. As Raeburn pointed out when discussing the water supply in the western Mesaoria: "In the last forty years, reafforestation, terracing, new irrigation channels, draw-off by pumping and particularly by chains-of-wells have altered the whole regime of these rivers, and there is not now the surplus water of former times. Flooding of a destructive character has practically ceased."14 Certain of the census writer's deductions, then, seem open to question. Nevertheless, his main conclusion stands firm. Apart from the disappearance of sugar cane, the agriculture of Venetian Cyprus differed in no essential respect from that of today, even though some new plants and new techniques have been introduced since the sixteenth century. Concerning the condition of the forests during the Venetian period we have little information. In 1491 the military commander in Famagusta requested Venice to send him a large quantity of timber and iron so that the inhabitants might repair their dwellings —a request he would hardly have made if the island had possessed good timber within convenient reach of the port. On the other hand, Savorgnan reported to Venice in 1562 that enemy forces could obtain plentiful supplies of timber from the forest near Kyrenia, and that wood (for both fuel and timber?) was available near the Limassol coast. Eight years later, too, when the Turks bottled up the Venetians in Famagusta, they were able to obtain all the rough timber they needed for their siegeworks from the Karpas Peninsula to the north. Yet before the end of the century we find the French traveller Villamont complaining that real firewood was scarce on the island. Weighing these apparently contradictory statements, we may conclude, perhaps, that individual pines and other tall trees dotted many of the mountain slopes, but that stands of good building timber survived only in remote districts, mainly in the Troodos 14 Cyprus, Water Supply and Irrigation Department, Water Supply in Cyprus, a general report by C. Raeburn (2nd ed.; Nicosia, 1945), p. 17.

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Mountains, where they were not easily accessible. Land transport, we must remember, was then very primitive. Logs could be dragged along the ground, but all other goods had to be carried on the backs of donkeys and camels, or in oxcarts. Though paths were numerous everywhere, real roads were few. Whereas today three paved highways pierce the Kyrenia Range to connect the central plain with the north coast, the sixteenth century knew only one poor wagon road, an easily blocked road that used the same pass as the present highway between Nicosia and Kyrenia.15 The Venetians knew the locations of the ancient copper and asbestos mines, and claimed that the island contained also gold, silver, lead, tin, and other minerals, including diamonds and emeralds. They themselves mined only salt, principally from the lake near Lamaca, for the lake at Limassol yielded so poor a quality that it was often neglected. Baumgarten, who visited Cyprus in 1508, noted that great quantities of salt were being exported to Syria, Greece, Italy, and other countries, much to the profit of Venice; and forty-five years later the Englishman John Locke remarked that "the Venetian ships that come to this Band are bound to cast out their ballast and to lade with salt for Venice. Also there may none in all the Iland buy salt but of these men, who maintain these pits for S. Marke. This place is watched by night."18 Just how much salt Cyprus was producing in the second half of the sixteenth century is unknown, but it was enough to make Larnaca the busiest port on the island, and to yield a revenue that in good years averaged perhaps 300,000 ducats. Famagusta, the island's administrative capital, became now its chief money market. After its evacuation by the Genoese a small colony of Jews moved in, twenty-five families of moneylenders, whose activities one of them described in glowing terms to a compatriot in Italy: People who want to borrow money come here [to Famagusta]. This money-lending business is really remarkable. One lends to no one except on a thoroughly sound security. No trust or credit. If the pledge is of gold or silver the interest is twenty per centum: If of wool, thread or silk twenty-five per centum. The pledge is kept 15 A. Savorgnan, "Copiosa descrizione delle cose di Cipro . . . fatta per il Signore Savorgnano," in J. P. Reinhard, Vollständige Geschichte des Königreichs Cypern (Erlangen and Leipzig, 1768), Vol. II, Beylage IV, p. 36. 10 Cobham, Cypria, p. 69.

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a year, after which notice is sent to the debtor at his expense that he must pay in a month at the latest. If when this is past he does not come, the pledge is taken to the town-court and sold by auction. If the price fetched covers the capital, interest and costs the borrower takes the balance. If otherwise, the court gives the lender an order on the debtor for the remainder, and he can insist on another pledge to cover the sum. There is no public loan-bank, and no lender has any advantage over his fellow. Anyone who wants to follow this business has only to say so, but he is bound to keep a very exact account of the pledges he takes, and get his ledger stamped by the judge; it is then accepted as legal evidence. As soon as the Christians see a fresh Jew arrive to stay here they ask him if he wants to lend money. If he says yes, they are kindly towards him, and he need not fear that the other Jews will look askance at him as though he were poaching on their preserves. The country is big enough to feed them all. They even beg the newcomer to lend to their friends whom they cannot oblige themselves. Sometimes sums as great as 50,000 ducats are lent for more than six months, but not of course to the first comer. It is an essential condition, and a good custom it is, that the borrower before he receives the loan, were it but a crown, makes some present in proportion to the sum he asks, a chicken or two, a lamb or goat or calf, some wine, cheese or oil. But when the pledge represents a large loan, the gift will not be in the same proportion as for small sums, but will be something worth having, equivalent to 3 or 4 p.c. additional interest. It is an old custom, without legal basis or authority from the regulations in force, yet better observed than any law, so that you have no occasion to ask for the gift, it is offered to you spontaneously. In ten days I have lent all the money I brought with me, and all against gold or silver: I would not take clothing in pawn, nor make loans of more than 30 scudi or less than three. Sometimes the brokers ask a considerable sum for commission (this is a doubtful question among us) so that the borrower pays as much as forty per centum interest: but nobody cares. In spite of all, the inhabitants are very glad to find ready money for their pledges, as they need it. Besides every mechanic, every labourer, has in his house vessels of silver or jewels, for they are all rich, and pledges are easy to find.17 Jewish moneylenders, nevertheless, played only a backstage role in the island's economy, since Venice reserved the export and import trade for her own nationals. Greek-Cypriots also were excluded from this field, as they had been under the Lusignans; but they carried on much petty trading as before. Peasants from the Nicosia countryside, following age-old custom, continued to attend the weekly market in that town, and late in October each year 17

52

Elias of Pesaro (1563) in Cobham, Cypria, p. 74.

VENETIAN REGIME : 1489-1571

Cypriots from all parts of the island gathered outside its walls for the fair of St. Demetrios, at which they bought and sold whatever they needed for the coming winter, made terms with their creditors, and transacted other business." Nature did not spare Venetian Cyprus her customary train of calamities. Locusts devoured the crops unsparingly, despite processions, holy water, and the sensible but too infrequent gathering of the eggs. Droughts occurred from time to time, and earthquakes caused much damage. Worst of all were the repeated ravages of plague, which had become almost endemic in the eastern Mediterranean. Notwithstanding all these tribulations, the island continued to prosper until 1571, when its Venetian government collapsed under the onslaught of the Turks. is Mas Latrie, I, 33; Cyprianos (1788) in Cobham, Cypria, p. 357.

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PART IV TURKISH REGIME: 1571-1878

The Turkish conquest of Cyprus marks the end of its feudal age and the beginning of the modern era: for the Turks recognized only two divisions of mankind, true believers and infidels, and they lumped together indiscriminately the island's Greek-speaking majority and its ruling Latin minority. Distinctions between noble and peasant, freeman and serf, disappeared overnight, for the serfs automatically gained their emancipation, while the nobles who survived the conquest, deprived of their landed possessions, dropped to the level of the common people and were forced to earn their livelihood by such humble occupations as driving mules and hawking wine. This social revolution, long overdue, came with the same dramatic suddenness as the recent Bolshevik revolution in Russia; and, just as in the latter country, it brought in its train many economic changes, though naturally on a very much smaller scale. The expulsion of the Venetians inevitably affected the island's commerce. Throughout the Lusignan and Venetian regimes this had flowed toward both the Moslem and the Christian worlds, but the western stream had always been the stronger. The Turkish conquerors set out to reverse the strength of the two currents, and for a brief period the Christian world received only a small percentage of Cyprus' exports. Changed also were the amounts and destinations of the exports, because Turkish needs and interests did not coincide with those of Italy, France, or England. Thus the new masters forbade the export of grain to Christendom;' and they paid little attention at first to Cyprus' cotton and wines, and to the Larnaca salt so highly prized at Venice, because they possessed other sources for those products within their own empire. To be sure, they retained the salt tax on every inhabitant in order to augment their revenues; yet at the same time they neglected to keep up the dikes and canals that kept out or drained off surplus water ' Pococke in C. D. Cobham, Excerpta Cypria (Cambridge, 1908), p. 268. In Pococke's day (1738) a small amount was being exported to Europe, despite the prohibition.

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from the salt works, with the result that within fourteen years the output of Larnaca Lake dropped in value from 300,000 to only 8,000 ducats.2 Turkey quickly learned, however, that she could not disrupt the established trading channels without damaging her own interests. Unless Cyprus was permitted to sell some of her products to Christian countries, she could not pay both the annual tribute that the Porte imposed and the salaries of the Turkish officials; and if her cotton, wine, and certain other goods lacked a ready market within the Turkish Empire, they were still eagerly sought by a Europe that had increased its population, extended its commerce into every ocean, and enriched itself with American gold and silver. As early as 1536, when the Venetians still retained their hold on Cyprus, France had negotiated a treaty with Turkey that gave her extraterritorial rights in the latter's empire; and by 1580 both French and English traders were carrying precious metals and woollen goods to the marts of Smyrna and Aleppo to exchange for silks and carpets, drugs and cotton.2 About the same time Lancashire weavers laid the foundations of their flourishing textile industry by combining Levantine cotton, some of it from Cyprus, with linen yarn from Ireland to make a light, cheap cloth called fustian, which became very popular in England, along the Slave Coast of Africa, and on the sugar plantations of North America. Even Venice, despite her ejection from Cyprus, did not drop out of the commercial competition for longer than two or three decades. On the contrary, she quickly adjusted her relations with Turkey and again sent her vessels into Cypriot waters; by 1596 her merchants were operating in Larnaca and Nicosia and her vessels calling at Larnaca and Limassol. From this time onward merchantmen that were heading for Syria or Egypt were able to obtain cheap provisions in the island's ports, often too an extra cargo.' More and more vessels then began to visit them—not 2 Louis de Mas Latrie, Histoire de l'lle de Chypre sous le Regne des Princes de to Maison de Lusignan (Paris, 1861), III, 560. s In 1592 the Levant Company was founded through an amalgamation of two earlier companies. It operated a factory in Cyprus during the seventeenth century, and doubtless exported cotton to England. R. H. Lang, Cyprus (London, 1878), p. 228. * "Cyprus on account of its situation, and the cheapness of all sorts of provisions in the island, is the place where almost all ships touch on their voyages in these parts; and by this way a correspondence is carried on between all the places in the Levant and Christendom." Pococke (1738) in Cobham, Cypria, p. 268. Cf. also C. D. Cobham (trans.), G. Mariti's Travels in the Island of Cyprus (Cambridge, 1909), p. 17.

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Famagusta, whose harbour for security reasons the Turks had closed to foreigners immediately after its captures and later had blocked against all but small vessels, but Larnaca (Salines), Limassol, and less often Paphos. It need not surprise us, therefore, that by 1605, only thirty-four years after the conquest, large quantities of salt were again flowing regularly to Venice, that cotton, the island's chief export staple, was being shipped to both Venice and Holland, and that Venice had even opened a consulate in the port of Larnaca.e If Moslem rule, after the first few years, did not greatly deflect the island's trade, it nevertheless introduced new property and inheritance laws that in the course of time modified considerably the prevailing size and ownership of agricultural holdings. The Turks distinguished the land itself from the olive and other trees that grew from it, and the buildings that rose above it. Each of these, land, trees, and buildings, could be held in shares and inherited by a different individual or group of individuals. So too could the water that irrigated the land, whether derived from a well or an aqueduct;7 but the minerals below its surface concerned no one except the government, which for many years disallowed prospecting and prohibited any mining apart from the quarrying of gypsum and the digging of painters' earths. The laws governing inheritance were very complicated, and differed slightly for Moslems and Christians. Over the years, however, they promoted a steady fractioning of the agricultural land, until by the end of the regime the average farmer no longer owned a single tract large enough to G At the same time the Turkish governor forbade non-Moslems to spend the night within the fortress city, thereby forcing them to move outside and found a new settlement, the modern Varosha, just beyond its walls. The openness of this suburb, its fertile gardens and orange groves, made residence there so much pleasanter than in the narrow-laned city that its inhabitants refused to move inside the walls again when the Turks rescinded or relaxed the prohibition about the beginning of the nineteenth century. Cf. Cobham, Cypria, p. 434. Today Turks still preponderate inside the city walls, and Greeks outside them. G W. F. Sinclair (trans.), P. Teixeira's The Travels of Pedro Teixeira (London, 1902), pp. 133 et seq. Cf. Dandini (1596) and Moryson (1596) in Cobham, Cypria, pp. 181, 185. Turkey must have sanctioned also the establishment of a Franciscan monastery at Larnaca, for a monk from that monastery officiated in the chapel of the Venetian consulate. e "The difficulties with which the Land Registry Department has to grapple owing to the intricacies of Turkish succession law may be gauged by the following examples. There exists a carob tree which is owned by more than one hundred co-heirs; a one-fifth share of a single room in a house was recently purchased from 132 persons; the ownership of a certain well in the Karpass peninsula is divided into 2,903,040 shares, held in varying proportions by nine individuals." AP 1914-16, IX, C. 7643, p. 35.

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Diamond Jeru eess

Diamond Jenness

PLATE III A. WINTER WHEAT GROWING IN LONG NARROW FIELDS BETWEEN RIDGES OF UPTURNED SANDSTONE. NOTE THE CULTIVATION AGAINST THE CONTOURS, THE RAPID EROSION, AND THE EROSIONBRAKE OF STONES IN THE FIELD TO THE FAR LEFT. AN AUSTRALIAN EUCALYPTUS DROOPS ITS BRANCHES OVER THE TOP OF THE PICTURE.

B. A CENTURIES-OLD OLIVE TREE SURROUNDED BY A LOW TURF WALL TO RETAIN THE MOISTURE.

w

PLATE IV A HILLSLOPE, ONCE BARREN, TERRACED AND RECLAIMED FOR VINEYARDS. THE SCATTERED OLIVE TREES HELP TO CHECK EROSION.

U.K. Information Service

TURKISH REGIME : 1571-1878

support himself and his family, but a number of tiny plots dispersed among other plots over an area of several square miles. Some plots were too small to repay the labour of cultivation; others lay too far from home, or were accessible only through land that belonged to other farmers. Holdings of this nature wasted time and energy. Often too they discouraged any attempt at conservation, any measures against soil erosion which, to be effective, required the co-operation of many individuals. Moreover they greatly increased labour costs, even if they did not lower per acre production; and they gave rise to numerous disputes and frequent litigation. Yet this system of land tenure which evolved during the Turkish regime persists to the present day, despite recent legislation aimed at consolidating the holdings; and it constitutes a major obstacle to farm-mechanization.8 When the Turks changed the island's legal system, they reversed also the status of its Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox churches. The former, the faith of the hated Venetians, they persecuted and virtually expelled. Some of its churches, including the cathedrals at Nicosia and Famagusta, they converted into mosques; the rest, together with the monasteries, they abandoned or sold to the Greek Orthodox church, which they tolerated, in Cyprus as on the mainland, because it was the religion of a subject population. In the mid-seventeenth century this tolerance gave place to grudging support when they discovered that the church's ruling council, comprising an archbishop and four to six bishops, offered them a very effective organization for the collection of Cyprus' tribute. The governor thereupon acknowledged the archbishop as the official representative of all the Christians on the island and laid on him the burden of extracting the tribute, as well as such other levies as he might impose from time to time; and the archbishop, aided by his bishops, willingly carried out the task by assessing 8 The fragmentation of holdings is a major problem and in some areas has occurred to such an extent as to render the proper utilization of the land very difficult. The number of plots per holding according to the 1946 census was 12.6 of an average size of 4.25 donums. In some instances the plots are contiguous, but in general the plots are widely separated and in some cases miles apart. It is exceptional to see a homestead on the land, the majority of farmers living in villages which range in size from mere hamlets to small towns. Some 22% of the agricultural holdings are situated outside the boundaries of the cultivators' village." Cyprus, Department of Agriculture, Annual Report of the Department of Agriculture, 1954 (Nicosia, 1955), p. 1; Cyprus, Census of Population and Agriculture, 1946, a report by D. A. Percival (London, 1949), pp. 65 f.; Cyprus, Proceedings of a Conference on Land Use in a Mediterranean Environment (Nicosia, 1947), pp. 19 et seq.; Cyprus, Land Utilization Committee, Report of the Land Utilization Committee (Nicosia, 1946), pp. 5 f.

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each village's share of the tax and sending out grammatikoi or clerks to collect the money. The Turkish administration thereby laid on the head of the Orthodox church a heavy civil responsibility. Added to his religious prestige, it gave him so much authority that from the seventeenth century until 1821 he frequently rivalled in power the governor himself. Inevitably, too, his church increased its temporal wealth and power by acquiring some of the best farm land, as the Roman Catholic church had done under the Lusignans. How much it attached to the various monasteries, and how much it vested in its ruling council and financial committee, we do not know;') but by the middle of the nineteenth century, when many of the freehold farms had been fractionalized by the inheritance laws, numerous other fields had passed into the hands of the church10 or of absentee landlords, and were cultivated not by their owners, but by tenant farmers whose condition did not differ greatly from that of the medieval serfs except that they could abandon the holdings whenever they wished. And since seasons unfavourable to crops continued to recur with distressing frequency, while moneylenders willing to finance the farmers until the next harvest demanded exorbitant interest rates,11 a high percentage of both the freeholders and the tenants toiled under the burden of hardly redeemable debts. Native Cypriot moneylenders and merchants were a new element in the social structure of the island, which lost its merchant class when it was conquered by the Crusaders and acquired no banking facilities until the nineteenth century.12 Venice's commercial agents vanished with the Turkish occupation; and the Jewish ° Cf. paragraph 20 in the Berat issued by the Sublime Porte to an archbishop of Cyprus in 1866: "All the waqf possessions of the churches which are under the Archbishop's jurisdiction, vineyards, gardens, farms, fields, pastures, fairs, holy wells, mills, flocks and other ecclesiastical property, are entirely under the lordship and control of the said Archbishop, and no one else may interfere with them." Cobham, Cypria, p. 472. Before the end of the Turkish regime Kikko Monastery possessed many farms throughout the island, and property in both European and Asiatic Turkey, even at Tiflis in the Caucasus. Ibid., p. 439; R. Biddulph, "Cyprus," Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society (London, 1889), XI, 718. 10 In 1879 the churches of Famagusta district alone owned 8,184 donums (2,700 acres) of land, and its 19 monasteries 15,759 donums, most of them leased to laymen. AP 1880, XLIX, C. 2543, p. 93. 11 Hill says the interest rates were from 15 to 20 per cent, quoting from a consular report of 1846. By 1858 it had risen to 25 per cent. Sir George Hill, History of Cyprus (Cambridge, 1952) IV, 187, 241. 12 H. C. Luke, Cyprus Under the Turks (Oxford, 1921), p. 210. Prior to 1864 when the Imperial Ottoman Bank opened a branch office at Larnaca, merchants had settled many of their accounts by bills on Constantinople, Smyrna, or Beyrout. 58

TURKISH REGIME : 1571-1878

moneylenders of Famagusta, their contemporaries, went the way of the merchant princes of Lusignan days, for Turkey strictly prohibited any Jews from setting foot on the island,18 as Rome had prohibited them more than one thousand years earlier. The disappearance of both Venetian agents and Jews created a commercial vacuum which inevitably drew in the Greek-Cypriot peasants, because their Turkish masters were more interested in agriculture than in trade and settled nearly all their colonists on the land. A new merchant class, of course, could not develop overnight. Greek-speaking peasants continued to be oppressed and held down by their rulers, though hardly more, perhaps, than their Turkish neighbours. But as the years went by, some of them entered the service of the administration, and their Orthodox church leaders began to share authority with the governor appointed by the Porte. Opportunities then arose to improve their economic position. The unpaid or poorly paid servants of the inefficient government, and clerks engaged by the church leaders to collect the taxes from the illiterate population, did not hesitate to accept bribes, or to divert public money to their own purses, and with the capital thus acquired to trade in grain and wine and other produce." GreekCypriots were no longer debarred from foreign commerce, since their new rulers, unlike the Venetians, showed no desire to drive out merchants of other nationalities or to reserve the foreign trade exclusively to fellow Moslems. So when Europeans displayed no interest in marketing the island's lumber and carobs throughout the Levant, the Cypriots themselves took up this traffic, which they monopolized down to the end of the Turkish regime. One avenue of trade commonly opens up others. It is not surprising, therefore, that within a century of the Turkish conquest a Greek-Cypriot emissary to the Duke of Savoy could report: "There are rich and influential individuals among the Christian Cypriots, but not being allowed to carry weapons they devote themselves to trade. They carry oil, cheese, and other goods to Tripoli and other ports in Syria, but do not make long voyages."16 Furthermore, as we saw earlier, soon after the expulsion of the Venetians, ships of many nations began to put in at Paphos, Limassol, and Larnaca, each vessel vying with the others for a share of the island's commerce; and several countries, fortified by 13

Pococke (1738) and De Vezin (1798) in Cobham, Cypria, pp. 269,

368. 14 Cf. the career of George Lapierre outlined in Hill, IV, 138-41. 16 Mas Latrie, III, 586.

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extra-territorial rights, set up consulates in Larnaca to channel Cyprus' products toward their own shores and to protect their nationals. These consulates employed a considerable number of Cypriot servants and guards, and also attracted to their doors a host of agents, interpreters, and middlemen, many of whom placed themselves under the official protection of the consuls and thereby acquired all the immunities granted to foreign merchants.10 Some even became consuls or vice-consuls themselves for one or more European nations: thus a certain Greek-Cypriot in Limassol, Demetrio Francoudi, served simultaneously as consul for Naples, vice-consul for England, and vice-consul for Russia, three positions from which he acquired great wealth.17 Before many years had passed, the shipping ports of Larnaca and Limassol swarmed with petits bourgeois—native consuls, consular employees, traders, interpreters and hangers-on, both Greek-speaking and Turkishspeaking, though the former were the more numerous—who found no dearth of opportunities to engage in foreign trade on their own account and to speculate in the money market, either as principals or as agents working for a share of the profits. The foreign consuls themselves set the example. At Larnaca where "the Austrian, Neopolitan, French and Spanish consuls had their residence, ... all except the French consul were engaged in trade; and of course their own interest prevailed over that of the country they represented.... Much of the trade is contraband, "18 particularly cornThese consuls and their satellites, or at least some of them, inevitably filled the gap left by the expulsion of the Jewish moneylenders. An early eighteenth-century traveller wrote: Beside the private merchants living at Lernica, there are also consuls of several nations, as English, Dutch, French, and Venetian. the English consul is highly respected all over the island, as jointly with his company he advances money to the inhabitants, for getting in their several harvests, in which otherwise they would be at a great loss. 16 Cobham, Cypria, p. 397. During the Lusignan era many Syrians and Greek-Cypriots had acquired by the same means the privileges and immunities of Genoese and Venetian nationals. They were known as "White Venetians" and "White Genoese." In the sixteenth century, however, they lost their separate identity and merged with the ruling Venetians. Mas Latrie, Vol. III, p. 60 n. 4 et al. 17 Cobham, Cypria, p. 392. For other examples see pp. 339, 425. The English traveller Henry Light (1814) reported that the English vice-consul at Larnaca "was a Zantiot, and had amassed a considerable fortune from his office during the latter periods of war, when every vessel coming to Cyprus bore the British flag." Ibid., p. 419. 18 Ibid., p. 420.

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In this both parties find their advantage, for the English do not advance their money under twenty per cent. and receive the interest in silk, wine, cotton, corn and other products of the country, on all which they set their own price; whence, without wronging those gentlemen, it may be supposed that thirty per cent. is the least they make of their money, and on failure of payment at the time appointed, they may immediately seize on the debtor's effects. The French are well aware of this lucrative manner of gaining the people's affections, and would be glad to supplant the English, but have not sufficient funds, most of them being only factors to merchants at Marseilles.1e

Thus in several ways there grew up during the Turkish regime a small but influential class of native Cypriot merchants such as had not existed since the Byzantine era, men who occupied themselves usually in commerce, but who possessed surplus funds which they could risk in tax-farming, invest in town and country real estate, or lend to impoverished peasants desperately trying to pay their taxes and support their families until the next harvest. By the beginning of the nineteenth century they virtually controlled the export trade of the island, which at that period consisted largely of cotton.2O Hardly any of them, ironically enough, belonged to the Moslem community that claimed political control of Cyprus: within two centuries economic dominance had passed to Turkey's Christian subjects, who adhered to the Greek Orthodox church. As the British vice-consul, T. B. Sandwith, reported in 1867, "the Christians ... are the wealthiest class in the island, being the principal landowners, and, in trade no less than in agriculture, possess preeminence over the Mohomedans."21 Such was the status of the two peoples in the nineteenth century, after nearly three hundred years of Moslem rule. In the early years of that rule, however, it was very different. The GreekCypriot peasants had welcomed the Turkish invasion because it freed them from their Latin overlords; but their new masters proved even more oppressive than the old, not through vindictiveness so much as through indolence, administrative inefficiency, corruption, and highhandedness. Part of the Turks' victorious army, and settlers, whom they brought over from the mainland to strengthen the Porte's rule, received grants of land, nominally detached from the public domain and from the confiscated estates of the Latins, but in many cases expropriated from Greek farmers, 10 Heyman (1700-23) in Ibid., p. 250. 20 Ali Bey (1806) in Ibid., p. 397. 21 Luke, p. 219.

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who lacked the power to resist or even to protest. Intermittently thereafter Turkish soldiers and minor officials whose wages the administration failed to pay—as it did sometimes for months and even years—pillaged the wretched peasants and seized their fields in order to support themselves and their families ;22 and irregular troops and bandits plundered and slaughtered indiscriminately during the frequent outbreaks of civil strife. The peasants were ground down also by tithes on agricultural products imposed over and above the tribute, by rentals for the supply of water, by octrois on merchandise entering the towns, and by various other taxes decreed for the support of Turkish officials and troops, but not always used for that purpose.29 So the lot of the Greek-Cypriot farmers was worse under the Turks than it had been under the Lusignans and Venetians, except that now all of them were freemen.24 To escape these never ending exactions many Greek-speaking peasants entered the monasteries, their refuge in Lusignan times; others abandoned their homes and fled to the mountains;25 and still others made their way overseas to Syria, Crete, and Greece. Repeated famines, provoked not by droughts alone but by civil disorders and excessive requisitions of grain,2Ø accelerated the migration until the population was inadequate for the cultivation of the 22 Cf. the statement of De Vezin: "All the Turks in the Government service, in Nicosia, Famagusta, Larnaca and other parts have no pay. They buy their posts, but to recoup themselves for their outlay, and make something over, the Governor surrenders certain of his privileges for their support." Cobham, Cypria, p. 371. 23 Cf. Cyprianos' account of the taxes imposed by the Turks immediately after the conquest, in Cobham, Cypria, pp. 346-47. Cyprianos, of course, was a Greek Cypriot. He wrote about 1788. 24 "... Cyprus, of old a most fertile and productive country, is now in great measure deserted and uncultivated. For the Turks have no care themselves for agriculture, and if they see any of the Greek natives occupying themselves in cultivating the soil, or amassing wealth, they either harass them with avanie (so the Italians call the fraudulent tricks of the Turks), or drain their resources by exactions, and flay them (so to speak) to the bone. So much only remains to the wretched creatures from the fruits of the earth as allows them to sustain life, to provide bare necessities, and sow their fields anew." Cotovicus (1599) in Cobham, Cypria, p. 192. Cf. the remark of Cyprianos in 1788 that "in spite of its scanty population the island pays yearly and inevitably to its masters more than it paid under the Venetians." Ibid., p. 366. Cf. also Ibid., p. 198. 25 In the early eighteenth century raids by privateers from Malta caused the abandonment of some stretches of coast in the Karpas Peninsula. Since they enslaved only the Turkish population, not the Christian Greeks, the Turks of that period concentrated in the Mesaoria, where they were comparatively safe, and left the coastal regions to the Greeks. Cobham, Cypria, pp. 255 f., 258 f. 26 Cf. the accusation brought against the administration by Captain J. M. Kinneir early in the nineteenth century: "The Governor and Arch-

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land. Then diseases, especially cholera and plague, ravaged those who remained behind. Twice at least, once in the seventeenth century and again in the eighteenth, plague carried away half of the inhabitants. From these and other causes the population during the first two hundred years of Turkish rule fell to 100,000 and probably lower, a mere third or quarter of its number in the most prosperous days of the Lusignan era. In the nineteenth century, however, conditions improved, owing partly to the pressure exerted by western European nations on the Porte in Constantinople. Although taxes remained approximately as high as before, the administration became less oppressive and arbitrary, so that the people could adjust themselves to it more rapidly. Their number then began to increase again until by the close of Turkish rule in 1878, it had reached about 180,000, only a little below its total three centuries before when that rule began (Fig. 1).27 It was in 1838, Gaudry tells us, that this new era dawned. In that year the Turkish governor, who previously had relied on the taxes for his income, was assigned a fixed stipend of 120,000 francs. Thenceforward he governed the people more justly, and agriculture began to raise its head. Each day saw the planting of new carob trees; olive and mulberry trees, barley, wheat, and sesame began to cover the more open areas; madder-cultivation expanded rapidly; tobacco flourished around several villages; and the flocks of sheep and goats slowly increased. Although cotton production failed to gain, and the aspect of the island as a whole remained one of desolation, there was a marked feeling of improvement.28 bishop deal more largely in corn than all the other people of the island put together; they frequently seize upon the whole yearly produce, at their own valuation, and either export or retail it at an advanced price; nay it happened more than once during the war with Spain, that the whole of the corn was purchased in this manner by the merchants of Malta, and exported without leaving the lower orders a morsel of bread." Cobham, Cypria, p. 414. 27 Cf. Hill, IV, 31-34. 28 Paraphrased from A. Gaudry, Recherches Scientifiques en Orient (Paris, 1855), pp. 86 f. A Greek writer who dated the recovery from about 1840 asserted from that date "Cyprus began to recover and develop; the population increased and trade revived; and the Mütesarrif and Kaimmakam behaved with greater respect to the inhabitants and especially to the Greek magnates. The Turks got on well with the Christians." Hill, IV, 264. The last remark conflicts with Gaudry's who wrote after his visit to the island in 1853 that: "Conqu6rants de l'ile, ils [les musulmans} traitent les Grecs dedaigneusement " Gaudry, p. 127 f.

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,

1900

FIG. 1. POPULATION CHANGES FROM THE FOURTEENTH TO THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. Note the steep drop in the population during the troublesome years of the later Lusignan kings, the slow rise under the Venetians, the steady decline during the first two centuries of Turkish rule, the recovery in the nineteenth century, and the explosive growth since 1878 under British rule.

Not until late in the Turkish regime, however, did this improvement occur. During the previous two hundred and fifty years insecure conditions and the decline in population greatly diminished the area under cultivation and lowered the island's agricultural production. Mariti, writing in 1760, hints at this when he mournfully remarks of the Mesaoria, "villages and hamlets are dotted over the plain, some inhabited, some abandoned."23 Gloomier still was his description of the plain just north of Larnaca: "It is sad to see the place so neglected; there are now hardly ten families where 50 years ago were 2000 souls, who tilled the ground and drew from it abundance of cotton. Silk, too, the best in the island, was produced in large quantities."90 20

SO

64

Cobham, Mariti's Travels, p. 61. Ibid., p. 37.

TURKISH ØIME : 1571-1878

The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries have left us no figures of either crops or farm acreages to mark the depth of the depression; but for the year 1844 (Fig. 2), when conditions had

FIG. 2. PERCENTAGE DIVISION OF THE CULTIVATED LAND IN 1844. Grain cultivation dominated Cyprus' agriculture. Of the 61,300 hectares (about 151,500 acres) under crops in 1844, no fewer than 43,000 (71 per cent) were planted to the three cereals wheat, barley, and oats. Furthermore, about twice that acreage—perhaps 87,000 hectares—was being reserved for cereals, since the farmers of that period were allowing their fields to lie fallow from one to three years. Grapevines covered only 8,000 hectares, cotton 4,000. The "other" crops noted in the graph were mulberries and oranges, 2,500 hectares; legumes and farinaceous vegetables, 2,000; flax and sesame, 600; tobacco, 250; and madder, 150. (Figures from Gaudry, p. 90.)

become more stable and the population was increasing again, the French consul Fourcade estimated the area under crops as 61,300 hectares, and the total amount of farm land, reckoning a one to three year fallow, at some 180,000 hectares, or about one-fifth of the island's land surface.31 If we compare his figures with those for 1946, when the population had roughly trebled (with more than al Gaudry, p. 150. Cf. Oberhummer's estimate for 1863 of 65,000 hectares under crops and 200,000 of actual farm land. E. Oberhummer, Die Insel Cypern (Munich, 1903), p. 273.

65

THE ECONOMICS OF CYPRUS

20 per cent, however, living in towns and therefore not directly concerned with agriculture), we find that in the later period the area under crops was 225,000 hectares (1,700,000 donums) and the total amount of farm land about twice that figure.32 This would suggest that in 1946 farmers were cultivating about half their holdings each year because the island was rather densely populated, labour plentiful, and artificial fertilizers available to those who could afford the cost, whereas in Turkish times, when the island was underpopulated, labour scarce, and no fertilizers available except the droppings of grazing animals, they cultivated only about one-third of their holdings. At that period they really owned too much land, so that they were tempted to work only the richest soils and to leave vast stretches waste. Even in the fertile Mesaoria, Gaudry says, one could see amid cultivated fields numerous patches of ground unworked and neglected." Inevitably land was very cheap, as we see indeed from the price, 20 piastres or about a pound sterling, paid by a Captain Loretti around 1800 for a tract several hundred acres in extent, three miles southwest of Kyrenia.34 The captain planted the area to olive trees because they yielded a large profit in a short time; but the same land, or land very close to it, had been irrigated from the Lapithos spring in Lusignan times and made to yield good crops of sugar cane and cotton. Having noted some of the major developments in the economy of Cyprus during the three centuries of Turkish rule, let us now review that economy in detail, beginning with the cereal crops on which the economic life of the island largely depended. Cereals The first two centuries brought no change in agricultural methods, and no improvement so far as we know in plant strains; consequently there could have been no significant change in the productivity of the cultivated land or of the farmer who worked it. And since the amount of land cultivated each year and the farm labour force both decreased, there must have been a corresponding decline in the production of the two main cereals, wheat and barley (Fig. 3 ) . Our information is too vague, however, to give us a clear Census of Population and Agriculture, 1946, pp. 66 f. Gaudry, p. 186. 34 Cobham, Cypria, p. 418. 32

33

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TURKISH REGIME : 1571-1878

picture of this decline or the subsequent recovery, for we have inherited no harvest estimates at all from the seventeenth century, and from the eighteenth only De Vezin's two figures; 250,000 mozas of wheat and 500,000 mozas of barley, both hypothetical because of the uncertain value of the moza.35

FIG. 3. GRAIN PRODUCTION FROM 1500 TO 1950. This graph is suggestive only, because until near the end of the Turkish regime we have only rough estimates for six isolated periods. Nevertheless, it appears reasonably certain that Cyprus grew less wheat and barley throughout the Turkish regime than either before or after; that yields dropped to their lowest point in the eighteenth century, and began to climb upward again in the nineteenth. The fluctuations in grain yields thus closely paralleled the population changes, as can be seen by a comparison with the population graph of Figure 1, p. 64.

Nineteenth-century writers abandoned the moza unit and recorded the cereal production in either hectolitres or kite, the latter, stabilized in 1884 at 36.3477 litres, being equivalent to one English bushel. In Table 3 are the few figures of grain yields that have survived from the Turkish regime, converted into English bushels. 35

See Part III, footnote 10.

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THE ECONOMICS OF CYPRUS

TABLE 3 SOME GRAIN YIELDS OF THE TURKISH REGIME YEAR

WHEAT (BUSHELS)

1790 1815 1853 1862 1876 1877 1878 1876-78 average

250,000 200,000-250,000 412,500 640,000 1,600,000 800,000 560,000 986,667

BARLEY (BUSHELS) 500,000 300,000-350,000 962,500 960,000 2,400,000 1,500,000 1,200,000 1,700,000

Droughts and locusts ravaged the crops in Turkish times no less than in earlier eras. The former plague man could neither predict nor avoid, but the latter he could keep in check by a vigilant administration that enforced the collection of the insects' eggs and the destruction of the migrating but still wingless young. In Mariti's day—the middle of the eighteenth century—the Turkish administration regarded the swarms as a visitation of God and opposed any human measures to stop them, leaving the farmer no other remedy than to beseech some saint to raise a wind and blow the insects out to sea.36 In 1782, however, the plague became so devastating that the governor revived the old custom of collecting and destroying the eggs; and his successors, when not too indolent or distracted, followed his example. One of the last, indeed, waged so vigorous a campaign that he almost exterminated the locusts, which inflicted very little damage for several years afterwards.3' Then they multiplied again during a drought, and have remained ever since a pest that requires sleepless control. In the mid-nineteenth century, perhaps indeed in all periods of the island's history, they sometimes determined what grain crop should be sown; for farmers especially endangered by the scourge planted barley in preference to wheat because it ripened before the insects swarmed; and they postponed the sowing of their cotton from early April until mid-May and even June so that the young plants might not Cobham, Mariti's Travels, p. 74. Cf. AP 1881, IX, C. 2930, pp. 47-49. Persons unable to gather the quota of eggs demanded from them purchased them from others at so high a price that it tempted Turks in Anatolia to collect and smuggle them into Cyprus. The island's customs regulations still (1955) contain details of a duty on the importation of locusts' eggs from Turkey, an odd survival from earlier times. 36

37

68

TURKISH REGIØ : 1571-1878

emerge until the scourge had passed, although by mid-May the land had lost most of its moisture and the cotton, ripening late, was liable to heavy damage from bollworms.88 All through the centuries from pre-Christian times Cyprus had been a breadbasket for cities to the west whenever her wheat harvest exceeded home needs. In the days of Greece's glory her chief customer had been Athens. Rome then succeeded Athens, and Constantinople Rome. During the Lusignan era the population seems to have grown so fast that little wheat remained unconsumed and available for export save to the Crusaders in Syria and Palestine; but with the Venetian occupation the traffic revived, Venice herself taking all the surplus crop. Turkey banned the export of wheat to Christian lands, and after 1597 we hear of no further shipments to the western Mediterranean until the first half of the eighteenth century, when we have the previously quoted record of Pococke;S9 but in the middle of that century Cyprus was exporting barley each year to the coast of Syria, and several cargoes of grain to Leghorn, Genoa, Marseilles, and Malta.f0 At the beginning of the nineteenth century J. M. Kinneir said that Larnaca was exporting many cargoes of wheat annually to Spain and Portugal, and William Turner reported that the island, after supplying its own needs, could furnish enough corn to load sixty or seventy vessels; in good years, he estimated, it shipped as much as 300,000-350,000 bushels of wheat to Europe and Turkey, despite the prohibition of its export to any place except Constantinople.41 No shipments to western Europe seem to be mentioned until much later, but in 1853 wheat was moving to Greece and Turkey; and it was still flowing to Turkey, and also to Marseilles, in 1867, although like wine and some other products, it laboured under a heavy export duty.4a In the last decade of Turkish rule Italy joined Turkey in accepting Cyprus' wheat, while western Europe demanded its barley. England received 330,400 bushels of barley in 1874, and 360,000 in 1875: Belgium took 160,000 bushels in the latter year, France 128,000.48 S8 Gaudy, p. 156; AP 1871, XXIX, C. 343, p. 325; AP 1906, XIII, Cd. 2717, p. 7; Cobham, Mariti's Travels, p. 40. 38 See page 54. We do not know at what date the ban was imposed. Girolamo Dandini wrote in 1597 "the island abounds in wheat, wine and excellent meat, which it sends to other countries." Cobham, Cypria, p. 183. 4° Cobham, Mariti's Travels, pp. 120-21. 41 Cobham, Cypria, pp. 414, 426, 431. 42 Gaudry, p. 156; AP 1868-69, XXVII, C. 4110-VI, p. 424; Luke, p. 235. 43 AP 1876, XXXIV, C. 1486, pp. 1032, 1038. 69

THE ECONOMICS OF CYPRUS

On the other hand, when the harvest failed, when civil strife laid waste the countryside, or the requisitions of the authorities exceeded all bounds, hunger and famine stalked the land and grain had to be imported from abroad. In 1765 some Turks of the Mesaoria and Famagusta, who had revolted against the government, seized the water mills at Kythrea that ground much of the island's grain, and threatened to starve out the inhabitants of Nicosia unless they surrendered. "Flour failed," said a besieged Cypriot, "we ate broad beans and haricot beans, pulse and vegetables for nearly fifty days. What little flour we could get we had ground in hand-mills."94 Bread made from wheat was Cyprus' staff of life, as it has been of every Mediterranean land since the beginning of agriculture. The product of the island's ovens won the praise not of ancient writers only, but of an English traveller in 1802, who affirmed that the bread made in the island's homes was unequalled except by that prepared for the table of the Sultan in Constantinople.45 This traveller, however, was referring to the bread served in the stuccoed stone houses of the more prosperous Cypriots who resided in Nicosia and the coastal towns, not that eaten by the peasantry-90 per cent or more of the population—in their tworoomed mud huts that had "mud floors, and ceilings of plaited rushwork, plastered outside with mud, with one half of the floor raised above the other, and generally with no other furniture than a ricketty wooden bedstead."46 These humbler people ate a coarser wheat bread, or in times of scarcity bread made from barley; and they lived a more frugal life than the townsfolk, although even they sometimes gladdened their days with a bout of drunkenness that was rendered all too easy by the cheapness and abundance of the local wine. To supplement their bread the peasants ate cheese, olives, beans, and various other vegetables, particularly those of the gourd family. Their goats' cheese was famous all over the Levant. Fats of all kinds, milk, eggs, and pastry they considered injurious to 44

Archbishop Cyprianos in Cobham, Cypria, p. 360. Ibid., p. 343. The traveller, W. G. Browne, describes its preparation: "It is composed of what is called fibre di farina. The flour is divided into three parts to obtain the kind which is proper for manipulation. The first separated is the coarse and husky part: the next, the white impalpable powder: after which operation remains the fibre di farina, which is neither very finely pulverized, nor remarkably white, and is by far the smallest quantity of the whole mass. This is found to contain the purest part of the wheat, and to make the finest bread." Ibid., p. 343. 46 Ibid., p. 448. 45

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TURKISH REGIME : 1571-1878

health, especially in hot weather: but they treated themselves occasionally to a home-raised chicken, to lean meat boiled to a jelly, and, in the late summer, to the small but savoury "fig birds" that swarmed to the ripening figs and grapes. From the early eighteenth century onward the island produced excellent hams; but these were for export rather than for home consumption, and only Christians handled the traffic, since the Turks, being Moslems, would have nothing to do with swine and even forbade the raising of them outside of certain localities.47 Life was still very simple. Given adequate acreage, many farmers could build their own homes, raise all the food they needed for themselves and their families, and live as independently of their neighbours as the inhabitants of an English medieval manor. Nevertheless, climatic and soil conditions forced districts to specialize as they do today, and the central plain, particularly its eastern part, produced most of the grain, meat, and cheese, the hill slopes most of the olives, wine, and carobs. Wines

The Lusignan monarchs had fostered a lively export of Cyprus wines, especially of commanderia, the brand evolved on the Colossi estate of the Knights Templars and their successors the Knights Hospitallers, and well advertised by those two orders throughout western Christendom. Venice inherited the taste of her French predecessors: she too promoted viticulture in Cyprus and loaded her ships with its products, part for her own consumption, part to launch on the sea of international trade. Then Portugal learned to savour commanderia's aroma;48 she transplanted some of the vines to Madeira, where their offspring acquired from the strange soil a new quality that has opened the doors of every nation to Madeira wine. Good Moslems, however, discourage the cultivation of the grape; and for perhaps a hundred years after Turkey seized control of Cyprus the island exported comparatively little wine.49 During 47

I bid., p. 267.

Or did she prize its reputed medical power? Cf.: "It has the virtue of a balsam, and taken in moderation is of great service in sickness." Cotovicus in Cobham, Cypria, p. 199. 4 D The memorandum on Cyprus' resources transmitted by Peter Senni of Pisa in 1668 to the Duke of Savoy, after listing the average yield annually of cotton, hides, silk and potash, mentions casually, without giving any figures, that the island can produce cheese and wines for the maintenance of an invasion force and for export. Mas Latrie, III, 579. It was the Greek Cypriots who owned all the vineyards, then and two centuries later in Gaudry's day. 48

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THE ECONOMICS OF CYPRUS

that period of civil unrest and decline in population many vineyards were doubtless abandoned through shortage of Iabour, and many hill terraces on which they grew became derelict and overgrown with scrub. By the middle of the eighteenth century, however, the trade was reviving, and Venice was receiving once more large quantities of commanderia, or of wines that carried that long established label. Mariti gives some interesting particulars: The island produces annually 40,000 couzai of wine [a couza is 2;6 gallons]. The whole crop takes its name from the "Commandery," which hardly supplies 10,000 couzai, but of the best quality. The rest comes from different parts of the island. Most of it is exported to Venice, where, even in the cafés, it is largely drunk. But the Venetians are not very particular about the quality, never buying wine more than 18 months old, and paying only a piastre the couza. The older or finer quality is sent to France, Holland and Tuscany, and costs from 21 to 3 piastres the couza. The island produces other wines, used at meals, not unlike those of Provence. The best is made in the village of Omodos. It is originally dark, but after a few years begins to turn yellow, and in colour and taste to grow like that of the Commandery. It is not exported, but drunk in the island, and on the vessels which trade with the coast of Syria.50 Mariti and another eighteenth-century writer, De Vezin, name the places most noted for their wines—Omodos, Kilani, Limassol, Orini and Marathos. Marathos, or Marathasa, is a fertile valley north of the Troodos Mountains near Lefka, but the other four places lie south of the mountains, Orini a few miles northeast of Limassol, Omodos and Kilani northwest of that town within the area that had belonged to the estate or the commandery of the Knights Templars. Today the region west and northwest of Limassol still carries more vines to the acre than any other district on the island. Mariti's figures of wine production seem irreconcilable with those of Drummond ten years earlier and of De Vezin thirty years Iater. The former reckoned the worst vintage at about 750,000 couzai (2,000,000 gallons) and the best at never more than 900,000 couzai (2,400,000 gallons); while De Vezin estimated the average harvest at 150,000 couzai (400,000 gallons) of commanderia and 170,000 couzai (450,000 gallons) of ordinary red wine. Not until the mid-nineteenth century do we reach firm a° Cobham, Mariti's Travels, pp. 115-16.

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ground, when Gaudry recorded that the annual production of wine from 1841 to 1853 averaged 140,000 hectolitres (3,050,000 galIons ).51 The wine industry seems to have prospered throughout the first half of the nineteenth century, for Turner states that in 1815 Cyprus was exporting fifty shiploads of wine yearly. At that date Russia was sharing with Venice a little of the commanderia, and Turkey was accepting some of the common red wine, which found a good market in Egypt and other parts of the Levant. In 1853 the island exported also 1,000,000 okes (294,000 gallons) of brandy, continuing a traffic that half a century earlier had brought her a revenue of 10,000 dollars. But in the summer of 1853 a blight suddenly attacked the vines, and plagued them without letup down to the end of Turkish rule.62 To add to the vinegrowers' troubles, in 1862 the administration imposed very severe taxes, 10 per cent on the grapes themselves, another 10 per cent after their conversion to wine, and a further duty of 8 per cent on their export.63 This piling of Pelion on Ossa almost crushed the industry. By 1867, we are told, exports of wine had dropped by a half, and that of brandy to 375 tons (roughly 88,000 gallons): one could buy brandy imported from Trieste more cheaply than the local product. Many peasants began to convert their grapes into raisins to escape the taxes; others abandoned the vineyards, which in 1872 employed no more than 3,000 persons.fi4 The common red wine Cobham, Cypria, pp. 281, 372; Gaudry, p. 341. Not phylloxera, but a fungus disease, Oldium Tuckeri. Gaudry, who observed its first onset, says that a cloud from Asia Minor carried it to the island in the month of June. The cloud settled on Mt. Pentedactylus in the Kyrenia Range, as many clouds do; and from there it slowly drifted over the plain to Troodos, where it released a fine rain. A month later a minute dust, hitherto unknown, covered the grapes in Prodhromos and other places. The disease had established itself. Gaudry, p. 353. Pages 331-425 of his work are devoted to Cypriot viticulture in the mid-nineteenth century. 63 Luke, pp. 229-231. See also Lang's report in AP 1862, XXXI, C. 3060, p. 359, and the discussion of this and other accounts of the wine taxes in Hill, IV, 244-45. 54 "Vine cultivation, I am informed, greatly decreased in the island after 1862, which is evidenced by long stretches of waste land, showing the roots and stumps of dead vines, or the plants alive, but run wild. The cultivation of the vine for the time practically receded to the broken parts of the uplands, where no plough could work. The explanation is not far to seek. The Cypriot peasant has no capital, he can only get money on exorbitant terms. To make wine involves his finding nearly twice as much money for taxes as he would have to do if he cultivated cereals, olives or carobs. Hence many remain on the arid Mesaoria plain subject to frequent years of privation, whilst long stretches of land capable of bearing vines, and more accessible than the existing vineyards, lie waste. I believe that such waste land amounts to about five times the area of existing vineyards." AP, 1883, IX, C. 3661, p. 73. 51 52

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still flowed to Egypt, the commanderia to Venice and Trieste;36 but the industry languished until a new regime modified the taxation system, taught the peasants to protect their vines with sulphur, and introduced more scientific methods of manufacturing wine. Olives The campaign of the Venetians to promote the cultivation of the olive collapsed before it could make much headway. Nearly two hundred years went by before we hear again of the tree and its oil, and then we learn that olive trees were not as numerous as in earlier times and that instead of exporting oil Cyprus was obliged to import it, even though her population had fallen by a half. At Larnaca cisterns that had stored the oil of previous centuries lay empty and half-destroyed.66 In 1790 De Vezin estimated the total production of olive oil at only 25 cantars. The best, he says, came from Lapithos,87 which helps to explain why Captain Loretti a few years later planted olive trees on the estate he bought adjacent to Lapithos. That shrewd mariner was riding the advance wave of a revival, for by 1850 the island was producing, on an average, 5,000 hectolitres (354 tons) of oil, of poor quality to be sure, because it was badly prepared. The olive trees of that period, mingled as today with carob trees, formed bands separating the mountain slopes from the cultivated plains; and though they bore well, their fruit was being barbarously handled. "Instead of picking the olives they knock them down like nuts and thereby break a large number of shoots. They do not know how to purify the oil; they mix the green olives with over-ripe and spoiled ones, producing a liquid so bitter, and with so strong a taste, that Europeans in Cyprus have to use oil brought from France or Italy."58 The dacus fly was attacking the trees in the middle of the nineteenth century, but when it first appeared we do not know. Despite its ravages the island generally shipped a small amount of oil to 55 About half the wine crop was consumed locally. Lang, p. 227. I have gleaned from the consular reports these export figures for the closing years of Turkish rule: 1861 707,000 gallons 1869 572,400 gallons 1862 824,940 gallons 1871 514,000 gallons 1864 666,400 gallons 1874 1,048,050 gallons 1868 539,100 gallons 56 Cobham, Mariti's Travels, p. 11; Cobham, Cypria, pp. 309-10, 314. 57 Cobham, Cypria, pp. 372, 373. 58 Trans. from Gaudry, pp. 169-71.

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other lands until about 1860, when production failed to keep pace with the increasing population, and the quantity imported from the mainland exceeded any outgoing oil. In 1856 the olive crop failed, and instead of exporting oil Cyprus had to import most of its requirements from Turkey; but in 1863 the crop was large enough to cover the island's needs and leave a small margin for export. Five years later we learn that it was importing each year about 3,000 hundredweight of oil, valued at £.12,000; and the English consul who reported this added: "Perhaps Cyprus is the only example of an island in the Levant not producing olive oil sufficient for its own consumption. The country abounds in wild olive trees which only require grafting, and the ground around ploughing, to be productive; but the scarcity of the population in those parts of the country where the trees abound, and the want of encouragement on the part of the government, contribute to retard the development of this branch of husbandry."S0 Only rarely, reported another consul in 1877, did Cyprus export any olive oil, but in years when it was plentiful and cheap the peasants converted some of it into soap, which they traded at Mersine and other places in Caramania.8° TABLE 4 FIGURES SUGGESTING THE EXTENT OF OLIVE CULTIVATION BETWEEN 1864 AND 1877 YEAR

PRODUCTION

EXPORTS

1864 1869 1871 1875 1876 1877

— — — — 77,000 gallons (250 tons) 90,000 gallons (3121jß, tons)

129 tons — — £600 — --

IM PORTS 144 tons 315 hundredweights £10,000 £ 1,000 — —

I have found only a few statistics from the third quarter of the nineteenth century; they are shown in Table 4. They suggest that the cultivation of the olive at that period approximated the level it had reached in Venetian times. 59 AP 1868-69, XXVII, C. 4110-VI, p. 425. °° AP 1878, XXIX, C. 2088, p. 1365.

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Sesame De Vezin credited Lapithos with producing not only the best olive oil, but the best cotton; for it was watered by the second largest spring on the island.81 In the early nineteenth century, when cotton was in less demand, some of Lapithos' irrigated fields were planted to sesame, which was grown also at Dhali, and at Soli near Lefka; but in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the output of sesame was quite small, seldom sufficient to leave a margin for export 02 Gaudry, in 1853, reported some movement of it to Marseilles; in 1864, 1,250 hundredweight, in 1868, 875 hundredweight were shipped to France and Turkey; and in 1869, 700 hundredweight went to France, Turkey, and Austria.66 Carobs The Venetians had promoted a healthy traffic in carob pods, which they fed to stock and used also in a sweetmeat. The tree itself is intolerant of heavy soils, or soils with poor drainage, but it thrives in chalky ground, into which it sends strong roots that may reach as far as 30 feet below the surface. Although it commonly fruits when seven or eight years old, it does not yield its maximum crop until about thirty, when a healthy tree will bear each year a hundredweight of pods, and continue to bear, though not so prolifically, up to the age of one hundred. It is very sparing, too, of labour, for unlike the olive it requires but one pruning, after which it may be allowed to grow as it will.84 One may christen it perhaps "the peasant's tree," because it provides a nourishing food in winter for his sheep and goats, sustenance for himself in times of famine,66 fuel for his oven, grateful shade in the hot days of summer, and protection for his land against the erosion of water ' Gaudry gave the palm to the cotton from Solia and Evrykou, two villages at the northern foot of the Troodos Mountains. Gaudry, p. 159. 02 "When the island was thickly peopled, the inhabitants were wont to extract oil from sondra (glass wort) also, an expedient they were glad to use when neither olive nor sesame oil sufficed for their wants. In their extreme need they used also the fruit of another plant called Curtunid (Palma Christi [castor]) ." Cobham, Mariti's Travels, p. 11. 68 AP 1866, XXXI, C. 3582, p. 937; AP 1868-69, XXVII, C. 4100-VI, p. 427.; AP 1871, XXIX, C. 343, p. 326. 84 See D. K. Jones, Carob Culture in Cyprus (Rome, 1953). Sandwith wrote in 1870: "This [carob] is a favourite crop of the peasantry, as it entails very little toil, merely ploughing round the roots of the trees, and the trouble of plucking the pods, which require no preparation for market." AP 1871, XXIX, C. 343, p. 325. 68 During the drought and famine of 1873 many peasants cooked carobs in place of cereals. AP 1874, XXXIII, C. 1079, p. 1561.

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and the drifting of sand. Today in several coastal districts one can see numbers of wild carobs, descendants of trees, perhaps, that went untended during the troublous years of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when many peasants abandoned their farms and fled either to the mountains or overseas. The flourishing traffic in carob pods did not end with Venetian rule. Twenty-five years after the merchants of the city-state had been ejected from Cyprus, one could still see along the shore near Limassol "huge heaps of carobs piled up like hills, with which at times whole ships are loaded."00 But for more than two hundred years very few of the pods found their way westward or were shipped by European merchants. Instead they went to Syria and Alexandria, especially to the latter, and were exported by Turkish and Greek Cypriots, although still carried in European vessels engaged in the Levantine trade. About 1745, 500 cantars went to Egypt, where they sold for 21/ piastres a cantar; and in 1812, 6,000 cantars went to Egypt, Syria, and Constantinople. About that time Turkey levied on their export, the heavy tax of 8 piastres each 220 okes, and forbade their shipment from any port except Zyyi, 20 miles east of Limassol. Since most of the pods came from north and west of Limassol, this restriction was a hard blow to the shippers, now forced to transport them on mule-back or camelback an extra 20 miles over a wretched track. Added to the new tax, it crushed the traffic, and exports declined until they amounted to no more than 4,000 cantars. Gaudry, writing in 1853, provides some interesting details: Twenty-eight years ago [in 18251 the Turkish government had a monopoly of the carobs. The peasants brought their stocks and were paid according to their weight. The government paid them 8 piastres-1.80 francs—for 220 okes, but it was well known that the scales it used, instead of weighing 220 okes, weighed only 180. The carobs were weighed on the south coast of the island at Zii. The farmers, not being adequately paid, destroyed their carob trees; every year a large number disappeared from the face of the island. When the monopoly ceased carob culture revived rapidly.67

We do not know the year in which the administration abolished its monopoly, but it must have been before 1846, for Gaudry says that a very large number of carob trees were planted between that year and 1854.88 He estimated that the island produced during that 86 Cotovicus in Cobham, Cypria, p. 189. G7 Trans. from Gaudry, pp. 171-74. 08 Oberhummer seems to interpret Gaudry's remark just quoted as implying that the monopoly was abolished in 1825, but Sandwith, writing in 1868, says "20 years since [in the mid-1840's] it was a monopoly." AP 1868-69, XXVII, C. 4110-VI, p. 424.

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period an average of 4,500,000 kilogrammes (19,700 cantars) yearly. In 1852 it exported 5,985 cantars, in 1856, 40,000, of which a small quantity, loaded on six vessels, went for the first time to England, where it was converted into cattle food. England, however, could not match the prices offered by Russia, Austria, and Egypt, which divided among them the 1863 export of 40,000 cantars, the 1864 export of 31,500 cantars, and the 1866 export of 18,340 cantars. Two years later England again entered the market for a share of the approximately 29,000 cantars available for export, but Russia, which imported the pods for human consumption, continued to offer higher prices and carried off the greater part of the crop. She was the main beneficiary also in the three years 1871, 1872, and 1874, when shipments amounted to 8,490, 15,000 and 7,900 tons respectively, selling free on board (in 1872 at least) for £4 10s. a ton. The merchants of England raised their offer in 1875 and took the major share of the exports in that and the two succeeding years-18,000, 14,500, and 13,500 tons respectively;8° but they had to share about half the 1878 export of 10,000 tons with France, Austria, Italy, and Russia. Baker estimated that during the five-year period 1872-77 Cyprus exported each year an average of 13,000 tons, the harvest of perhaps 350,000 trees.70 By that time, indeed, the lowly carob, once little esteemed, had replaced salt as the island's most lucrative export, and the peasants were giving more heed to its cultivation. Dyes, etc. The royal dye works set up by Lusignan kings in Nicosia and Famagusta vanished with the Venetians, for we hear no more of them.71 Yet Cyprus did not cease on that account to produce and export dyes and medicines: it still shipped cochineal, sumach, ladanum, storax, colocynth, and turpentine to Venice, London, 60 The consular reports from 1876 and 1877 disagree concerning the 1876 figures; one gives 14,500 tons, the other 45,000 cantars (10,125 tons). 70 Sir Samuel Baker, Cyprus As I Saw It in 1879 (London, 1879), pp. 295-96, 402. 71 The dye works at Famagusta did not survive the Lusignans, for in 1491 the citizens of the town petitioned Venice to compel the lessees of the Nicosia works to "maintain a dye-work at Famagusta such as had existed in the time of James II and the Genoese." They believed that if the plant were re-established, the samite-makers and camlet-makers who had moved to Nicosia would return to Famagusta. Venice refused their request. Mas Latrie, III, p. 490.

78

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Amsterdam, and Hamburg.72 To Amsterdam and to Italy, from 1605 at least, went also umber for painting, which was mined, then as today, from hills covered with black, yellow, and red earths at Troulli, eight miles north of Larnaca: 500 tons left the island in 1744, 1,700 tons in l873.73 Most of the turpentine shipped abroad came from Cyprus' pine trees, but the best medicinal turpentine was extracted from another tree, the terebinth (Pistachia terebinthus L.), which by the nineteenth century had become very scarce outside of the area around Paphos. By the middle of the eighteenth century, two plants that once had brought the island an appreciable revenue had disappeared: rhubarb, which had been highly prized as a medicine, and saffron, a useful flavouring and dye. In their place Cyprus acquired about a century earlier two new plants of far greater economic importance: a dye from Asia, madder,7" and a narcotic from America, tobacco. Madder Mariti described madder: a root which furnishes a red dye, grown in the fields near the sea at Famagusta and Citti on sandy and stony soil. It is of two sorts, one which springs of itself, the other from seed sown.... Madder was formerly a capital article of commerce with Aleppo and Baghdad, whence it passed into Persia. But since the disturbances in that country, where arts and trade are on the decline, very little is sent there; but a new trade has been opened with France, which takes, either directly or through Leghorn, the largest part of the crop.72

Mariti omitted to record the quantity of madder roots exported, out merely said that they had become one of the richest products of the island. They held this place for over a century, as appears 72 About 1760 Cyprus was exporting yearly 100 cantars of colocynth (a purgative), in 1815, 30 to 40 cantars, and in 1853, 1,500 okes. Most of it went to England. Cobham, Mariti's Travels, p. 116; Cobham, Cypria, p. 426; Gaudry, p. 168. Turkey and Greece took the sumac: in 1875 the former received 150,000 okes valued at £700, the latter 40,000 okes valued at £200. 73 Cobham, Cypria, p. 281; AP 1874, XXXIII, C. 1074, p. 1568. Cf.: "I saw here on the [Larnaca) beach some heaps of very fine earth, of various colours: grey, green, and dark or bright red, which is dug in some parts of the Isle. I was told that the Flemish ships carry it to Flanders as dye stuff." Sinclair (trans.), Teixeira's The Travels of Pedro Teixeira, p. 137. 74 Mas Latrie thought that madder reached Cyprus in the Middle Ages, Oberhummer not until Turkish times. Mas Latrie, I, p. 63; Oberhummer, p. 291. 75 Cobham, Mariti's Travels, pp. 117-118. Cf. Cobham, Cypria, p. 268, Luke, p. 182.

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from the export figures that were recorded by the customs authorities in Cyprus. France's silk industry absorbed the greater part of these exports down to about 1860, when England moved into first place.78 We learn from Gaudry, however, that much of the crop, which the English consul Campbell estimated in 1856 to average from 2,300 to 2,400 cantars, did not enter the export market, but went to supply the needs of the small cotton factories in Nicosia.77 The same author has described in some detail the cultivation of madder, which had doubled in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. It could be grown from cuttings, he says, but the best plants came from seed sown in the midwinter months, not in sandy or stony ground, as Mariti had reported, but in beds of fine sand, free from stones and underlain with running water that the roots could tap. The farmer turned up the ground to a depth of about three feet, removed all the large pebbles, and enriched it plentifully with sheep and goat dung, the only common manures on the island. About two years later, preferably after the autumn rains, he harvested his crop, drying the three-foot-long roots in the shade to preserve their colour. He then let the land lie fallow for a year, or else planted it to potatoes or watermelons. Gaudry names the places that grew madder in the mid-nineteenth century, listing them according to the quality of their crops: they were Hagia (Ayia) Iris north of Morphou, where the roots were intensely red; Morphou; Sotira just south of Famagusta; Hagios (Ayios) Seryios just north of Famagusta; Varosha, the suburb of Famagusta; the country eastward from Larnaca to Cape Pyla; and Kiti, southwest of Lamaca.78 In 1867 the island still obtained most of its madder roots from the Famagusta district, although in the absence of presses at Famagusta it exported them from Larnaca. In that decade markets were relatively inelastic and easily overstocked, so that the price of 76 AP 1857, XIV, C. 2285, p. 206. In 1871 England received 98 per cent of the madder that Cyprus exported, in 1872 76 per cent. 77 Gaudry, p. 163. 78 Ibid., pp. 163-67. Gennadius tells us that "in order to uncover the cultivable soil covered by the dunes, the cultivators excavated the sand to a depth of 10-30 feet and removed it from great extents, having thus formed all along the shores a sort of tanks the bottom of which forms the madder grounds. ... Almost all these works were, therefore, made by the landowners themselves, and most of them still [19051 exist, utilized for the production of vegetables." P. Gennadius, Report on the Agriculture of Cyprus (Nicosia, 1895), Part II, p. 18. Cf. also Lang, pp. 234-36.

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madder fluctuated considerably from one year to the next.7° Then the science of chemistry discovered a cheap aniline substitute, and these markets collapsed as quickly as they had arisen. Whereas in 1872 Cyprus had exported 330 tons of madder, in 1873 she exported no more than 235; and growers loudly complained that the low prices they received barely half those of five years earlier— did not cover the cost of cultivation. Madder land that had been worth between £90 and £100 per donum (roughly Y3 acre) fell in value to between £ 15 and X.20.8° The madder farmers then left some of their fields uncultivated: others they planted to hemp (Cannabis indica) in order to make the intoxicant hashish, and when that crop was prohibited, they planted potatoes and melons." Cyprus exported a small quantity of madder in 1883, and shipped 14 cantars to England in 1887.82 Within living memory, too, the plant has been grown for local use near Morphou. However, it lost all its commercial importance before 1890, and with its passing vanished also most of Cyprus' centuries-old trade in dyes, perfumes, and herbal remedies. Tobacco A more permanent asset than madder was the plant introduced from America, tobacco. Oberhummer says that the narcotic reached Turkey in 1655,89 but I have found no reference to its cultivation in Cyprus earlier than 1801, when Hume noticed some small fields near Limassol covered with tobacco and cotton plants.84 Its cultivation seems to have spread with great rapidity, for only fourteen years later we learn from Turner that "considerable quantities of tobacco are prepared in Baffo [Paphos] and by many thought superior to that of Latakia."85 By the middle of the nineteenth 70 "A considerable quantity of madder-roots were shipped to England at the commencement of 1863, but a glut in the English market paralyzed this branch of trade, and the low prices in the English market were unremunerative to the producer. Morphou madders, however, still command a good price in the Smyrna market, where they are mixed with Baker's which thus adulterated are shipped to England." AP 1864, XXX, C. 3393, p. 437. 88 Owing to wretched communications the price of land depended largely on its proximity to a town. "At Famagusta an acre of madder-root land sometimes obtains the high price of £60, while at Morfa [Morphoul and Trene [Ayia Irene], solely from their interior position and want of population, land which produces a finer root commands from £ 8 to £ 10 per acre." AP 1862, XXXI, C. 3060, p. 61. 81 Baker, pp. 162 1f. 82 Annual Report for 1887-88 in AP 1889, X, C. 5749, p. 7. 88 Oberhummer, p. 290. 84 Cobham, Cypria, p. 341. 88 Ibid., p. 443.

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century the island was producing 150,000 kilogrammes yearly.B6 Then the Turkish administration taxed it so heavily that nearly all farmers abandoned its cultivation, which did not recover until aftes the First World War more than half a century later.Ø7 The decline in the cultivation of tobacco, however, in no way affected its consumption, since it was readily obtainable from the mainland. Nor did it diminish the revenues of the government, which controlled both the importation and the sale of the leaf, not directly, but by farming out the monopoly and sanctioning the establishment of eight depots, four in Nicosia and two each in Larnaca and Limassol. About 1877 the island was importing some 280,000 pounds each year from Volos and Salonika in European Turkey, consuming about 90 per cent of the amount locally and re-exporting the remainder in sealed packages to Syria and Caramania. The government derived from this traffic a revenue of 1,300,000 piastres ( £8,280) yearly.88 Cotton In the closing years of Venetian rule sugar was fast vanishing, and the fields once covered with its canes swayed with the white bolls of the cotton plant. Dandini remarked in 1596, "there is so much cotton that the inhabitants not only have enough for their clothes and for household use, but they supply also Italy and other countries."89 Among these other countries stood England, for a large proportion of the cotton exported from the island at this time seems to have ended up at Manchester. Soon after Dandini's day, however, cheap fibre grown on the slave plantations of America began to invade European markets, and the transatlantic competition, combined with the decline in Cyprus' population, discouraged and reduced the cultivation of cotton on the island. Whereas under the Venetians it had produced up to 30,000 bales yearly, by 1710 it was producing only 8,000, and fifty years later 5,000 in good 86 Gaudry, p. 88. This author says that the Paphos tobacco was inferior to that of Omodhos, which, as we learn from Lang was highly esteemed in both Syria and Egypt. Ibid., p. 167; Lang, p. 231. 87 AP 1871, XXX, C. 402, p. 767; AP 1878, XXIX, C. 2088, p. 1366; Luke, p. 231. Cf.: "At Omodos and Kilani they [the tithe collectors] took half the tobacco-crop and were likely to kill the industry." Hill, IV, 264. Baker estimated that the island produced 1,395 okes in 1875; 1,280 in 1876; 857 in 1877, and 1,731 in 1878. Baker, p. 403. 86 AP 1876, XXXIV, C. 1486, p. 1033; AP 1878, XXIX, C. 2088, p. 1366. 89 Cobham, Cypria, p. 184. Cf. Sinclair, Teixeira's Travels, p. 134.

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TURKISH REGIME : 1571-1878

seasons and 3,000 in bad. At this period, the middle of the eighteenth century: "The greater part of the cotton crop is sent to Venice, whence Germany draws its quantum. It fetches so good a price there that a great many English and Dutch houses, as well as merchants in Constantinople and Aleppo, give orders for Cypriot cotton to be assigned to Venice and sold there on their account. Some goes every year by way of Venice to France and Tuscany, and to England and Holland direct."0° Production seems to have dragged along at its mid-eighteenth century level for fifty or a hundred years. We have two crop estimates around the turn of the century, one of 3,500 cantars in 1790 and the other of 3,000 cantars in 1812.°2 At that period Europe was still receiving the surplus, but England was rejecting the finer cotton because it cost more than the American fibre and possessed a shorter staple. At the same time England's mass-produced goods were so depressing the prices of Cypriot fabrics that the island's small textile factories were beginning to close their doors. By 1855, indeed, not one factory remained, although a dye works still operated in Nicosia, processing mostly white cottons imported from Liverpool.02 About this time, when the Crimean War had set a premium on grain production at the expense of cotton and the island was raising each year only about 1,500 cantars of the fibre,°$ most of which it shipped to Marseilles, pressure from an expanding market and a need for more raw material forced England to change her policy. She tried now to increase production in the Levant by distributing seeds and cotton gins through her consuls; and in 1861 she signed a treaty with Turkey which reduced from 10 per cent to 1 per cent that government's export duties on cotton and certain other raw materials, thereby lowering their costs in England and stimulating their production in Cyprus.04 The American Civil War, 90 Cobham, Mariti's Travels, p. 113. The bale, Mariti says (p. 112), weighed a cantar of 100 rotoli (i.e., a little over 500 pounds). Drummond estimated production in 1744 at 3,000 cantars; Constantius in 1766 at 4,000. The latter, who estimated the Venetian-era production at 25,000 bales, remarked that "in most of the fields formerly adorned by the cotton plant traces of it may still be found. But this gives only a faint notion of its former luxuriance." Cobham, Cypria, pp. 281, 310. Ol Cobham, Cypria, pp. 371, 426. 02 Mas Latrie, Vol. III, p. 685, n. 5. From neighbouring Syria too an English consul reported "the annihilation of native cotton manufactures and other branches of native industry owing to their utter impossibility of competing with steam machinery." AP, 1857, XIV, C. 2285, p. 183. ea Gaudry, p. 90. Campbell says that Cyprus produced 2,700-2,800 cantars in 1856, but does not specify whether this was ginned or unginned. AP 1857, XIV, C. 2285, p. 206. 94 AP 1864, XXX, C. 3393, pp. 436 F.; Luke, p. 236; Hill, IV, p. 426.

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TKE ECONOMICS OF CYPRUS

which broke out in that year, further promoted the island's cultivation of cotton by disrupting Europe's main source of supply. Cyprus' production increased accordingly from 1,000 cantars of "clean" cotton (i.e., about 3,000 cantars unginned) in 1862 to 4,000 in 1863 and 5,500 in 1864. So high was the price that nearly the whole crop entered the export market, bound, not for Marseilles, but for England; and many peasants even ripped up their mattresses to retrieve and trade the cotton with which they were stuffed. But the boom was short-lived. As soon as the Civil War ended, American cotton flowed once more to England, which immediately lowered the price she would pay and ceased to compete for Cyprus' crops, of which she had been carrying off twothirds. Fortunately in this crisis Spain opened a steamship line from Barcelona to Smyrna, and the latter mart bought on Spanish account England's former share of the crop. Nevertheless, the cultivation of cotton declined, and part of its acreage was devoted to other crops. Figure 4 shows the cycle of its rise and fall during the period 1863-68. In 1871, a season of rather unfavourable weather, the crop dropped to 1,500 cantars, most of which went to Marseilles and Trieste. It rose to approximately

1863 I864 1865 1866

21.000

1867 1868

ACRES OF COTTON

FIG. 4. INCREASE IN THE NUMBER OF ACRES PLANTED TO COTTON IN CONSEQUENCE OF THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR OF 1861-64. Notice the lag in its effect: the acreage reached its peak in 1865, a year after the war ended. (Figures from AP 1868-69, XXVII, 4110-VI, p. 425.)

84

TURKISH REGIME : 1571-1878

1,650 cantars in 1873, and to 2,200 in 1877, the last full year of Turkish rule: but its future remained dark with clouds.96 See Figure 5.

FIG. 5. COTTON PRODUCTION FROM 1500 TO 1950. Note the expansion of cotton cultivation in the sixteenth century and its virtual collapse in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries through competition with West Indian cotton grown with slave labour on large plantations. Production soared a little in the 1860's during the American Civil War, but slumped again when the war ended. It soared again during the depression years between the two world wars.

During the eighteenth century, the finest Cypriot cotton, the best in the Levant reputedly, came from the irrigated fields at Episkopi and Lapithos that had yielded the Lusignans rich harvests of sugar. As late as 1806 every house at Episkopi was "surrounded with gardens, trees, plots of cotton and sown fields."0° Kythrea also enjoyed the reputation of growing excellent cotton, although other crops requisitioned the greater share of the water from its renowned spring. The indigenous cotton raised at these places, however, was 95 AP 1868-69, XXVII, C. 4110-VI, p. 425; Annual Report, 1889-90 in AP 1892, IX, C. 6764, p. 14. W. R. Dunstan, "Report on the Agriculture of Cyprus," in AP 1906, XIII, Cd. 2717, pp. 2-7; Baker, pp. 392, 396. The last author says that the 1877 crop was of inferior quality and, like the 1871 crop, went mainly to Marseilles and Trieste. 99 Cobham, Cypria, p. 403.

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THE ECONOMICS OF CYPRUS

inferior to some Egyptian varieties, and to the Orleans and other types grown in the United States. Some Orleans seed introduced into Cyprus just before the American Civil War throve and yielded a superior fibre, but it rapidly deteriorated when the peasants carelessly allowed it to cross with the native plant.07 Our sources do not reveal how much the dry lands watered only by the winter rains contributed to the harvest, nor the amount of fibre used locally. The latter must have been considerable, because Cypriot country women were expected to make all the clothing their families required, most of it from home-grown cotton, which had largely superseded the linen and wool of medieval garments. In the towns people were more sophisticated, at least during the second half of the nineteenth century; they scorned the local weaves and insisted on garments made from foreign cloth, generally cotton goods brought in from England. Silk Hardly less important than cotton was silk, which the Turks seem to have encouraged as vigorously as the Venetians. A hundred years after their conquest the island was producing 8,000 okes of silk yearly, and the "gardens of the Greek Cypriots, nearly all of whom were engaged in agriculture, showed nothing but a quantity of mulberry trees whose leaves were nourishing the silkworms reared in every house."BB Flowered silks and cottons, "little inferior to those of the Indies," were the chief articles of trade at the beginning of the eighteenth century." By 1735 the island was exporting almost 100,000 pounds of raw silk every year, most of it to Marseilles and London.1 Ten years later Drummond estimated the quantity at 40,000 okes, valued at 7 piastres an oke.2 The indefatigable Mariti, writing about 1760, lowered the figure considerably: he estimated the average production at 25,000 okes, and described the industry in some detail: The second most important article of produce is silk. In May it is all wound off and ready for shipment. The silk-worm is treated just as in Tuscany, but runs less risk from the uncertainty of the weather which in the Cypriot spring is more settled. The quality of the silk varies with the places where it is spun: the finest and whitest comes from Famagusta and the Carpasso, that of a lemon or "AP 1862, XXXI, C. 3060, p. 361; AP 1871, XXIX, C. 343, p. 325. 98 Van Bruyn (1683) in Cobham, Cypria, p. 243. °B Heyman (ca. 1720) in Cobham, Ibid., p. 248. 1 Pococke (1735) in Ibid., p. 269. 2 Drummond (1744) in Ibid., p. 281.

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sulphur hue from Citerea [Kythreal and the villages on the same side of the northern range, the golden yellow or orange cocoons from villages in the district of Paphos. The white is most esteemed in Europe, but bales, except those consigned to England, Holland and France occasionally contain lemon or sulphur coloured silk. Venice and Leghorn accept hues equally: white is certainly preferred, but not so exclusively as in the countries farther north. The orange silk is generally bought by the Turks, who pay a piastre more for it, and send it to Cairo, where the colour is much admired, and the thread too is finer.3 The same writer described the arrangement of the mulberry trees. They were planted, he says, as in Syria, in regular order, and at equal distances one from the other, so as to make a square grove composed of two, three and even five thousand trees. The crown is kept a little more than three braccia from the ground, and the circumference at a braccio and a half. They have no chance of growing taller, because every year when they gather the leaves for their silkworms they cut the branches.; Instead of mulberry leaves some Cypriots used the leaves of the Cistus monspeliensis. An English botanist who explored part of the Troodos Mountains in 1757 frequently encountered this plant along his trail, and met numbers of peasants who were freighting "horseloads" of it to their villages in order to feed their silkworms.5 Immediately after Mariti's day the industry declined, partly through onerous taxation, partly because it could not compete with the expanding sericulture of France and northern Italy.° Many mulberry trees were neglected, and withered in the hot days of summer from lack of water. By 1790 A.D. the island was producing only 9,000 okes of white silk and 4,000 of yellow, the latter in the Paphos district. Nearly all of it went to Egypt because England, which for many years had been Cyprus' best customer, had virtually closed off its market with a high tariff.? 3

Cobham, Mariti's Travels, p. 113.

* Ibid., p. 38. For the cultivation of the tree in the middle of the nine-

teenth century see Gaudry, pp. 260-63. s Cobham, Cypria, p. 332. ° Gaudry attributed its decline to onerous taxation, particularly to the laying of a tithe on the number of silkworms instead of on the weight of silk they produced. "Whenever the taxes on silk have been too heavy the industry has declined and gone to ruin. On the other hand, when the taxes have diminished the peasants have regained courage and have given more care to the easiest and most natural industry in the Levant." Trans. from Gaudry, p. 256. De Vezin in Cobham, p. 372. In 1812 Turner estimated the crop at 10,000 okes of white and 5,000 okes of yellow, most of it sent to Egypt. Cobham, p. 425.

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THE ECONOMICS OF CYPRUS

In the second quarter of the nineteenth century France offered Cyprus a profitable market for its silk, particularly the yellow variety. The peasants then planted more mulberry trees and increased their annual silk crop until it averaged 19,700 okes, most of which the French market absorbed.8 So greatly did the trade flourish that each year the island's government scooped in 200,000 piastres merely by farming out the export tithe on the raw fibre. But in 1858 disease attacked the silkworms, production plunged steeply, and exports became so uncertain that no one would speculate on the tithe. Its collection then devolved on the customs officials, but with the disease still raging unabated their receipts in 1867 amounted to only 80,000 piastres!' For a quarter of a century the industry struggled along, barely able to keep its head above water. In 1864 it exported to France no more than 3,000 okes, in

35 —

30

EO

—

25

O 20

15

TURKISH PERIOD I 1700

1

BRITISH PERIOD

I 1800

1 1900

FIG. 6. SILK PRODUCTION FROM 1680 TO 1913. Note the decline after 1750, caused by onerous taxation and competition from France and Italy; the rise in the first half of the nineteenth century, promoted by an expanding market; a second decline after 1858, when disease attacked the silkworms; and a limited rise after 1884, when Cyprus began to import disease-free silkworm eggs from France and Italy. s Gaudry, pp. 257 et seq. He estimated the number of mulberry trees in 1853 at 250,000. 0 Luke, p. 225.

88

Jn/oronion Service

PLATE V A. A STONE SHEEPFOLD NEAR THE NICOSIA•KYRENIA HIGHWAY.

B. A SHEPHERD AND HIS TWO HELPERS, ONE A BOY OF FOURTEEN YEARS AND THE OTHER A GIRL OF ELEVEN. THE SHEEP BELONG TO THE LONG-FACED, FAT-TAILED VARIETY WIDELY DISTRIBUTED IN THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN. Information Service

PLATE VI COW AND ASS, YOKED TOGETHER, DRAW THE PLOUGH, WHILE THE CALF FOLLOWS BEHIND.

U.K. In/ormaflon S,

TURKISH REGIME : 1571-1878

1869 3,440 okes. In 1877 the English consul Watkins reported the sending to France of silk cocoons worth £ 17,358; but he added: "Production of silk has sensibly diminished during the last few years owing to the disease among the silk worms and to a partial fall in prices in. the French market."10 A few months later Turkish rule ended, and in 1884 England introduced from France uncontaminated silkworm eggs that helped to bring about a revival (Fig. 6) . Flax The Venetians had fostered the cultivation of flax for both its fibre and its seed; and although the Turks offered it no encouragement, preferring cotton to linen, Cyprus continued to grow a considerable quantity, mainly in the district around Morphou. Most of the fibre went for cordage, but in 1864 the island sent to Turkey 75 tons of flax, and to France, Italy, and Turkey 2,972 hundredweight of linseed.11 Of hemp we hear almost nothing: never very important, the plant had Iost all significance. Wool The remaining textile, wool, also lost ground as soon as cotton entered the arena. Samite and other cloths woven from wool, along with camlet made from camel's or goat's hair, disappeared, or at least faded from notice. The shepherds still sheared their sheep in Iate March or early April and exposed their wool for sale right afterwards; but most of the crop went abroad.12 The demand for white wool exceeded that for black, but sellers generally mixed the two colours indiscriminately in their bales. During the eighteenth century exports averaged 500 cantars, judging by two records that have come down to us: France took a small percentage; the rest went to Leghorn, and thence to various countries. In Turner's day, 1812, the current had changed and was carrying the entire surplus, 10 AP 1878, XXIX, C. 2088, p. 1366. There is another record of the shipment of cocoons instead of spun silk in the English consul's report for 1871, which lists Cyprus' exports to France and Turkey of silk and silk cocoons worth £ 5,000. AP 1872, XXIH, C. 597, p. 811. 11 Cobham, Cypria, p. 248; AP 1866, XXXI, C. 3582, p. 937. In 1868 the quantities were 1,850 hundredweight of flax and 2,982 hundredweight of linseed. AP 1868-69, XXVII, C. 4110-VI, p. 427. 12 Cf.: "It [Cyprus] has plenty of cotton, exporting more than five thousand bags a year, every one at least twenty-five arrobas of Castille [an arroba is 25 pounds]. It exports also three thousand bags of very fine wool ...." Sinclair, Teixeira's Travels, p. 134 (1605 Am.).

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THE ECONOMICS OF CYPRUS

600 cantars, to Syria; but it resumed its old course in the middle of the nineteenth century, and deposited most of the wool once more on France's shores."S Gaudry estimated the annual production around 1850 at 140,000 kilogrammes (648 cantars); and consular reports shortly after his time supply us with the export figures shown in Table 5. TABLE 5 SOME FIGURES FOR WOOL EXPORT BETWEEN 1862 AND 1877 YEAR 1862 1864 1867 1868 1869 1871 1873 1877

CANTARS 667 289 932 944 1,075 1,071 865 655

DESTINATION

France, Italy, United States France, Italy, Austria and Turkey France, Italy, Austria and Turkey France, 74 per cent; England, 15 per cent France, Italy, England, United States France, Italy, Austria

Sheepskins and Goatskins Few hides of full-grown sheep and goats seem to have found their way to foreign markets; they were needed locally for bedding, for leather, and for cloaks to protect the shepherds in cold and rainy weather. But merchants shipped kidskins and lambskins abroad: in the mid-nineteenth century the island was exporting to France each year 10,000-12,000 kidskins, and to Trieste an average of 15,000 lambskins. These figures rose to 15,000 and 20,000 respectively in 1853, a year of average rainfall; but in 1864, a season of drought, their combined total was 108,000, shared by England, France, Italy, Austria, and Greece:14 for although Cypriot sheep and goats are extremely hardy, so meager is the grazing that even today an appreciable number die of starvation each autumn, particularly if the rains come late. 13 Cobham, Mariti's Travels, p. 114; Cobham, Cypria, pp. 281, 372, 426; Gaudry, p. 90; Oberhummer, p. 384. 14 Gaudry, pp. 205, 207; AP 1866, XXXI, C. 3582, p. 937. In 1869 Cyprus shipped to Austria, Italy, and Turkey lambskins and goatskins valued at £7,200; in 1871, to the same three countries, and to England and France, skins worth £8,166; and in 1877, to France, Austria, and Italy, skins worth £ 11,555. AP 1871, XXIX, C. 343, p. 326; AP 1872, XXIII, C. 597, p. 811.

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Livestock When we consider the vital role that sheep and goats have played in the island's economy since the dawn of its history, we cannot help wondering why early writers mention them so rarely. We have one estimate of their numbers prior to the British regime, that of Riddell in 1872, who reckoned the flock population at 800,000 head, one-third of them sheep and two-thirds goats.15 Our sources do not tell us whether every shepherd owned at least a part of his flock, or whether some worked for hire alone, and, if the latter, whether on a wage or a share basis. They throw no light on how grazing lands were apportioned or leased, or what happened in cases of trespass or of damage to growing crops or trees. Today the majority of landowners possess a few sheep and goats, which they entrust to professional shepherds; and the same was true, probably, in earlier centuries. Certainly priests could own flocks during the Turkish era, for we hear of a woman accusing her neighbour, a parish priest, of grazing his flocks on her fields.16 An examination of the Turkish law codes might answer some of these questions. Quarrels may indeed have been relatively infrequent, because there was much waste land that could not be cultivated and was claimed by the government alone, especially in the mountains.17 Even on the fertile plains the system of crop rotation kept at least half the fields fallow each year, and farmers must have welcomed their refertilization, at no expense to themselves, by wandering sheep and goats. Moreover, while the shepherds in some places occupied special hamlets, in others they lived in the same villages as the farmers, and the very proximity of their homes would have helped to dampen quarrels. Certainly the shepherds were not the most prosperous element in the population, but they and the farmers had established a symbiotic relationship, and the interests of both called for harmony. In 1868 an English consul complained of the "absurd restrictions" the government was imposing on the export of live sheep and goats, which were worth only from 10 to 12 shillings a head in Cyprus, but in Egypt brought three times that amount. He continued: "It frequently happens during winter, when the snows in Lebanon interrupt the communication of Beyrout with the interior, us AP 1873, XXVII, C. 828, p. 1096. 18 Hill, IV, p. 164. 17 Under Turkish law all the land belonged to the Sultan. See page 101.

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that mutton in that town goes up to 8d. a lb. while here, at a distance of only 12 hours by steam, it sells at 3d. a lb., and yet exportation is as strictly prohibited as if the two countries were in a state of war."18 The consul admitted, nevertheless, that the government feared that any exporting of livestock might so raise the local price of meat that the peasants could no longer afford to buy it. Probably, then, the ban was justified. From the Turkish regime we have only one isolated record of the number of cattle on the island, Turner's estimate in 1812 of 8,000 to 10,000 head.19 This is less than half the number in Venetian times, yet the figure seems reasonable enough when we consider that the number of farmers also had decreased by perhaps a half. As stated already, Cypriots never milked their cattle or ate the meat, but employed them as draught animals only. Horses remained as scarce as in Lusignan times, because the climate of the island prohibits suitable pasture; but camels, donkeys, and mules all seem to have held their numbers. A government report of 1920 declares that "Cyprus can produce some of the finest donkey stock in the world," and certainly the mules bred from it have long been considered the best in the Levant. Syria imported them during the eighteenth century in exchange for horses.2° During the nineteenth century the British army used them in the Crimean War, and later, in 1867, bought 800 for its Abyssinian campaign, 700 at £ 20 a head and 100 at £ 18 10s.21 Oberhummer tells us, on the authority of a Turkish writer, that the buffalo introduced from Egypt about the twelfth century degenerated during the seventeenth, probably through scarcity of water, and died out very soon afterwards. The observant Mariti, who wrote about 1760, does not mention them. Honey Another minor casualty of the Turkish occupation was honey. Both the French and Venetian rulers had promoted the keeping of bees in the villages, and the Venetian censuses had recorded the " AP 1868-69, XXVII, C. 4110-VI, pp. 423-424. 19 Cobham, Cypria, p. 426. The text there reads "Cattle and sheep," but doubtless this was an error and the estimate covers the cattle only. 20 Hasselquist (1732) in Cobham, p. 306. Gaudry deemed the mules greatly overrated: he preferred donkeys, which the island was exporting in the mid-nineteenth century at the rate of 400-500 yearly. Gaudry, p. 203. 21 Luke, p. 237. The British army bought 2,000 in all during the years 1867 and 1868. AP 1868-69; XXVII, C. 4110-VI, p. 423.

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production of 300 cantars of honey and 60 cantars of beeswax about 1500, 400 cantars of honey and 80 cantars of wax about 1540. Three centuries later, in 1801, we find this description of a typical bee-colony in one of the villages: "They build up a wall formed entirely of earthen cylinders, each about three feet in length, placed, one above the other, horizontally, and closed at their extremities with mortar. This wall is then covered with a shed, and upwards of one hundred swarms may thus be maintained within a very small compass ..."zz Of special significance seems a following phrase: "all the honey thus made is demanded by the Governor." It may explain why at the close of Turkish rule there was no surplus honey for export, and barely enough wax to satisfy the ritual needs of the Greek Orthodox church. Fig-birds In an earlier passage we noted the commerce in "fig-birds" that was initiated by the Knights Templars at the beginning of the Lusignan era. Mariti describes how it operated in the mid-eighteenth century: I must not forget the beccafico and the ortolan, which are very plump: they are sold indiscriminately at four soldi the bunch of twelve, and they are so plentiful that even at this price they are a source of profit to the villagers. The largest catches are made near Santa Napa. Some are sold fresh, but most of them have the head and feet cut off, are scalded, and then put into vinegar with certain drugs. Thus prepared they keep for a year, and are sold at the same price as the fresh birds. The sale of these little birds is in the hands of the Europeans at Larnaca, who continually receive commissions from England, Holland, France, and some parts of the Turkish dominions, from correspondents who desire them for their own use. Every year 400 little barrels are exported, some containing 200, others 400 birds.28

Salt In the first two centuries of Turkish rule Cyprus harvested from the lakes at Larnaca and Limassol little more salt than would satisfy her own requirements. Ships sailing westward no longer 22 Cobham, Cypria, p. 386. In Lusignan days a German pilgrim noticed in the wall of a monastery cell a small recess whose wooden door was closed by an iron bolt. Curious to see what lay behind the door he opened it, and fled precipitately before the swarm of bees that buzzed angrily around his head. Ibid., p. 44. 28 Cobham, Mariti's Travels, pp. 13-14. Cf. Cobham, Cypria, p. 213. 93

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called for it, because Italy and other nations had gone elsewhere to fill their needs—to salt pans in the central Mediterranean and on the coasts of the Atlantic Ocean, or to the mines of rock salt in central Europe. Syria and Constantinople offered small but not very profitable markets: ship captains taking on other cargo for those places often filled their vessels with Cyprus salt to sell on their own account.24 But the export boom in salt had ended with the Venetians. The close of the eighteenth century, nevertheless, witnessed a moderate revival, despite the apathy of the Turkish administration. About 1790 both the Larnaca and the Limassol lakes were worked for salt; the latter was producing the greater quantity, but its product commanded only half the price because its quality was poorer.25 From that time until nearly the end of the Turkish regime, salt flowed in appreciable quantities to Syria, Constantinople, and sometimes Smyrna, providing the island with its surest source of revenue, since it was the easiest to collect. Turner estimated the output in 1812 at between 4,000,000 and 5,000,000 okes; Gaudry in 1853 at 6,000,000 okes, valued at 75,000 francs; D. E. Colnaghi in 1864 recorded the exportation to Turkey of 2,700,000 okes, valued at £ 24,505: Sandwith, in 1869, of 11,600,000 okes, valued at £52,718; and W. Riddell quotes revenues of £25,000, £ 14,400, £ 18,900, £ 20,600 and £ 8,900 for the years from 1868 to 1872 inclusive.26 However, the Turkish government was dissatisfied with the revenues it was receiving from its monopoly, and about 1870, or a little earlier, raised the price of salt from 8 to 30 paras an oke (a penny for 24/s pounds). When this extravagant increase reduced consumption in the island, which was not allowed to import salt from outside its shores, the government lowered the price to 20 paras, and kept it at this level until the British occupation. But even 20 paras was too high for Syria, which could obtain all the salt it needed from Benghazi for 17 paras. The Cyprus government consequently lost that valuable market, its sales dropped, and its revenues declined: in 1873 it was carrying twelve-months supply of salt in its depots unsold, although it had refrained from mining Larnaca Lake during the two previous years. Only in 1877, the 24 Cobham, 25 Cobham,

Mariti's Travels, pp. 121-122. Cypria, p. 371. 26 Ibid., p. 426. AP 1866, XXXI, C. 3582, p. 937; AP 1871, XXIX, C. 343, p. 326; AP 1873, XXVII, C. 828, p. 1097; Oberhummer, pp. 111-118.

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last full year of Turkish rule, did Syria become a customer again: in that year Cyprus shipped abroad, mainly to Syria, 3,734,000 okes, and itself consumed about 729,000 okes. One year later all export ceased, because under the terms of its convention with England Turkey debarred Cyprus salt from the markets of the Ottoman Empire and no other country was interested in the island's product.Trade and Commerce I have now traced in some detail the vicissitudes of Cyprus' cotton, sugar, salt and other products during the Turkish regime, and drawn attention to the difficulties that beset the island as she navigated the sea of international commerce. In antiquity, and down through the Middle Ages, she had been a tiny trading bark competing with other barks not much larger than herself in the restricted basin of the Mediterranean; but from the sixteenth century onward she was sailing among full-rigged galleons on a commercial ocean that spanned the whole globe. World production and world trade had grown incalculably since the days of the Lusignans; measured against it, Cyprus' production, however vital to her own well-being, counted hardly more than a grain of wheat in a sackful, and her foreign trade rose and fell at the mercy of currents that reached her from every point of the compass. Mass production of sugar and cotton on New World slave plantations drove her own sugar and cotton out of foreign markets; a prohibitive import duty imposed by England dampened her traffic in silk; Atlantic salt beds and mid-European rock salt undermined her profitable commerce with Venice; English and German chemists destroyed the demand for her madder and other dyes; and diseases that struck from beyond her shores ruined her grapevines and her silk. However valiantly the little Levantine bark might hold her course, the sea she was riding was perilously stormy. She could not steady her keel by filling her hold with goods of her own manufacture; for she lacked the means to industrialize, to become a manufacturing country. In spite of being the third largest island in the Mediterranean, she was quite small, less than half the size of Wales, and not endowed by nature with rich resources. With her mountainous terrain and varying climates she could raise a number of different crops, but none on a large scale; and all around 27 AP 1872, XXIII, C. 597, p. 812; AP 1873, XXVII, C. 828, p. 1097; AP 1876, XXXIV, C. 1486, p. 1038.

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her were lands that could raise the same crops in greater volume and generally at lower costs. Apart from her agriculture and her flocks, she had little to offer. Her forests of timber had shrunk to insignificance, her mines had closed and been forgotten, her water power barely sufficed to grind her wheat, and her soil lacked coal to attract and support any industry. Peasants sitting outside their homes might spin and weave silk and cotton on their hand looms to sell to the merchants in Nicosia and Larnaca;28 women in Lefkara and surrounding villages might fashion lace and sell it to passing travellers;20 but these cottage crafts could not compete with the mass-production machines of northern Italy, France, England, and The Netherlands.90 Mariti was not shutting his eyes when he wrote that "there are no arts but those which are indispensable to human existence. Or if there are others they are only those concerned with the manufacture of cotton. And these deal with so small a produce that it can no longer keep up a regular commerce with Europe. The same may be said of the manufacture of skins tanned with sumach, yellow, red and black, of which just enough are prepared for home consumption."81 Cyprus then could export little but a few primary materials to pay for the ironware and other staples she needed from abroad, and for the foreign luxuries that her townspeople demanded. De Vezin lists some of these imported goods, as he observed them about 1790 from his watchtower in Larnaca. He saw iron goods brought 28 In the mid-eighteenth century, and probably later, most of the native textiles were woven in village homes, not in the cities. Cobham, Mariti's Travels, p. 45. In the mid-nineteenth century some small factories in Nicosia were making coloured cotton goods and good quality silks. Gaudry, pp. 131 f. 2° 'This town is one of the richest in Cyprus, and is the centre of the lace industry, which is made by the women, whose menfolk travel all over the world selling it. Leonardo da Vinci, when he visited the island in 1481, purchased lace made at Lefkara for the altar-cloth in Milan Cathedral." Gunnis, pp. 320 f. a° Drummond, who visited Cyprus in 1745 and again in 1750 says: "They have indeed some manufactures in the island, and do not want capacity, were they willing to be rightly instructed. Of cotton dimities, with a little silk, they make about 10,000 pieces, of 10 pics each, the pic being equal to 27 inches; of qutuni and bassma, coarse kinds of cotton-satin, about 15,000 pieces; of bitani, or broad cotton cloth, about 1,000 pieces; of coarse silk handkerchiefs very bad, 20,000 pieces; of skimity, which is a kind of cotton-linen, about 40,000 pieces; and of a thin coarse shirting a great quantity, through I do not know precisely what." Cobham, Cypria, p. 282. For a similar list given by De Vezin forty years later, see Ibid., p. 372. 31 Cobham, Mariti's Travels, p. 16. Luke quotes a similar remark a century later: `There are no manufactures of importance in this Island, silk, cotton, and leather being manufactured only in sufficient quantities to meet local wants.' Luke, p. 235. 96

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from France; also cloth ("Londrins seconds"), lace, gold-embroidered stuffs, coffee, sugar, three spices, (pepper, cloves, and cinnamon), and two dyes (indigo and cochineal). From Venice he noted nails, window glass, mirrors, carved chests and wardrobes, pine boards (50,000), vitriol, headkerchiefs, and silk stuffs of all kinds.82 We could have anticipated some of these items—the iron goods, the window glass and the mirrors, the Venetian carved chests and wardrobes, and the coffee; for they had become necessities, or halfnecessities, that Cyprus could not furnish from her own toil. We can understand, too, the cotton cloth and the lace, destined for resident foreigners and for fastidious Cypriots in Nicosia, Larnaca, and Limassol, who scorned the homemade textiles of their countrymen.33 The 50,000 pine boards imported from Venice each year show how grievously Cyprus had slashed her magnificent forests and impoverished herself since the days when she built ships from her own pines and oaks, and supplied both Syria and Egypt with abundant timber; and the sugar brought from France might have stirred an Aeschylus to cry out against the blindness of fate, which had built up an industry in Cyprus only to destroy it when the islanders could no longer do without its product. The spices and indigo mark another turn of fate's wheel, which had interrupted the old trade route from the Indies through the Red Sea to the Mediterranean, and was now bringing Cyprus from western Europe the very goods she had once relayed to the west. None of these imports need surprise us. Only the demand for vitriol and cochineal arouses our wonder, because Cyprus had herself produced and exported vitriol in past centuries,84 and because she had traded also a scarlet dye resembling—and often called—cochineal, which was derived from the bodies of an insect, Coccus ilicis, found clinging to the twigs of the Kermes oak.35 32 Cobham, Cypria, p. 372. Drummond had reported forty years before: "The import consists of broad-cloth, by far the greatest part of which is from France, and some from a new manufactory at Venice; a few bales come from Great Britain, but none, as yet, from Holland; in watches, toys of every kind, cutlery ware, pepper, tin, lead, sugar, all sorts of silk manufactures, and other things of less consequence; ... " Ibid., p. 282. 33 '. . the centres of population [in Cyprus] continue as before dependent for their supply of cotton stuffs on foreign markets.' Luke, p. 236. S4 Cf. "Crussoco district today yields vitriol.... In ancient times fair quantities of this vitriol were mined in the city of Tamassus, where today one can see no trace of it." Trans. from Lusignano, p. 37. 35 1n Mariti's day Cyprus was still exporting this "cochineal" to Venice; the quantity, he says, was small, but the profit high. Cobham, Mariti's Travels, p. 118.

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The petty industries and the commerce of the eighteenth century underwent numerous modifications in the nineteenth, but made only limited progress.88 The Nicosia tanning establishments expanded and, when local supplies became inadequate, turned to importing raw hides from Egypt and other countries, re-exporting them later as shoes or leather. By 1863 Cyprus was shipping to Alexandria fine Turkish shoes of red, blue, and yellow leather; and in 1877 the Nicosia tanneries, which were then turning out each year between 1,500 and 2,000 bales of leather, imported ox and camel hides valued at £ 9,485, nearly all for processing and reexport. But only the leather industry prospered. The weaving of silk and cotton by women and girls, and the printing of cotton goods by men, hardly breathed; by 1877 Cyprus was shipping abroad the dry cocoons instead of the spun silk, and the home market was receiving each twelve months no more than 10,000 pieces of silk for dresses, sashes, and handkerchiefs.87 At that date one or two small factories were making soap for the local market whenever olives were plentiful, and Famagusta's suburb, Varosha, was sending abroad a little inferior pottery:B° but 95 per cent of Cyprus' exports were the same primary products as in the eighteenth century, though greater now in quantity and value. The principal development, perhaps, was the emergence in Europe of a profitable market for the raisins of the Limassol district, and of another market in Egypt for the fresh vegetables and fruits (onions, oranges, lemons, and pomegranates) of the Famagusta area. The former developed as a shield against the vagaries of the wine market, the latter as an outgrowth of regular steamship connection between Larnaca and Alexandria.39 S6 In 1879, just one year after Turkey vacated the island, an English official listed as follows the "skilled tradesmen" in the Paphos district: 26 Chairmakers _____ 5 9 Carpenters Barbers 18 ,_ 74 Tailors ____—_____ 8 Masons Bakers 47 Mattress-makers __ 10 Dyers __ _ 8 Blacksmiths _— Tannery workers__ 10 Saddlers _____________ 14 Shoemakers —_-137 S7 AP 1864, XXX, C. 3393, p. 437; AP 1878, XXIX, C. 2088, pp. 1366, 1371. SS "We saw a vessel loading in the harbour [of Famagusta) entirely with these—jars, water-bottles, dishes, etc.—but the earthen-ware is of a coarse description, and the quality of the clay does not admit of sufficient porosity for the purpose of cooling water or of filtering, like the Egyptian ware; at the same time it is not sufficiently impervious for the retention of wine or oil without a considerable loss by absorption." Baker, p. 164. 33 In the middle of the nineteenth century, and probably earlier, Cyprus was sending Egypt considerable quantities of dried fruit: she shipped £ 3,900 worth in 1869. AP 1871, XXIX, C. 343, p. 326. But the carriers were small Arab sailing craft, too subject to delays from wind and weather to be entrusted with fresh fruit or vegetables.

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Mid-nineteenth-century imports, generally speaking, resembled those of a century earlier, but were more diversified. European cotton and woollen textiles still predominated; but the glass, cutlery, miscellaneous hardware, and handkerchiefs of previous decades were now accompanied by fowling pieces, kerosene, and paper. Timber continued to come in from Trieste and Asia Minor, but ranking second to textiles was the tobacco of Macedonia, which profited from the slump in the Cyprus leaf. The demand for such food products as sugar, rice, coffee, and butter had expanded greatly, indicating slightly improved living conditions, at least in the towns; and a further indication of this improvement during the closing years of Turkish rule was the growing importation of Egyptian flour and the spread of good quality bread from the towns to some of the villages. Cyprus' trade both reflected and was influenced by her shipping connections. The island's largest customers in the third quarter of the nineteenth century were the two countries, Turkey and Egypt, whose vessels predominated in her waters. Turkey accepted her cheese and mules in exchange for timber and tobacco, Egypt her wine and yellow silk in exchange for flour. Many other goods passed between the island and the neighbouring mainland, but their sources and destinations are uncertain because a high proportion were transshipped to or from the West. After Turkey and Egypt came Austria and France, which were linked to Cyprus by the regular services of the Austrian Lloyd and Messageries Maritimes steamship companies. These western nations traded cotton and woollen goods, iron manufactures, sugar, coffee, earthenware, and spirits for some of Cyprus' wine, silk, barley, linseed, hides, carobs, wool, and other products: here again, however, the lists that the consuls have given us are deceptive, since both Trieste and Marseilles were primarily transshipment centres that exported goods from many countries, not Austria and France alone. England held a relatively low place on Cyprus' commercial list, despite her preoccupation with its political status; but indirectly she received nearly all of its madder, and some of its carobs, barley, and cotton.'° 4 D AP 1857, XIV, C. 2285, p. 206; AP 1871, XXIX, C. 343, pp. 325-6; AP 1876, XXXIV, C. 1486, pp. 1032 ff. England's demand for cotton during the American Civil War raised her temporarily into second place, above France but below Austria.

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Fiscal policies and their effects The import and export trade, and the island's production in general, received little support from the fiscal policies of the Turkish rulers. Neither Cyprus nor any other part of the Ottoman Empire possessed an efficient civil service to advise its governor and carry out his policies, or a disciplined police force to ensure that his orders and regulations were obeyed. The governor himself, whether responsible to Constantinople directly (as throughout most of the Turkish period) or indirectly through a governor general in Rhodes or Cannakale, owed his appointment not to administrative experience or unusual competence, but to court favouritism or to his ability to pay a larger price for the post than any of his rivals. His appointment, nominally annual at one period, triennial at another, so seldom ran for any fixed term that he might find himself superseded after six months only, or not before six years; and the uncertainty of his tenure did not encourage him to undertake any reforms or to initiate any project which he himself might never complete, or his successor continue. Moreover, he generally seemed to be in desperate need of money—money to recover the cost of his appointment, money to pay the salaries of his officials and the wages of his soldiers, money to satisfy the demands of Constantinople for contributions to meet special emergencies, or money simply to line his pockets against the day when he would lose his office. In drawing up his budget, therefore, he often followed the principle of demanding just as much as the traffic could carry. Sometimes, however, he miscalculated, and his taxes were more than the traffic could carry. Sometimes the taxes themselves were reasonable, but rapacious tax collectors mulcted the peasants twice over in order to line their own pockets, a robbery that was not too difficult, because 95 per cent of the population, including most of the village headmen, could neither read nor write. And sometimes again, when the taxes were reasonable and their collectors honest, the peasants evaded them by the various subterfuges taught by many centuries of foreign rule. The island's taxation system did not remain stationary, of course, throughout the three hundred years of Turkish rule. Writers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, however, failed to describe it in detail, and it is not until the third quarter of the nineteenth century that we gain a clear picture from the reports of 41 For a summary of Turkey's Cyprus administration as it appeared to the British in July 1878 see Report of H. M. High Commissioner for Cyprus, 1879 in AP 1880, LXIX, C. 2543, pp. 1-5.

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various foreign consuls, and later from the British officials who took over the administration from the Turks. The unit of Turkey's revenue system in that quarter-century was the village. Above the village was the group of villages called nahie; above the nahie the canton, caza; and above the caza the region, sandjak, which was itself a part of a province or vilayet ruled by a Governor General, a Director of Finance, and an Administrative Council. Excellent regulations guided the flow of the revenues from the village to the governor general's palace, but few officials seemed to know them, or if they did, they ignored them. A subordinate governor with the title of Mutessarif ruled Cyprus, which ranked as a mere region or sandjak in the province of Rhodes; but its relative isolation gave it a semi-independent status and allowed its governor a fairly free hand in regulating the island's taxes. Its revenue came from a score of different taxes, the main ones being (a) tithes on all agricultural produce; (b) property and income taxes (verghi); (c) export and import duties, and excise taxes; (d) taxes on sheep, goats, and pigs; (e) a tax that exempted all Christians (i.e., three-fourths of the population) from military service. The most productive were the tithes, which commonly yielded half the revenue. They rested on the theory that all land belonged to the Sultan, who granted titles to segments of it in return for 10 per cent of the yearly produce.42 In 1874 the government suddenly raised the rate to 121/2 per cent, but Iowered it again to the tithe two years later when the farmers in protest reduced their crops and restricted their output. Forty years earlier, following the unrest aroused by the Greek War of Independence on the mainland,48 the governor had abandoned the long established practice of delegating the collection of the tithes to the Greek-Cypriot archbishop and bishops, and was now farming them out by villages, nahies or cazas, between March and June so that the merchants who speculated in them could estimate from the growing crops the size and quality of the harvest: any tithes that remained unsold on 15 June the government collected through its own agents. In the 1870's the auction realized £ 58,000 a year; the tax farmers spent about £ 6,000 in collecting the tithes and aimed at a profit of about the same amount. One may thus estimate the average value of the tithes at roughly £70,000 and the crops at ten times that figure." 42 Mas Latrie, III, p. 560. 48 See page 114. 44 AP 1883, IX, C. 3661, pp. 48-49. 101

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For their actual collection we may quote from the English financial commissioner who prepared the island's estimates in 1878, immediately after the Turkish officials had withdrawn: When the sales are effected the tithe-farmer signs a bond for the amount, payable in six monthly instalments, commencing from the 1st August, with interest on instalments not paid at due date. Each tithe-farmer is required to have sufficient surety, who also signs the bond and is jointly and equally responsible with the principal. After conclusion of the agreement, the tithe-farmer proceeds at once to watch the fields in which he is interested and to estimate the yield. He sees the grain cut, threshed, heaped, and insists on its remaining upon the threshing floor until his claim is satisfied—the claim always exceeding the stipulated tenth. For wheat, barley and other grains, arrangements have to be made by the cultivators for transit to the nearest port of embarkation, on terms more or less unfavourable to themselves. Their cattle are taken away for transport when most required in their own fields, and they have to bear all the expenses of transit, except the expense of the first mile, which is paid by the tithe-farmers. For fruit, vegetables and other perishable articles, the tithe is commuted in a money payment, respecting which there are usually disputes, determinable by the local kaimakam or head government official in each caza. The awards of these officials are always in favour of the tithe-farmers, who are members of the Administrative Councils, or otherwise persons of influence in the cazas comprised in their respective engagements. Later in the year, or about the 15th August, the vineyards are similarly visited by the tithe-farmers or their representatives, and estimates of the produce are made by them and by the cultivators. These estimates always differ, and are the subject of constant disputes, which are referred to the kaimakam, whose award is generally in favour of the tithefarmer. As the grapes cannot be removed until the claim is settled, the cultivator submits to the exactions of the tithe-farmers rather than risk the deterioration or loss of his stock, and is thus practically mulcted in proportions far exceeding a tenth of the entire produce. The effect of these illegal exactions has been to reduce the cultivation of the grapes throughout the island. But, though keen in their dealings with the peasantry, the tithefarmers are slow in their own payments to the Government Treasury. These payments are required, under their bonds, in six monthly instalments from the 1st August; grace is allowed for 40 days, and the instalments are required to commence on the 10th September. They are delayed, however, on various pretexts, and reclamations and remissions of revenue are often unjustly obtained through collusion with the local Kaimakams and Malmudirs. Thus, the tithe-farmer makes his bargain with the government when the crops are ripening, recovers his claim directly they are gathered, indefinitely postpones his own obligations to the government and often evades them altogether. Although, under his bond, interest is 102

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payable on overdue instalments, it is never enforced. An examination of the accounts revealed the existence of considerable arrear claims extending over several years, and for the most part irrecoverable now. Practically the tithe-farmer's obligations have never been discharged in the year to which they belonged. Of the collections credited to the year 1876-77 nearly one-half was on account of the claims of prior years.45 A tithe of 10 per cent would not have been exorbitant had it been honestly collected, but unscrupulous or indolent governors and a corrupt civil service opened the door to innumerable abuses. Other taxes increased the load on the peasant until in an average year he seems to have paid the government from 20 to 25 per cent of his income. We need not wonder then that when an excessive tax struck the tobacco growers, they either gave up planting that crop or sold their output secretly; that when another tax, equally oppressive, hit the carob trade, the peasants ceased harvesting the pods and cut down so many of their trees that the law was repealed; and that when three different taxes were imposed simultaneously on the wine industry, exports dropped 50 per cent and imported brandy sold for less than the local product.48 Had the Turkish administration not been so lamentably inefficient and shortsighted, it would never have maltreated so persistently the geese that were providing its golden eggs. As it was, erratic taxes and rapacious tax collectors not only depressed agriculture, but discouraged the flow of local capital into commerce and industry and frightened away foreign investors" Forests If the administration's fiscal policy was extremely shortsighted, even more so was its treatment of the forests.48 We have seen that from the Bronze Age onward the native forests of pine, cedar, and oak shrank steadily under axe and fire until by the end of the Venetian period they survived only in the less accessible mountains. During those four thousand years there were no doubt decades, 1878-79, ØI, C. 2396, pp. 1-2. 'The chief item of exports to Turkey, consisting in grain, wine, dairy produce and articles of raw material, all suffer from the high duty imposed on them.' Luke, p. 235. Cf. also page 94 for the effect of the government's inordinate exploitation of its salt monopoly. 47 For further details of the taxes see Lang, pp. 276 et seq., and Hill, IV, pp. 28-30, 241-46. 48 Thd ensuing discussion, longer and more detailed than that accorded to other topics, seems justified by the narrowness of Cyprus' escape from the complete denudation that had befallen the islands of the Aegean Sea and large areas of the mainland. 45 AP

46 Cf.:

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even centuries, in which the destruction slackened, the forests held their own for a time, and perhaps advanced again. That could have happened whenever Cyprus drifted into a backwater, whenever the outside world sailed indifferently past her shores and lowered its demand for her timbers and fuel. But if such re-advances of the forest did occur, early writers, always more concerned with wars and politics than with economics or geography, have not mentioned them; and when we reach the Turkish regime, travellers speak only of relentless deforestation.49 Turkey did not introduce new agencies of deforestation: she merely allowed fuller scope to agencies that had operated from antiquity. Excessive cutting was not a new feature: it had helped to ravage the great cedars of Lebanon from which King Solomon built his temple. Fire has been a destroyer of forests in every age and in every country. In Cyprus conflagrations seem to have been particularly numerous under Turkish rule, owing to the carelessness and indifference of the charcoal burners;60 yet they may have been just as numerous in the Bronze and early Iron Ages, when copper mining was in full swing and the smelting of the ores demanded large quantities of charcoal. In classical times, again, and probably all through the Middle Ages, man had barked and killed the pine trees for their resin. Finally, in all ages the voracious goats of Mediterranean shepherds had prevented the regeneration of the forests by devouring the young plants and the seedlings: during the inefficient Turkish regime, they were allowed to destroy unhindered.51 We can trace the progressive havoc these agencies wrought in Cyprus by piecing together the statements of numerous travellers during the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Within 49 Yet what nation dare cast the first stone? During the nineteenth century the Tennessee Valley and other regions in the United States were thoughtlessly stripped of their timber, while in the same period settlers from England relentlessly destroyed with axe and fire the unique forests in the North Island of New Zealand. °° "Unhappily, every peasant is permitted the barbarous pleasure of burning green trees." Trans. from Gaudry, p. 200. °1 "The French forest officer whom I have mentioned, M. Madon, made a very careful examination of the best-preserved parts of the forests, and showed the following results: "(1) For every hundred trees which were standing, there were 72 that had been felled and were left lying on the ground to rot. "(2) For the same number of standing trees (100) there were only 25 seedlings. "The first shows the result of wasteful and reckless woodcutting. The second is the result of the indiscriminate pasturage of goats." Biddulph, "Cyprus," Proc. Royal Geog. Soc., XI, 711.

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twenty years of the Turkish occupation a foreign vessel put in once more at Limassol to take on wood, as had been customary in Venetian days.S2 There was no pine forest in that locality, but the hill slopes behind the port bore many smaller trees that were suitable for fuel, mainly perhaps cypresses, olives, and carobs. The pine forests themselves lay north and west in the Troodos Mountains, where R. Pococke one hundred and fifty years later found many of the trees deliberately killed for the extraction of tar, and observed that the island was still exporting wood to Italy and France.68 Alexander Drummond, another traveller of the mideighteenth century, witnessed similar destruction of the pines on the northern slopes of the Troodos Mountains near Lefka; and Mariti noted a few years afterwards that pitch, tar, and planks were being exported from the island, although in such small quantities that European merchants left the traffic to the Cypriots b6 By the second half of the eighteenth century the Kyrenia Range, which parallels the north coast of the island, carried few if any large pines but was "covered with small trees and brushwood."66 Eastward, in the Famagusta and Karpas area, grew "hardwood for export and for building peasants' dwellings,"" but some of this hardwood was olive, apparently, for on the coast between Salamis and Cape Andreas, Mariti had reported groves of olive trees that were no longer fruitful, but were used for firewood: vessels from the coastal towns of Syria were cutting them down and carrying them away unhindered.67 Thus there was no real forest at this period except in the Troodos Mountains, where Sibthorpe in 1787 recorded: "The higher regions of Troodos are covered with the Pinus pinea; this, mixed with the Ilex, and some trees scattered here and there in the valley below of the Quercus ægilops, are the only trees that can be regarded as proper for timber. The carob, the olive, the andrachne, the terebinthus, the lentisc, the kermes oak, the storax, the cypress and oriental plane, furnish not only fuel in abundance for the inhabitants, but sufficient to supply in some degree those of Egypt."b8 Cobham, Cypria, p. 171. 1bid., pp. 262, 268. p. 295; Cobham, Mariti's Travels, p. 122. Cobham, Mariti's Travels, p. 49. Cobham, Cypria, p. 373. Cobham, Mariti's Travels, p. 71. See Baker, pp. 131, 135-36 for the same traffic a century later. 66 Cobham, Cypria, p. 334. 62

65 "Ibid., 56 56 57

105

THE ECONOMICS OF CYPRUS

It appears then from these reports that in the eighteenth century Cyprus, as a unit in the Turkish Empire, had resumed her ancient role of purveyor of timber and fuel to the wood-hungry countries around the Levant, particularly Syria and Egypt, and occasionally even exported a little to Europe. Her pitch, tar, and planks served both merchantmen and the Turkish navy, as they had served the merchant and naval vessels of Rome in the time of Christ. She herself required a far from negligible amount of timber, and of fuel for her Turkish baths and domestic clay ovens; furthermore, the limestone kilns of the Kyrenia Mountains consumed a certain amount of wood, as did also the Famagusta potteries, which in the nineteenth century and doubtless earlier manufactured earthenware from a whitish-yellow clay for both the home and the export markets." Ceaselessly assailed to meet all these requirements, the forests hastened their retreat, and good timber had become so scarce by the century's end that Cyprus was forced to import from Venice 50,000 pine planks yearly. In the early nineteenth century we hear of an added assault on the forests, one, however, that was by no means new. Turner, who entered the Troodos Mountains from Lefka and ascended to Kykko Monastery, reported that, "Many burnt trees were lying along the mountains and across the valleys, of which the peasants make great quantities of charcoal, and this forms a considerable branch of commerce between Cyprus and Alexandria."" This traffic declined quickly, for little or no charcoal seems to have been exported after about 1850. But when we remember how rapidly charcoal burners denuded the Weald in southern England, and how they opened immense gaps in European forests from France to Russia, we can be sure that they wreaked similar destruction in Cyprus also, though they operated in a much smaller theatre." Coming to the middle of the nineteenth century, we find the French scientist Gaudry outlining the main vegetation zones that a b9 See page 98 and Luke, p. 255. Biddulph wrote: "There is now a stony desert at the south-east of the island between Famagusta and Lamaca, where tradition says there was formerly a large forest, and to the east of the Mesaorea, on the now dry and desolate plateau, there are many limekilns now in ruins, which could not have been, supplied except by a vegetation that has now altogether disappeared." Biddulph, "Cyprus," Proc. Royal Geog. Soc., p. 711. Cf. also Baker, pp. 78, 164. 80 Cobham, Cypria, p. 439. " At a forestry conference in Teheran in 1955 it was estimated that charcoal burning was costing Iran about 500,000 tons of first-class timber yearly.

106

TURKISH REGIME : 1571-1878

traveller of that period would encounter when crossing the island in a straight line from the south coast to the north: If a traveller leaves sea-level at Limassol he will find himself at first in the zone of the plains, marked by fields of cereals; but he will soon arrive at the zone of carobs. Higher up vast stretches of waste-land will unfold before his eyes. Then will come a few clumps of oak trees, and finally, on the summit of the Troodos Mountains, a mantle of pines. Descending the opposite (northern) slopes of the mountains he will find a very similar succession of zones, but in reverse order; and at the bottom of these slopes he will encounter vast plains planted to cereals and cotton. Crossing them, he will come to another mountain system, the Kyrenia system, which carries some olive trees at its base, but is waste-land at its summit. Since it is not as high as the Troodos Mountain system it does not reach the zone of pines. Descending now the northern face of this range of mountains the traveller will cross some huge scarps of waste-land, then encounter some magnificent olive and carob plantations. Still descending, he will reach at last the island's northern coast at Acheropithos and Kyrenia, where rich fields of cereals and cotton mark the zone of the plains.62

No large trees then covered the nakedness of the Kyrenia Mountains, the same writer tells us, merely some scattered copses of stunted pines, lentisks, and broom. The two last clothed the western base of the mountains toward Cape Kormakiti. To the east, the fertile Karpas Peninsula carried some woods near Cape Andreas, and several small promontories were covered with juniper and lentisk brush that abounded in hares, red partridges, and francolins. Very different were the Troodos Mountains. Their summits were almost wholly covered with pines, below which stretched a zone of oaks, plane trees, maples, willows and other trees. In this belt of green-leafed trees above the waste land and the olive and carob plantations lay most of the island's vineyards. The mountains tapered off to the east into hills of limestone or sand, some barren, others covered with copses of juniper, lentisk, and cypress (Fig. 7). Gaudry observed that a considerable amount of pine lumber was being shipped to Syria through Karavostasi and Kato Pyrgos in Morphou Bay. No Europeans seemed to be handling this traffic, only vessels belonging to Greeks and Turks.63 62 68

Trans. from Gaudry, pp. 104 f. Gaudry, pp. 99-104, 200-201.

107

THE ECONOMICS OF CYPRUS

KYRENIA

TROOOOS MTS.

ter&

S

7

3

MORPHOU PLAIN

UMASSOL

KYRENLA

FIG. 7. VEGETATION ZONES. Zone 1: cereals, cotton, sesame. Zone 2: olives, carobs. Zone 3: waste or covered with such shrubs as juniper and lentisk. Zone 4: oaks, maples, etc. Zone 5: pines and ferns. (Gaudry, p. 447, Fig. 1.) In this same period Mas Latrie had already reported that there existed in Cyprus only one real forest, the ancient Wood of Jupiter that clothed the western mountains from Makheras (Machera) Monastery to Troodos. It covered a fairly large area, but its trees were thinly spaced. Pines predominated, but amid them grew oaks and elms mixed with sycamores, planes, valagnas, scledros, and other trees bearing the thick and heavy leaves peculiar to the climate.°4 Not long after Mas Latrie a German traveller, F. Unger, visited this forest and described its mournful condition thus: In the Troodos Mountains trees 200-300 years old predominate; younger ones are sparse and young copses rare. None of them are hemmed in, but stand rather widely apart, so that it is only here and there that their branches touch one another. Seldom is a tree whole and undamaged; the majority show marks of mutilation in the bark and wood, and have acquired a gloomy look through partial charring. Among these upright evidences of man's irresponsibility toward the forests stand almost as many dead trees that stretch out their bristling branches like a thousand arms; others lie on the ground, half burnt and wracked by wind and weather—a pitiful sight. The picture repeats itself, whether you wander over the rocky crests of the mountains, along their steep slopes or through their gullies; but in the gullies, and in damp valleys where rare springs evoke a tender green from mosses and grasses, the gloom gives place to friendliness. In the higher regions, finally, where fog and rain support some vegetation in the spring and autumn, one can scarcely discover an older tree that is not covered with the lichens Usnea, Borera, Ramalina and Evemia. One hurries along over the tangled mass of fallen and rotting tree-trunks and approaches the last summits.86 Charcoal burners were no doubt responsible for some of this destruction; but they were not the only assassins of the forest. Even today, in certain parts of the Middle East, roving shepherds still ea

Mas Latrie, I, 62.

°u Trans. from F. Unger, Die Insel Cypern Einst and Jetzt (Vienna,

1866), pp. 49 f., as quoted in Oberhummer, p. 250. 108

TURKISH REGIME : 1571-1875

ring and mutilate whole blocks of trees in order to enlarge their grazing grounds. Unger's fellow countryman, F. von C. Loher, who visited Cyprus in 1875, three years before the end of Turkish rule, drew an even darker picture of the condition of its forests and pointed the finger of judgement at their destroyers. To obtain 100 tree trunks for navy docks 1,000 trees were cut down, because it was easier to select them when they lay on the ground: those not needed were left to rot. Every defeat the Turkish navy suffered brought fresh destruction to Cyprus' forests. . . . It was Mehmed Ali, the first Viceroy of Egypt,ß6 who gave the coup de grace to the high forest. Wherever there were still good stands of timber he allowed everything to be felled, a part to sell overseas, another part to build a fleet, but the major portion to export to Egypt for the construction of water-wheels and canal buildings.... Wherever there is a village, large or small, regularly there appears a wide clearing around it.... Somewhat farther from the village one finds indeed stronger trees, but not one that has not suffered the loss of bark, cutting, and burning near its base.67

Towards the end of their regime the Turks themselves became alarmed at the rapid deforestation of the island. They prohibited the manufacture of resin, and in 1873 enacted the following regulation, which they communicated to the British consul in Larnaca :68 To the British Consul (T), The local Government having learned that, notwithstanding the small number of forests in Cyprus, trees continue to be felled as before both for fuel to drive engines as well as for export, and that if this state of things does not cease the forests will soon disappear, thereby reducing the rainfall, the Central Majlis Idare has decreed as follows: `It is forbidden henceforth to export wood or to use it to drive engines; he who is found disobeying this order will be fined, and the wood will be confiscated by the Municipality.' His Excellency the Governor-General having applied the above regulation to all the Qaimaqamliks, I have to request that you will be good enough to notify your nation also that henceforth they must neither export wood nor use it for their engines. The Qaimaqam of Larnaca, Mehmed Arif. April 28, 1289 (1873). 66

Mehmed All ruled Cyprus from 1832 to 1840. Trans. from F. v. C. Loher, Kypros (Stuttgart, 1878), pp. 39 f., as quoted in Oberhummer, pp. 250-51. 68 Luke, pp. 255 f. 87

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THE ECONOMICS OF CYPRUS

This regulation alone would not have saved the surviving forests, because it attacked only one of the causes of their destruction. In any event, before she could follovi it up with other measures, Turkey handed over the administration of the island to Britain and left that nation to deal with the problem. Today we can discount the fear of the Turkish government that the deforestation of the island could seriously affect its rainfall, since the land area is too small to charge its atmosphere with moisture through transpiration from its trees or evaporation from its soil. What deforestation can do, and has done, is to increase the volume and speed of the surface runoff, causing grave erosion of the soil and the loss of water for irrigation and other purposes. Furthermore, it endangered the survival of some of the native fauna and flora.69 The pheasant, the deer, and perhaps the wild pig were exterminated during the Turkish regime; the wild sheep barely escaped the same fate, and the splendid native cedar became so scarce that it was believed extinct until Baker learned in 1879 that a few trees survived in a remote part of the Troodos Mountains. It may be that firearms contributed their share toward the disappearance of the fauna, but the main cause, unquestionably, was the destruction of the forests, which stripped the animals of nature's protection and made them an easy prey to the hunters. Communications Although Cyprus' prosperity hinged largely on its foreign trade, the Turkish officials made little attempt to improve any of the harbours through which it passed. Famagusta, the principal port in all previous eras, remained blocked right down to the end of the regime to vessels drawing more than 11 feet, and the town itself, still in ruins three hundred years after its capture, sheltered only 800 inhabitants, all of them Turks: it was hardly more, indeed, than a strong-walled prison to which the Porte exiled troublesome persons and politicians who had fallen from grace.70 To guide vessels approaching the port of Larnaca, which handled most of 69 But not the locusts. "One result is that the island is ravaged by locusts. These are not, as in Russia and Algeria, a migratory plague bred at a distance. They are bred in the island itself on the large areas of denuded and uncultivated land and would disappear if these were reclaimed." Sir Joseph Hooker's report concerning deforestation in AP 1882, IX, C. 3385, p. 8. 70 Gaudry, p. 135; Gunnis, p. 88; Biddulph, p. 716.

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TURKISH REGIME : 1571-1878

the imports and exports,71 Turkey built three lighthouses in 1864, one on Cape Gata, the second on Cape Kiti, and the third at Larnaca itself;72 but the ships that anchored in the roadstead off the port found no jetty at which to land their passengers and freight. Land communications suffered the same neglect as the harbours. We hear of a road around the island, but it seems to have been only a mule path that followed rather closely the course of the old Roman road. As late as 1862 the merchant who wanted to travel from Larnaca to Nicosia—a distance of only 26 miles—faced two choices; he could walk the whole distance, or he could mount a mule and ride uncomfortably for eight hours. Not until 1865 did the government undertake to join the two places with a road, which it completed six years later. Even then it was badly graded and poorly surfaced, judged by contemporary western standards; yet it was the only carriage road in Cyprus prior to the British regime. Wretched communications discourage trade as much as they do travel; and many carob and olive trees growing in the north and west of the island must have remained unharvested because it was too difficult to carry the fruit to market.73 Communications by sea were little better than those by land. Small Arab sailing craft carried most of the traffic, even after steamships made their appearance in the Levant shortly before the middle of the nineteenth century. In 1846 the French Messageries Maritimes was running a three-monthly steamship service to Beirut, with an uncertain stop at Cyprus, while the Austrian Lloyd operated a monthly service that called at Larnaca on both the inward and the outward voyage. In 1847 a small Peninsular and Oriental steamer was placed on the run between Constantinople and Beirut, and it too sometimes touched at Cyprus, but like the French 71 Larnaca was nearer than Limassol to eastern Cyprus and the central plain which produced most of the grain, madder, cotton, wool, hides, and other exportable goods; and it had better "road" connections. Limassol exported little except carobs and wine, the special products of its district; and it imported only what was needed in its immediate area, and in the adjoining Paphos district. Consular statistics from the last years of Turkish rule show that the value of the exports and imports that passed through Limassol each year barely attained one-third the value of those that passed through Larnaca. 72 "Cyprus," The Geographical Magazine (London, 1878), V, 202. 73 "Nothing, however, is expended or proposed to increase the resources of the island, or to facilitate and improve the means of intercourse from the interior to the shipping ports; whilst the means of transport has become so inadequate to the wants of the island that, upon an average, the rate of carriage of grain from the interior to the coast exceeds the freight to Europe, besides the frequent impracticability of getting it transported at all." AP 1875, XXXVI, C. 1354, p. 435.

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THE ECONOMICS OF CYPRUS

steamer could not be depended upon. Shipping increased during the American Civil War, when western Europe, and particularly England, was eagerly seeking cotton from all over the Levant; but when the war ended, even the Liverpool steamers found it unprofitable to call at Cyprus except at long intervals. So the Austrian Lloyd with its regular service enjoyed a virtual monopoly of the steamship traffic down to the last decade of Turkish rule.7¢ Yet even that company's vessels linked the island with the Moslem world more than with the West. Cyprus indeed lay in an eddy. It had little direct contact with Europe, although a large percentage of its products ended up in the West; but it maintained a brisk traffic through sailing craft with the neighbouring emporia of Smyrna, Beirut, and Alexandria. Waterworks Two and a half centuries of maladministration and population decline caused the neglect and abandonment of numerous waterworks on the island.76 As far as I can discover, the Ottoman regime may claim credit for only one major aqueduct, that built by Abu Bekr in 1747 to supply the town of Larnaca. Luke considered its construction the most important public work undertaken by the Turks in Cyprus; and Drummond, who observed it before it was quite finished, thought it sufficiently impressive to merit this description: He set down sumpts, or pits, and carried drifts from one to another, to lead the water through the high ground, and conveyed it in aqueducts over the hollows: the first of which from Arpera is an arcade of fifty arches; two of these are small, the others nine feet wide, the highest twelve feet in height, while the others diminish as the ground rises: the pillars, or piers of the arches, are eight feet thick; and here he has planted fine silk-gardens, with a vineyard, and built a mill, in which grain is ground by the fall of water. The second arcade has twelve arches, each being twelve feet wide, the pillars being five feet broad and three feet thick, and the highest about eighteen feet in height. The third arcade, which is near Larnica, consists of thirty-one arches, four feet and an half wide, the height of the highest being about sixteen feet, each pillar is four feet thick and twelve feet broad.76 74 In 1864 half the tonnage that entered Cyprus' ports was Austrian, and in 1871 two-thirds of it. AP 1866, XXXI, C. 3582, p. 935; AP 1872, XXIII, C. 597, p. 810. 75 Cf. page 30 and: "I have said that during the Lusignan and Venetian periods the island's streams were broken up when they reached the plains into little canals and gutters. Such irrigation was especially necessary for cotton. Today, unhappily, it is neglected." Trans. from Gaudry, p. 161. ?6 Cobham, Cypria, p. 288. Cf. also Ibid., p. 369 and Luke, pp. 69 et seq.

112

ØISH REGIME : 1571-1878

After Turkey moved out of the island, the British found that not Larnaca alone, but Famagusta, Nicosia, and one or two other towns had been supplied with fresh water by aqueducts; these, however, appear to have been built in Lusignan or Venetian times. Recently Raeburn has credited the Turks with constructing some of the chains of wells still operating in the eastern Mesaoria;7 and he may well be correct, because two governors, one about 1844 and the other about 1870, reclaimed some very fertile land in this region by regulating the course of the Pedieos River. The later governor, aided by one or two rich landowners, also encased the outlet of the Kythrea spring.78 Private enterprise might have undertaken many of these works; and it would have received the blessing of the Turkish administration, which from the mid-nineteenth century onward, to use the words of the English consul Riddell, was "probably meaning well, and even desirous of giving encouragement to every useful and legitimate enterprise."90 But the government's record did not inspire confidence in foreign investors, and the Cypriots themselves lacked capital to risk on any enterprise that did not promise immediate dividends. Comparison of the Turkish and Venetian regimes If we now summarize the three hundred years of Turkish rule and compare them with the one hundred years rule of the Venetians who preceded them, we observe some striking differences. The Italian state governed the island so sternly as to seem needlessly ruthless until we remember that it was always expecting an invasion from the still aggressive Turks. It put down brigandage, held in strict feudal subjection the Greek Cypriots and their Orthodox church, controlled and expanded agriculture, and promoted a vigorous foreign trade which it kept in the hands of its own nationals. The Turks, on the other hand, immediately abolished every trace of feudalism and, regarding the Cypriots as just one more subject people within their empire, not only tolerated the Orthodox church, but drew its bishops and archbishops into the administration by making them responsible for the collection of the tribute. At the same time, in the manner of the Roman and other empires, they strengthened their hold on the island by colonizing many areas Water Supply in Cyprus, p. 3. Hill, Vol. IV, p. 249, n. 2. 78 AP 1875, XXXVI, C. 1354, p. 435. 77

78

113

THE ECONOMICS OF CYPRUS

with ex-soldiers and with peasants brought over from Asia Minor. Since they had seized it, however, for their own security and not, as had the Venetians, to exploit its products and enlarge their trade, they made no effort to direct its agriculture, but allowed the peasantry to grow whatever crops it wished, provided it paid the taxes; and they relinquished most of the external trade to foreigners, whose nationals received extraterritorial privileges in the ports of Larnaca and Limassol. Closing Years of Turkish rule No directionless, laissez-faire policy of this character could restore the prosperity Cyprus had known under the Venetians and the earlier Lusignans. Communications were slow and faulty prior to the middle of the nineteenth century, and Constantinople too remote from its provinces to keep a tight rein on its viceroys. For more than two hundred years, therefore, incapable and rapacious governors, operating through officials and agents who were corrupt, extortionate, and domineering, oppressed the islanders so grievously that their number steadily diminished and their agricultural output ebbed lower and lower. Discontent reigned everywhere, among Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots alike, and the relations between the two peoples, never cordial, became more and more strained. Greece's War of Independence in the early nineteenth century intensified the unrest, for the Cypriot Greeks openly supported the struggle on the mainland and themselves, if we may believe the Turks, threatened to revolt. The governor of the period reacted savagely: he summoned to his palace the archbishop and bishops, accused them of organizing the plot, and without warning massacred them. Conditions improved soon after this tragedy. At Constantinople two Sultans strove earnestly to reform their empire and to correct abuses in its government; and although they failed, the administration of Cyprus and other areas became less arbitrary and tyrannical. This in no way abated the ill will between the Greek and the Turkish Cypriots. During the Crimean War, indeed, the former loudly expressed their jubilation at every Russian success. Nevertheless, the island remained peaceful: its population crept slowly upward again, its agriculture expanded, and its volume of production mounted until by the end of Turkish rule both population and production had almost regained the level they had held at the close 114

TURKISH REGIME : 1571-1878

of the Venetian regime. The increase in production and the establishment of regular steamship communication enlarged the trade with foreign lands, as is clear from the figures in Table 6. TABLE 6 FIGURES FOR THE VALUE OF TRADE BETWEEN 1851 AND 1877 YEARLY AVERAGE 1851-55 (5 years) 1861-64 (4 years) 1869-71 (3 years)* 1874-77 (4 years)

IMPORTS

EXPORTS

£ 64,247 130,320 187,957 173,809

£103,096

259,423 265,353 318,589

* The year 1870 was a year of drought with high imports and low exports. AP 1872, XXIII, C. 597, p. 108.

Augmented production brought a shortage of agricultural labour, a rise in wages and rents, and a rise in the cost of living. It became increasingly difficult to hire enough pickers for the cotton fields when the crop matured. Casual workers in Larnaca(?) who had accepted a shilling a day in 1858 demanded ls. 6d. in 1871, and clerks who had been satisfied with a yearly salary of £ 50 asked £ 100. During the same period town rents doubled, and a dwelling that had leased for £.30 a year now cost £ 50. The price of food rose correspondingly, with mutton jumping from 3d. a pound to 51 d.80 Foreign residents might criticize the island's administration, but they could not deny that the economic climate was changing and becoming more favourable. "The island is prosperous and progressing, but its prosperity is independent of and in spite of an obstructive and negligent administration."81 The consul who penned these words should have qualified his second phrase, for not all Turkish governors were obstructive and negligent. In his own day one of them planned, and his successor carried out, the construction of the carriage road that joined Larnaca and Nicosia, probably the first carriage road the island had seen since Roman days. Moreover, 80 81

AP 1872, C. 530, p. 109; AP 1875, XXXVI, C. 1354, p. 433. AP 1867, XXIX, C. 3761, p. 82.

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THE ECONOMICS OF CYPRUS

during that third quarter of the nineteenth century, the Turkish administration succeeded in controlling two of the island's most virulent scourges: it all but exterminated the locusts that had ravaged Cyprus' crops since antiquity; and by vaccination and quarantine it abolished the epidemics of smallpox and plague that had so often depopulated the island in past centuries. Recurrent droughts it could not overcome, but in 1870, when the farmers used up their seed grain to save themselves and their families from starvation, the administration remitted the taxes in the most necessitous districts and advanced the peasants fresh seed, apparently without charge.82 These and two or three other progressive measures, such as the reform of the customs service, certainly merit our commendation. A few constructive acts at irregular intervals during her threehundred-year rule cannot absolve Turkey from the charge of irresponsibility and shortsightedness in neglecting to improve the island's communications, conserve its forests, and develop its resources for future generations. Yet we should not judge the Moslem world by the philosophical theories concerning the functions of society and government that western nations have evolved before and since the Darwinian era. The Turkey of the sixteenth to the nineteenth century was still a theocratic state in which secular and religious authorities theoretically governed in unison. Religion was static, fixed once and for all by revelation and set forth in the Koran for the instruction of the faithful; and the principles that should guide society and government were static also, laid down in the same Koran. There could be modifications and surface changes, like the ripples and waves that disturb the surface of the ocean; but no progressive change, no deep, pervading revolution. Since under this interpretation man and society did not "grow from more to more," there was no cause for pride in the past, no vision of a different and better future. The function of a government was to promote the immediate welfare of its people, not to plan for an uncertain future or to innovate and stimulate change. Why then should Turkey have expanded the island's trade and created new industries unless these brought immediate benefits, or were necessary for survival? As for education, she had always supported schools of learning to expound the Koran and the law, to explain the mysteries of the heavens and to teach the art of medicine; but 82 In 1877, another year when the crops failed, the Turkish administration distributed 30,000 bushels of seed wheat without charge among the poorer peasants. AP 1878, XXIX, C. 2088, p. 1367.

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for man to seek after knowledge in order to control his environment and build his own future, powers that lay in Allah's hands alone, that was sheer madness. We should remember, further, that in the nineteenth century, when the West was throbbing with the machines brought in by the industrial revolution, the Turkish Empire was in the throes not of evolution but of dissolution. By the third quarter of that century the sick man of Europe seemed to be nearing the end of his days, and several nations hovered around his bedside hoping to share his estate. Imperial Germany was dreaming of a Baghdad railway that, linked with the Paris-Constantinople line, would lead her to India and the riches of the Orient. Russia fought and lost one war in an effort to gain an outlet through the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, and twenty years later, in another war, would have reduced European Turkey to a tiny enclave around Constantinople had not Austria-Hungary, who feared a powerful Slav empire on her southern as well as her eastern frontier, and England, who jealously ruled the seas and from her watch posts and coaling stations at Gibraltar, Malta, and Aden guarded the approaches to the Suez Canal and the route to India, marshalled the western powers to rescue the Ottoman and drive the Muscovite Empire back. Already English consular and naval officers were disputing whether Famagusta harbour or Larnaca roadstead could serve as a base for a British fleet. In Cyprus itself, meanwhile, the Greek Cypriots, willing pawns in any game that would rid them of the hated Turks, waited impatiently to see whose king would survive the struggle on the international chessboard. Under circumstances such as these, why should an ailing Turkey exert herself to increase the prosperity of an island in which the majority of the population openly prayed for her death? Allah, however, was merciful. Through times' revolving wheel He had restored to Cyprus some of the strategic importance it had possessed in earlier eras. This vexatious island, which Turkey was unable to defend and which paid her only a meagre tribute, she could barter away to one of her protectors in exchange for a promise of assistance on her vulnerable Armenian frontier. On 4 June 1878, therefore, she reluctantly signed with England a convention which placed the administration of Cyprus in the latter's hands, but reserved to herself the legal sovereignty.88 88 Britain unilaterally annexed Cyprus in 1914, when Turkey entered the First World War on the side of Germany. Turkey accepted this annexation, and renounced all further claim on the island, when she signed the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923.

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PART V BRITISH RULE : 1878-1888

The commissioner from Turkey who supervised the transfer of authority in Cyprus from the Porte to Britain found the capital, Nicosia, "dirtier than any den in Constantinople."' It is true that the city possessed an abundant supply of pure drinking water, a convenience very rare at that time in Cypriot towns and villages; but its narrow, congested, unlit streets lacked adequate drainage, and twice at least in the previous quarter-century the Pedieos River had inundated them, leaving a trail of mud and filth. Everywhere fetid smells assailed the nostrils, one contributor being a thirtyemployee tannery that, in the absence of sewers, poured its liquid waste into the city's moat; and in the torrid month of August, when the British general, Sir Garnet Wolseley, assumed control as high commissioner, clouds of choking dust swept through every lane and alley, swirled around the principal square and invaded the government's headquarters. To check any repetition of the floods Wolseley ordered an ancient canal to be cleared and re-opened; and he transferred the government headquarters from the centre of the city to higher ground a mile and a half outside its walls where, undisturbed by the crowds and their clamour, he could take stock of the island, reorganize its administration, and plan a comprehensive investigation of its people and resources. England at that period had reached the pinnacle of her power and prestige. Mistress of an empire on which the sun never set, she was as confident of her mission to civilize large areas as Augustan Rome had been to rule them. Yet not all her soldiers and statesmen were jingoistic imperialists dedicated to imposing an `English way of life" on some of the earth's less fortunate inhabitants, whether the recipients appreciated or not the blessings so generously delivered at their doors. Many, the most influential perhaps, were men of broad culture and understanding, who respected other ways of life because they saw only too clearly the ills and imperfections of their own: and these men built rather than destroyed, persuaded 1 Limassol, Larnaca and Famagusta were as sordid as Nicosia. All were sewerless, ringed with marshes and notoriously unhealthy, as indeed was Nicosia itself. 118

BRITISH RULE : 1878-1888

rather than coerced, knowing that the most intractable problems in every clash of cultures are neither political nor economic, but psychological. Their country had coveted Cyprus, not as an advanced base against a hostile Turkey, the motive that had animated Venice four centuries before, but as a fortress overlooking the northern entrance of the newly built Suez Canal. In the flush of taking over the control of the island, therefore, it naturally gave first consideration to military requirements, not to administrative or economic ones. Before the summer of 1878 had ended, England's navy had carried out a detailed survey of Famagusta harbour to assess its value as both a naval and a commercial base; and it had inspected the other harbours on the island—Limassol, Larnaca, Paphos and Kyrenia—to determine their loading and unloading capacities and the amount of shelter they afforded from the varying winds.2 Meanwhile General Wolseley was building a waggon road from Limassol to Platres, high in the Troodos Mountains, so that he might move his troops from the malaria-infested coast into a cool and healthy environment. Doubtless he knew—since it accorded with the longer-range plans he was already formulating— that this road would open up a rich carob- and grape-growing region that had always lacked adequate facilities for transporting its products to market; but it was military rather than economic necessity that urged him to undertake its construction immediately. Administrative changes Military pressures notwithstanding, administrative and economic matters could not be long deferred. Britain dealt very cautiously with the administrative system she had inherited from her predecessor, because although she controlled the island she had not yet acquired legal possession of it. Turkey had divided it into six districts, each one under a kaimakam (quaimagam) or commissioner responsible to the governor in Nicosia, and given him a cadi or judge to interpret the laws and soldiers to enforce them; but because the government had grossly underpaid both the kaimakam and the cadi,3 and generally not paid the soldiers at all, the officials 2 A Captain Thomas Graves in H.M.S. "Volage" had surveyed the whole coastline in 1849. "Cyprus," Geographical Magazine (London, 1878), V, 202. 3 "The Court was composed of a Cadi as President, and four members The members were wretchedly paid, about 17s. 6d. a month each." AP 1880, XLIX, C. 2543, p. 433.

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had too often lent an ear to bribery and the soldiers gained their livelihood by brigandage. Wolseley (and Biddulph, the English high commissioner who succeeded him and carried on his policies, for Wolseley himself remained in Cyprus only about nine months) did not abolish this administrative pattern, but merely purged it of some of its abuses. He enrolled and trained a regularly paid police force to replace the disbanded soldiery, and gathered around his headquarters at Nicosia the nucleus of a permanent and reliable civil service. Although he could find no place in his regime for the Turkish kaimakam, he confirmed the cadi in their posts because they were presumably versed in Turkish law; but to protect them from temptation he allotted them decent salaries, and proclaimed that henceforward the government would administer the established Turkish laws without regard to religion or wealth.4 At the same time he placed over the cadi English commissioners, hand-picked army officers whom he charged not merely with preserving law and order, but with developing the economic resources of their districts and promoting the welfare of all its inhabitants, Turks and Greeks alike. Each commissioner was assigned a small police force to uphold his authority, and a qualified medical officer to deal with problems of sanitation and health. All these measures, of course, required the approval of the British cabinet in London, which did not favour a military dictatorship, but desired to consult the Cypriots themselves on every important issue and to draw them step by step into the administration. It therefore proposed to set up a council, representative of the entire population, to advise the high commissioner and his small council of English officials concerning the island's condition and needs. This proposal immediately stirred up a violent controversy over the proportionate representation of Greeks and Turks in the new council, the Greeks claiming that it should correspond to the proportion of the two peoples in the island's population, i.e., three to one, and the Turks demanding absolute equality on the ground 4 "The policy of the Sublime Porte... has been to maintain its equilibrium by giving class privileges to those who were able to exercise influence over the lower orders. The exemption of the clergy and the rich of all denominations from the pressure of the tax-collector is another example of this policy." AP 1878-79, XIII, C. 2398, p. 13. Cf. also: "Previous to our arrival the rich man paid practically no taxes. He evaded doing so by obtaining the protection of some foreign consul. The Pasha was afraid to force him to pay knowing that the Christian bishop or the rich man under such consular protection could always raise such a complaint against him at Constantinople that he would most probably be recalled by the Porte." AP 1878-79, XXXIII, C. 2324, p. 6.

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U.K. Information Sen-ice

PLATE VII THE WOODEN PLOUGH. IT CUTS, BUT CANNOT TURN THE FURROW.

PLATE VIII A. THRESHING WHEAT ON A DIRT FLOOR, WITH A SLED UNDERSTUDDED WITH FLINTS.

From a Cyprus postcard

B. WINNOWING WHEAT.

From a

Cyprus postcard

BRITISH RULE : 1878-1888

that their mother country still retained the legal sovereignty. After much discussion and delay England decided in favour of the Greek Cypriots, and in November 1882 established by order in council a Cyprus Legislative Council of eighteen members under the presidency of the high commissioner, six of the members to be government officials and twelve, nine Greeks and three Turks, to be elected by the various districts: and because comparatively few Greeks spoke Turkish or Turks Greek, while a still lesser number understood or spoke English, she decreed further that all three languages should henceforth be considered official and might be used in the legislative council, even though this would encumber and slow up its deliberations through the interruptions of interpreters and translators .5 Biddulph, who was then high commissioner, put the new scheme into effect without delay, and a legislative council of eighteen members, two-thirds elected and one-third nominated, continued to operate until well into the twentieth century. Unfortunately, from the very beginning it failed to function harmoniously because its Greek members, instead of representing the special interests of their various constituencies, as England had expected, acted as a solid block that, with the support of any one of the Turkish representatives, could out-vote all the other members of the council on any measure that was tabled for their consideration. Currency With the currency of Cyprus Britain took a more independent line. Finding that the piastre, the basic unit established by the Turks, was reacting to every movement of the unstable Constantinople currency and varying in value locally according to different uses, she introduced a large quantity of gold coins and tied the weak currency to the gold standard, thus stabilizing its purchasing value and holding it unmoved when the currency of Constantinople sharply depreciated a few weeks later. The new currency speedily acquired the reputation of being the firmest in the Levant; and when the government introduced a program of public works that provided almost full employment and a faster circulation of the gold coins, Cyprus' trade and revenue both began to climb upward.° 6 Down to 1883 there was no printing establishment in Cyprus. In that year England sent out a skilled English printer who taught the Cypriots to set up type in three languages, English, Greek, and Turkish. In 1880, for the first time probably since the Roman era, a large percentage of the taxes were paid in gold coin.

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The island's monetary strength helped also the collection of its taxes, which were now assessed in stable English coin instead of in the earlier shifting currency, thereby rendering it impossible any longer to cheat the revenue department by what was called "shuffling the piastre."' The coinage that was circulating when Turkey handed over the island consisted of a little French and Turkish gold, some foreign silver, and a quantity of debased and nearly worthless copper and nickel pieces. Added to these was a mass of Turkish paper money known as caime. By 1898 all the paper money had disappeared, and the coins in circulation were English sovereigns and halfsovereigns, French twenty-franc pieces and Turkish lire (all of gold), the English silver pieces (half-crown, florin, shilling, and sixpence), and some local copper coins, viz., one-piastre, halfpiastre, and quarter-piastre, which took the place of the English penny, halfpenny and farthing, nine piastres being equal to one shilling. Two years later, on 17 September 1900, an order in council established the sovereign as the only current gold coin, authorized the issue of a special silver currency consisting of an eighteenpiastre piece, a nine-piastre piece, a four-and-one-half piastre piece, and a three-piastre piece equivalent respectively to the English florin, shilling, sixpence, and fourpence, and for the smaller currency retained the one, half, and quarter-piastre coins of bronze. For a time Levantine merchants who traded with Cyprus looked with suspicion on the new silver coins, being accustomed to English silver: but when the Imperial Ottoman Bank accepted them without discount, the traders hastened to follow suit.8 Taxation The reform of the taxation system was a more complex operation than the reform of the currency, and one that was accomplished less swiftly. So many abuses had accompanied the collection of the tithes that the new rulers considered replacing them by a direct impost on the farm land, to be collected by the government in the same way as the military exemption and other taxes. They 7 Cf.: "The reform of the currency enabled us to effect one very important reform in the revenue collection. The taxes are no longer assessed in piastres of different sorts, each sort being itself of a fluctuating value, but they have been, for the year 1879, assessed in English money, and as every coin received in the Treasury is valued at a fixed Government tariff, it is no longer possible to defraud the revenue by what was commonly termed `shuffling the piastre.' " AP 1880, XLIX, C. 2543, p. 13. 8 AP, 1889, X, C. 5812, p. 12; AP 1900, IX, Cd. 227, pp. 9-12; AP 1902, XII, Cd. 937, p. 9; AP 1905, XI, Cd. 2327, pp. 7-8.

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quickly discovered, however, that the time was not yet ripe to introduce this change into any part of the island. For one reason, there was no accurate map showing the boundaries of private and state lands: for another, farm holdings were in a chaotic state legally, since many cultivators lacked titles to their lands, and even those who possessed them could not always be sure of their interpretation. A's title, for example, might define his land as bounded on the north by a hill not further identified, and on the east by B's land; while B's title might describe his holding as bounded on the west by A's holding, and on the north by some unspecified stream. This vagueness in land boundaries, which were never marked by fences, led to endless disputes and litigation that might have produced grave disorders had the island been more densely populated; but at this period, as the 1881 census revealed, Cyprus supported only about fifty persons to the square mile. There was also a further complication. Before any British troops actually set foot on the island, rumours of the impending change of rule sparked a property inflation in the two largest towns, Nicosia and Larnaca, and a stampede by peasants all over the island to claim large areas of crown land, adjoining their holdings, that hitherto had been forest or waste. The wine-growers northwest of Limassol even cut and burned a large part of the neighbouring state forest to extend their private vineyards, as Sir Samuel Baker observed on his journey through the island in 1879. The property inflation in the two towns righted itself within a year, inflicting little damage except to a few speculators, some of them carpetbaggers from Constantinople. But the seizure of crown lands posed a difficult problem, for however eagerly the administration desired to expand the island's agriculture, it could hardly condone the grabbing of land not for cultivation, but as a purely speculative venture.° It knew that an accurate cadastral survey and an efficient land-registry office would ultimately check such brigandage; but these were not yet in sight. Provisionally, therefore, it sought the same result by imposing a tax of one shilling on each donum of land that was left uncropped for more than a year,10 0 "At present, about one-half of the cultivated land fin the Limassol District) is possessed by good titles, and one-tenth of the uncultivated, and yet all the land is claimed, for the few patches acknowledged to be Government property is not worth alluding to." AP 1880, XLIX, C. 2543, p. 40. io Perhaps because the population density was low and good agricultural land abundant, many farmers seem to have allowed their fields to lie fallow for two years before planting them again to wheat, cotton or other crops." AP 1880, XLIX, C. 2543, p. 105.

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THE ECONOMICS OF CYPRUS

ordering the publication of a list of such land, and assuming the authority to sell whatever continued to be uncultivated a year after its listing. Faced with these difficulties, Wolseley's administration left the numerous taxes unchanged,11 save that it applied the military exemption tax to Moslems as well as to Christians and abolished the 1 per cent duty on exports, the fishing tax, and one or two other imposts that cost almost as much to collect as they yielded. It proclaimed, however, that from 1879 onward the government would no longer farm out the tithes, but would collect them through its own agents;1' and that it would require them to be paid in money by October or November, instead of in kind at the harvest. From this latter regulation it exempted two articles, carobs and silk, because both were produced mainly for export; on these the tithe was to be paid at export, thus saving the cost of assessment. The new fiscal arrangements necessitated the recruiting of suitable tax collectors, no easy problem in a population 95 per cent illiterate, because in addition to being trustworthy, candidates were required to read and write either Greek or Turkish, and in some cases both languages. Wolseley shrewdly appointed as his chief collector of tithes a man who had been one of the most successful tithe farmers under the later Turkish regime, placed him under the English auditor- and accountant-general, and enlisted through him a corps of agents and superintendents, for the most part men who had held similar positions under various tithe farmers earlier. Since the auditor- and accountant-general seldom left his office in Nicosia, the English commissioner in each of the island's six districts acted as his deputy in the field when the agents were assessing and collecting the tithes. For a brief period the plan worked well. The payment of the tithes in money during the late autumn instead of in kind at the harvest appeared to benefit both the government and the peasants. The government benefited because it was spared the trouble and expense of storing and marketing its share of the crops. As for the peasants, they stood to gain in two ways: first, they paid no more than their assessments, instead of being mulcted a quarter as much again, or even a half: secondly, they could now sell their produce 11 For the main taxes see page 101. In 1877 the Turkish administration, conscious of the evils that seemed inseparable from tax-farming, had itself collected the tithes; but it farmed them again in 1878, just before the British assumed control. 12

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BRITISH RULE : 1878-1888

whenever and wherever they could obtain the best prices. Indeed, so smoothly were the tithes collected during the first year of operation (1879) that the government forthwith abandoned the old Turkish method of appointing temporary collectors for each kind of tax, and instead enrolled the tithe agents in the permanent civil service for the collection of all the taxes. The English commissioner of the Paphos district has described the impact of the new fiscal arrangements on the local silk and carob trades, which paid their tithes not at harvest but at export: I never shall forget the consternation which fell on the small merchants of this town (Ktima) when the new regulations as to cocoons were published. Up till last May (1879) it has always been the custom of the government to make a caliph, or kind of booth. To this spot the peasants were compelled to bring all their cocoons, and the weighing of the tithes took place there. This suited these usurer merchants completely, for as soon as Government had taken its tithes, they pounced on the peasant and laid hold of the cocoons. Now the peasant is free to sell when and where it pleases him. I hear already that many of the peasants are selling their carobs in the villages, and getting a much better price than if they were to bring them to Ktime. I think this is very much owing to their experience gained last cocoon season; they are commencing to appreciate the value of a free market.13

Wolseley's retention of the main features in the Turkish taxation structure disappointed a great number of peasants, who had fondly dreamed that the coming of the British would relieve them of all taxes. Once they had recovered from this hallucination, however, they accepted the changes with indifference. Less content were the moneylenders, who held a high percentage of the peasantry in their toils. The majority were wealthy landholders or merchants who as part of their business speculated in grain and other produce, lending seed to needy farmers at the planting season and recovering it at harvest, if the season was good, at an immense profit.14 If the harvest was poor, they renewed the debt with interest, tried to secure the farmer's title deeds, and threw their 13 Report of H.M. High Commissioner, 1879 in AP 1880, XLIX, C. 2543, p. 218. 14 Cf. R. H. Lang, Cyprus (London, 1878), pp. 254 f. The exact arrangements varied. One writer says: "If a peasant wants seed corn, he usually obtains it on the following condition. The usurer supplies him with the corn on condition of receiving half the crop in return. As a bushel of barley will yield 16 bushels in a good harvest, the usurer gets 800% return within six months. If from any cause the crop is lost, the peasant is bound to repay in money at the rate of 30% or 40%. Sometimes the barley is

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THE ECONOMICS OF CYPRUS

victims into prison whenever they defaulted. In 1879 one in twentyfive of the population in the Limassol district was sued for debt, and all over the island prisons overflowed with debtors who were being maintained at the expense of the state. During the last years of its rule the Turkish administration had attempted to help the farmers by establishing an agricultural bank from which they could borrow at 12 per cent, the same rate then demanded from the merchants; but the bank collapsed when some of the officials embezzled its funds and influential men borrowed from it with no intention of repaying."S The British immediately checked imprisonment for debt, and half emptied the jails by decreeing that creditors must contribute 6d. a day towards the support of every debtor imprisoned on their behalf.10 Each year after 1879 the administration, encouraged by signs of growing prosperity, changed one or two more details of the tax structure. In 1880 it abolished the tithe on certain fruits and vegetables, provided they were not exported. In 1881 it imposed a special tax to combat the locusts,17 which had multiplied again and were ravaging the cereal and cotton crops of the Mesaoria and lent at a certain value, say 20 piastres a bushel, together with interest. Thus the account of a peasant borrowing 10 bushels would stand as follows: 200 piastres 10 bushels Q 20 piastres 40 piastres Interest 20% Total 240 piastres When the harvest comes the creditor arrives at the threshing floor; there is no market yet, or the peasant cannot get to it, and the creditor repays himself in barley at the rate, say, of 8 piastres a bushel. He thus carries off 30 bushels in payment of the 10 he lent. When therefore the Government valuation is laid at, perhaps, 12 piastres, the cultivator feels that he is paying 12 when he only got 8 from the merchant who was his creditor." AP 1881, IX, C. 2930, p. 121. In November 1879 some merchants were lending seed barley, then worth 27 piastres a bushel, against promises of repayment the following August at the rate of 42 piastres a bushel. 15 Cf. Lang, pp. 293-95 and also: "We found at the occupation an institution called the agricultural bank in operation whose assets consisted of bonds of people of more or less doubtful solvency, and in many cases there was little hope of money ever being collected." AP 1889, X, C. 5812, p. 17. 10 Seventy debtors were admitted to Kyrenia prison between January and July 1879, but only fifteen after 1 August, when the regulations came into force. At the end of that year the commissioner of Famagusta district reported no prisoners held for debt, because creditors refused to contribute to their maintenance. Annual Report, 1879 in AP 1880, XLIX, C. 2543, p. 22I. 17 This tax was not paid into the general revenue, but kept in a separate account; and it was maintained with little reduction long after the locusts had been brought under control and required only a small expenditure yearly. Its surplus provided a capital fund from which loans were made for irrigation and other purposes.

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BRITISH RULE : 1878-1888

Karpas. In 1883 it abolished the tithe on grapes, thereby lowering the price of wine and encouraging the expansion of viticulture, which it further promoted two years later by subsidizing a roadbuilding program in the Limassol wine districts; and in 1883 and 1884 it discarded such petty taxes as the animal sales tax, the weighing tax, the tax on small incomes, and one or two others. Despite all these changes the burden on the individual peasant remained nearly as heavy as it had been under the Turks; and the peasant was the backbone of the economy, since the merchant class was small and as yet there were no industries of any account to take up part of the load. It is true that the English administration slightly reduced the sum total of the taxes; but it drove the peasants almost as hard as its predecessor, because it collected them more efficiently, leaving him none of the chances to evade them that he had found during the previous regime. Behind the administration, pushing it without cease, stood the Treasury Office in London, which obstinately adhered to the doctrine that every dependency should pay its own way and not rely on a subsidy from the United Kingdom. In the case of Cyprus this meant that the yearly revenue should cover both the local expenditure and the so-called tribute to the Porte; for the convention that transferred the administration of the island to England stipulated that the Porte should not lose financially, but should continue to enjoy each year the excess of revenue over expenditure that it had been receiving previously, the exact figure—fixed later at £ 92,799—to be determined by averaging the amounts it had collected during the last five years of its rule. It was this payment to the Porte that overstrained the island's economy.18 Despite the weight of taxes, its revenue had always been small, and Turkey had succeeded in producing a budgetary surplus of the above amount only by spending practically nothing on education or public works. No conscientious government could condone such neglect. Yet even in democratic countries accountants who hold the purse strings often fail to see the larger issues; and those in the British treasury brushed aside more than one protest from Cyprus that, morally at least, the tribute to the Porte might not be the island's responsibility, and that the inclusion of the item in its budget reduced the funds available for local use, 18 The money never actually reached Constantinople, but by a feat of book-keeping in London, went to pay British and French bond-holders the interest on a loan that Turkey negotiated in 1855, and on which she defaulted the interest from 1877 onward. On the whole subject of the tribute see Sir George Hill, History of Cyprus (London, 1952), Vol. W, Chap. 12.

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handicapped its public works program, and slowed down the development of its natural resources. The treasury officials insisted that Cyprus should aim at balancing its budget, and only reluctantly approved a large grant-in-aid each year to help it attain that visionary objective (see Table 7). TABLE 7 BALANCING OF THE BUDGET THROUGH LARGE GRANTS-IN-AID*

YEAR

TOTAL REVENUE

1879-80 1880-81 1881-82 1882-83 1883-84 1884-85 1885-86 1886-87 I88y-88

£148,361 156,095 163,733 189,335 194,051 172,072 172,334 187,044 145,443

LOCAL EXPENDITURE

£117,445 119,417 157,673 120,636 111,684 112,085 111,301 110,679 113,325

T

GRANT-IN-AID TO UTEt COVER DEFICIT

£90,000 92,686 92,686 92,686 92,686 92,746 92,799 92,799 92,799

£20,000 78,000 90,000 30,000 15,000 15,000 20,000 18,000 30,000+25,000

* AP 1889, X, C 5812, pp. 118, 120. t The amount was eventually fixed at £ 92,686, but was subsequently increased to £92,799 because of certain receipts connected with the Ottoman Light administration.

Gradually, however, popular protests increased, and became louder and more vehement. The Cypriots complained that their new rulers were oppressing them more than Turkey had ever done; and at least one English high commissioner criticized the justice of saddling the Cypriots with a tribute that had been negotiated without their knowledge or consent. An English district commissioner, too, roundly deplored the severity with which the administration collected the tithes, and declared that its exaction in money, far from helping the peasants to pay off their debts, as the administration had hoped, was driving them deeper into the arms of the usurers. This last complaint was justified, for with the improvidence that often accompanies a strain of fatalism, most of the farmers spent the income from their harvests as soon as they received it, and then either defaulted when the time came to pay their taxes or 128

BRITISH RULE : 1878-1888

rushed to the moneylenders again.19 Complaints of fraud and misappropriation of funds, too, proved to be well-founded; for men do not change their habits overnight, and the bribery and corruption that had riddled the Turkish administration could not be eradicated in a single year. Murmurs presently drifted up to the high commissioner in Nicosia, and to the Colonial Office in London, that some of the new tax officials were defrauding the government by under-assessing the harvests of their friends, while others were falsifying their accounts and holding back public money. The administration reacted quickly. It haled the accused officials before Cyprus' chief justice, investigated the charges, and sentenced several superintendents and tithe agents to stiff terms of imprisonment; and it divided the corps of tithe officials into two independent groups, the one to assess the tithes at harvest and the other to collect them. Furthermore, it speeded up the registration and revaluation of immovable property20—as far as it could without a cadastral survey —in order that it might one day replace all tithes with higher excise and import duties, an income tax, or an adjustment of the tax on the land. In this way the administration tried to seal three cracks in its tithe-gathering system. But a far graver one opened up a year or two later. The system was indeed only a fair-weather one, contingent on two factors that were entirely outside the government's control, viz., good harvests and prices that offered a fair return to the cultivator for his labour and expense. England had taken over 19 The banker Lang, who also operated a farm for several years during the Turkish regime, observed: "It is the improvidence of the peasants and the rapacity of the Government in good years which make the results of a year of drought so disastrous. Being able to wait patiently without falling into the hands of usurers or diminishing my operations, I found an ample compensation in the very abundant harvests of the succeeding years—the natural consequence of the enforced repose which the land had enjoyed. But it is very different with the majority of native cultivators. They fall behind in their financial position, they become a prey to exacting usurers, they are unable to replace the bullocks which they had not the means to maintain in life; in a word, as they themselves aptly express it, `the wheel of their operations gets broken,' and it requires long years of prosperity to restore their position." Lang, pp. 239 f. 20 No revaluation had taken place since 1860. Cf.: "The present valuation of immovable property was made, and is maintained under the provisions of the Census and Property Registration Law, dated 14 Jemaziilevvel 1277 (1860). Previous to this law the amount of Verghis to be contributed by each Sandjak of the Ottoman Dominions was fixed at Constantinople. In Nicosia the amount to be contributed by the island of Cyprus was divided up among the six Cazas, and each Caza proportioned locally the sum allotted to it amongst the villages of the Cam. The village authorities again divided up the amount fixed for the village among the individual villagers." AP 1886, IX, C. 4831, pp. 41-42.

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THE ECONOMICS OF CYPRUS

the administration of the island during a relatively prosperous period, even though the market for madder had collapsed, that for silk and cotton was unfavourable, and Europe, particularly the Mediterranean, seemed to be heading towards a slump. For three or four years all went well. Then the prices of cereals began to drop, depressed by the cheap grain Europe was importing from India and America. Carobs and wine, Cyprus' two other main products, followed the same downward path. At the same time nature struck the island with a series of below-average grain crops that impoverished and burdened with debt even the more prosperous farmers. Money, whether for the purchase of goods or the payment of taxes, became very scarce; the moneylenders themselves were hard pressed, and instead of renewing their loans, they tried to call them in. All over the island more and more peasants fell into arrears with their taxes. To crown their troubles, in 1887 the winter rains failed almost entirely, and most of the island experienced a

FIG. 8. GRAIN PRODUCTION FROM 1879 TO 1889. Note the poor harvests of 1883 and 1885, and the drought of 1887. (Production figures from AP 1890, IX, C. 6003, p. 25.)

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BRITISH RULE : 1878-1888

severe drought that cut in half its production of cereals, wine, and cotton (Figs. 8 and 9). Many peasants sold to Syrian traders, at despair prices, not only their sheep and donkeys, but also their oxen, to save the animals from starvation.

WHEAT PIASTRES PER BUSHEL

BARLEY 40

20

/

---- - '

TURKISH PERIOD

I Iti72

I

I

1

BRITISH PERIOD I 1 1

1876

ISSO

1884

1 1888

FIG. 9. CEREAL PRICES PER BUSHEL, SHOWING THE SLUMP THAT DEVELOPED IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE BRITISH OCCUPATION. Prices continued to drop after 1888, and in 1894 reached as low as 13 piastres for wheat and 7 piastres for barley. Note that 1887 was a year of drought and near famine. (Figures from AP 1889, X, C. 5812, p. 113.)

Hardest hit was the Paphos district. Even in 1886, the year before the great drought, its district commissioner had reported: the people are worse off than I have ever known them to be. There are many men I could point out who have not had a solid meal for some months, and as they have little or no property are unable to borrow money. Others who have property have got deeply involved with the usurers.... A large amount of wheat has lately been brought into the district, which will suffice to feed the people until the next crop is ready, but it is being given out on exorbitant terms by the merchants. I have no hesitation in saying that it will require consecutive good harvests to free even a prosperous villager from the clutches of the usurer.21 21

AP 1887, X, C. 4961, pp. 63-64.

131

THE ECONOMICS OF CYPRUS

The official then recommended that the government revert to the Turkish system of collecting the taxes in kind at the harvest, when the peasants were temporarily solvent. This the government did the following year, purely as an experiment and in the Paphos district only; but the success of the measure encouraged the authorities to extend the system first to the Karpas area, then gradually over the whole island.22 By 1892, thanks to four good harvests in succession, the tax arrears, which had accumulated when the tithes were being paid in money, had almost disappeared and the farmers were much more contented. For thirty years longer the tithes continued to be the government's largest revenue-producer; only in 1928 were they abolished in favour of increased duties on certain imports and exports. Neglected condition of public works Whether during the first decade of their rule the British realized as much revenue from the taxes as their predecessors is not clear. We know that the Porte received nearly £ 100,000 yearly, but how much more the Turkish governors spent on administration, and how much they carried away with them at the conclusion of their terms of office, we cannot determine. We do know, however, that they spent almost nothing on public works,Y3 whereas from the very first year of its rule the British administration set aside for that purpose what seemed to its legislators a considerable sum, even though the engineers who carried out the various projects protested that it was wholly inadequate to overtake the arrears of construction that had accumulated through the centuries. In material progress, indeed, Cyprus was at least three centuries behind western Europe when Turkey vacated the island. Only three lighthouses guided the navigator in approaching its shores. Its. port of Famagusta would admit no vessel larger than a small sailing boat, and no other harbour possessed a pier or jetty at which a steamer could tie up. Paphos and Kyrenia lacked even quays, while the quays at 22 Cf. AP 1890-91,

IX, C. 6489, p. 1. "The amount spent [under Turkish rule] in the island for any useful purpose except the collection of taxes, the administration of the law, and the Iocal troops, was certainly under £ 1,000." AP 1903, IX, Cd. 1465, p. 13. Cf. also: "Nothing has been done in the way of public works during the year [1877]; even the carriage road between Larnaca and Nicosia, which was traced out a few years ago at a great outlay, has been greatly neglected. No other roads exist in the island save bridle paths, some of which are also used by bullock carts. There are no wharfs and jetties. The only facilities for shipping are a few wooden scalas, and these, as a rule, generally disappear in winter." AP 1878, XXIX, C. 2088, p. 1467. 23

132

BRITISH RULE : 1878-1888

Larnaca and Limassol, the two main ports, were too short to be of much use, and in any case sorely needed repair. Wolseley disembarked his occupation troops and their supplies at Larnaca with the help of a wooden jetty hastily thrown up by the Royal Navy; and he travelled inland to Nicosia over a poorly graded road that had been washed away in several places and lacked many bridges. Yet it was Cyprus' only road, for at that time no carriage could circle the island by skirting its shores, or ascend into the Troodos Mountains, or cross the Kyrenia Range to the northern coast. As for driving through the central plain, Baker's experience in 1879 showed what herculean efforts that feat demanded: he meandered for days across the eastern Mesaoria with his ox-drawn (and manhauled) gypsy waggon, struggling to avoid unbridged ravines and derelict irrigation channels, only to abandon the shattered vehicle at the entrance to the Karpas Peninsula and continue his journey through Cyprus without it. Gaudry had remarked in 1855 that any government seeking to restore Cyprus' prosperity should first restore these abandoned irrigation canals. Turkey had indeed restored a few in the eastern Mesaoria during the last years of her rule, but throughout most of the island they were blocked and useless. Nearly every river and stream ran its course uncontrolled; and much water flowed waste during the winter months, when floods rendered large areas of land uncultivable and sometimes inundated towns and villages. Nicosia, as we noticed, suffered two disastrous floods during the Turkish regime, and Limassol was ravaged by others in December 1880 and November 1894. Before the British occupation the majority of the population obtained its water supply from wells that reached down to various depths, but were seldom uncontaminated. A few towns and villages relied on aqueducts to convey water from distant wells or springs to public fountains; but even when the aqueducts' sources were pure, their water usually became contaminated along its course. Most townspeople supplied their needs from the fountains in jars, but a few upper-class families drew the water through earthenware pipes to cement-lined tanks within their own gardens or courtyards. Limassol's water supply was so bad, and caused so much sickness, that persons who could afford the expense purchased purer water from vendors, who brought it on donkeys from a spring three miles away. As for sanitation, the word had no meaning at that time to the Cypriots, who lived contentedly without sewers, despite a high 133

THE ECONOMICS OF CYPRUS

death rate from diseases. Waste water simply drained into the narrow streets of the towns and villages, forming foul pools in all low-lying places.24 Map Survey These were the conditions that Wolseley encountered when he set about organizing a new government. Being an experienced army officer, he knew that no long-range program of public works could be effective without a detailed map of the island and an accurate census. He therefore commissioned a young engineer, Lieutenant Horatio (later Field-Marshal Lord) Kitchener, to carry out a field survey of Cyprus on a scale of four inches to one mile in the agricultural plains and two inches to one mile in the mountains; and to include in his survey detailed plans of the four principal towns. Kitchener pushed the work so vigorously that in 1881 the government was able to issue plans of Famagusta, Larnaca, and Limassol on a scale of 1:2,500, in 1882 a similar plan of Nicosia, and in February 1885 a contoured one inch to one mile map of the whole island showing every road and important mule path, woods, streams, villages, and many other features. The survey was carried out too rapidly, however, to mark the boundaries of government land, village property and private property, without which no revision of the land taxes was possible. These details were filled in much later by a cadastral survey, authorized in 1907 by the passage of a law that provided, among other matters, for a general revaluation of all immovable property. Census An accurate census, which was nearly as indispensable as an accurate map, had to wait for three years, because the cabinet in London decided that it should coincide with the decennial censuses to be taken in other parts of the empire in 1881. When completed it registered a population of 186,174—equal, approximately, to Cyprus' population three centuries before when the Turkish regime succeeded the Venetian. Its composition, however, was now less homogeneous, since 23 per cent of the inhabitants were of Turkish descent. Peasants predominated, as in all periods of the island's history. Its six towns together contained only 31,335 inhabitants.25 24 AP 1878-79, XIII, C. 2324, p. 14; Report of the Sanitary Commissioner, Annual Report, 1880 in AP 1881, IX, C. 3092, pp. 67 ff; Report of the Chief Medical officer, Annual Report, 1885-86 in AP 1887, X, C. 4961, pp. 54-55. 25 Nicosia, 11,536; Larnaca, 7,832; Limassol, 6,006; Famagusta, 2,534; Paphos (including Ktima), 2,204; and Kyrenia, 1,192.

134

BRITISH RULE : 1878-1888

Communications The new government did not sit with idle hands awaiting the completion of either survey or census, but began to improve the island's harbour facilities as soon as the navy had surveyed the port of Famagusta and equipped it with a wooden jetty. It commenced—but did not finish until 1891—the construction of a mole and quay at Kyrenia, whose small shallow harbour offered the only safe shelter along the north coast and was therefore much frequented by vessels trading with the neighbouring mainland, particularly during the summer months.26 On the south coast the government repaired the quay at Limassol, and in 1881 erected there a T-headed iron pier at which the mail steamer could dock, thus avoiding the expense and delay of lightering. In the following year it built a similar pier at Larnaca, the second port of call of the two steamship lines that were now carrying passengers, cargo and mail to Alexandria, where they connected with the Peninsular and Oriental mail vessels that plied between England and the Orient. In 1883 the authorities constructed a third but smaller jetty at Zyyi, halfway between Limassol and Lamaca, to facilitate the shipment of carobs from the surrounding district; and in 1884 they took over from the Ottoman Light-House Company Cyprus' three lighthouses, planning to add at least three others when the necessary funds became available.27 No less farsighted was the program for land communications. In 1879, the year after she occupied the island, England repaired the only carriage road, that from Larnaca to Nicosia, and enlarged the mule path from the latter town to Kyrenia to make it traversable by carts. In the same year she completed the carriage road from Limassol to Platres in the Troodos Mountains, and from the Larnaca-Nicosia highway constructed a branch road that passed through Dhali to Mathiati, a second district where troops were being quartered during the hot summer months. Before the end of 1881 it was possible to travel by carriage from Nicosia in five 26 Between 1 January and 16 December 1879, 247 vessels entered Kyrenia harbour. Of this number 125 brought timber, seed corn, butter, and barley from Asia Minor, and the remaining 122, including 11 European vessels, called to load carobs, donkeys, cotton, and other goods. Most of the vessels came from Anatolia, Caramania, and Syria, but there were also a few sponge-fishing boats from Greece. Report of H.M. High Commissioner, 1879 in AP 1880, LXIX, C. 2543, p. 218. 27 By 1894 Cyprus had seven lighthouses—at Point Papho, Cape Gata, Cape Kiti, Larnaca, Cape Greco, Famagusta, and Kyrenia. It added an eighth in 1913, on Klidhes Island in the extreme northeast off the tip of the Karpas Peninsula.

135

LIMASSOL _........____........___(91" ..-

KYRENFA

LARNACA

12

0

Scale in Miler

12

WHEN TURKEY VACATED CYPRUS

CARRIAGE ROADS IN 1878

FAMAGUSTA

24

U.K. Information Service

PLATE IX SURVIVORS OF• THE LONG CAMEL TRAINS THAT CARRIED MOST OF THE HEAVY FREIGHT PRIOR TO THE TWENTIETH CENTURY.

PLATE X A "PERSIAN" WELL OPERATED BY A DONKEY. IN BUILDING A CHANNEL OF CONCRETE THE OWNER COPIED GOVERNMENT IRRIGATION SYSTEMS.

U.K. Information Service

12 1 -

I

0

Seale hi Mlles 12 I

CARRIAGE ROADS IN 1881

24

PAPHOS

KYRENIA

CARRIAGE ROADS IN 1904

12

0

Seale in Miles 12

24

(BASED ON A MAP IN W. DUNSTAN, "REPORT ON THE AGRICULTURAL RESOURCES OF CYPRUS." IN AP 1906, XIII, Cd. 2717, pp. 24.) NOTE THE UNFINISHED RAILROAD FROM FAMAGUSTA TO NICOSIA.

LARNACA

FAMAGUSTA

BRITISH RULE : 1878-1888

directions, north to Kyrenia and Lapithos, west to Lefka, south to Larnaca and almost halfway to Limassol, east to Famagusta, and —provided one could force a passage across the unbridged Pedieos River—northeast to Kythrea and from that village 63 miles to Rizokarpaso near the tip of the Karpas Peninsula. Each year thereafter saw the network of carriage roads extended, and a steady increase in the amount of wheeled traffic—carts drawn by mules and donkeys, and, near the towns, horse-drawn vehicles and bicycles—where previously there had been only a few ox waggons. None of these roads, of course, matched the smooth, well graded, well drained and asphalted roads that crisscross Cyprus today. In England itself at that time the best highways were still macadamized, not asphalted, for the era of the automobile was a quarter of a century away. Of the new Cyprus roads that Britain built during her first decade only one or two were metalled throughout, and even they lacked bridges and were liable to interruption by floods during the winter months. The administration, harassed by a meagerness of funds, continually faced two choices: it could use up nearly all its funds each year to macadamize a few sections of the main highways and build the necessary bridges, or it could maintain those highways in good condition for fair weather traffic and push on with the building of new roads that would open up regions less easily accessible and enable more peasants to transport their produce to market. The military road from Limassol to Platres was metalled and bridged at the time of its construction, as were also some short roads in the southern winegrowing districts, built and maintained by the local villagers with the government contributing half the cost. But it was not until 1889 or 1890 that the government completely macadamized and bridged the LarnacaNicosia highway, which had developed a considerable traffic in carriages and carts; and at that date Cyprus' second most important highway, the road between Larnaca and Limassol, still lacked bridges over three rivers and nine small streams. The "wine" roads just mentioned deserve a brief notice, because they illustrate the unforeseen complications that often arise when primitive agriculturalists are urged to modernize some of their age-old methods. During the closing years of the Turkish regime the vinegrowers on the southern slopes of the Troodos Mountains had found a profitable market for their wines in France, whose vineyards were being ravaged by phylloxera. By 1881, however, other countries also had expanded their exports to France, 139

THE ECONOMICS OF CYPRUS

countries whose wines were carried to market, not in tarred goatskins as in Cyprus, but in wooden barrels. Thereupon the French public, which disliked the taste of the tar,28 reduced its imports from Cyprus and threw the Troodos wine industry into a slump. The island's best vineyards lay along rough tracks 2,000 to 3,000 feet up the mountain slopes, whence the bags of wine were transported to Limassol during the heat of the day on the backs of donkeys and mules. The British administration, which had already converted into a military highway a mule path that ran from Limassol to Platres through some of the wine villages, subsidized the vinegrowers of the area to convert other mule paths into carriage roads so that they could discard their goatskins, load their wine into barrels, and freight the barrels to Limassol during the cool of the night. The vinegrowers built the roads without demur, but most of them, lacking suitable carts with efficient brakes to freight heavy barrels down the mountain side, continued as before to pack their wine in tarred goatskins. Whenever possible, however, they now loaded the skins on camels instead of mules, because the larger animal, although unable to clamber up and down steep tracks overhung with carob and olive branches, could carry with ease on the new unobstructed roads nearly half as much again as a mule.23 Many years had to pass before the cart finally asserted its supremacy over the trains of camels and pack mules that operated like railways in the mountainous wine districts, on the plains between Nicosia and Famagusta, and between Famagusta and Larnaca; and many years, too, before the tarred bag yielded to the barrel. The island needed telegraph lines to supplement its roads, also cable communication with the mainland. In 1871 the Ottoman Telegraph Administration had laid a cable from Latakia in Syria to Ayios Theodhoros, 16 miles north of Famagusta, and a land line from Ayios Theodhoros to Nicosia, which it extended in 1874 to Larnaca;30 but neither cable nor land line was efficient or adequate. Immediately following the British occupation, therefore, 28 "Fifteen specimens of Commauderia, five of Black wine, one of Muscat and one of Morocanella were shown [at the Societe Philomathique in Bordeaux]. As low-classed wines, the cheaper sorts were found by the jury, and the merchants and brokers, in general of very fair quality. But the jury felt obliged to comment on the bad corks, and the tarry taste which must be overcome before the wine can be submitted to the usual process to prepare it for European markets." AP 1883, IX, C. 3772, p. 84. 20 Cypriot camels could carry about 5 hundredweight, mules 33/4. 30 AP 1872, XXIII, C. 597, p. 813. 140

BRITISH RULE : 1878-1888

the Eastern Telegraph Company linked up by telegraph the six main towns, and also Platres and Troodos in the mountains—this last-named village being the seat of government during the summer months, as it had been in Turkish days. The same telegraph company then ran a cable from Larnaca to Alexandria, giving the island a second and more dependable connection with the mainland. Cyprus' first regular postal service also dates from the beginning of the British occupation, when a new department headed by an experienced official from England opened offices in the six main towns, enrolled a few mail carriers, and undertook to forward letters outside the island by any suitable steamers that called at Larnaca or Limassol. From this humble start the service steadily grew, and was soon accepting registered mail, money orders, and small parcels. We may run a little ahead of our narrative to outline its progress down to the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. During the 1880's and 1890's it expanded into the rural districts pan passu with the roads, until by the opening of the twentieth century few villages of any importance lacked direct postal communication with one or other of the main centres. Mail to and from foreign countries suffered for many years from the irregularity of the steamers that called at the island, but this was partly remedied in 1896 by the subsidizing of a weekly steamer service to Egypt. In 1905 the post-office department experimented in Nicosia with a house-to-house delivery of mail, and when it proved satisfactory in the capital, extended it to other towns. Five years later it contracted with the Cyprus Motor Transport and Development Company for a fast service by motorcar between Limassol, Larnaca, and Nicosia, so that when the subsidized steamer called at Limassol, correspondents could receive and answer their letters before the boat left Larnaca, its second port of call. By that period the post office had gained such a reputation for efficiency and reliability that many merchants were entrusting it with light and valuable parcels, and were mailing abroad considerable quantities of cigarettes, embroidery, native dress materials, and other goods. Water Supply The first English administrators knew that Cyprus' most precious commodity was water, that the precipitation was light and uncertain, that the hot sun quickly drew from the ground much of 141

THE ECONOMICS OF CYPRUS

the rain that fell upon it,31 and that droughts and famine had punctuated the island's history for as far back as there were re•• cords. They knew, further, that beneath the dry surface of the land lay mysterious streams or basins of water that gushed forth at a few places in sudden springs, and at others were accessible through hand-dug wells or chains of wells. But the science of hydrology was still in its infancy; no wells had plumbed the earth of Cyprus deeper than about 40 feet; and opinions differed concerning both the abundance of this subterranean supply and its origin—whether it came from the local precipitation, or from the melting snows of Asia Minor across the forty-mile strait.$2 No one actually knew, indeed, the amount of the local precipitation, because previous governments had failed to record the day-to-day rainfall or the day-today temperatures at any place on the island. This task Wolseley's administration immediately imposed on its medical officers, and with it the duty of analyzing the water supplies of the larger settlements and of taking whatever measures were possible to ensure their purity. The town that cooperated most wholeheartedly with its English medical officer and district commissioner was Limassol, which flourished greatly during the two years following the British occupation, owing to bountiful harvests of wine and carobs in the surrounding area, and the stream of money that flowed from the British garrison camped in the neighbourhood.83 The municipal authorities repaired the leaky stone aqueduct whose water was so polluted that itinerant vendors were peddling purer water through the streets on donkeyback; and they added an iron pipeline to bring water from another source three miles away. When the Garyllis River suddenly inundated the town and undermined some of its mud houses, causing several deaths, they passed a resolution that all future houses should be built of stone, at least in their lower stories, and encouraged the piping of water into the new buildings from the public main. Kyrenia sank a chain of wells and carried pure water to public fountains in both its Greek and its Turkish quarters; at the same time it drained away to the sea the overflow of a derelict aqueduct that had spotted the town with stagnant and 81 "No report has been made on the rate of evaporation from standing waters or from saturated soils. As a result a nominal figure of 50% evaporational losses has had to be used in this report." Cyprus, Water Supply and Irrigation Department, The Underground Water Resources of Cyprus, a report by D. J. Burdon (Nicosia, 1952), p. 2. S2 Geologists have now discarded the second hypothesis. 33 Most of the British troops were evacuated in 1884.

142

BRITISH RULE : 18784888

malarial pools. Larnaca drained one of its most pestilential marshes. At Nicosia a forestry expert converted the city's foul moat into a public promenade adorned with shady trees; and the municipality of Limassol then followed his example by establishing a small park. By 1882 no town except Famagusta Iacked a public supply of good water, drains of greater or less efficiency, and some sort of scavenging systems' We need hardly wonder, then, that official accounts of the first four or five years of British rule should breathe a note of optimism. Nearly every town and large village was beginning to show clear signs of improvement, not in its water supply alone, but in the increasing number of well-built stone houses lighted by large airy windows that were replacing the mud dwellings darkened by blank walls, or walls pierced by but one or two miserable apertures. The island's chief medical officer cautioned, indeed, that there were still very few localities which did not urgently need better drainage and sanitation; and a depression that struck the entire Levant in the mid-1880's halted for a while the burst of civic progress. Property then declined in value, and the people, crushed by bad harvests, low prices, and steadily increasing debts, neglected to keep the aqueducts in repair and allowed waste water from the public fountains once again to swamp many of their streets. However, the depression was short-lived. The following decade brought larger harvests and more favourable markets that quickly set Cyprus in motion again along its forward path. It was a simple engineering problem to furnish the towns and villages with drinking water, but to regulate and increase the supply for agriculture was both difficult and costly. The peasants themselves realized the need for more irrigation, but they had long since abandoned the old feudal habit of working cooperatively, and individually they lacked the capital to dig new wells. When Wolseley in 1878 repaired an old canal to prevent any further flooding of Nicosia by the Pedieos River, he automatically restored irrigation facilities to a considerable block of good farm land. This encouraged the farmers around Morphou to dig a chain of wells the following year in order to irrigate their fields also; but they abandoned the enterprise when their funds ran out, and did not resume 94 Sir Robert Biddulph, "Cyprus," Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society (London, 1889), XI, 708; AP 1883, IX, C. 3661, p. 21-22; AP 1880, XLIX, C. 2543, p. 148; AP 1881, IX, C. 3092, pp. 67 ff. About 1912 the government appointed an inspector of water supplies to visit all the settlements on the island and draw up schemes for the improvement of their supplies of water.

143

THE ECONOMICS OF CYPRUS

and complete it until 1894, after they had secured a loan from the Agricultural Board.85 In 1880 England sent out a geologist, R. Russell, to explore the central plain, report on its existing water supply and recommend methods for increasing it; but his sketchy report failed to initiate any practical project. Nevertheless, his mission did not fail completely, for he directed official attention to the intricate property laws bequeathed by the Turkish regime, and the serious obstruction they presented to any rational use of streams and wells. To cite but one example: "Konklin Chiflek (farm) claims proprietary right, in virtue of Imperial firman, over three large rivers, and Poli Chiflek over one; this, therefore, disposes of four of the six rivers which traverse the (Paphos) district. The villagers have to pay high rents for every donum irrigated, and these rivers are, on this account, a great source of litigation."88 After Russell had returned to England the Cyprus administration set up impartial tribunals to resolve the more serious conflicts over water rights: and so well did they perform their task that in 1890 the government was able to reclaim a considerable area of land in the Mesaoria by restoring the old Pedieos and Idalia canals. It had to postpone other important irrigation projects, however, for several years, because the cabinet in London kept a very tight rein on the island's expenses.S7 As for the property laws, they persisted with little change for another half-century. Mining Mining lagged no less than irrigation, but not from the same cause. When Turkey vacated the island only two minerals were being exploited, umber and gypsum, neither on a very large scale: and on both, England continued to levy the same royalties as her predecessor. Yet the world still remembered that Cyprus had once been the eastern Mediterranean's principal source of copper and asbestos, and in 1886 an English syndicate obtained a concession to reopen an ancient copper mine at Pelathousa, in the Paphos district. It operated there for two years, employing a considerable 83 AP 1897, X, C. 8580, p. 54. Annual Report, 1881 in AP 1882, IX, C. 3385, p. 92, which also contributes this further observation: "The Moslems, on conquering the island some hundred years ago, took for themselves the most favoured spots, and established certain rights and claims to water; in so doing they did but follow the right of conquest, but since the British occupation much litigation has resulted therefrom." 87 To finance the work on these canals the administration borrowed from surplus money in the Locust Control Fund. AP 1893, XI, C. 7053, p. 30. 89

144

BRITISH RULE : 1878-1888

number of workmen; but not finding any payable ore in that time, it abandoned the enterprise and surrendered the concession.$$ No other syndicate attempted to rework any ancient mine, or to open a new one, until the end of the century. Cyprus' ores were elusive, but nature did not hide the salt in the Larnaca and Limassol lagoons. Though barred by treaty from Turkish markets and no longer sought by other countries, it possessed a profitable market in Cyprus itself, which consumed about one thousand tons annually. The English administration therefore maintained the ancient monopoly, and by selling the salt at a penny an oke, added £3,000—£4,000 each year to its revenue during the first decade of its rule." Forests The government's funds during this period were scanty, yet not too scanty to prevent the salvation of Cyprus' few remaining forests. Hardly had Turkey vacated the island than the new English administration commissioned an official of the Indian Civil Service, A. E. Wild, to reconnoitre the forests of the Troodos Mountains and suggest how best they could be administered.40 Wild reported that although the forest law decreed by the Turkish administration in 1870 had helped to reduce the indiscriminate felling of trees and the extraction of resin,41 the apathetic forest guards had failed to check the ravages of fires, many of which were being deliberately set by peasants in order to enlarge the sizes of their vineyards, and by shepherds to increase the pasturage of their flocks. He therefore '8 AP 1889, X, C. 5749, p. 76; AP 1890, IX, C. 6189, p. 15. 80 AP 1889, X, C. 5749, p. 6.

4° It is worth recording that before the close of 1878 Wolseley's administration also prohibited the unauthorized excavation of ancient sites, some of which had already been looted; and it issued an ordinance establishing a closed season for hunting and a tax upon all guns. In 1883 the government supplemented this ordinance with a Wild Birds' Protection Law; and two decades later, in 1900, it founded in Nicosia the Cyprus Museum of Antiquities, a well-organized institution whose present director, Dr. P. Dikaios, has added greatly to our knowledge of Cyprus' prehistory. 41 A. E. Wild gives some graphic instances of reckless felling: "To procure kneading-troughs for making bread, and yokes for their oxen, they will fell large trees and only use (say) 8 feet, leaving the remainder to rot and fire. The production of these troughs, when we consider the number required, must be a great source of impoverishment to the forests. The bases of large trunks only are used, which they cut in two and hollow out." He continues: "To obtain round rafters, which is one of the most prevalent forms of timber in the island, they fell middle-aged and young trees, hack off the sap-wood, and only retain the more durable heart-wood. It is seldom that a tree is split up into two or more." Report by A. E. Wild on the forests in the south and west of Cyprus in AP 1878-79, XIII, C. 2427, p. 7.

145

ts_

-

, —

= ~

O

Ns-

—

ø

9 _

',

~]

ms

The boundaries of these forest lands worn set by the Forest Delimitation Commission between the years 1884 and 1896. More than two-thirds of the so-called forest lands bore nothing but scrub, having been burnt out and overgrazed for contunes. (Taken from what appears to be the oldest map extant showing the boundaries, a map that was reduced from the original Kitchener maps and published by Stanford's Geographical Establishment, London, sometime between 1906 and 1914.)

BETWEEN 1884 AND 1896 5 O 5 MILES

CYPRUS 10

FOREST LANDS OF

_

ao SDINON003 3H.L

snaax~

BRITISH RULE : 1878-1888

advocated an immediate delimitation and beaconing of all forest areas,42 their protection by regulations similar to those of India, and a continuing program of planting useful trees on waste land unfit for agriculture. The administration immediately implemented his report by passing an ordinance that applied to Cyprus the major provisions governing the forests of India; and Wolseley, who was still the high commissioner, issued a proclamation declaring that henceforth all forest Iand except such as might belong to private individuals was under the care, protection, control, and management of the government.43 He thus annulled at one stroke the grazing and timber privileges that the Turks had granted to many individuals and villages, and gave his administration a free hand to take whatever further measures it deemed necessary. After Wolseley's departure his successor, Biddulph, borrowed for two years the services of a French expert, P. Madon, to study the island's forests and advise the government on their management. Madon too recommended their immediate delimitation, but counselled against any systematic replanting until the government could set aside larger funds and apply stricter measures for their protection and natural regeneration." While he believed that the existing forests, carefully managed, could yield sufficient wood to meet the reasonable needs of the villagers, he warned the administration that unless it checked the inordinate waste,' and ended, or at least greatly reduced, the number of fires, "the Mediterranean would soon count one island less and one rock more." After investigating all the forests on the island, he was unable to point to a single five-hundred-acre block that did not bear traces of ancient conflagrations. He himself had frequently encountered fresh fires kindled by shepherds and woodcutters, who so resented government interference with their age-old activities that they even obstructed his efforts to extinguish the flames.46 42 In 1882 the administration set up a permanent delimitation commission which virtually completed its work ten years later, after mapping and beaconing 575 square miles of forest land. 42 The administration believed there was no privately owned forest land. 44 From 1878 to 1905, perhaps even later, the annual budget for forestry did not exceed £ 3,500. 45 To check a little of this waste, and save much labour and expense, Madon recommended the erection of two water-driven mills to saw between 40,000 and 50,000 planks annually; for the Cypriots themselves rarely used saws, but laboriously hewed out their planks with axes. The government erected the saw mills, which gave excellent service until the First World War. 48 See Reports of P. Madon in AP 1882, IX, C. 3384, pp. 17 ff.

147

THE ECONOMICS OF CYPRUS

The administration and its advisers fully realized, of course, that it was neither possible nor desirable to exclude all peasants from the forests. Thousands of sheep and goats" would have died of starvation, scores of woodcutters have lost their employment, and dozens of mountain villages have faced impossible expenses for fuel and timber. The administration therefore issued permits to the woodcutters to draw dry and fallen timber from the forests, but to cut green wood only when it was essential for ploughs and yokes; and it licensed the grazing of flocks in certain forest blocks, but banned it from others to let nature regenerate them unmolested, warning all license-holders that any damage to those blocks would lead to the revocation of their permits. Through these measures, and through the stern prosecution of all offenders,' Britain in her first four years of rule greatly restricted the Cypriots' use of forest land and saddled them with a heavy bill for imports of firewood and timber from Trieste and Caramania;°° but in justification of her policy she could point to a lessened rate of deforestation and to the growing number of young trees that were beginning to spring up. Although Madon discouraged the immediate replanting of the forest land,b0 he multiplied the number of eucalyptus, acacia, and other exotic seedlings in the nursery gardens at Nicosia and Larnaca that the government had established late in 1878 and early in 1879; and he added to them seedlings of the native pines, the cypress, and the almost extinct cedar, hoping that the cedar at least would be transplanted again to the Troodos Mountains. Under careful watering these nursery seedlings flourished, and in 1882 a number of eucalyptus plants were transferred to Famagusta, where thirty years earlier Gaudry had observed the slow engulfing of the Varosha mulberry trees by shifting sand dunes. Soon afterwards young stone pines and eucalyptus trees were planted at Salamis, six 47 In 1881 goats alone numbered 210,000, of which 180,000 grazed continuously for several months each year on what was classified as forest land. AP 1881, IX, C. 2930, pp. 78-79. 48 The arrest, trial and imprisonment for a week of a Greek Orthodox priest and three peasants for deliberately violating the ordinance against felling live trees in the forest became a cause celebre. The Cyprus archbishop protested to the high commissioner, and appealed to London, against the administration's failure to observe an "ancient right of clergy," which guarded a priest against arrest without the archbishop's consent, or his incarceration in a common gaol instead of his surrender to the custody of the archbishop. AP 1878-79, XIII, C. 2398, pp. 1-14, esp. pp. 4-6. sa Cyprus imported 42 per cent more firewood in 1881 than in 1880. 5° P. Madon estimated that it would cost the government £ 14,200 yearly for perhaps fifty years to restore full cover to the forest land.

148

BRITISH RULE : 1878-1888

miles north of Famagusta, to hold down the extensive sand dunes that had covered the ancient city of St. Bamabas; and in 1887 the government carried the eucalyptus to western Cyprus by transferring 160 plants to Morphou, where other sand dunes driven by the prevailing southwest wind had invaded the plain over an area of about eight square miles.51 Two years later the Cypriots themselves were demanding young nursery trees to plant on private land, and the government was creating on the arid plains small plantations of eucalyptus and acacia to supply the villages with fuel. Today these two Australian trees introduced by Britain in the first year of her rule are a familiar sight in nearly every part of the lowlands. Besides fixing the sand dunes and reducing the demand on the forests for fuel, they are redeeming some of the marsh and kavkala Iandsb2 and protecting from erosion the banks of the streams. Indeed, so vital a role do they play in the island's economy that its Department of Agriculture has recently circulated among the peasants a short pamphlet carrying the slogan: "Plant pine trees in the mountains, acacia in the kavkala hills and similar places on the plains, eucalyptus on the river banks." Agriculture Many difficulties, some of them psychological, obstructed the improvement of agriculture, Cyprus' principal resource. The climate on the lower slopes of the Troodos Mountains encouraged the cultivation of the grapevine and the carob tree, and the soil of the plains was fertile enough to yield rich harvests of wheat and barley whenever the rainfall was normal. But the peasants still stolidly followed the methods their ancestors had employed in the days of the Pharaohs, using antiquated tools at the cost of back-breaking labour for both man and animal. In the last years of the Turkish regime the banker and amateur farmer R. H. Lang had introduced from England modern ploughs, harrows, and other machinery, but they proved ill-adapted to Cypriot conditions: the conservative peasants looked askance at them, no mechanics could be found who would repair them, and no spare parts were procurable on the 51 . deux heures de marches' A. Gaudry, Recherches Scientifiques en Orient (Paris, 1855), p. 95. 52 Kavkala is the Cypriot name for lands covered with a peculiarly hard limestone cap that varies in thickness from a few millimetres to 25 or 30 centimetres. Beneath this cap is a much softer limestone that can be induced to support trees. Cyprus laments thousands of acres of kavkala land. 149

THE ECONOMICS OF CYPRUS

island.56 Artificial fertilizers were unknown, animal manure scarce and not fully appreciated. What manure was available farmers used for their vegetable crops and madder plants, not for their grain fields, half of which lay fallow each year to regain some of their fertility. The peasants paid little attention to their seed, mixing the pure with the impure; they allowed tares to ripen and be harvested with the grain; and they defiled the grain itself with dirt and pebbles from the earthen threshing floor so that it brought only secondgrade prices. As a result of such primitive cultivation, foreign residents (and many of the Cypriots themselves) preferred to buy flour imported from Egypt rather than tolerate the inferior local product.64 Equally primitive were the methods used in other branches of agriculture. I have already quoted Gaudry's strictures on the harvesting of the olive crop and the manufacture of olive oil. Baker stated in 1879 that the upper-class Cypriots were importing olive oil from France and Italy because the quality of the local oil was so poor; and that the island's olive groves were old and neglected, although the Paphos, Karpas, and other districts contained jungles of wild olive trees that could be rendered fertile by grafting.b6 The same traveller noted also the barbaric method with which some of the Cypriots cultivated their grapes: When the shoots (of the vines) are about three feet long and have shown the embryo bunches, a number of men enter the vineyard with switches and knock off the tender ends of the runners which in a gentler method of cultivation would be picked off with the finger and thumb-nail. Sometimes goats are turned in to nibble off 53 Lang, pp. 200 f. In 1881 the Bishop of Paphos imported a reaping machine only to discover that his fields were too strewn with rocks and stones to permit the proper play of its blades. AP 1883, IX, C. 3772, p. 91. 54 In 1909 Cyprus imported 70,308 hundredweight of flour from Egypt, in 1910, 99,299 hundredweight. The government analyst who examined samples of this imported flour and also of the native flour, reported very unfavourably on the latter. "Over 100 samples of imported flour were examined and found to be free of any adulterant. The native flour was found in many instances to contain considerable quantities of sand and an excessive amount of bran: several samples were found also to contain small pieces of flint, the presence of this dangerous material being due to the wear and tear of the flint stones on the threshing boards. Until the primitive methods of threshing and milling in use are replaced by some more modern appliances imported flour will continue to be preferred to the local article, to the great detriment of island industries." Annual Report, 1910-11, in AP 1911, IX, Cd. 5898, p. 19. Several flour mills were established in Cyprus in 1912. 55 Sir Samuel Baker, Cyprus As I Saw It in 1879 (London, 1879), pp.

44 et seq.

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BRITISH RULE : 1878-1881

the shoots in order to save labour, and at the same time to feed the animals; they of course damage the vines, but the Cypriote thinks the system pays. The young vines are never staked and tied as in Europe, but are allowed to take their chance, and the heavy bunches in many instances rest upon the dusty ground.60

Even Cyprus' large and juicy oranges, grown primarily for export, were so thick-skinned and full of seeds that they could not compete in the English market, where prevailing prices were higher than in Egypt. Clearly there was a great need for agricultural education and leadership, but no one seemed able to supply it except the government57 During its first decade, unfortunately, the English administration failed to provide this education and leadership, partly because it lacked funds and expert counsel, and partly because it was confronted with problems that seemed more urgent—the salvation of the forests, for example, and the construction of roads. Moreover, its function, as interpreted by London at this time, was to stimulate production but not to control it, to encourage individual initiative rather than dampen it. Accordingly it declined to draw up any comprehensive plan for agricultural reform, but adopted only such measures as seemed required to meet each passing problem. From the very beginning it carefully compiled agricultural statistics, and took steps to prevent the introduction of phylloxera that was ravaging the French vineyards, and of the cattle and sheep diseases that were afflicting certain parts of the mainland. When the locusts multiplied and in 1882 threatened to destroy a large proportion of the grain crops, the government combated them energetically and in three years brought them under control. In 1883 it abolished the tithe on grapes so that Cyprus' wines might compete more readily in foreign markets, and in 1885 it began to subsidize the construction of the "wine roads"S6 to facilitate the carriage of wine from b° Ibid., p. 275. This chapter is devoted to viticulture and the manufacture of wine in Cyprus. In 1889 it was stated that "no one in Cyprus prunes his vines or bis olives. Some owners seem to be aware that this is done else. where, with good success, but they show no wish to emulate the practice." AP 1889, X, C. 5812, p. 140. In 1912 "a survey by the Agricultural Department showed 23,299 acres of vineyards. Out of these 9,849 had been attacked by Oidium Tuckeri. The government ordered 600 tons of sulphur to be imported and sold at various centres at cost price." AP 1912-13, XII, Cd. 6430, p. 29; AP 1914, XI, Cd. 7065, p. 23. 67 On the whole subject of Cypriot agriculture down to the end of the nineteenth century see P. Gennadius, Report on the Agriculture of Cyprus, 1895, Parts I-III (Nicosia, n.d.). 68 See page 139 f.

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THE ECONOMICS OF CYPRUS

the interior to Limassol. From 1884 onward, too, it imported disease-free silkworm eggs from France and Italy in an effort to rehabilitate the Cyprus silk industry, offered rewards for planting olive trees, appointed watchmen to protect the field crops from trespassing sheep and goats, introduced merino sheep to provide a finer fleece,°° and tried to improve agricultural methods in the Nicosia, Famagusta, and Kyrenia districts by holding annual fairs that awarded prizes for local produce and livestock. This hands-off, hands-on policy, however, rested on a rather shaky foundation, for centuries of despotic foreign rule had stifled the initiative of the Cypriots. Tradition-bound to the point of inertia, like most primitive agricultural communities, they manifested scant desire to change their ways in conformity with the advice of their new rulers, but made the government the scapegoat for many of their troubles, expected it to lead the way in every innovation and to rescue them in every emergency.00 Nevertheless, before and° after the disastrous drought of 1887, when they complained—not without reason in a few cases—of the high cost of administration, the heavy taxation, the payment of the "tribute" to Turkey and various other features of British rule, their leaders possessed the foresight to recommend one very valuable measure—the creation of a department of agriculture that would combat animal and plant diseases and help the peasants to modernize their farming.6' The government accepted their advice, and within a year appointed an Inspector of Agricultural Industries to survey the situation. Four years later, in 1894, it invited the Director of Agriculture in Greece, Dr. P. Gennadius, to visit the island for three months and report on its agriculture; and in 1896 it induced him to retire from his post on the mainland and become the first director of the Department of Agriculture in Cyprus. His appointment marked a new era in the island's agricultural history. Not only did he organize a very active and progressive department, but he linked it closely with the day-to-day needs of the farmers; for, being Greek by birth a° The experiment failed because the merino could not adapt itself to the food available. AP 1898, VIII, C. 8805, p. 73. G0 Cf. the remark of a high commissioner in 1911: "Government endeavours to foster initiative and local enterprise and responsibility and to avoid the paralyzing grip of the dead hand of bureaucracy. Its efforts are, however, continually thwarted by the habit of dependence on the central government engrained, doubtless, in the Cypriots by centuries of despotic rule." AP 1911, IX, Cd. 5898, p. 36. 61 AP 1888, IX, C. 5523, pp. 87-110, esp. p. 110; AP 1889, X, C. 5812, pp. 113-127, esp. pp. 158-59.

152

Information Service

PLATE XI

MECHANIZATION COMES TO SOME OF CYPRUS' GRAIN FIELDS.

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PLATE XII PLANTING POTATOES ON FLAT LAND BELOW TERRACED VINEYARDS.

U.K. Information

Se.

BRITISH RULE : 1878-1888

and highly competent, he could discuss their problems in their own tongue and lend his counsel greater weight because it seemed to emanate from a fellow islander.82 We gain a little insight into some of the farmers' problems through a few statistics that have come down to us from the beginning of the British administration. At that time first-class cereal land in the eastern Mesaoria could bring as much as 4,500 piastres (£25) an acre. There were very few large estates in the area, or indeed anywhere in Cyprus; and on such as did exist the peasants worked the land for a share of the crop. The greater part of the region was partitioned among a host of small proprietors, of whom the more prosperous owned each a pair of oxen and some 60 donums (20 acres) of land, worth, let us say, £500. As a rule the owner cropped only about a third of his acreage each year, letting the rest lie fallow. If we assume that his land was first-class and that he planted barley, using seed which he had saved from the previous harvest, he would sow on his 20 donums about 30 bushels of grain and reap in a good season about 750 bushels. With barley selling (in 1879) for about ls. 8d. a bushel, his crop would return him a gross income of approximately £ 62 10s. In addition, it would supply him with a considerable amount of straw which he would chop up to feed to his oxen during the late summer and early winter. From this income of £ 62 10s. we can subtract the following more or less fixed expenses: £ s. d. 2 0 0 Land tax (4 mills on estimated value) 6 5 0 Tithe (1/10 of £62 10s.) 2 6 Exemption from military service 5 0 18 Year's food for family of five at is. per day" 26 12 6 Total, fixed expenses 82 Yet Gennadius himself met with constant apathy and even resistance from the ultra-conservative peasants. When he finally retired, after labouring hard for eight years to improve conditions, his successor wrote: "The vineyards of Cyprus still continue to be ravaged by Oidium. Notwithstanding the issue of pamphlets and instructions by Mr. Gennadius and stimulation on the part of the Commissioners of Districts, vinegrowers continue to show . The scale disease in carob much apathy in regard to this disease. trees is extending, especially in the Papho district, and here again the Department of Agriculture meets with much opposition on the part of owners in the application of proper remedies. The same may be said of diseases of orange, lemon and other fruit trees." An. Rpt. Dept. Agriculture, Cyprus, for 1904-05, p. 5 (Nicosia, 1905). 83 "The great majority of the inhabitants, who are very poor, live almost entirely on bread, with a few olives and oil; they scarcely ever eat

153

THE ECONOMICS OF CYPRUS

Their deduction leaves the farmer with £35 17s. 6d. to meet all charges until the next harvest. What charges could he anticipate during those twelve months, assuming—and this is a very large assumption—that he owed no debts and paid no rent for the use of a threshing floor? He would need to buy seed for the next planting, unless indeed he planned to sow barley again and had reserved enough seed from his crop. He might require extra feed for his oxen, and some new agricultural implements, a plough perhaps, a yoke for the oxen, or even a new ox. Then there would be clothing material for himself and his family, mostly local wool and cotton that his wife would weave and sew; small amounts of salt (a government monopoly) and tobacco; and a little pocket money to spend in cafés, then as today the Cypriot's favourite dissipation. Apart from the ox, however, none of these items would involve heavy outlay, so that if the farmer were reasonably provident, he might save enough money from the crop of one good year to carry him over one lean year.64 Whether through improvidence or ill luck, however, very few peasants in this period had escaped the incubus of debt, which was difficult to throw off when interest and other charges amounted to between 27 and 33 per cent 65 Most peasants too were not as prosperous as our hypothetical farmer above; they did not own as much as 20 acres of land and a pair of oxen. Consequently they had no reserve, and even if they did succeed, after one good harvest, in paying off their debts, a crop failure the next year put their heads into the noose again, while two crop failures in succession exhausted their credit and left them destitute.66 During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries many peasants had reacted to such calamities by abandoning their holdings and emigrating. In the nineteenth century the Turkish administration had tried on several occasions to keep them on the land and to lighten their distress by providing seed gratis or at cost. Its English successor adopted the meat, seldom fowls, and now and again a little pork; sometimes cheese, a few figs, grapes and pomegranates. In villages where there are gardens fresh vegetables, onions, kolokas, vegetable marrow, cucumbers, etc. are used. Mutton is only to be found in the larger villages. Milk is scarcely used as an article of diet, even for children. Eggs are little used. AP 1880, XLIX, C. 2543, pp. 105 f. Evidently the diet had changed very little through the centuries. 64 Report of H.M. High Commissioner, 1879 in AP 1880, XLIX, C. 2543, pp. 105 f. 6s Hamilton Lang quoted in AP 1883, IX, C. 3661, pp. 48 f. 66 Cf. page 125.

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BRITISH RULE : 18784888

same policy; in addition, it organized a program of public works, mainly road-building, that employed at the prevailing wage rates as many destitute farmers as the government's meagre funds would provide for. Wages and Cost of Living The money wage rates of 1879 differed little from those of 1871; they were no higher, seemingly, but may have been slightly lower.67 Unskilled labourers, if men, received from 9d. to ls. for a nine-hour day, if women ("who are most industrious and hardy") 9d., if boys 6d. Skilled labour of course cost more; masons and carpenters received from 2s. to 3s. a day. One could hire a pony or mule for 2s. 6d. a day, a donkey with attendant for ls. 6d., and a pair of bullocks with a strong cart for 3s. 6d.88 Within a very few years, however, wages began to creep upward. By 1886 unskilled labourers in the Lamaca district were demanding up to ls. 6d. a day, masons and carpenters up to 4s., although food cost no more than eight years earlier. Other districts too then raised their rates. Looking beyond the first decade of British rule we learn that in 1898 "the rates of wages vary for field labour from 6 c.p. [Cyprus piastres) to ls. 6 c.p. (i.e. 9d. to ls. 51/2(1.). The wages of artisans range from ls. 6 c.p. to 4/- a day."60 After 1898 wage rates changed very little until the First World War,7° but commodity prices and rents increased until the heightened cost of living began to create serious problems. In 1909 a government engineer complained that the expense of maintaining each mile of road had risen nearly 30 per cent in ten years. On the other hand, farmers were better off than they had been for centuries because they were receiving higher prices for their produce; and many things they had considered luxuries in previous years they now regarded as necessities.71 See page 114. Report of H.M. High Commissioner, 1879 in AP 1880, XLIX, C. 2543, p. 206. The road engineer who supplied these statistics added: "These facilities have enabled me to perform large movements of earth ... at an average cost, of 41d. per cubic yard, which in England would cost, worked in the same manner, ls. 9d. 66 AP 1900, IX, Cd. 227, p. 63. 70 In 1913 unskilled labour was earning from 3 to 18 Cyprus piastres a day depending on whether it included board: the amount rose somewhat during the harvest season. Masons, carpenters, tailors and other skilled workers earned from Is. to 4s. and occasionally Ss. a day. 71 AP 1910, VIII, Cd. 5372, p. 22; AP 1914, XI, Cd. 7065, p. 35. 67

66

155

THE ECONOMICS OF CYPRUS

Commerce From the foregoing pages it is evident that Cyprus' economy moved upward during the early years of the British regime, although it was hampered by poor harvests and by the grave depression that afflicted the whole Levant during the 1880's. A glance at the trade statistics for periods between 1850 and 1890 (Figs. 10 and 11) reveals how the island shared in the great expansion of world commerce that followed the development of steam vessels, and how its trade continued to grow without serious interruption when political control passed from Turkish to British hands. For Britain, faithful to the free-trade principles that had guided her home policies throughout most of the nineteenth century, did not

Imports

Exports Total of Imports and Exports

fl a.er yearlyy average 1874-77 yearly average

_

E 167,343

1

£492,398

f l ar yearlyy average

£564,141

1884-88 yearly average

£ 572,771 I I I I I I 300 600 200 400 500 100 THOUSANDS OF POUNDS STERLING

FIG. 10. GROWTH OF TRADE BETWEEN 1850 AND 1890. Since figures for the exports and imports of 1856 are not available, the period 1852-57 is reckoned as five years, not six.

interfere with the established trade currents that connected Cyprus with other countries. She did not even encourage its direct steamship connection with England, although for years after she occupied the island, she shipped £25,000 worth of supplies to its garrison annually, in addition to large quantities of goods ordered by the soldiers themselves. There was no direct communication, in fact, between England and Cyprus until 1898 or perhaps later, whereas both the Austrian Lloyd and the Messageries Maritimes steamship lines continued down to the First World War the fortnightly services they had initiated in Turkish times. It is therefore 156

BRITISH RULE : 1878-1888

FIG. 11. EXTERNAL TRADE FROM 1879 TO 1913. After the severe drought and heavy importations of foodstuffs in 1887 the peasants had neither money nor credit to buy imported goods. Exports, however, soared owing to bountiful harvests from 1889 to 1893. The upturn of both imports and exports about the turn of the century resulted from increased production, slightly higher prices, improved communications and a rising standard of living. The lag in exports from 1898 to 1902 can be traced to low prices, a drought in 1901 and a still worse drought in 1902. For the figures on which this graph is based see Appendix IV.

not surprising that the Turkish empire easily maintained its place as Cyprus' chief customer, accepting most of the island's exports and supplying most of the imports. The annual statements of the chief customs officers tabulated the main exports and imports during the 1880's. The exports were carobs, wheat, barley, straw, linseed, sesame, wine, spirits, raisins, fruit, vegetables, wool, raw cotton, silk cocoons, hides, sumac, cheese, sponges, gypsum and umber; and the imports were cotton yarn and cotton goods, woollen and silk manufactures, tobacco, sugar, coffee, tea, rice, beer, spirits, butter, soap, iron (manufactured and unwrought), leather, timber, wine casks and petroleum. 157

THE ECONOMICS OF CYPRUS

As in earlier periods, the exports were overwhelmingly agricultural in character, and consequently rose and fell according to the abundance of the harvests and the movement of world prices. Wine registered the greatest increase, despite its low price in foreign markets; between 1879 and 1888 Cyprus exported each year an average of 1,320,000 gallons, nearly double the average of the twenty preceding years. Little of this flowed to England, which received, indirectly for the most part, carobs, barley, cotton, and linseed. However, her share of Cyprus' exports amounted to less than 25 per cent. Equally small was her contribution to Cyprus' imports, despite the volume of supplies she sent to her garrison. In 1879 she furnished only 15 per cent of the imports, and although the figure rose to 31 per cent in 1883, it fell back the next year when the weekly steamer from Alexandria to Cyprus stopped running, and by 1887 was no more than 22 per cent. Unlike Venice then four centuries earlier, England made little effort to exploit commercially the control she exercised over the island politically. Even the Lancashire merchants who had been flooding Cyprus' market with their cheap and variegated fabrics for a hundred years72 now faced increasing competition from Italy. The annual imports entering Cyprus rose in value from £ 64,247 in the period 1852-57 to £ 173,809 in 1874-77, the final years of the Turkish regime; but they still amounted to only 60 per cent of the value of the exports. In the first decade of British rule the ratio changed until imports came to surpass the exports in value even after deducting the goods brought in for the British garrison. This aroused some apprehension among the leaders of the Cypriots, who feared that their island was living beyond its means.73 Their fears, however, proved illusory, as the next decade revealed. In the 1880's trade had indeed become unbalanced because Cyprus underwent three years of drought or partial drought which cut down its exports and obliged it to import large quantities of flour and fodder from abroad;74 but after 1887 a succession of good harvests corrected this anomalous condition and brought about a healthier trade balance. Imports and exports then roughly cancelled one another; the island was able to resume its economic growth, and through a gradual rise in living standards to cushion See page 83. 1889, X, C. 5812, pp. 113-127. Cf. page 131. In 1887-88 Cyprus imported food-stuffs to the value of £ 95,974. AP 1889, X, C. 5812, p. 98. 72

73 AP ~4

158

BRITISH RULE : 1878-1888

its peasants against the worst effects of future droughts. NevertheIess it would be a mistake to ascribe the trade imbalance of the 1880's to drought and low prices alone. A contributory if lesser factor was the impact of British economic and social customs, which increased the demand for such foreign goods as European clothing, furniture, stationery and books, articles of copper and iron, and last but not least petroleum, much sought after at this period to replace in lamps the traditional but expensive olive oil. Technical Assistance The economic changes that occurred during the first decade of British rule set the pattern for the changes and growth of the next half-century. Britain's avowed objectives were the creation of democratic institutions such as existed in England itself, the extension of education until it became universa1,75 and the scientific development of every natural resource the island possessed in order to increase the prosperity of the inhabitants and raise their living standard. Cyprus itself at this period supported no trained scientists apart from the two or three Europeans in government employ; but from the very first year of her occupation England encouraged a "technical assistance" arrangement whereby the island's administration could borrow for short periods the services of outside scientists, particularly, but by no means exclusively, English officials who had gained practical experience in other areas of the British Empire. It was under this arrangement that during its first decade the English administration hired the Indian civil servant Wild and the French expert Madon to lay out a program of forest protection and management, and engaged the English geologist Russell to advise on methods of conserving and increasing the water supplies. Subsequent to that decade it repeatedly sought the help of outside experts on problems that baffled the efforts of its own staff. In 1896 —the year in which it appointed the Greek Gennadius as its first Director of Agriculture—it borrowed Medlicott from the Indian 76 In its third year 1881 the British administration established a Department of Education; and between that year and 1911 it increased as follows the number of Moslem and Christian schools on the island, and the number of students attending them, by making liberal subventions to the funds raised by local assessments: Number of students Number of schools Year 170 6,776 1881 1891 323 13,903 417 20,931 1901 1911 574 30,557

159

THE ECONOMICS OF CYPRUS

civil service to study irrigation prospects; in 1903 it asked Professor W. R. Dunston, Director of the Imperial Institute, to investigate the possibility of making Cyprus once again an important cotton-growing centre; and in 1905 it imported a skilled workman from Greece to teach Cypriot wine jar makers how to seal the interior of their vessels with a harmless glaze instead of with the objectionable tar. In 1908 Clement Reid, of the English Geological Survey, reviewed and expanded the previous studies on Cyprus' water supplies, and Hutchins, Conservator of Forests in East Africa, investigated the conservation methods practised in Cyprus' forests. Finally, in 1913, Sir Ronald Ross visited the island and advised the government on measures to reduce the ravages of malaria. These experts in various fields contributed so much to Cyprus' progress that in 1907 the administration inaugurated another phase of technical assistance, the training of qualified Cypriots abroad. It desperately needed capable personnel for its newly created agricultural department, and since Cyprus was too small and too poor to provide adequate facilities for training them, it financed their studies in various European centres and enrolled them in its service when they finished their courses. Of four such protégés in the year 1909 one, who had just completed a course of viticulture in Greece, was appointed to the Department of Agriculture's staff; a second, who had taken a similar course in Italy for one year, received approval to stay on for another year at his own expense; a third was studying agriculture in Greece, and a fourth attending the Ecole Nationale d'Horticulture at Versailles, France. The last became overseer of the Limassol Municipal Garden the following year, when the overseer of the Nicosia Garden was sent to Greece for a three month course in apiculture. In 1913, just a year before the outbreak of the First World War, the administration sent two Cypriots to England and France to study entomology, sericulture, and basketry. A British high commissioner of this period prophesied that "in time Cyprus will have at its disposal the services of young men trained in the best schools of the continent in the various branches of agriculture and kindred sciences." His prophecy came true before the middle of the twentieth century; and these experts trained under the government's farsighted program 160

BRITISH RULE : 1878-1888

have contributed in no small measure to the stability of Cyprus' economy. One cannot but regret that the government did not supplement the program by introducing a uniform educational system adapted to the needs of Greek-speaking and Turkish-speaking Cypriots alike, and by insisting on standards in the primary and secondary schools comparable to the highest standards in the schools of mainland Europe.

161

PART VI BRITISH RULE: 1889-1914

A fog of anxiety shrouded the end of Britain's first decade in Cyprus. The drought of 1887 had crushed many of the peasants under an avalanche of seemingly irremovable debts. The government, it is true, had advanced them seed grain for the next crop, and the winter of 1887-88 brought rain enough to give them a fair harvest; but Levantine prices for wheat and barley had dropped Iower than ever, the cotton crop failed them, and the carob and olive crops proved unusually light. So little money circulated in the island that numbers of farmers were unable to pay their tithes, and at the close of the financial year the administration had to write off some of their obligations as irrecoverable. All through 1888 the courts were busy enforcing sales of immovable property for the payment of debts. Then the tide turned. During the next three years seasonable rains brought abundant harvests of grain, carobs, and grapes and no drought recurred until 1901. By that time the farmers had compounded all their main debts, money was circulating freely again, and Cyprus' economy had become reasonably stable. Even when the 1901 drought was followed by a still worse drought in 1902— the worst within human memory — the island suffered neither famine nor extreme distress, but buoyed up by a large public works program in the eastern Mesaoria and by road-building operations elsewhere, it absorbed the shock without losing manpower through emigration and without reducing the area under cultivation. During this 1902 crisis the government had not viewed the farmers' plight with indifference. On the contrary, it had provided road work at various rates of pay, generally lower than average in order to stretch employment; it had checked the sale of farm land for debt by postponing all sales of immovable property until the 1903 harvest; it had held down the prices of imported flour and fodder; and it had supplied seed grain at wholesale prices, to be repaid in kind at the next harvest with one-fourth added. The population had grown since 1878. By 1891 it had passed the 200,000 mark, for the first time, probably, since the Lusignan era; and by 1811, shortly before the outbreak of the First World 162

BRITISH RULE : 1889-1914

War, it numbered 274,108.1 By that year every town had grown considerably: Nicosia contained 16,052 inhabitants, Larnaca and Limassol approximately 10,000 each. Yet the urban population still numbered less than 18 per cent of the whole. As always, the great majority of the inhabitants remained rural, scattered among 738 villages2 of which only 537 contained more than 100 people. It was the countryside then, not the towns, that absorbed most of the population increase during the second half of the nineteenth century. Naturally this brought about an expansion of the area under cultivation, as is evident from some figures of the acreage devoted to cereals. In 1844 the French consul Fourcade had estimated that farmers were planting about 30,000 acres to wheat and 45,000 to barley. In 1871, twenty-seven years later, Lang estimated 40,000 acres to wheat and 60,000 to barley, not a very significant increase, perhaps, considering that cereal acreages vary greatly from year to year in response to fluctuations in the rainfall. In 1898, however, twenty-seven years again after Lang, the government's receiver-general calculated the wheat acreage at 142,800 and the barley acreage at 100,000, which suggests that the average area sown to grain had approximately doubled.3 The tithes that the government collected on agricultural products between the years 1879 and 1897 (see Appendix III) indicate that virtually all branches of agriculture, not the cultivation of grain alone, underwent notable expansion during the first two decades of British rule. Except for cotton, which continued its slow decline, every crop increased its yield, denoting a general advance all along the line, with no sacrifice of one crop to another. Orchards expanded as well as field crops, for carobs, olives, figs, citrus fruits, pomegranates, and vineyards all yielded larger harvests. Notwithstanding this increase in population and production, and a slight rise in the standard of living, the island seemed almost comatose down to the end of the nineteenth century. At a time when neighbouring Egypt was throbbing with activity as more and more steamers bound for the Orient headed for the Suez Canal 1 It has maintained its steady increase down to the present day, and now exceeds half a million, the highest total in Cyprus' history. 'Roughly the same number of villages as in Venetian times (see page 44), since the above figure excludes eighty hamlets containing fewer than ten persons each. 3 AP 1900, IX, Cd. 227, p. 33. In 1905 the Department of Agriculture estimated the area of land under cultivation at about 1,700 square miles (approximately a million acres), held in about a million separate holdings; but this included land devoted to grapevines and other non-cereal crops.

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and the Red Sea, Cyprus' foreign trade languished, because the droughts of 1887 and 1888 had drained away almost all its hoarded gold; and although the succession of good harvests immediately afterwards enabled the peasants to redeem their debts, the unusually low prices their products brought throughout the Mediterranean prevented them from accumulating fresh reserves. Furthermore, the heavy taxation to cover the expenses of government, and as much as possible of the Turkish tribute, deprived peasants and merchants alike of any surplus funds that might have been used for trading ventures. The economic pump needed priming, but there was no money to pour into it. The administration could not rouse the sluggish economy, because London had ordered it to set aside for the tribute every pound it could save from the revenue; and although it managed to build, over two decades, a very creditable network of carriage roads that facilitated internal movement and trade, the meagre £ 8,000 it was allowed to spend on public works each year barely sufficed to keep these roads in repair. No foreign capital was available; for after the abortive attempt to resuscitate the ancient copper mine at Pelathousa investors cautiously held aloof, sharing the uncertainty about Cyprus' future that pervaded the political world. Both Cypriot and foreign newspapers, in fact, had been printing alarming and contradictory reports, some asserting that England planned to deliver the island to Greece after a few years, others that she intended to give it back to Turkey, the legal owner; and the commercial world naturally feared to invest large sums of money in an island that might change masters overnight. Hence the British government remained the only possible source of capital funds to set the economic machine in motion; and down to the end of the century that government insisted that Cyprus should struggle to pay its own way, strictly avoiding all public loans. British loan, its purpose and effect Happily official policies change. In 1896, when Sir Joseph Chamberlain took the seals of the Colonial Office in London, he injected a preliminary stimulant into Cyprus' ailing economy by sanctioning an increase of its public works' vote from £ 8,000 to £21,000. The island's administration immediately applied the extra funds to the building of two strategic roads complete with bridges, one road from Limassol to Paphos, the other from Nicosia to Morphou, in order to open up the western districts of the island 164

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and enable their produce to reach the principal ports. Still mindful of Cyprus, Chamberlain gave it a second injection three years later: he pushed through the British parliament a special loan of £ 314,000, of which £ 60,000 was to be expended on irrigation works in the eastern Mesaoria, and £ 254,000 on the reconstruction of Famagusta Harbour and the building of a narrow-gauge railway through the central plain to Nicosia and Morphou. The Cyprus government began the drainage and irrigation works without delay and finished them in 1901. It drained away the waters of the Pedieos and Yialias Rivers, and of the pestilential swamps these rivers nourished with their floods, and impounded them in three large reservoirs, Syngrasi, Kouklia and Akhyritou, which in good seasons held enough water to irrigate about 4,350 acres. It then surveyed the swamp land it had reclaimed and tried to sell it to the Cypriot farmers for the cultivation of cotton; but the peasants, with their tenacious memories of rainfall irregularities, distrusted the reliability of the reservoirs and refused to commit themselves to growing only cotton, preferring to lease the land on a yearly basis with freedom to raise whatever crops they wished. The government therefore sold most of the area to an English syndicate, the Anglo-Egyptian Land Allotment Company, which proposed to develop it through the peasants on a crop-share basis, and, in addition, to plant up to 30,000 carob trees, which it ordered from the Department of Agriculture. It tried also to increase the local water supply by sinking a number of wells, and to modernize local agricultural methods by importing a few steam ploughs and other machinery. Under an arrangement with the government, too, it set up an agricultural bank, capitalized at £ 100,000, to make small loans to the farmers and industrial workmen of the district at rates not exceeding 9 per cent on the security of "immovable property, stock, agricultural and industrial produce, personal security, and such other security as the Company might determine". During the first year of its operation, 1907, the bank advanced £ 308 in short term loans (£165 of which was repaid before the year's end), and £53,573 in longer term loans. But in 1908, just one year later, the company withdrew from Cyprus entirely and abandoned its ambitious scheme to develop with up-to-date equipment this part of the Mesaoria.4 4 Cf. Annual Reports particularly those for 1905-1906 and 1906-1907. AP 1908, X, Cd. 3742, pp. 27, 30-31; AP 1908, X, Cd. 4199, pp. 37-38; also Cyprus, Department of Agriculture, Report of the Department of Agriculture, 1908-1909 (Nicosia, 1909), p. 5.

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Time confirmed the misgivings of the peasants concerning the reliability of the reservoirs, and the government's well-intentioned reclamation project failed to produce the expected results. Raeburn wrote thirty-seven years afterwards: The main reason for the failure of the eastern Mesaoria reservoirs to do what was expected of them ... is the unreliability of the rainfall. In one year the reservoirs would be full, in the next almost empty. Farmers preferred to do what they could with cereals during the winter rather than risk waiting to put in a summer crop for which there might be no water. Had it been certain that the reservoirs would be full for use each summer, little difficulty would have been experienced in inducing the farmers to grow summer crops. In addition to the uncertainty of the rainfall the malaria menace has crippled the scheme, and so far no economical method has been evolved for dealing with mosquitoes in and around the works.6

Disappointing too, owing to inadequate knowledge of the island's geology, was the government's first well-boring scheme, initiated in 1904 on the central plains and suspended in 1916. Of the seven holes drilled to depths of many hundreds of feet, only one gave a small supply of good water, and even its flow sufficed to irrigate no more than 21/2 acres .° It was not until 1925, when geologists understood more about the underground resources, that the government again undertook an extensive well-boring program, and either itself, or through subsidized agents, sank hundreds of holes in various parts of the island. By 1950 the total number of wells exceeded 2,000, enough of them successful to supply much water for domestic use and also to irrigate 10,000 acres of land so that they would bear two crops annually.? If the irrigation scheme in the eastern Mesaoria disappointed its promoters, they more than redeemed themselves with the second project financed by the British parliament just before the turn of the century—the dredging and reconstruction of Famagusta Harbour. By 1904 steamers displacing up to 2,000 tons could tie up at the new dock and discharge and load their cargoes; and by 1906 the harbour had been fully equipped with lights and buoys and was 6 Cyprus, Supply and Irrigation Department, Water Supply in Cyprus, a report by C. Raeburn (2d ed.; Nicosia, 1945), p. 5. England eradicated malaria from Cyprus after the Second World War. Three of the remaining wells yielded small quantities of saline water. 7 Cyprus, Water Supply and Irrigation Department, The Underground Water Resources of Cyprus, a report by D. J. Burdon (Nicosia, 1952), pp. 10-16, 46.

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receiving still larger vessels. In that same year, 1906, the gauge railway of 2 feet 6 inches from Famagusta to Morphou that had been started in 1903 opened for passenger and freight traffic, and sent two trains daily in each direction. Many people then predicted that within the next year or two Famagusta would become the island's leading port. But long-established trade channels rarely change overnight. Transport rates on the new railway ran very little lower than the rates for camels and mule carts, and the steamship lines that had been calling at Limassol and Larnaca could see little reason to change their itineraries. Dealers in carobs and wines, which were Cyprus' most remunerative exports at this time, did not cease shipping their products from Larnaca and Limassol, the ports nearest to the districts that yielded the largest crops; and Larnaca continued to receive more than half the island's imports, and to forward them to their destinations by road. Rather more grain than before found its way to Famagusta from the central plain, and the fruits and vegetables for which the Famagusta district itself was noted naturally passed through the local port; but for several years traffic on the western section of the railway was so light that in 1910 the government reduced the service between Nicosia and Morphou to one train daily each way. Yet gradually the tonnage of goods increased, and in 1914 the authorities even extended the line another 15 miles to Evrykhou near Lefka. Many years elapsed, however, before Famagusta became once again what it had been in Lusignan days, the busiest port on the island; and when that day arrived, its pre-eminence was not due to the railway, which was abandoned in 1951, but to the motor truck.8 8 " . the trade through Famagusta is still very small as compared with that through Larnaca, and the latter remains the principal port of call of vessels of the Austrian-Lloyd and the Messageries Maritimes Companies. .. - The present area of railway is very limited, and outside that area the conservative peasant is content to travel on foot or mule, and to transport his goods on carts or pack animals." AP 1911, IX, Cd. 5898, p. 33. The following is a list of the values of imports and exports through the three principal ports during the years 1909, 1910, and 1913: Imports 1910 1909 1913 £ 249,180 £ 272,176 Larnaca ________ £ 312,178 120,541 133,839 148,087 Limassol 93,083 Famagusta — 83,005 134,442 Exports 1910 1909 1913 £ 181,664 Larnaca ____ £ 192,920 £244,520 170,925 196,607 Limassol 136,858 89,549 65,769 Famagusta .~ 101,890

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The island received still a third "shot in the arm" in 1907, when the British government undertook to contribute £ 50,000 annually toward the "Turkish tribute." Thenceforth the Cyprus administration could spend much larger sums on the island's needs without fear of defaulting on its own share of the tribute, now reduced to £42,799. Accordingly, the very next year, 1908, it raised its public works vote by £ 25,784, foreseeing that the accelerated traffic of the newborn automobile age would soon require more and better highways than those it had been building for animal traction.9 The three financial "injections" administered by Britain could not have been more timely, for by the end of the nineteenth century Cyprus had reached a critical phase in its economic history. A partial paralysis had gripped the island just when the activities of its administration during the previous two decades had cleared the way for a sweeping advance. Britain's promise of an annual subsidy covering 54 per cent of the "Turkish tribute," and her substantial loan of £ 314,000, convinced local and foreign investors alike that the political status of Cyprus was unlikely to change in the near future and that they could safely risk their capital in schemes for its development; and the additional money put into circulation by the irrigation, railway, and harbour works not only relieved the unemployment and distress that the 1902 drought had left behind, but even created a small boom. The result was spectacular. The island's trade leaped forward, its revenues soared, and funds began to pour in for mining development and for the opening of various tiny industries. The energy released at that time has continued to 9 Yet so little could it foresee the volume of this automobile traffic that its engineer believed only two roads on the island would carry many "such mechanical devises," the Limassol-Troodos road via Trimiklini, and the Nicosia-Larnaca road. His description of those two highways at the time makes interesting reading today when we consider the 800 miles of smooth, well-graded and asphalted all-weather highways that now criss-cross the island. The account runs: "Limassol-Troodos: 39 miles, 21 metalled and 18 unmetalled. Rises from sea-level to 5,120'. Where unmetalled (on upper slopes of Troodos) surface consists of debris from rock cuttings. Goods carried—carobs, grain, wine, grapes, military barracks equipment, passengers in summer. Vehicles —double-mule cart, camel, and 4-horse (abreast) carriages measuring 23' x 8'9" over-all. About 25 passengers carried each way in summer months, daily. Upper part of road practically unused between October and May. "Nicosia-Larnaca: 26 miles, all metalled. Carried merchandise of all kinds, grain, hardware. Vehicles double-mule carts. Little camel transport, but this decreasing. Make journey from Larnaca to Nicosia in one night." AP 1909, X, Cd. 4589, pp. 11-13.

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U.K. Information Service

PLATE XIII A WATER VENDOR IN NICOSIA. IN 1950 A JARFUL COST 11/2 PIASTRES (BETWEEN TWOPENCE AND THREEPENCE).

PLATE XIV KALOKHORIO DAM, WHICH BLOCKS THE MAROULENA RIVER SOUTHWEST OF NICOSIA. IT HOLDS 10.000.000 GALLONS OF WATER, AND COST £12,000, ONE-FIFTH OF WHICH WAS PAID BY THE VILLAGE OF KLIROU. THE CHIEF BENEFICIARY. WHEN COMPLETED BY THE IRRIGATION DEPARTMENT, THE DAM WAS HANDED OVER TO THIS VILLAGE'S IRRIGATION COMMITTEE FOR MAINTENANCE AND ADMINISTRATION.

U.K. Tn/ormatinn Service

BRITISH RULE : 1889-1914

operate to the present day: and since the upheaval occurred just after 1900, we may take that year to mark a watershed. On the far side of it lies the mediaeval island off the coast of Turkey; on this side the modern, economically prosperous Cyprus. Banking The rapid increase in the island's banking facilities throws this divide into sharp relief. Cyprus had no banking facilities at all until very late in the Turkish regime, when the Imperial Ottoman Bank opened a branch at Larnaca. A quarter of a century later an Egyptian bank tried to gain a foothold,'° but it either merged very quickly with the Ottoman bank or else withdrew, since it does not appear in the list of banks published in the high commissioner's annual report for 1911. Whatever happened, the Ottoman Bank enjoyed a monopoly of the banking business when the century closed. Then the government stepped in. In 1903 it opened in Nicosia the Government Savings Bank, which offered 21/2 per cent interest annually on every full pound deposited for a full month; and in 1904 it approved the efforts of its commissioner in Paphos to promote village cooperative banks on Raiffeisen principles. The Government Savings Bank, it is true, made little progress, because people feared it might not keep its transactions secret; and when they finally overcame that fear, they still disliked its low rate of interest. The village cooperative banks, on the other hand, took root and expanded to districts outside Paphos. Other small savings banks then sprang up: one, the Caisse d'Epargne la Nicosia, even secured a considerable amount of commercial business, showing that money was flowing freely again after the drain of the 1902 drought. Meanwhile, trade was increasing so rapidly that in 1910 the Bank of Athens established a branch in Limassol and appointed correspondents in other towns; and two years later a totally new bank opened its doors in Nicosia, the Bank of Cyprus, founded apparently with local capital. Thus three institutions were now conducting every kind of banking business on the island. The senior one, the Imperial Ottoman Bank, still occupied a preferred place because it preserved its monopoly of government business and its duty to uphold the currency by maintaining an adequate gold reserve; but the two others competed with it so strongly that all i° "There are two banks, branches of banks from Turkey and Egypt, but their operations do not touch the class which is most in need of help, the agricultural peasantry." AP 1889, X, C. 5812, p. 137.

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three reduced their interest rates on private loans to between 6 and 8 per cent—greatly to the benefit of the peasants, who had been accustomed to pay about 12 per cent. Some of the small savings banks, too, began to offer 6 per cent interest on deposits, although the government kept its own rate at 21/2 per cent. The private banks, of course, could not promise their depositors the same security as the government institution. Foreign Trade It was the increasing prosperity, and the rapid growth of exports and imports, that inspired this multiplication of banks. Yet in character the island's trade hardly changed, because it exported very little except its agricultural products, its silk cocoons, gypsum, and umber;13 and its imports included the same goods it had been demanding since Turkish times, viz., textiles, foodstuffs, leather, tobacco, soap, earthenware and glassware, timber, machinery, and petroleum—now, to be sure, in greater volume and variety. Nor did the trade diverge greatly from its old channels. During brief periods Russia provided an important market for Cyprus' carobs (the island's most valuable crop since about 1870), Roumania for its citrus fruits, Spain for its cereals and also carobs, and Greece for its cereals and cotton; but England, Turkey, Egypt, Austria, France, and Italy monopolized most of the traffic—generally in that order (Fig. 12), though it could be modified by droughts and wars, by fluctuations in market prices, and by changes in national policies. Thus in the drought year of 1902 Turkey's trade temporarily exceeded that of Great Britain because it was called upon to furnish Cyprus with heavy supplies of food; but ten years later Austria was accepting far more of the island's exports than Turkey because the Moslem country was warring with Italy over possession of the Dodecanese Islands and part of North Africa. Egypt's share increased, and France's declined, when the latter in 1892 placed a prohibitive tariff on Cyprus' wines, and the island's winegrowers had to seek a market elsewhere for their product; and Egypt's share rose again, putting her definitely into second place, when she was linked to Famagusta in 1905 by a direct steamship line that 11 "Cyprus, with the exception of a very few kinds of cloth and some earthenware pots, exports no industrial product.... The principal productions of Cyprus are those of the Vine, Cerial, Carobs and Cocoons. These four articles, notwithstanding the depreciation from which in recent years they have suffered, account for three-fourths of all the export trade of the island." Gennadius, Part I, p. 3 f.

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IMPORTS 1891

IMPORTS 1907

EXPORTS 1891

EXPORTS 1907

FIG. 12. DIRECTION OF TRADE IN 1891 AND 1907 SHOWING THE PERCENTAGE TO AND FROM THE PRINCIPAL COUNTRIES. UK — United Kingdom; T — Turkey; A — Austria-Hungary; E— Egypt; F — France; I — Italy; 0 — other countries. The general pattern of trade did not change greatly from 1878 to 1914. The United Kingdom held first place in both exports and imports; in exchange for carobs, and in some years a little barley, she shipped to Cyprus manufactures of all kinds—particularly cotton goods, machinery, provisions, and coal. Italy sent the island mainly textiles: other textiles reached it from Germany through Trieste. Austria furnished sugar, coffee, paper, matches, and miscellaneous goods. France supplied leather and woollen goods in exchange for silk cocoons, carobs, and, until 1892, wine. From 1890 onward exports to Egypt increased greatly at the expense of all other countries except the United Kingdom, and by 1912 Egypt was accepting all the cereals, fruit, vegetables, and live stock that Cyprus could send it, as well as most of the island's wine.

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could carry larger quantities of fruits, vegetables, and livestock to the Nile. Cyprus' growing prosperity at this time owed as much to its expanding market in Egypt as to favourable prices for its products. Although the pattern of Cyprus' trade hardly changed between 1903 and 1913, its volume almost doubled, as can be seen from Figure 12. Imports grew no faster than exports, so that the balance of trade remained favourable. By 1910 both had expanded so greatly that the government organized a preventive service, which erected 18 coast guard huts around the island's shores to check the operations of smugglers. Communications Cyprus' revenues soared parallel to the soaring of production and foreign trade, although her taxes underwent little change, and certainly became no heavier. The government reserved approximately £40,000 yearly to cover its share of the "Turkish tribute," and ploughed back the rest of the money into public works, education, health and other projects that would speed up the island's progress (Fig. 13); for neither production nor trade could continue to increase without a marked improvement in communications on both land and sea. The administration divided the roads into two classes; main highways, for whose construction and maintenance it assumed full responsibility, and secondary roads, for which it held the village communities responsible, although it aided them with a small annual grant.12 In 1899 it enacted the Village Road Law that obliged every able-bodied villager to work six days a year on any road or other public project its village council might require, unless indeed he chose to compound his labour for a fee that went to swell the village road fund. It was through this corvee, and the regular taxes, that the central and local authorities succeeded in opening every district to wheeled traffic, even places previously regarded as inaccessible. Before 1905 Cyprus was better provided with roads than any other island in the Mediterranean; and few of its villages lacked postal facilities within easy reach. By 1913 it could point to 760 miles of main roads, all constructed since the British occupation, and another thousand miles of secondary and village roads, some of 12 In 1902 the grant was £ 1,500, taken from the vote for public works. AP 1904, XII, Cd. 1984, p. 50.

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300

AMR

POPULATION -- _ . REVENUES EXPENDITURES 1883

1 1893

1 1903

1

1913

FIG. 13. GROWTH OF POPULATION, REVENUES, AND LOCAL EXPENDITURES FROM 1879 TO 1913. Note how both revenues and expenditures turned sharply upward after the two drought years of 1901 and 1902. The impetus came not from increased production only, but from the great expansion of foreign trade that followed the British loan of £ 314,000. That government's grant of £ 50,000 yearly toward the Turkish tribute from 1907 onward allowed the Iocal administration to apply a much larger proportion of its expenditures to local purposes. For the figures on which this graph is based see Appendix V.

which crossed very difficult terrain. Automobiles could travel on many of the main roads only in the dry season from March to November, but they could use the highways connecting Nicosia with Larnaca, Limassol, Paphos, Kyrenia, and Troodos throughout the whole year. In 1913, indeed, the Cyprus Motor Transport and Development Company, assisted by the government subsidy for carrying the mail, ran a bus uninterruptedly each day between Nicosia, Larnaca and Limassol.'3 is Cyprus' camels, which probably never numbered more than a few thousands, steadily lost their usefulness as the island extended its roads and increased the volume of its wheeled traffic. The building of the Mesaoria railway dealt them a heavy blow, but the motor truck dealt a still heavier one, and by 1956 had driven all but two or three score animals from the island.

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It was inevitable, perhaps, that a few of the towns and villages dragged their feet. Accustomed for centuries to the despotic rule of foreigners, many Cypriots believed that the central administration in Nicosia possessed unrestricted powers and an inexhaustible purse; and they saw no reason why they, rather than the government, should pay the cost of roads and other works that affected the public welfare. The same viewpoint pervaded the municipal councils in certain towns and the village councils in some of the country districts, producing frequent situations in which a conservative majority opposed to any change that would cause them trouble or expense overruled a progressive minority that desired to improve the local conditions. Even the capital showed itself no more enlightened than many country villages, for as late as 1910 Nicosia was "ill-lighted, ill-paved, ill-supplied with water, and defective in sanitary arrangements, the council refusing to improve its financial position by levying a rate, and relying for its income on a few indirect taxes such as slaughter-house fees, storage of petroleum, etc., which send up the price of provisions for poor and rich alike and do not provide sufficient funds for an efficient municipal administration."" In contrast, an energetic council at Limassol had vastly increased the amenities of life in that port. Its houses and streets were greatly improved, plans were on foot to introduce electric light, and a town band played each week in the popular public garden.' It was not only the road network, but also the harbours that called insistently for attention, because the number and tonnage of vessels visiting Cyprus had increased since the first decade of Britain's occupation and much local transport continued to move by sea in small coastal craft.16 In 1894, over and above the tramp steamers that put in occasionally to take on grain, carobs, umber, and other cargoes, vessels from the four nations Austria-Hungary, France, Russia, and England called more or less regularly. These "regulars" comprised two steamers of the Austrian-Lloyd Company AP 1911, IX, Cd. 5898, pp. 36-37. Cf.: "I may remark how pleased I was with the uniform condition of the government roads throughout the island.... The urban roads and streets under municipal control I found, I regret to say, in marked contrast to their rural contemporaries and conspicuous by their filthiness." AP 1898, VIII, C. 8805, p. 56. 16 In 1899 the administration had subsidized a steamship service round the island, but much traffic still moved in Arab sailing vessels. 14

15

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that stopped briefly at Cyprus on the voyage between Constantinople and Alexandria, and a Messageries Maritimes vessel that ran from Marseilles via Smyrna, Limassol, and Larnaca to Egypt, then directly back to Smyrna and Marseilles. The Russian Steam Navigation Company contributed a vessel that plied fortnightly between Odessa and Alexandria, calling at Limassol and Lamaca to take on carobs and other cargo; and the small steamers of the Prince Line (a subsidiary of Bell's Asia Minor Line), which had Iong called irregularly at the same two ports, began in 1896 to visit regularly, having contracted with the Post Office Department to carry mail to Egypt each week. Several changes occurred after that year. The Russian line ceased to participate in the carob trade and withdrew its steamer, while the Austrian-Lloyd Company abandoned one of its two services in the face of stiffer competition from the Prince Line. In 1900 a group of Cypriots joined together to establish a local line, the Limassol Steamship Company, which sought at first merely to expand the export to Egypt of livestock, wine, fruit, and other market commodities, but later, in 1905, successfully tendered against the Prince Line for the carriage of mail to Port Said. About 1912 another new company entered the Cyprus trade, the Navigazione Generale Italiana; and in October 1912 the Khedivial Mail Steamship Company of Egypt took over from the Limassol Steamship line the mail service to Port Said. To keep abreast of these developments the Cyprus administration first modernized the harbour of Famagusta with money from the British loan; then in 1906, when it had completed the works in that port, it directed its eyes to Larnaca and Paphos, bypassing Limassol because the port facilities there seemed adequate, at least temporarily. In 1908 it extended the pier at Larnaca by 450 feet, and added an arm to its head to shelter lighters that landed goods and passengers from the steamers anchored in the roadstead. In the same year it began to dredge the shallow bay at Paphos to a depth of eight feet at low water, so that small coasters might take refuge there in rough weather and discharge their cargoes directly onto the jetty.17 In 1912 it dredged the tiny Kyrenia Harbour to a similar depth and strengthened its old stone jetty so that it would accommodate small vessels. Then, having improved all the other harbours, it turned back to Limassol and began in 1913 to build a stone jetty in that strategic port. 17 One stormy night in January 1910 twenty vessels found safety in this bay, although the dredging was still unfinished.

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Agricultural expansion All branches of production shared in the expansion attested by the growth of trade, the increase in banking facilities and the improvement in communications; but of special significance was the expansion of agriculture, the keystone of the island's economy. In 1896 Gennadius had initiated a search for useful plants that might be acclimatized, and between that date and 1914 several new crops appeared in Cyprus, notably potatoes, maize, soya beans, cumin, lucerne, and sisal. By far the most important of these was the potato, which quickly became a more lucrative export than madder had ever been, as well as a valuable addition to the islanders' diet: in the five year period from 1907 to 1911 Cyprus was shipping to Egypt an average of 960 tons yearly and the traffic was growing by leaps and bounds.18 Agriculture benefited greatly, also, from the introduction of more productive varieties of plants already cultivated on the island, and from the distribution of pure seed grain to replace the impure seed that the peasants had been using from time immemorial.'° Most farmers in these first years of the twentieth century tried hard to improve their agriculture, encouraged by vigorous propaganda and support from government departments. Vinegrowers learned to combat the oidium disease with sulphur, citrus growers to fight the scale disease with a soap spray. By 1914 most Cypriots were willing to pay for insecticides, and either spray their crops themselves or allow the government to spray them. The administration continued to control the locusts,20 and it attempted also to keep down the rats that preyed on the carob and fruit trees by 18 In the five-year period 1918-22 Cyprus exported annually, 5,167 tons of potatoes worth £61,980; and in the five-year period 1945-49, 19,090 tons, worth £444,329. The 1955 figures were half as high again: 32,727 tons, worth £697,049. 19 The administration carefully advanced only selected seed to farmers who applied for advances under the Seed Corn Law of 1898. 2° In 1883 it ceased to pay for the collection and destruction of locust eggs during the summer and winter months, but revived the payments ten years later, when it also rewarded the villagers for catching the hatched insects in nets during the spring. The tremendous hosts that had persistently ravaged the eastern Mesaoria during the Turkish era had been so reduced in numbers that they no longer marched in swarms, and Mattei's screen-andpit method of destroying them (see page 30) was virtually useless. In 1912 the government experimented with a spray of sodium arsenite and molasses, and found this to be the cheapest and most effective locusticide. Today it is using a spray of benzene hexachloride (B.M.C.), which is less toxic to grazing stock than sodium arsenite.

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offering a bounty of one piastre on every rat's tail the peasants brought in.21 It experimented, too, with chemical fertilizers, and publicly demonstrated their use until in 1911 some villagers voluntarily tried them out on their fields. Three years later a dozen business firms had become agents for various European fertilizers, and were promoting their use with all the zest of free enterprisers who have discovered a virgin market 22 Nevertheless, in one phase of agriculture, mechanization, Cyprus lagged badly. Lang's attempt in 1877 to mechanize his farm near Larnaca had ended in dismal failure.23 Even Gennadius, the first Director of Agriculture, laboured with little success for several years to teach the peasants the advantages of steam threshers, cultivators, horse rakes, screens for purifying grain, and other machines and implements of that pregasoline era. He and his successor devised a special plough more suited to Cyprus' soils than foreign ploughs, and they demonstrated its superiority over the native implement not in government nurseries alone but on private farms. With the approval of their superiors they even entered the importing business and brought in various machines to sell at cost price to any peasants they could induce to buy them. But scarcely any peasants could afford capital equipment of this type, and the few large landholders who could saw little profit in buying it as long as labour costs remained very low. So the prejudice against change was slow in fading. At the beginning of the twentieth century, however, when wages had risen and the heavy cereal crops that followed the droughts of 1901 and 1902 created a strong demand for more farm workers, a few farmers did mechanize some of their operations, and in one year (1907) the Department of Agriculture disposed of no fewer than eleven reapers. Thereupon several merchants accepted agencies from foreign machine-manufacturers, and the government retired from the supply business, leaving its development to private enterprise. Since that time mechanization has advanced fitfully, lagging in some periods, and speeding up in others when labour has been in short supply.24 After sixty years, however, the process has failed to penetrate deeply, largely because 21 In 1913 the government paid £469 in bounties on the 84,370 rats the peasants destroyed. 22 Cyprus imported 47,713 tons of fertilizers in 1954. 23 Cf. page 149. 24 1954 was one of these periods. In that year the island imported 56 combine harvesters. Report of the Department of Agriculture,1954 (Nicosia, 1955), p. 10.

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the holdings of the average peasant are so small and scattered that they can be cultivated economically only with the simplest and cheapest machinery." Let us survey very briefly the vicissitudes of the principal crops around the beginning of the twentieth century.26 Production of the staples, wheat and barley, increased in rough proportion to the increase in the island's population (see Figs. 5 and 7), although harvests naturally varied greatly from one season to another. Oats continued to be, as always, a minor crop, and the maize that Gennadius introduced from America met with little favour; but another plant he imported, cumin, gradually spread and has now become a valuable export. Faulty methods of production and fierce competition from other countries harassed the winegrowers down to the First World War; but the struggle taught them to improve their techniques, and when the war ended, they recaptured some of their old markets and gained a few new ones. The carob growers encountered fair sailing. Their markets in Egypt and western Europe, especially England, seemed insatiable, encouraging the peasants to enlarge their plantations until by 1910 they were exporting an average of 40,000 tons of pods yearly, almost three times as much as thirty years before Fig. 14).27 The citrus growers too fought their way to prosperity, despite the ravages of the scale disease; in the ten years from 1902 to 1912 they doubled their production (see Fig. 15), which has grown continuously since.28 Tobacco and cotton, however, both languished. Turkish taxation had crushed the cultivation of tobacco, and England's first attempts to revive it failed, partly because the Cypriots had forgotten how to cure the leaf, and partly because they had acquired a taste for foreign tobacco. Only after the First World War did it revive and become a major crop. Cotton, once the white gold of Cyprus, never revived (see Fig. 5) ; with the opening up of the 25 Any attempt to consolidate the holdings without a cadastral survey would have created grave confusion and unrest. After the completion of such a survey between the two world wars the government did pass legislation to facilitate farm consolidation, but progress has been very slow because the process runs counter to the old inheritance laws introduced by the Turks. See page 56. 26 Fuller details are given in Appendix VI. 27 Yearly exports of carobs from 1945-49 averaged 46,131 tons, valued at £694,941. 28 Exports of citrous fruits have increased enormously since 1912—and indeed since 1950—in both quantity and value, even allowing for the depreciation of the pound sterling. Between 1945 and 1949 the island exported each year, on the average, 451,669 cases of oranges, lemons and grapefruit worth £377,021, whereas for the three years 1953-55 its exports averaged 909,649 cases worth £ 1,122,543.

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BRITISH RULE : 1889-1914

1880 1890 1900

13.793

2I.95 I 29:994

1910

10 20 THOUSANDS OF TONS

30

FIG. 14. CAROB EXPORTS: yearly averages for the four decades ending 1880, 1890, 1900, and 1910.

FIG. 15. EXPORTS OF CITRUS FRUITS AND POMEGRANATES FROM 1889-1912. The sudden drop in citrus exports in 1894 marks the attack of the scale disease, which became serious again in 1898 and 1899. In those two years Cyprus encountered competition from Italian merchants in the Black Sea. The year 1902 was one of drought, but I could find no reason for the decline from 1906 to 1909.

New World it had ceased to be the scarce and expensive article of Venetian days, and Cyprus, with its limited farm land and restricted water supply, could afford very little acreage for a lowpriced crop. Happily, her second textile, wool, did not suffer the 179

THE ECONOMICS OF CYPRUS

same eclipse, because the numbers of sheep held stable within the limits of the island's pasturage, rarely exceeding 300,000 or falling below 200,000. The production of her third textile, silk, increased a little after the British authorities regulated the importation of silkworm eggs from France and Italy, and established two sericulture stations to train the workers; but silk failed to recover the place it held during the first half of the eighteenth century (see Fig. 6) . Forests and the goat problem The expansion of agriculture called for sterner supervision of the forest lands, on which the peasantry continued to make serious inroads. For more than twenty years the British administration adhered to the forest policies that Madon had recommended in 1882.29 It made no effort to replant the barren slopes and ridges, an operation that required more funds than it could spare; but it strictly enforced its forest regulations in the neighbourhood of the new mines that were opening up, and forbade all use of wood or charcoal for smelting ores, thereby forestalling any repetition of the havoc that copper mining had wrought in Cyprus' timbered regions during the remote Bronze Age, when mankind knew no other fuels. It increased, too, the number of fuel plantations near the towns and villages to diminish the drain on the forests and reduce the heavy bill for imported firewood;8° and it expanded its nurseries to meet an ever growing demand from the public for economic and shade trees that could be planted on private land.82 By 1894 its forestry department—which then comprised only 5 officers, 4 mounted guards and 23 foot guards, with 10 more foot guards added in summer when the hazards from fire were greatest—had arrested the steady shrinkage of the forests and was successfully protecting the young seedlings that had sprung up in many places. Ten years later, when Britain's large development loan and her assumption of over half the "Turkish tribute" enabled the administration to increase its budget, this small staff drove paths through the forests to aid the work of the fire fighters and to expedite the extraction 29 See page 147. 3° See page 149. By an ordinance of 1884 all forest products were admitted to Cyprus free of duty. 31 In 1890 the Nicosia nursery alone issued 6,826 young trees, free of charge to monasteries, schools and other public institutions, and for purely nominal sums to private individuals. In 1907 the same nursery sold 26,223 trees, of which 21,258 were forest trees, 2,002 foliage plants, and 2,963 fruit and carob trees.

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of timber for the government's two sawmills; and it replaced with Aleppo and stone pines the areas from which it cut this timber. By 1913 it was administering no fewer than 32 fuel plantations and nursery gardens, in addition to three mountain stations whose staff raised seedlings to plant in the adjoining forests and at the same time maintained a strict fire patrol. Many shepherds who had previously derived much of their livelihood from forest lands resented every limitation of their ancestral grazing grounds and opposed this modest conservation program at every opportunity.82 To placate them the government separated more sharply the timbered areas from those that were covered with brush only, and threw the latter wide open for the grazing of flocks. But while it retreated strategically in this direction, it attacked the shepherds in another. It knew that their ever hungry goats ate not only the seedlings in the forests, but the leaves and fruit of every living plant that came within their reach—the vines of the wine-producer as well as the farmers' olives, carobs, and grain; and in a move to enlist the support of the victimized cultivators33 it pushed through the legislative council a law "to provide for the reduction of goats in Cyprus" by applying the principle of local village option. Under the new regulations, if ten property owners in any village demanded a ballot, and if in that ballot the majority of the village's property owners voted in favour of the exclusion of all "free-range" (i.e., untethered) goats, the villages became what was called "prescribed" and no one might keep the animals within its boundaries. To avoid penalizing the shepherds, however, the law granted them one year in which to dispose of their goats, and decreed that the government should purchase all animals that remained over at the end of that period. 92 They were still opposing it forty years later. Cf.: `By age-old custom shepherds regard themselves as being at liberty to graze flocks on any land which is not actually under growing crops and they resent any restriction imposed on the grazing area by tree planting. The shepherds are a lawless class and by threats of violence, actual uprooting of young trees, or permitting goats to graze over planted areas, exercise a powerful influence against tree planting, which is so badly needed, especially in the plains, for the production of cash crops such as olives, almonds, and carobs, the supply of fuel and the provision of shelter belts." Cyprus, Land Utilization Committee, Report of the Land Utilization Committee (Nicosia, 1946), p. 10. 33 "The rich men and all owners of vineyards are for the destruction of the goats. Poor men are generally indifferent. To those who own goats the question is one of vital importance. Strong measures against the goats might give rise to riots in certain parts of the island, where the people have little or nothing else to live by." AP 1883, IX, C. 3661, p. 63.

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This measure, passed in 1913, gained support immediately, and within a year 34 villages had voted in favour of banning free-range goats from their territories.$* But the problem had not been solved. The war between free-range goats and the forests never ends until one or the other has been eliminated: "they cannot exist together in the same place any more than a cat and a mouse in the same room."86 Yet governments dare not blandly decree that the goats must go, for these animals, like sheep, are an indispensable source of wealth in many parts of the Mediterranean; and the free-range goat, which is cheaper and easier to maintain than the tethered animal, will thrive in environments so harsh that sheep perish. A committee of experts that studied the question in 1946 estimated that if Cyprus eliminated all its free-range goats, it would reduce the island's production of milk by about 35 per cent, of cheese by 45 per cent, of meat by 25 per cent, of local leather by 80 per cent, and of available manure by 40,000 tons; and it concluded that losses of this magnitude were too high a price to pay for reforesting more of the island than is forested today.88 So the warfare between goat and forest continues. It pressed particularly hard against the goats and sheep during the early years of the twentieth century, when Cyprus' growing population was ploughing up more and more of the waste land in the plains that had nourished most of the flocks. The administration sternly refused to increase the number of grazing licenses in its forests. It actually reduced them, indeed, in 1912, on the ground that the shepherds' flocks had inflicted excessive damage during the two or three preceding years. The boundaries of forest lands today have changed but little from those outlined with cairns by the Forest Delimitation Commission between the years 1884 and 1896. Conservation and reforestation are slow and expensive processes in an island where pine trees require 150 years to reach maturity, and within the areas classified as forest land the overgrazed sections, bare or covered with scrub, still greatly surpass the productive ones: the proportion 86 By 1954 almost half the boundaries of the forests were fringed with villages that had voted to ban goats from their lands; yet much illicit grazing and cutting within the forests still continued. Cyprus, Forest Report, 1954, by G. W. Chapman (Nicosia, 1955), p. 14. 88 Sir D. E. Hutchins quoted in Cyprus, Proceedings of a Conference on Land Use in a Mediterranean Environment (Nicosia, 1947), p. 24. 88 Report of the Land Utilization Committee, p. 10. A law passed in 1886 had sought to check the increase in the number of goats on the island by prohibiting their importation except under special permission; but the effect was negligible.

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now is 2 to 1, and it must have been considerably greater before the twentieth century. By 1914, nevertheless, the measures adopted in the first years of British rule had already begun to pay dividends. Pines and cypresses were springing up all along the Kyrenia Range; many, perhaps most, of the diseased and fallen trees in the Troodos Mountains had been cleared away, leaving room for the young seedlings; and the public was being supplied from its own forests with pine lumber for housebuilding, oak for ploughs and carts, arbutus for chairs and for fuel, wood for saddles, axe handles, garden stakes and many other purposes, all at prices as low or lower than it could buy them elsewhere. It is not possible to determine the extent to which the government's care of the forests lessened the volume and speed of the runoff from the winter rains, checked floods and land erosion, and conserved the water supply; but we can hardly doubt that in these directions also it exerted much beneficial influence. Mining Cyprus' mining industry developed very slowly during the early British regime, and indeed until the end of the First World War. It is true that local capital continued to exploit her umber and gypsum deposits, but for ten years after the closing of the Lymni mine near Pelathousa her copper deposits remained untouched and seemingly forgotten.37 In 1898 a new syndicate tried to work the same or a neighbouring mine, but it fared no better than its predecessor. Speculators then shifted their interest to asbestos. In 1907 the Cyprian Mining Company of Trieste, with a capital of 400,000 crowns, attacked the historic deposits at Amiandos, in the Troodos Mountains, and before the year ended shipped out 88 tons of dressed asbestos valued at £563 16s. Encouraged by this success the company merged two years later with another, increased its capital, and purchased the abandoned mine at Lymni; but only 60 of the 1,000 tons of ore it extracted from that property in 1910 carried enough copper to warrant shipment to London. However, its Amiandos mine prospered and more than covered the expense of the Lymni one. During the four years from 1910 to 1913 the company exported small but increasing quantities of asbestos-435 tons in 1910, 713 in 1911, 832 in 1912, and 1103 in 1913. 87

See page 144.

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The mining of umber rose and fell in response to the demands from European and American markets, and exports fluctuated correspondingly from about 1,000 tons yearly to 3,000, and, in one exceptional year, 1907, to 6,517 tons. Nevertheless, production slowly increased under British rule (Fig. 16), although the earth commanded a low price, ranging from only 10 shillings to one pound per ton. For a few years the administration retained the heavy umber royalty that it had inherited from the Turks, but it greatly lowered the percentage when the industry showed signs of slumping under the burden. Most of the earth went to Leghorn in Italy, where it was calcined and re-exported, mainly to the United States; but a considerable quantity of the raw material found its way to England.

2.609

1884 1890

1,975

1895

1.928

1900 1905

2.086 2.479 3,495

1910 1,000

2,000 TONS

3,000

FIG. 16. UMBER EXPORTS: yearly average for five-year periods ending 1890, 1895, 1900, 1905, and 1910. The period ending 1884 covers three years only.

Gypsum too brought low prices for large tonnage, but ships could load it as ballast and freight it at little cost. It enjoyed a small but expanding market within Cyprus, and a foreign market that was equally small until about 1896, when a building boom in Egypt sent it soaring. Exports to that market then increased tenfold in as many years, and the Nile country was still absorbing as much as 184

U.K. In/ormadon Sertice

PLATE XV REFORESTED MOUNTAIN SLOPES AND A GUEST HOUSE FOR OFFICIAL VISITORS, WHO HAVE TO BRING THEIR OWN FOOD.

PLATE XVI NICOSIA, THE CAPITAL OF CYPRUS. THE MINARET CROWNS THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY GOTHIC CATHEDRAL OF SANTA SOMA, NOW A MOSQUE.

U.K. 1n/ormation Service

BRITISH RULE : 1889-1914

Cyprus could furnish (Fig. 17). In 1906 the Larnaca district erected an additional factory to crush the mineral; and in the same year Egypt herself began to exploit some low-grade deposits near the Nile and to set up factories in her own territory. Two years later, however, a financial crisis checked Egypt's building boom and her demand for gypsum declined as swiftly as it had arisen. Cyprus' exports then dropped by a half in twelve months, and did not recover until after the First World War.

FIG. 17. EXPORTS OF GYPSUM FROM 1885 TO 1910. Note the rapid expansion of exports at the turn of the century induced by seemingly limitless demands from Egypt, and the equally sudden drop after 1908 when a financial crisis in Egypt restricted building and the country's own newly built gypsum factories began to compete with Cypriot ones.

Although mining slowly expanded, then, during the early years of British rule, it remained a relatively unimportant industry down to 1926. From that date it grew rapidly, aided by capital from the United States, and by 1954 was shipping abroad mineral products valued at £9,575,621 or 59 per cent of the total value of all the island's exports. Copper and iron pyrites held first place in those 185

THE ECONOMICS OF CYPRUS

exports: for the economic wheel had come full circle, and the metal that had spread Cyprus' fame during the Bronze Age was now contributing once again to her prosperity." Industries Cyprus needed other industries besides mining to lessen her dependence on agriculture and give employment to her rising population. Unhappily, she lacked the sources of energy that are requisite for industrial development. She possessed no coal deposits, her supply of wood was severely limited, and her rivers carried too small and irregular a flow to furnish any appreciable amount of electricity. The electricity grid that covers the island today uses the latent energy of imported oil, but that fuel came into widespread use only after the First World War. So with only manpower and animal power supplying the energy, Cyprus' age-old ceramic, textile, and leather industries had hardly risen above the level of handicrafts. Even these industries declined in the early years of British rule. True, tanning and the manufacture of leather goods continued to flourish in Nicosia, although the factories were now producing drab shoes and boots of European styles in place of the blue, yellow, and red shoes they had supplied to Turkey and Egypt before the British occupations° But the island's textile industry was no more. It had collapsed during the Turkish regime through competition from Manchester, and of the forty to fifty small factories whose printed calicoes had carried the name of Nicosia all over the Levant only one survived in 1898, and the owner of that "factory," with his one assistant, could hardly meet his expenses. Men and women 38 The Lymni mine mentioned above has changed hands several times during the British regime. Owned now by the Cyprus Sulphur and Copper Company Limited, it yielded in 1954, 2,979 tons of copper-bearing ore and 549 tons of cupreous pyrites. The Cyprus Asbestos Mines Limited still works the Amiandos deposits: it employed 2,295 labourers at the peak of the 1954 season, mined 1,473,874 tons of rock, and exported 18,163 tons of asbestos fibre valued at £868,668. In the same years the island exported to various countries throughout the world slightly under 100,000 tons of gypsum and about 5,000 tons of terra umbra. The latter went mainly to England and the United States, which have been Cyprus' chief customers for this product since the nineteenth century. See Cyprus, Mines Office, Annual Report of the Inspector of Mines, 1954 (Nicosia, 1955). 88 Cypriots used the native pine bark or crushed sumac leaves for tanning; and they shipped large quantities of the latter to Greece and Turkey, but gathered and prepared it so carelessly that it brought a low price. In 1888, however, a Limassol factory imported sumac-crushing machinery from England and proceeded to turn out a high quality product that won a good market in England and France.

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still wore coarse calico dresses woven in Cypriot homes, and the more affluent women could buy dresses in Nicosia made from a finer cloth described as cotton-linen; but much of the yarn for these materials came from England. The silk-weaving industry had gone the way of the cotton-weaving. Raisers of silkworms in the Paphos and other districts sent most of their cocoons to France; and only a few women in Nicosia still wove silk, dying it usually with aniline colours, since all the old vegetable dyes had disappeared except those derived from the roots of madder, the blossoms of safflower, and the peels of onions and pomegranates.40 Many small ceramic factories that had made wine jars, water chatties, tiles, and other articles had gone to the wall. In 1886 Lapithos alone had maintained about forty small pottery works, and there were others in Varosha near Famagusta, at Kornos in the Larnaca district, and at Phini in the Limassol district; but ten years later foreign competition and the price of fuel had reduced the number of Lapithos' plants to four.41 In partial compensation for the loss of these small and primitive establishments a brick-and-tile factory that opened in Limassol about 1905 equipped itself with up-to-date machinery and began to supply first-rate products to both the home and export markets. The most prosperous industry at the end of the nineteenth century was the manufacture of cigarettes from imported Macedonian tobacco,42 which now added Britain to the list of its overseas customers. During the 1890's Cyprus was importing each year about 130,000 okes of tobacco leaves valued at £ 12,000, and about 31,000 okes of "tumbeki" or Persian tobacco valued at £2,200.49 Less than half this quantity was re-exported. The greater part was consumed in Cyprus itself, where it quickly created an aversion to the local product and a preference for the foreign leaf. It was this preference more than imperfect techniques that checked the renascence of tobacco cultivation on the island, and foiled the efforts of a syndicate launched in 1910 to manufacture and market cigarettes from the home-grown product, reducing to bankruptcy that enterprise which initially had seemed most promising. Several new industries, e.g., the making of artificial teeth, have established themselves in Cyprus since the First World War, but 40 Gennadius had encouraged the use of native dyes, and made also a valiant attempt to revive the manufacture of the perfumes for which Cyprus had once been famous; but his efforts were still-born. 41 AP 1899, DC, C. 9289, p. 29. By 1956 only one remained. 42 See page 82. 43 Gennadius, Part II, p. 21.

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all are small except the tourist traffic, which is generally classed today as an industry. In origin it dates back to the early years of England's rule and to the vision of her first high commissioner, Sir Garnet Wolseley, who predicted that the island's pine-clad mountains, with their invigorating air and freedom from malaria, would become a tourist and health resort for the peoples of Egypt and Syria as soon as steamship connections became more regular and frequent, and a few modem hotels replaced the unsanitary, vermininfested inns that visitors of his time had to put up with. He himself pointed the way by retaining Troodos as the seat of the government during the hot months of summer, as it had been under the Turks, and by moving his occupation troops up the LimassolPlatres road to a station below Troodos, where they could escape the heat and sicknesses of the fever-ridden plain. So healthy was this locality that in 1885 the British War Office began to send invalid troops from Egypt to convalesce in the same camp from June to September. In 1892 an enterprising Cypriot opened a good hotel outside Limassol, but was forced to close it a year or two later because the local traffic proved inadequate to support it, and the island was still too isolated to attract enough travellers from surrounding countries and from England. By the summer of 1905, however, the salubrity of Cyprus' forested mountains had become more widely known, and visitors from Egypt and elsewhere found satisfactory accommodation at Platres in a modest hotel, and in an encampment of tents which an Englishwoman set up in the neighbourhood to meet the needs of tourists. Eight years later the administration spent several hundred pounds on improving this locality, which was fast becoming a popular tourist resort, frequented by Cypriots as well as by foreigners. Its popularity has grown with the years. By 1954, just before the outbreak of violence in support of union with Greece, more than 30,000 persons were visiting Cyprus each year, in addition to the uncounted passengers of several cruising ships; and the hill resorts of Troodos, Platres, Prodhromos, Pedhoulas and Kalopanayiotis were providing excellent hotel accommodation at very reasonable prices. Summary of British rule down to 1914 Agriculture dominated in the broad economic advance that characterized the thirty-five year interval between the retirement of Turkey and the First World War. That period witnessed the 188

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island's regeneration. A trained civil service, recruited almost exclusively from the local population, executed the government's policies and collected the taxes; and an avowedly impartial judiciary enforced the laws without regard to language, religion, or wealth. For the first time since Roman days—and more easily than in Roman days—men could circle and crisscross the land in wheeled vehicles, modern Cypriots riding in automobiles where the Roman inhabitants had travelled in slow-moving ox waggons and donkey carts. For the first time in its history, too, Cyprus possessed safe harbours in which vessels of moderate size could anchor or tie up and unload passengers and freight at solidly constructed wharves. No known resource of the island remained untapped, even if it was not yet fully utilized. Slowly—very slowly—the mountains were being reclothed with trees, ancient mines were yielding their minerals again, rivers and streams coming under control, and crops —a few new but most of them old—spreading into areas that had lain derelict and waste for centuries. Trade was flourishing, the population rapidly increasing, and the standard of living slowly rising. Closer contact with the outside world, new discoveries and new techniques, all helped to bring about this revival; but by themselves they would have yielded little result without the efficiency of Britain's administrators and the enlightened character of their rule. Nevertheless, several flaws marred that enlightened rule. In those early years of her administration England fumbled with the tax system and with the "Turkish tribute." For a time she clung obstinately to the theory that every people, whatever its environment, history, or social conditions, should pull itself up by its bootstraps as England had done, availing itself only of free enterprise and the initiative of its citizens; and the imperial treasury, matching theory with practice, refused for two decades to extend Cyprus a helping hand. Worst of all, England sanctioned the dichotomy she found in the island, and even promoted it to the best of her ability, by leaving the educational control of the Turkish minority, one-fourth of the population, in the hands of the Turkish Cypriots, and of the Greek-speaking majority in the hands of the Greek Cypriots—or, more correctly in this latter case, in the hands of their mediaeval, politically ambitious Greek Orthodox church.44 "Cf. Sir George Hill, History of Cyprus (Cambridge, 1952), Vol. IV, Chap. 8. Throughout the British regime Greek and Turkish children in Cyprus have attended separate schools and received instruction in their

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Her apologists may protest that England lacked the right to change an educational system that was already established, because she had received from Turkey only the trusteeship of Cyprus, not the ownership. Whatever the merit of this somewhat legal argument, there can be little doubt that her retention and expansion of the system intensified and perpetuated a schism that had plagued the island for three centuries, and that continues to plague it down to the present day.45 I may appropriately close this summary of England's early rule by quoting the judgment of a contemporary observer, published in 1898 by an unidentified United States newspaper, probably the New York Times: The island of Cyprus is just now an object lesson of the kind of government England can give. It has been for twenty years an English possession. An American observer, Dr. George Post, of the college of Beyrout, who knew Cyprus well under Turkish rule, has recently been writing in enthusiastic terms of the astonishing transformation wrought by the British occupation. The government has but a small personnel—only about 100 officials all told—but it has simply revolutionized the island for the better. Taxation has been lightened and made a fixed and rational system, instead of a means of rapacious extortion, agriculture has been improved, and trading put on a securer basis, while a complete system of public schools is in operation. Dr. Post saw on all sides, in a recent visit, contentment and prosperity where thirty years ago only terror and wretchedness were visible.46 separate tongues, learning English only as a second language. The textbooks in the Greek schools come from Athens, as do also some of the high-school teachers; the text-books of the Turkish schools come from Istanbul or Ankara. 45 Professor Niyazi Berkes, of the Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University, Montreal, comments as follows: "The fact is, the ecclesiastical or communal monopoly over education (especially primary education) within the Ottoman Empire (including Cyprus) was not maintained at the will of the Turkish government. To the contrary, the failure to realize a common educational system for all was from the third decade of the nineteenth century a direct result of incessant pressure by the Western Powers and Russia. No one fought more tenaciously to prevent the "melting" of the peoples of the Ottoman Empire through education than the British ambassador Stratford Canning. Originally an element in the medieval Ottoman polity, the millet system, according to which education was an exclusive communal prerogative, became in the age of imperialism a tool of Western and Russian diplomacy. Demands for the preservation, even extension, of the traditional rights accorded to the non-Muslims became the means, among other things, for promoting the dissolution of the Empire. The establishment of British control on Cyprus was one of the early steps in this process." 48 AP 1900, IX, Cd. 227, p. 64.

190

BRITISH RULE : 1889-1914

History frequently mocks at human judgement. We know today that the economic improvement attested by Dr. Post in 1898 grew almost uninterruptedly for half a century, survived two world wars, and made Cyprus the most prosperous island in the Mediterranean. But the contentment of the population gradually diminished. England's government won the economic struggle, but lost the psychological one. She rid Cyprus of its sordid poverty and degradation, but she failed to reconcile and win the inhabitants' minds. From the very beginning her rule remained the rule of a foreign power, as were those of Venice and of France in earlier centuries. English officials, tourists, and businessmen came and went without sinking new roots in the island; and its Greek and Turkish inhabitants continued to live side by side without merging with one another or resolving their antagonisms. Could Cyprus have drifted far enough from Greece and Turkey that the partisan cries from those two countries reached it as feeble echoes only, it might have subdued its violent nationalisms and taught its factions to work in peaceful cooperation, all alike enjoying the economic prosperity that England had brought the island. But man, who today can split the atom and even fuse new atoms, has never learned to govern his emotions or to control his actions by his reason. His psychology remains a terra incognita greater than the physical universe. After five thousand years of what we call civilization he lives no more harmoniously with his fellow men than did his ancestors of the Stone Age.

191

APPENDIX I THE CAROB TREE. The first author to mention the carob tree, apparently, is Theophrastus, who about 332 B.c. wrote a treatise on the history of plants. He tells us that the carob was a native of Syria, and that it had spread from that country to Ionia, Rhodes, and Cnidos. F. Merton, plant ecologist of the Cyprus Department of Agriculture, believes that it was indigenous to Cyprus also: "It is most probable that the carob is native and truly wild in Cyprus. The same plant communities in which it occurs exist in Cyprus as on the mainland, e.g., Zohary's Ceratonia—Pistachia lentiscus community. The fact that Homer does not mention it does not mean that it was not here, or even widespread, but merely that it was not an important article of diet. Perhaps its use was not yet known."1 On the other hand, a former Director of Agriculture in Cyprus, P. Gennadius, either rejected or did not consider an indigenous origin for the tree, but, relying on Theophrastus, accepted its derivation from Syria; noting, moreover, that the ancient Greek writer did not mention its presence in either Cyprus or Crete, he concluded that it did not reach either of those islands until after the fourth century B.c.2 Literature, indeed, does not explicitly connect the tree with Cyprus until the reign of the Emperor Zeno, 474-491 A.o., when the island's bishop miraculously discovered under a carob tree the bones of St. Barnabas.3 It may be worth observing that although the carob grows today more or less haphazardly, often amid olive groves, in nearly every part of Cyprus below the level of two thousand feet, yet from at least the fourteenth century it has been concentrated most heavily in the south, from near Larnaca westward to Cape Aspro. Since this was the very region that absorbed the greatest number of Phoenician settlers during the first millenium B.C., it may be that those immigrants brought it with them when they crossed over from the mainland. Whatever may be its origin, it has made a greater contribution to the economy of Cyprus than any one could have foreseen, for carob pods have counted among the island's most valuable exports from the fifteenth century down to the present day. I F. Merton, personal communication. P. Gennadius, The Carob-Tree (Nicosia, 1902), pp. 4-5. Cf. E. Oberhummer, (Munich, 1903), pp. 305-309. 3 On the strength of this miracle he claimed for his church and himself special privileges which have devolved on all his successors down to the present Archbishop of Cyprus. 2

Die Insel Cypren

193

APPENDIX II STONE-WALLED TERRACES. As uncertain as the derivation of the carob tree is the origin of the stone-walled terraces, one above another, that cover the southern slopes of the Troodos Mountains behind Limassol and Paphos and redeem for viticulture large areas of land that might otherwise remain waste. They have enabled Cyprus to develop an important wine industry, which was shipping some of its products to western Europe as early as the thirteenth century A.D., and today values its annual exports at more than a quarter of a million pounds. Yet we know neither the birthplace nor the age of this agricultural technique, which is not confined to Cyprus, of course, but prevails in nearly every land washed by the Mediterranean Sea? Some scholars have assumed that it dates back to the early Iron and probably to the Bronze Age; but we may question so great an antiquity in Cyprus. To erect a continuous stone wall is an arduous and time-consuming task, even on rocky slopes of limestone or sandstone where material lies ready at hand;2 and unless the wall is built very carefully, it seldom holds intact longer than twenty years .8 To be sure, time does not count greatly in a primitive agricultural community, but no farmer, not even a slave-owning noble, willingly struggles with steep hill slopes if he Ø obtain flat or gently sloping land of equal or better quality; and such land was probably still plentiful during the Bronze and early Iron Ages, when the island appears to have been relatively peaceful and not burdened with an excessive population. I strongly suspect, indeed, that the Mediterranean region was unfamiliar with stone-terrace cultivation until the early centuries of the Christian era, because I can find no name for the terraces in classical Greek or Latin, nor any mention of them in classical literature.¢ The technique may have reached Cyprus from Syria or Lebanon, where it originated, perhaps, in the war-ridden years that followed the collapse of the Roman Empire. Once introduced, two factors would promote its extension: first, increasing recognition of the unhealthiness of certain lowland areas after malaria became endemic;5 and second, the raids of the Saracens I The narrow benches that the stone walls protect may be planted to olives, grapes, or (in Sicily) oranges, and beneath those trees the peasants commonly grow wheat or beans during the winter months, to bear a crop in the spring. Behind San Remo, on the Italian Riviera, flowers are now proving more profitable than either olives or grapes. 2 "The people hack a bench out of the valley side, build up a retaining terrace wall, carry soil to level the area; it may take a season's work for a family to produce a plot of land only a few times the size of an office table." Cyprus, Proceedings of a Conference on Land Use in a Mediterranean Environment (Nicosia, 1947), p. 9. 3 "It was the exception to find any terracing capable of lasting even twenty years. Ibid., p. 13. Cf. Cyprus, Report of the Land Utilization Committee (Nicosia, 1946), pp. 15, 31. 4 I have searched in vain through Cato, Varro, and Columella. I may add that in modem Greek these stone terraces are called Sows, from the classical word botcos, which generally meant a "house" but in two passages of Herodotus, and in some later writers, signified also "a layer or course of stones or brick in a building." H. G. Liddell and Robert Scott, Greek-English Lexicon (9th ed.; Oxford, 1953), sub Somas. Modern Italian has two names, neither of them ancient, terrazza and balzi, the latter from balzare, a verb of uncertain origin meaning "to leap." 5 See W. H. S. Jones, Malaria: A Neglected Factor in the History of Greece and Rome (Manchester, 1911).

194

APPENDICES

from the seventh century onward, which forced many Cypriots to abandon their coastal homes and flee for refuge to the mountains e 6 For the invasions of the Saracens in the seventh century see Sir George Hill, History of Cyprus (Cambridge, 1940), I, 283-94. History repeated itself later, for in 1738 an English traveller in Cyprus remarked: "Much of the island near the sea lies uncultivated by reason of corsairs." C. D. Cobham, Excerpta Cypria (Cambridge, 1908), p. 269. Similarly in the west, Saracen raids on the Ligurian coast and in the lower Rhone valley during the ninth and tenth centuries drove the inhabitants of those regions also into the mountains, and may have been responsible for the stone-terrace cultivation that still persists on the Riviera and on the eastern slopes of the Cevennes. W. Allan comments, usefully: "Raids may have been a very important factor in driving population into the hills. I know of a modern example. The Tonga, an African tribe I have studied, were in the nineteenth century frequently raided by the Matabele. They abandoned their fertile lands on the borders of the Kafue Flats and retreated into the barren escarpment hills behind, where they made crude stone terraces and scraped a precarious livelihood." W. Allan, personal communication.

195

APPENDIX III GROWTH OF AGRICULTURE AS SHOWN BY TITHES, 1879-1897* YEARLY AVERAGE FOR A FIVE YEAR PERIOD ENDING: CROP

March 1884

March 1889

March 1894

1897 over 1884

WHEAT (bushels)

107,909 132,638 185,917 195,003

80

BARLEY (bushels)

151,942 158,757 222,868 172,196

12

VETCHES (bushels)

16,049

14,595

23,516

26,302

64

OATS (bushels)

5,366

6,341

14,855

33,951

530

109,349 169,642 208,832 263,401

140

BEANS (okes)

25,395

185

FIGS (okes)

99,002 150,293 196,005 220,803

123

OLIVES (okes)

74,803 135,437 220,111 202,841

171

OLIVE OIL (okes)

29,591

37,110

54,214

83

POMEGRANATES (okes)

74,970

86,636 102,675 124,593

66

ONIONS (okes)

91,966

95,101 119,509 138,172

50

115,038 154,424 215,710 269,030

134

SESAME (okes)

POTATOES (okes)

8,893

23,032

18,899

69,676

34,673

55,277

72,996

81,978

136

3,015

3,236

3,993

4,821

60

LEMONS (number)

344,977 623,780 595,629 550,872

60

ORANGES (number)

138,720 276,105 256,988 263,905

90

KOLOKAS (okes) HEMP (okes)

* Tithe figures from AP 1898, VIII, C. 8804, pp. 17 f.

196

March 1897

PERCENTAGE INCREASE

APPENDIX

IV

IMPORTS AND EXPORTS EXCLUDING COIN AND BULLION 1879-1913* YEAR

IMPORTS

EXPORTS

1879 1880 • 1881 1882 1883 FIVE-YEAR AVERAGE

£308,407 272,663 296,868 333,512 344,183 311,127

£222,218 209,905 266,610 276,129 290,210 253,014

1884 1885 1886 1887 1888 FIVE-YEAR AVERAGE

304,375 312,917 355,795 356,375 227,700 311,432

287,521 294,815 312,797 201,266 210,297 261,339

1889 1890 1891 1892t 1893t THREE-YEAR AVERAGE

244,324 274,123 344,125

314,628 399,748 432,417

287,524

382,264

1894t 1895 1896 1897 1898 FOUR-YEAR AVERAGE

242,068 240,051 263,346 343,687 272,288

274,609 297,142 264,802 288,206 281,190

1899 1900 1901 1902 1903 FIVE-YEAR AVERAGE

289,768 289,874 364,092 402,961 354,522 340,243

264,851 338,371 311,130 271,098 374,439 311,978

1904 1905 1906 1907 1908 FIVE-YEAR AVERAGE

388,905 430,472 501,921 629,053 567,444 503,559

466,130 424,063 464,392 603,530 588,904 502,404

1909 1910 1911 1912 1913 FIVE-YEAR AVERAGE

580,593 493,475 547,772 602,345 619,338 568,705

449,950 51I,841 626,557 728,988 620,591 587,585

' Figures are taken from the Annual Reports of the High Commissioner, Cyprus, n AP 1879-1914. t The import and export figures for he years 1892, 1893, and 1894 in AP included coin and bullion and are therefore omitted.

197

APPENDIX V LOCAL REVENUES AND EXPENDITURES, 1879-1913* YEAR 1879 1880 1881 1882 1883$ FIVE-YEAR AVERAGE 1884 1885 1886 1887 1888 FIVE-YEAR AVERAGE 1889 1890 1891 1892 1893 FIVE-YEAR AVERAGE 1894 1895 1896 1897 1898 FIVE-YEAR AVERAGE 1899 1900 1901 1902 1903 FIVE-YEAR AVERAGE 1904 1905 1906 1907 1908 FIVE-YEAR AVERAGE 1909 1910 1911 1912 1913 FIVE-YEAR AVERAGE

REVENUES

EXPENDITURESt

£148,36I 156,095 163,733 189,335 194,051 170,315 172,072 172,334 187,044 145,443 149,363 165,251 174,499 194,936 217,161 189,933 177,053 190,716 167,092 167,777 168,658 190,625 210,284 180,887 200,638 215,268 198,070 160,112 215,360 197,889 218,884 238,212 286,873 311,810 303,477 271,851 309,775 286,848 319,572 334,685 341,816 318,539

£117,445 119,417 157,673 120,636 111,684 125,371 112,085 111,301 110,679 113,325 7 111,848 106,338 107,589 112,742 111,394 117,654 111,143 114,756 113,851 129,494 132,130 132,974 124,641 134,682 135,387 135,839 139,714 140,284 137,181 154,406 159,117 182,066 203,029 244,061 188,535 251,264 251,521 235,256 258,661 296,165 258,573

Figures are taken from AP 1880-1914. The occasional discrepancies that appear in those reports are insignificant. t Expenditures do not include Cyprus' contribution to the Turkish tribute. $ After 1883 the government fiscal year ended on 31 March, so that the period of time for this fiscal year was from 1 January 1883 to 31 March 1884.

198

APPØIX VI AGRICULTURE FROM 1890 TO 1914 CEREALS. The cultivation of wheat and barley continued to keep pace with the growth of the population, but actual production varied greatly from year to year—in the case of wheat from 885,436 bushels in the drought year of 1902, when the island had to import nearly 11,000 tons of flour from Egypt, to 2,600,839 bushels in 1907, the biggest crop on record up to that time: the average seems to have been about 1,500,000 bushels. The figures for barley, as usual, ran somewhat higher. Gennadius in 1895 estimated the average at 2,300,000 bushels, of which 675,000 were exported. Prominent in these exports was a special variety of barley that had reached Cyprus about twenty years before, and grew mainly in the mountains: it carried six rows of grain in each ear, and was much demanded in England for malting. From 1881 onward low prices for grain discouraged many farmers, who tried to diversify a little by planting olive and almond trees; but the Balkan War of 1912 raised prices again, and the World War I that followed sent them soaring. Oats shared in the general expansion of agriculture. The average annual production during the ten years 1879-89 was only 65,760 bushels, but in the five years 1897-1901 it reached 270,134 bushels, which is greater than today's average. Compared with wheat and barley, however, oats has always been a minor crop. Gennadius imported from the United States in 1897 two varieties of maize, which he propagated in his nursery at Nicosia and distributed to any farmers who would plant the seed. But the peasants preferred their usual fodder, vetch, and showed little interest in either maize or lucerne (which he imported about the same time) until the drought of 1902, when the vetch crop failed and they faced the alternative of either raising a fodder crop during the summer or selling their cattle. Many then planted maize seed supplied by the Department of Agriculture, and maintained their cattle on its green stems and leaves until the winter." As soon as the emergency passed, however, the majority contented themselves with growing only vetch again; and neither maize nor lucerne has ever reached the status of a major crop. SESAME. Sesame production, like cereal production, fluctuated from one year to another. Gennadius stated in 1895 that the island was raising about 5,250 hundredweight yearly, exporting a third of the crop for prices yielding about £ 1,750, retaining part of the balance for seed and using the remainder for oil or as a condiment.' As in earlier centuries, Cyprus rarely produced enough sesame to cover its own needs: it generally imported considerably more than it exported, as in the eight years from 1903 to 1910, when it imported 11,016 hundredweight and exported only 6,889. Why it exported any at all, indeed, is not clear. ANISEED. Aniseed is native to the Levant and has been grown in Cyprus since at least the Lusignan period; but it possessed so little importance that in 1881 the English administration exempted it from the tithe, which was yielding less than £2 a year. At that time the plant was cultivated in the Morphou area only, but soon afterwards it spread to the Nicosia and other districts, stimulated by a sudden demand for its seeds from France, Italy, and Syria, which used them to flavour liqueurs. In 1890 Cyprus' crops of aniseed covered nearly 5,000 donums, and produced seed weighing 4,850 hundredweight, of which nearly half, valued at £2,039, went abroad.s AP 1904, XII, Cd. 1786, p. 12. 2 p. Gennadius, Report on the Agriculture of Cyprus, 1895 (Nicosia, n.d.), Part II, p. 6. In 1912 production was estimated at 7,808 hundredweight and in 1913 at 7,935 hundredweight. 3 AP 1892, IX, C. 6764, pp. 18-19.

199

THE ECONOMICS OF CYPRUS

Then the government, realizing its new value, reimposed the tithe on the quantity exported, and Gennadius in 1897 brought in fresh seed from the Apennines.* Hardly had he done so than prices, which had been holding steady at about £ 1 per hundredweight, dropped without warning to half that amount, and many farmers who had been planting aniseed reverted to their earlier crop, sesame. Prices recovered in 1899, and after the drought year of 1902 production increased again, although it remained very irregular down to the outbreak of war in 1914. CUMIN. It is not clear whether cumin was grown in Cyprus before the British regime, or whether it was introduced by Gennadius, who imported some seed from Malta in 1897, when he imported also aniseed. He advised the peasants to cultivate cumin as a cash crop, since the price of cereals at that time was very low; but the peasants responded slowly, and the plant, whose aromatic seeds possess medicinal qualities, remained unimportant until after the First World War .5 CAROBS. Carob cultivation, the largest contributor to Cyprus' export trade at the end of the Turkish regime, continued its steady expansion under British rule, despite a drop in prices during the 1890's when the Levant was passing through a depression. By 1910 the island was exporting each year an average of 40,000 tons of pods, almost three times as many as thirty years before .° About half the shipments went to England, the rest to Egypt, France, and Germany. Limassol and Larnaca retained their dominance in the trade, being nearest the largest carob orchards, but other ports also benefited. The bumper crop of 1912, with surplus pods from the crop of the preceding year, sold for £251,750—more than a third of the total value of all that year's exports. This extraordinary growth in carob cultivation owed much to Gennadius and his successors in the Department of Agriculture, who enthusiastically promoted the transplanting and grafting of the wild trees. In the one year 1905 the peasants replanted no fewer than 2,200 from the forest land alone. WINE. When Britain occupied Cyprus, the island was marketing most of its wines in Egypt, France, and Turkey: Egypt bought 40 per cent of them in 1881, France 25 per cent and Turkey 12 per cent. All three countries accepted the common red brands, which France blended with other wines; the commanderia, as usual, went to Venice and Austria. Exports exceeded a million gallons a year, and were steadily increasing as the Cypriots enlarged their vineyards on the southern slopes of the Troodos Mountains. Prices were high: the 1881 vintage brought an average price of 6.7 Cyprus piastres (834d.) a gallon, the 1882 vintage 7.2. French vineyards had not yet recovered from the phylloxera which had devastated them; but that plague had not extended to Cyprus, and in the first years of its rule the British administration took measures to prevent its introduction. On a near view, therefore, the outlook for the Cypriot vinegrowers was distinctly rosy, and their number, only 3,000 in 1872, grew to 7,279 in 1882, 10,337 in 1890 and 15,681 in 1911. On the horizon, however, more than one danger signal was appearing. In 1881 Marseilles threw a whole consignment of Cyprus wine into the sea because it had been colored with aniline dye .7 The next year, when Cyprus' production equalled and indeed surpassed that of 1881, her exports suddenly dropped 30 per cent because foreign buyers refused to pay the high 1899, IX, C. 9289, p. 7. s Today cumin is more valuable than aniseed. From 1945 to 1949, indeed, the island exported each year an average of 9,160 hundredweight valued at £61,875, whereas its yearly exports of aniseed at the same period averaged only 4,050 hundredweight worth £28,750. 6 Yearly exports from 1945-49 averaged 46,431 tons valued at £694,941. 7 AP 1883, IX, C. 3661, p. 106. 4 AP

200

APPENDICES

prices for which the Limassol merchants held out. Even France, her secondbest customer, filled its needs whenever possible from other sources, disliking the taste of the tar in Cyprus' wines. A few of the more enlightened merchants saw these danger signs and changed their course. In 1881 an English firm set up two or three European presses in the mountain village of Mandria, behind Limassol, to improve and standardize the quality of the local wine; for shipments could never be uniform as long as every peasant was free to convert his grapes into wine in his own way and dump his crudely prepared product on the export market. Six years later two Limassol firms took a further step: they not only erected factories for manufacturing wine, but they laid out their own vineyards to feed the factories, using the latest equipment and methods current in France; and so well did they succeed that in 1896 one of them received a gold medal from the Académie Nationale of France for its superior eau de vie.8 Meanwhile, wooden barrels had made such headway against the tarred goatskins which traditionally carried the mountain vintage to the coast that by 1896 three-fifths or more of the wine on sale in Limassol no longer bore any taste of tar.

FIG. 1. PRICES OF EXPORTED WINE PER GALLON FROM 1886 TO 1904 IN CYPRUS PIASTRES. The same quantity (approximately 1,600,000 gallons) that brought £73,248 in 1886, when the average price per gallon was 8.09 Cyprus piastres, brought only £32,800 in 1892, the year in which France, Cyprus' second-best market, imposed a prohibitive tariff, and exporters had to sell almost their whole crop to Egypt in competition with cheap wine from Italy and Greece.

These improvements came slowly, however, and long before they could produce much effect, the island's wine trade had encountered stormy weather. In 1886, when wine was selling for 8.09 Cyprus piastres a gallon, Cyprus harvested an unusually large crop of grapes; but before she could place her new vintage on the market, a weakened demand from France lowered the price per gallon to 5.51 Cyprus piastres and only twice in the next seventeen years did it rise above that level. A worse blow struck her in 1892 when France, to aid the recovery of her own vineyards, laid a heavy tariff on the cheap Mediterranean wines that had been pouring in over her frontiers. The following year Cyprus' exports fell more than 40 8 AP 1882, IX, C. 3385, p. 79; AP 1889, X, C. 5749, p. 77; AP 1898, VIII, C. 8805, p. 8.

201

THE ECONOMICS OF CYPRUS

per cent, even though the Limassol merchants dropped their prices to 3.67 Cyprus piastres a gallon and tried to increase their sales to Egypt; for in Egypt they now encountered fierce competition from Italy and Greece, whose cheaper wines had also been penalized by the French tariff (Fig. 1). Despairingly the Troodos vinegrowers dried more of their grapes to raisins, converted some of their wine to vinegar, and, lacking other resources, held on, hoping for better times. The administration did what little it could to help them in their plight: in 1901 it freed the industry from all taxation,9 and tried to find a market in London for its choicer products, port wine and brandy. Italy and Austria fortunately continued to accept the commanderia, and the island's mounting population absorbed a growing proportion of its common wines. In 1909, too, when the vintages in France and Italy partly failed, prices rose and Cyprus' exports increased slightly. These small alleviations by no means restored the vinegrowers' earlier prosperity, but they helped them to survive the long depression years from 1890 to 1914 without too great hardship. In one respect indeed the depression was a blessing, for it forced many villagers to throw off their slavish allegiance to archaic methods and to cultivate their vines more scientifically; and it encouraged some of the winemakers to select their grapes and prepare their wines with the same meticulous care as manufacturers in western Europe. Raisin production fluctuated both with the vintage and with the price of wine: when the price was low, or the wine hard to market, the peasants converted more of their grapes into raisins. The island itself consumed only a small quantity, but throughout the last quarter of the nineteenth century it sold to France as much as it could send that country, despite serious competition from the raisin-makers of Greece. About 1903 another excellent market opened up in Austria-Hungary and Germany, which caused exports to rise from under 20,000 hundredweight yearly to over 40,000. During the disturbances that culminated in the Balkan War, Rumania entered a bid for nearly all Cyprus' raisin crop, and the industry showed so much promise that the administration introduced sultana and sultanina vines from Crete to give it a firmer base. A few vinegrowers carried a third (though weaker) string to their bows —the market for fresh grapes opened up by faster steamship connections with the outside world. Cyprus' nearest and most stable market was Egypt, but while phylloxera was ravaging the vineyards of France, vessels that carried wine from the island to Marseilles often carried also small cargoes of grapes: in 1880, when Cyprus exported grapes to the value of £ 11,861, and in 1881, when their value reached £22,848, between a half and twothirds of them went to Marseilles. Soon afterwards France dropped out of the trade and Egypt received virtually all Cyprus' grapes, though a few went to England shortly before 1900. In 1912 the island shipped Egypt 12,388 hundredweight worth £2,028, in 1913, 10,257 hundredweight worth £ 1,487 10 OLIVES. In the latest years of her rule Turkey had tried to increase the cultivation of the olive by exempting new plantations from tithes for a certain number of years; and her efforts were already beginning to bear fruit when she vacated the island. The olive harvest of 1883, indeed, largely failed, but 1884 brought an excellent crop and 1885 a crop so abundant 9 It retained a tax of two shillings per proof gallon on spirits consumed in the island. 10 Since 1950 the island has exported a vastly increased quantity of fresh grapes, which have also increased considerably in value, even allowing for the depreciation of the pound sterling. Between 1945 and 1949 yearly exports averaged only 3,595 hundredweight, valued at £5,481, but from 1953 to 1955 they averaged 56,512 hundredweight, valued at £163,211. Cyprus, Department of Agriculture, Annual Report of the Department of Agriculture, 1955 (Nicosia, 1956), p. 10.

202

APPENDICES

that it covered all the island's needsu The year 1889 brought another good yield, 479,910 gallons (1,559 tons) of oil; and although the next season's was poor, only 112,926 gallons (366 tons), Gennadius estimated the yearly average for the period 1889-1893 at about 1531 tons. Even this quantity, he says, did not suffice to meet the local demand, and Cyprus was importing annually during the same five-year period 58.75 tons of oil worth £ 1,500, and 9.8 tons of olives worth about £200" In 1890 England too tried to extend the cultivation of the olive, especially on the plains, where it could provide the grain growers with a second source of revenue to carry them through seasons of drought. The government then promulgated afresh the Turkish offer to exempt new plantations from the tithe, and promised simultaneous exemption from the land tax also18 Each year thereafter it distributed to the peasants grafted olive trees from its own nurseries, or permitted the peasants themselves to transplant and graft the wild olive trees on forest land, at a nominal price which in one instance at least amounted to no more than one-half a copper piastre (two-thirds of a penny) a tree" That the people eagerly embraced the opportunity appears from the numbers of trees they removed from the forests for replanting-3,874 in 1895, 8,555 in 1896, 11,200 in 1897, and 29,528 in 1905. Yet even at this rate the new plantations could not keep pace with the increase in demand; so the island continued to import (and still imports today) considerable quantities of olive oil—from 1905 to 1910 an average of 5,724 hundredweight yearly. The administration did more than promote the cultivation of the olive tree; it fostered improvements in the manufacture of the oil. In 1895 a private firm set up some modern presses in Kyrenia and operated them so successfully that four years later the Department of Agriculture began importing iron oil mills to sell at cost price, payable with interest in three instalments. There seems to be no record of the number of mills it imported over the years, but the olive-growers welcomed them, because they produced 15 per cent more oil, and oil of better quality, than the old stone mills the island had been using for at least two thousand years. CITRUS AND OTHER FRUITS. Pomegranates were perhaps indigenous to Cyprus, and oranges had been cultivated there since the Lusignan era; yet neither fruit possessed more than local significance until the closing years of the Turkish regime, when steamship connections with Alexandria opened a market for them in Egypt. During the British period this market grew, slowly at first, then more quickly in the years that immediately preceded World War I. Pomegranates found no other market, but the less perishable oranges, lemons, and citrons ranged more widely afield. Statistics begin in 1879, a year in which Famagusta shipped 19,265 hundredweight of pomegranates to Egypt. For citrus fruits, however, our first figures come from 1880, when Egypt accepted 100,000 oranges and 300,000 citrons. Three years later Cyprus shipped to the Nile citrus fruits numbering more than a million. Then Greek merchants from the island of Chios, where the scale disease had destroyed many citrus trees, began to buy up part of the Cyprus crop each year and ship it to Rumania as Chios fruit.' By 1893 scale was attacking the orange and lemon trees in Cyprus also, and Famagusta's garden suburb Varosha, which in 1892 had exported 420,050 oranges and 945,000 lemons, could ship in 1893 only 63,250 oranges and 332,100 lemons. II By this period kerosene had become the usual fuel in lamps, and olive oil served mainly for food and cooking. 12 Gennadius, Part H, p. 6; AP 1892, IX, C. 6764, pp. 16-17. 13 AP 1890, IX, C. 6003, p. 42. 14 AP 1895, X, C. 7876, p. 5. 15 AP 1892, IX, C. 6764, p. 19. 203

TITE ECONOMICS OF CYPRUS

Cyprus' citrus growers quickly succeeded in checking the scale disease with a soap spray supplied by their agricultural department. No sooner had they overcome that hurdle, however, than they received a heavy if unintentional blow from the United States, a country with which their relations were very limited: for when the United States in 1897, to protect its own producers, tripled its import duty on citrus fruits, the Italian merchants, who had been shipping large quantities of oranges and lemons to New York, diverted their exports to the markets of the Black Sea, including those of Rumania, which had been receiving about a fourth of Cyprus' crop. Immediately prices in the island dropped, and lemons that had sold previously for 10s. or 15s. per 1000 now sold for half that amount. Gennadius advised the citrus growers not to await the arrival of the Chios middlemen, but themselves to pack and export their fruit, and whatever they failed to market to convert into citric acid and essential oils. The crisis passed, however, before they could reconcile themselves to this change, and despite the drought of 1902, and another outbreak of scale disease in 1904, the industry slowly expanded again. In 1912 the island exported 12 million citrus fruits worth £8,736, and 5,300 tons of pomegranates worth £17,183, just double the quantity it had exported ten years before 1° The Department of Agriculture encouraged villages in the mountains to grow such temperate-climate fruits as apples and pears, but these remained luxuries of little significance. On the plains many farmers planted almonds to supplement their grain crops, and those nuts, unimportant initially, acquired considerable value after World War I. Steamers carrying fruits and livestock to Egypt carried also fresh vegetables, mainly onions and potatoes: in 1913 they carried 1,739/ tons of onions worth £2,854, and 1,5651/2 tons of potatoes worth £7,00317 TOBACCO. The heavy excise tax that Turkey had imposed on Cyprusgrown tobacco toward the end of its regime crushed that flourishing crop, and only a farmer here and there ventured to raise a few okes to satisfy his own wants and to sell surreptitiously to his neighbours. The incoming British administration, loth to lose the considerable revenue it gained from importing foreign leaf, retained the Turkish tax, thereby killing the last remnants of tobacco cultivation in Cyprus. In 1885, indeed, an enterprising merchant planted a crop in the Lamaca district from which he harvested 3,500 okes; and in 1891 another merchant grew 1,250 okes in the Paphos district; but both men experienced difficulty in selling their leaf, perhaps because it was improperly cured? In 1895 Gennadius recommended that the tax regulations be changed on the ground that if the island could grow its own tobacco, it would save most of the £ 14,200 it was spending yearly on importing the weed. Accordingly the government passed a law permitting experimental cultivation free of tax under certain conditions; and it distributed selected seed for the experiment to two villages, Omodhos in the Limassol district and Ayios Theodhoros in the Larnaca district. The experiment failed, however, because the peasants had forgotten the proper techniques for cultivating the plant and curing the leaves. Also the taste of the public had changed: it was accustomed now to Macedonian and Latakia tobaccos and had ceased to care for the local 16 Exports of citrus fruits have increased enormously since 1912, and indeed since 1950, both in quantity and value. Between 1945 and 1949 the island exported each year, on the average, 451,669 cases of oranges, lemons and grapefruit worth £377,021, whereas for the three years 1953-55 its exports averaged 909,649 cases worth £1,122,543. 17 Exports of both these vegetables have vastly increased since World War I and considerable quantities are now marketed in Great Britain. During the period 1945-49 yearly exports of onions averaged 57,638 hundredweight valued at £47,268. 18 AP 1887, X, C. 4861, p. 27; AP 1893, XI, C. 7053, p. 32.

204

APPENDICES

leaf. Twenty-five years later, after the First World War, the administration again attempted to introduce the cultivation of tobacco, and this time succeeded so well that it has now become a major crop. In 1955 it covered more than 5,000 acres and yielded over 14,000 hundredweight of cured leaf for export, besides the amount consumed locally. COTTON. The boom in cotton had faded in the seventeenth century, but its cultivation dragged along into the British regime with a yearly production that averaged 6,480 hundredweight during the period 1880-89. As in Mariti's day the peasants distinguished two varieties, "wet" and "dry", grown from identical seed. Dry cotton, cultivated mainly in the Mesaoria and Karpas, depended on the moisture left in the ground by the winter and spring rains: its fibre was shorter and harsher than that of wet cotton, and commanded a price about 10 per cent lower. Wet cotton was restricted to those few districts—Kythrea, Nisso, Dhali, Solea, and Lapithos were the most important—in which copious springs permitted the crop to be irrigated during the summer months. In these fortunate localities much of the best land belonged to merchants, who leased to the cultivators both their fields and their rights to water in return for threefifths of the unginned cotton delivered at their doors. Both dry and wet cotton often failed to ripen, or were attacked by bollworms, because the conservative peasants commonly disregarded the advice of the Department of Agriculture to sow their seed in early April and delayed the task until May or even June—a delay that may have been necessary in earlier times when myriads of locusts devoured every green shoot, but that served no useful purpose after the government had destroyed the vast hordes of the insects and kept the survivors under close observation and control." The cotton growers of this period sold their unginned fibre in one or other of the various markets on the island, where it was ginned in imported machines and sent to Larnaca for baling and export. Although England supplied the ginning machines, she had long ceased to be interested in the cotton itself, which went to France, Greece, and sometimes Austria. The acreage devoted to cotton fluctuated with the price of the fibre in foreign markets: when that price stood low—as it did in most years until 1909—many peasants planted some other crop or let their land lie fallow. In 1890 the government tried to stimulate production by abolishing the tithe on the crop at harvest and levying it only on the quantity exported; and in 1907 it experimented with four American varieties, two of which promised to give larger yields. More effective than either of these measures, however, was the doubling of the market price of cotton in 1909 and 1910, which so encouraged the Cypriot farmers that they more than doubled their output during the three succeeding years. In 1912 the government estimated the crop at 1,302,955 okes of unginned cotton and in 1913 at 1,648,214 okes (roughly 11,000 and 14,000 hundredweight of "clean" cotton), nearly all of which went to Greece. But even with this expansion the island was producing only about one-eighth the amount it had produced at the close of Venetian rule (Fig. 2). SILK. Except for the very small percentage of silk that it kept for home use Cyprus abandoned the spinning of its silk crop, apparently, in the last years of the Turkish regime and exported instead the dry cocoons; but whether this was because it lacked mechanical spinners,'» and found hand spinning no longer economical, is not clear. Disease was still ravaging its silkworms, provoking many villagers to stop raising them and even to cut down their mulberry trees. Anxious to revive an industry that gave profitable employment to a large number of peasants, particularly women and girls, the administration in 1884 encouraged the silk merchants to 19 AP 1904, XII, Cd. 1786, pp. 16-19. 2U Cyprus opened its first silk-filature factory at Yeroskipos, near Paphos, in 1925.

205

THE ECONOMICS OF CYPRUS

15

1890

1900

1910

FIG. 2. COTTON EXPORTS FROM 1883 TO 1913. The steep rise after 1909 reflects the influence of a rise in price.

FIG. 3. EXPORTS OF SILK COCOONS FROM 1878 TO 1913.

206

APPENDICES

import healthy eggs from France and Italy for their workers; and in 1891, when the production of silk had doubled, it urged the peasants to plant more mulberry trees, offering to supply them with young plants raised from French seed in the Forest Department's nursery" At this time the island was exporting to France and Syria each year about 30,000 okes (775 hundredweight) of dry cocoons and 120 okes of silk;22 but prices were low, and they dropped lower still when France in 1893 imposed a heavy import duty (Fig. 3). So uncertain did the market become that some of the cocoon-raisers deliberately refrained from increasing their production, and merchants tried to economize by supplying them with cheaper and poorer eggs. Gennadius complained in 1895 that Cypriot workers were obtaining only half as many fresh cocoons from their eggs as workers in France and Italy, and ascribed the low rate partly to poorer handling and partly to inferior eggs. The government then prohibited any importation of eggs except under rigid conditions, authorized the Department of Agriculture to set up two sericulture stations, one at Yialousa in the Karpas district and the other at Ktima near Paphos, where the peasants could learn how to raise the worms scientifically, and offered rewards to persons who planted more than 200 mulberry trees. Its encouragement, and a steadying of the market, rallied the industry, which produced about 40,000 okes of dry cocoons annually during the first decade of the twentieth century. While it continued to import large numbers of eggs from Europe, it was raising locally about a third of its requirements; and the Department of Agriculture was promoting this phase of the industry by training young Cypriots at its experimental station near Nicosia, and issuing licenses for raising silkworms to those who passed its examination. Dry cocoons weigh almost three times as much as the silk they yield," so that the 40,000 okes of cocoons Cyprus was producing annually at the beginning of the twentieth century represented no more than 14,000 okes of raw silk. Yet around 1750, when her population was only half that of 1900-10, she had developed a silk production of 30,000 and perhaps even 40,000 okes. How was this possible? We can only guess. We know, however, that the mulberry trees on which silkworms feed require a fair amount of moisture. Perhaps then Cyprus' water supply in 1750 and earlier was considerably greater than in 1910, and sustained much larger mulberry plantations. If this be true, it would help to explain why cotton too failed to attain between 1900 and 1910 more than a fraction of its earlier output: it failed because the ancient waterworks had fallen into decay, reducing the amount of irrigable land, which yields the best and largest crops. FLAX, LIVESTOCK, ETC. Flax grew mainly in the Nicosia district, but it remained what it had always been, a minor crop, more valuable for its linseed than for its fibre. The production of the latter fluctuated yearly between 1500 and 3000 hundredweight, worth from £ 500 to £ 1000, whereas the output of linseed ranged from 3,000 to as much as 30,000 hundredweight, though the average was nearer 5,000" In 1888 the government rescinded the tithe on flax to encourage its cultivation, and levied on the linseed only an export duty. Turkey, as in earlier times, took virtually all the fibre: England (and after 1900, Egypt also) purchased the linseed. There was still very little cultivation of hemp. 25 AP 1890-91, IX, C. 6489, 22 Gennadius, Part I, p. 20. 23 "During the same period

p. 2.

of six years (1888-94) there were exported in all 725 okes of silk, which is equal to 2,071 okes of dry cocoons." Ibid., p. 20. 24 It remains roughly the same today.

207

THE ECONOMICS OF CYPRUS

The production of wool, unlike that of cotton, did not fluctuate violently from one year to the next, because the numbers of sheep held stable within the limits imposed by the food supply, rarely exceeding 300,000 or falling below 200,000. France and Italy were Cyprus' chief customers; they divided between them each year about 4,000 hundredweight, worth usually over £ 10,000. Hides, another product of the livestock industry, also found a steady market at home and abroad. The local market absorbed the hides of old animals, which it generally tanned for leather. Most of the lambskins, however, went to Austria, and most of the kidskins to the United States. Goats' cheese has been a staple article of food in all Levantine countries since prehistoric times; and in this early British period, as in preceding centuries, Cyprus produced each year enough to satisfy her own needs and to export a little—about 3,000 hundredweight—to Turkey (Fig. 4).

5

;

4

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3

t

1 1900

1890 5 4

t

P

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I

A

6x ö

i it At

3 2 1

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CHEESE t` "t

WOOL \ i'\

/\/

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1 1890

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1900

1910

FIG. 4. EXPORTS OF CHEFCE, WOOL, AND HIDES. Not only livestock products, but the animals themselves held an important place in foreign trade (Fig. 5). Egypt was the chief customer for them: in the 1890's she was taking all the oxen, sheep, pigs, and poultry that Cyprus could provide, and such mules and donkeys as were not pre-empted by Turkey. In 1908, when shaken by a financial crisis, she reduced her imports temporarily, but resumed and even increased them a year or two later, with this slight change, that she now absorbed nearly all the mules and left most of the donkeys to Turkey. Through its Department of Agriculture the administration advocated and applied the same scientific principles in the raising of livestock as in the cultivation of the land. It combated animal as well as plant diseases, promoted the growing of special fodder crops, and imported high-class

208

APPENDICES

FIG. 5. VALUES OF LIVESTOCK EXPORTS FROM 1893 TO 1913. Egypt took nearly all the oxen, mules, sheep, swine, and poultry, and Turkey took nearly all the donkeys. The same two countries divided the camels between them. The inset graph shows a heavy export of camels after the Mesaoria railway, which opened in 1916, began to take away their traffic. Cyprus exported very few horses and goats. stud animals which it made available to the peasants at minimum prices. In most communities measures of this nature operate rather slowly, but in Cyprus we can already gauge their success by the healthy condition of the livestock industry today, and by the high reputation it enjoys throughout the Levant.

209

APPENDIX VII SPONGE-FISHING. In 1863 twenty boats from the Aegean islands of Kalymnos and Leros fished for sponges in the waters around Cyprus and earned 500,000 piastres, or a little under £ 5,0001 In 1877 forty boats from the islands of Hydra and Kastellorizo engaged in the same fishery, which extended along the eastern coast of Cyprus from Famagusta to Cape Andreas, along the western and southwestern coast from Karavostasi to Paphos, and lasted from June to the end of August: this fleet gathered about 2,500 okes of sponges of all sizes and qualities, sold 500 okes of its catch to Syrian buyers for 20 francs an oke, and carried away the remainder? Throughout these fifteen years Turkey had imposed no restrictions on the sponge fishers beyond exacting a license fee from each boat: and for a quarter of a century afterwards the British administration followed the same policy, obtaining an annual revenue of nearly £ 375. Dissatisfied with this amount, however, on 1 January 1904 it placed the fishery under the control of the Agricultural Board,' which laid down specific regulations to govern the industry, licensed the fishing boats, and inspected their operations every day of the fishing season in return for a share of the catch. The government's annual revenue then increased until it averaged £903 for the period 1907 to 1912. But the yearly catch that produced this revenue exceeded the reproductive capacity of the sponges, and by 1930 the beds had become so impoverished that the administration was forced to frame new and more restrictive regulations to save the fishery from extinction.' t AP 1864, XXX, C. 3393, p. 457.

2 AP 1878, XXIX, C. 2088, p. 1366. 3 In 1910 control was transferred to the

Chief Collector of Customs because his revenue vessels could check poaching. 4 See Cyrpus, An Investigation into the Cyprus Sponge Fishing Industry, a report by L. R. Crawshay (Nicosia, 1930).

210

BIBLIOGRAPHY OFFICIAL PUBLICATIONS CYPRUS.

Census of Population and Agriculture, 1946. A report by D. A.

PERCIVAL. London, 1949.

. Forest Report, 1954. By G. W. CHAPMAN. Nicosia, 1955. An Investigation into the Cyprus Sponge Fishing Industry. A report by L. R. CRAWSHAY. Nicosia, 1930.

. The Proceedings of a Conference on Land Use in a Mediterranean Environment. Nicosia, 1947. . Department of Agriculture. Annual Report of the Department of Agriculture, 1946. Etc. Nicosia, 1947 —. Report of the Department of Agriculture, 1908-1909. Nicosia, 1909. . Forest Department.

Annual Report of the Forest Administration in Cyprus, 1921-1930. By A. H. UNWIN. Nicosia, 1932. . Land Utilization Committee. Report of the Land Utilization Committee, 1946. Nicosia, 1946. . Mines Office. Annual Report of the Inspector of Mines, 1954. Nicosia, 1955. Water Supply and Irrigation Department. The Underground Water Resources of Cyprus. A report by D. J. BuRnoN. Nicosia, 1953. . Water Supply in Cyprus. A general report by C. RAEBURN. 2nd ed. Nicosia, 1945. GREAT BRITAIN. Parliamentary Papers, Accounts and Papers. London, 1856-1914.

BOOKS AND PERIODICALS ATIYA, A. S. The Crusade in the Later Middle Ages. London, 1938. Cyprus As 1 Saw it in 1879. London, 1879. BIDDULPH, SIR ROBERT. "Cyprus." Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society (London), XI (December, 1889), 705-19. BURY, J. B. History of the Later Roman Empire. 1st ed. London, 1923. BAKER, SIR SAMUEL.

"Chronique de 1'Ile de Chypre." (Collection de Documents In&dits sur 1'Histoire de France. Mélanges Historiques, V.) Paris, 1886. COBHAM, C. D. Excerpta Cypria. Cambridge, 1908. "Cyprus." The Geographical Magazine (London), V (August, 1878), 201-03. BUSTRON, FLORIO.

P. Guide to the Cyprus Museum. Nicosia, 1953. Khirokitia. London, 1953. GAUDRY, A. Recherches Scientifiques en Orient. Paris, 1855.

Dnutos,

211

THE ECONOMICS OF CYPRUS

P. The Carob-Tree. Nicosia, 1902. . Report on the Agriculture of Cyprus, 1895. Parts I to III.

GENNADIUS,

Nicosia, n.d. E. Studies on Prehistoric Cyprus. Uppsala, 1926. GUNNis, R. Historic Cyprus. London, 1936. HAMILTON, R. H. "Cyprus." Macmillan's Magazine, XXXVIII. Cambridge, 1878. HILL, Sm GEORGE. History of Cyprus. 4 vols. Cambridge, 1940-52. JONES, D. K. Carob Culture in Cyprus. Rome, 1953. JONES, W. H. S. Malaria: A Neglected Factor in the History of Greece and Rome. Manchester, 1911. LANG, R. H. Cyprus. London, 1878. Lusa, H. C. Cyprus Under the Turks. Oxford, 1921. LusIONANO, S. Chorograffia e Breve Historia Universale dell' Isola di Cipro. Bologna, 1573. MALI, LEONrtos. Chronique de Chypre. French Translation from the Greek text by E. MILLER and C. SATHAS. Paris, 1882. Warn, G. Travels in the Island of Cyprus. Translated by C. D. COBHAM. Cambridge, 1908. MAS LATRIE, LOUIS DE. Histoire de rile de Chypre sous le Regne des Princes de la Maison de Lusignan. 3 vols. Paris, 1852-61. MICHELL, H. The Economics of Ancient Greece. Cambridge, 1940. OBERHUMMER, E. Die Insel Cypern. 1 vol. (no more published). Munich, GJERSTAD,

1903.

PEGoLorri, F. B. La Pratica della Mercatura. Ed. A. EVANS. Cambridge, Mass., 1936. SAVORGNAN, A. "Copiosa descrizione delle tose di Cipro ... fatta per il Signore Savorgnano." In J. P. REINHARD. Vollständige Geschichte des Königreichs Cypern. Vol. II. Beylage IV. Erlangen and Leipzig, 1768. TEIXEIRA, P. The Travels of Pedro Teixeira. Translated by W. F. SINcLAm. London, 1902. TOUTAIN, J. F. The Economic Life of the Ancient World. London, 1930.

212

INDEX ACRE: fall of, 22; refugees from, 39 Administration, organization: of Turkish, 100-1, 119; of British, 120-1 Agriculture: neolithic, 7; bronze age, 10, 11; early iron age, 14-15; Byzantine period, 18, 20; Lusignan period, 25-29, 38; Venetian period, 46-50; Turkish period, 63-92; British period, 176-179, 198-208; area of land under cultivation, 65, 163; farm statistics, 153-4; faulty methods of, 4-5, 150-151; mechanization of, 149-50, 165, 177; introduction of new plants, 38, 176 Allan, W.: on primeval forest cover, 7n., 10n.; on bronze age trade, 9n.; on bronze age agriculture, 1On.; on early population, 10n., 14n.; on crop rotation, 26n.; on stone terraces, 194n. Anglo-Egyptian Land Allotment Company, 165 Animals, wild, 7; extermination of, 110 -domestic, 7, 8; value for fertilizing soil, 14 Aniseed, 198, 199 Annexation of Cyprus by Britain, 117 Aqueducts, 14, 17, 30, 112-3, 133; decay of, 19, 42, 112, 142 Asbestos, 15, 183, 186 BAKER, Sir Samuel, 78n.; travelled in 1879 with ox-cart, 133; on growing hemp for hashish, 81n.; on cultivation of vines and olives, 150-51n.; discovery of native cedar, 110 Banks, 58, 126, 165, 169-70 Barley, see Grain Baumgarten, Martin von: on condition of Greek Cypriots under Venetians, 43n.; on export of salt, 51 Gerkes, Niyazi, on education in Turkish empire, 190n. Bread, quality of, 70, 99 Browne, W. G., on preparation of flour, 70 Buffalo: imported from Egypt, 36; extinction of, 92 Burden, D. J., on origin of salt lakes, 3, 37 CAMEL: introduction in bronze age, 8; second introduction in Byzantine period, 21; value for transport, 37, 140, 173; camel-hair textiles (camlet), 21, 34 Camlet, see Camel Carob, 6; cultivation of, 76; export of, 23, 46, 77-8, 135, 178-9, 199; origin of, 192; uses of, 20-1, 23, 76; scale disease in, 153 Census: in Venetian period, 43, 46; decennial census in British period, 134 Ceramic industry, 13, 98, 187. See also Pottery Chamberlain, Sir Joseph, stimulates economy of Cyprus, 164-5 Church, Greek Orthodox: relations with Turkish government, 57-9, 113; property of, 58; control of education, 189; special privileges of archbishop, 58, 148, 192 -Roman Catholic, expelled by Turkey, 57 Cigarette industry, 187. See also Tobacco Cities, growth of, 10, 163; destruction of, 19; improvements in, 143, 174; population of, 44, 134, 163; sordidness in 19th C. of, 118; water-supply of, 17, 113 Citrous fruits, 24, 98, 151, 178-9, 202-3; development of Egyptian market for, 98; introduction of oranges into Cyprus, 38

213

INDEX

Coast-line, changes in, 1-2 Coinage, see Currency Colonization of Cyprus: from Asian mainland in bronze age, 8; by Phoenicians, 1, 13, 192; by Greeks, 1, 6, 10, 12-13; by Jews, 17; by French Crusaders, 19, 39, 40; by Turkey, 59, 61-2, 114 Commanderia wine: developed by Knights Templars, 23; origin of name, 34; popularity at Venice, 34; exports of, 34 Communications: in Turkish times, 110-112; in British period, 135-141, 172-175. See also Roads, Shipping Consulates, activities in Turkish period of, 60-61 Convention on Cyprus between Turkey and Britain, 117, 127 Copper, exploitation during bronze age, 9. See also Mining Cost of living: in Turkish period, 71, 115; in British period, 153, 155 Cotton, 21; cultivation of, 26-27; export of, 23, 34, 55, 82; production in Venetian period, 48; production in Turkish period, 83, 85; production in British period, 85, 204-5; decline of, 82-4, 163, 178; competition from America, 82-5; investigation by Dunston, 160 Cumin: introduction by Gennadius of, 176; exports of, 199 Currency: in British period, 121-2; instability of Turkish piastre, 121 Cyprus, strategic position of: in bronze age, 10; in Byzantine period, 18, 19; in Lusignan period, 22, 39; trade value to Venice, 44-5; unimportance to Turkey, 55, 114; military value to Britain, 117, 119 DANDINI, G.: on exports, 69n.; on cotton, 82 Davidson, D. F., on population in 14th C., 40n. Deforestation, see Forests De Vezin, M.: 59n.; on imports, 96-7; on Turkish officials, 62n. Discontent, under Turkish rule, 62, 70, 114 Droughts, 30, 53, 68, 76, 130-1, 158, 162, 170; measures to alleviate drought, 116, 130-1 Drummond, A., 86n.; on textiles, 96n.; on building of Larnaca aqueduct, 112 Dunston, W. R., 85n.; investigation of cotton industry, 160 Dwellings: of peasants, 70; improvements in, 142, 143 Dyes: trade in, 35, 78-81, 95, 97; attempt to revive native dyes, 187; dyeworks, 36, 78, 83 EARTHQUAKES, 3, 18, 42, 53 Education: in Turkish period, 116, 190; in British period, 159, 161, 189-90 Egypt: raids from, 33, 35, 41; suzerainty of, 1, 11, 13; trade with, 9, 10, 34, 36, 39, 73 Elias of Pesaro: on Jewish money-lenders, 51-2; on fruits and vegetables, 24n. Engomi, bronze-age city of, 3, 10, 11, 12 Eucalyptus: introduction of, 7, 148-9; value of, 149 Expenditures, of British government, 197 Exports: in bronze age, 9; in Lusignan period, 23, 35; in Turkish period, 98-9, 115; in British period, 157-8, 170-1, 196. See Trade Extraterritorial rights, 55, 60, 114

214

INDEX

FAMAGUSTA: importance in Lusignan and Venetian periods, 22, 39, 44, 51; stronghold of Genoese, 40, 41, 42; importance in British period, 167; place of exile in Turkish period, 110; siege of, 50; closed to non-Moslems in Turkish period, 56, 110; harbour blocked by Turkey, 56, 110, 132; harbour cleared by British, 166; railway from Famagusta to Morphou, 166-7; population (in 1540), 44, (in 1881), 134 Famines, 18, 29, 62 Feudalism, 20; abolition by Turkey, 54. See also Serfdom Fig-birds, 32, 93 Fiscal policies: Turkish, 100-103; British, 122-132 Fish, unimportance of, 32 Flax, 13, 34, 89, 206 Floods, 3, 6, 31, 42, 133, 142, 143 Food, daily: in neolithic period, 8; in bronze age, 10; in Lusignan period, 31-2; in Turkish period, 70-1; at end of 19th C., 153-4 Food plants: Lusignan period, 24; introduction of new, 21, 24, 176 Forests: character of, 6, 7, 107-8; extent of, 6, 9, 50-1, 182-3; destruction of, 3, 9, 12, 15, 19, 36, 103-110, 145, 147; conservation of, 180-3; surveys of, 145-8, 159, 160; replanting of, 7, 148-9 Fruits, 11, 24, 32, 202-3 GAUDRY, A.: on cultivation of grain, 25n.; on cotton cultivation, 27n., 69n.; on decline of silk industry, 87; on vine disease, 73n.; on olives, 74n.; on Turkish rule, 63n.; on vegetation zones, 106-7; on neglect of irrigation, 112n. Gennadius, P. G.: first Director of Agriculture, 152-3; on cultivation of madder, 80; imports new plants, 176, 198, 199; introduces agricultural machinery, 177; attempts to revive dye and perfume industries, 187n.; promotes tobacco cultivation, 203 Genoa, seizes Famagusta, 34, 41, 42 Goats: destruction of forests by, 18; control of, 181-2; number of, 91, 148; products, 182; skins, export of, 90, 207; textiles of hair, 89 Gold, 15 Grain: production of, 48, 67-68, 130, 198; areas planted to, 65-6, 163; primitive cultivation of, 150; prices of, 131; exports of, 69-70; economics of growing, 153-4 Grapes, 33-4; exports of fresh, 201; cultivation of, 150-1. See also Wine Gunnis, R.: on population in bronze and early iron ages, lln.; on manufacture of lace, 96n. Gypsum, 15, 56, 144, 184, 186 HARBOURS: inadequacy of, 110-1, 132-3; survey of, 119; improvement of, 135, 175 Henna, use of, 35 Hill, Sir G., v-vi, 3n., 9n., 17n.; on grain yield, 48; on interest rates, 58n.; on locusts, 16; on population, 40; on revolt of Jews, 17; on water supply at Episkopi, 27n. Honey, 37, 48, 92-3; Cyprus honey-bee, 37 Hutchins, D. E.: investigates forest conservation, 160; on goats and forests, 182n.

215

INDEX

IMPORTS: in Turkish period, 96-7, 99; in British period, 158-9, 170, 196. See also Trade Imprisonment for debt, 126 Industries: in Lusignan period, 38; in Turkish period, 96, 98; in British period, 186-8. See also Ceramics, Tobacco, Dyes, Leather, Mining, Shipbuilding, Textiles Inheritance laws, 56-57 Irrigation, 11, 14, 30, 143-4; neglect of canals in Turkish period, 112, 133; irrigation project in eastern Mesaoria, 165-6; at Morphou, 143-4 JEWS: colonization of Cyprus by, 17; revolt of, 17; Jewish money-lenders, 51-2; expulsion by Turkey of, 59 Justinian II, deportation of Cypriots by, 18 KAVKALA LAND, 149 Khirokitia, neolithic settlement at, 7 Kitchener H, Lieut., maps Cyprus, 134 Knights Hospitallers, 23, 30 Knights Templars, 23; organize traffic in pickled birds, 32; vineyards of, 33 Kyrenia: besieged by Egyptians in 1460, 33; harbour of, 132, 135, 175; sea trade of, 135; population in 1881, 134; water-supply of, 142 Kythrea: spring at, 14; flour mills at, 20 LABOUR, shortage of, 62, 115 Lace industry, 96 Land, forest, delimitation of, 147 -holdings of, 56-7, 153; effect of inheritance laws on, 56-7, 144, 178; uncertain boundaries of, 123; cadastral survey of, 134, 178; titles to, 123; valuation of, 129 -tenure: in classical times, 15; in Lusignan period, 20; in Turkish period, 56-7; Turkish theory of, 101 Lang, R. H.: on usury, 125-6n., 129n.; introduces agricultural machinery, 149-50, 177 Larnaca: importance of, 22, 111; destroyed by Egyptians in 1426, 41; harbour of, 111, 133, 135, 175; population in 1881, 134, in 1911, 163; road to Nicosia, 115, 168; salt lake at, 3, 37; trade of, 111 Leather industry, 98, 186 Legislative Council, creation of, 120-1 Levant Company, 55 Light-houses, 111, 132, 175 Limassol: importance of, 22, 111; destroyed by Egyptians in 1426, 41; exports from, 111; harbour of, 133, 135, 175; population in 1881, 134, in 1911, 163; salt lake at, 3; water supply of, 133, 142 Livestock, 36-7, 48, 91-2, 131, 180, 207-8; number of oxen, 48, 92; number of goats, 91, 148; number of sheep, 91, 180; export of livestock, 91-2 Loan, purpose and effect of British, 164-9 Locke, J., on export of salt, 51 Locusts, 29-30, 41, 53, 68, 110, 116, 151, 176; tax to combat locusts, 126, 176 Loher, F. von C., on destruction of forests, 109n. Luke, H. C.: on silk tax, 88n.; on export of mules, 92n.; on manufactures, 96n.; on exports to Turkey, 103n.; on Larnaca aqueduct, 112 Lusignan dynasty, rule of, 23-42 216

INDEX

MADDER, 79-81; introduction into Cyprus, 79 Madon, P., on forests, 104n., 147-8, 159, 180 Maize, introduction of, 178, 198 Malaria: investigated by Sir Ronald Ross, 160; eradicated by British, 166 Maps: inadequacy of early, 123; map survey, 134; cadastral survey, 134, 178 Mariti, G., 15; on madder, 79; on cotton cultivation, 26; on cotton trade, 83n.; on locusts, 68n.; on wine production, 72; on silk industry, 86-7; on export of fig-birds, 93; on industries, 96 Mas Latrie, L. de, 23n.; on dye works, 78n., 83n.; on forests, 108; on Italian merchants, 39n.; on madder, 79n.; on relations between French and Greek Cypriots, 40n.; on price of salt, 37-8n.; on runaway serfs, 42n.; on salt production at Larnaca Lake, 55n.; on Venetian censuses, 44n., 47n. Measurements, Venetian, 47, 48 Merchants: in Lusignan period, 39; rise of Greek-Cypriot merchant class, 58-61 Merton, F., on origin of carob tree, 192 Mills: watermlls, 20; windmills, 20; saw-mills, 147 Mining: in bronze age, 9; in early iron age, 15; in Lusignan period, 38; in Venetian period, 51; in Turkish period, 56, 96, 144; in British period, 144-5, 183-6; copper, 9, 13, 15, 17, 19, 144, 183, 185-6; asbestos, 15, 183, 186; gypsum, 15, 56, 144, 184, 186; gold, 15; umber, 56, 79, 144, 184, 186 Money-lenders: in Lusignan period, 40; in Venetian period, 51-2; expulsion by Turkey of Jewish money-lenders, 59; in Turkish period, 58, 61; in British period, 125-6, 129, 154 Morphou: chain-of-wells dug at, 143; reclamation of sand-dunes at, 149 Moza, see Measurements Museum of Antiquities, founding of, 145 NEOLITHIC PERIOD, 6-8 Nicosia: chief money-market in Lusignan period, 22; sordidness of, 118, 174; St. Demetrios' fair at, 52-3 OBERHUMMER, E.: on deforestation of lowlands, 12n.; on introduction of camel, 21n.; on introduction of madder, 79n.; on extinction of buffalo, 92 Olive, 11, 33, 49, 74-5, 201-2; production of oil, 47, 48, 74-5, 202; export of oil, 74-5; import of oil, 75, 150; presses for oil, 20, 202; planting of trees, 49, 74, 152, 202; attacked by dacus fly, 74 PAPHOS, harbour of, 132, 175 Phoenicians, settlements of, 13, 192; exploit copper, 13 Physiography of Cyprus, 1-5, 6-7, 12 Population: in neolithic, 8; in bronze age, 11; in classical times, 14, 17; in Lusignan period, 40, 42; in Venetian period, 43-4; in Turkish period, 63; in British period, 134, 162-3, 173; changes from 14th to 20th century, 64; censuses of, 43-4, 134; distribution of population, 44, 134 Post, Dr. George, judgement on British rule, 190 Postal service, 141, 172 Pottery, 10, 13, 98. See also Ceramic industry Printing plant, establishment of first, 121

217

INDEX

RAEBURN, C., on water supply, 50n., 113, 166n. Raids on Cyprus: by Isaurians, 18; by Saracens, 18, 21, 36; by Catalan pirates, 41; by Egyptians, 35, 41; by Maltese privateers, 62 Railway from Famagusta to Morphou, 166-7 Rainfall, 3; irregularity of, 166; effect of deforestation on, 109-10 Raisins, 33, 73, 98, 201 Reforestation, see Forests Reid, Clement, investigates water supply, 160 Rents in towns, 115, 155 Reservoirs, 42, 165, 166 Resin, 15; destruction of pines to extract, 104; manufacture forbidden by Turkey, 109 Revenue: sources of, in Turkish times, 101; statistics of, from 18791913, 197 Revolt of Jews in A.D. 115, 17 Roads: in Roman times, 17; decay of, in Byzantine period, 19; in Venetian period, 51; in Turkish period, 111, 115; in British period, 119, 133, 13540, 164, 168, 172-4; wine-roads, 119, 139-40, 151 Ross, Sir Ronald, investigates malaria, 160 Russell, R., investigates water supply, 144, 159 SALAMIS, ancient city of, 12; water supply of, 14, 17; destruction of, 18; plantations on sand-dunes covering Salamis, 148 Salt, 37-8, 93-5, 145; origin of, 37; revenue from, 51, 54-5, 94, 145 -lakes, at Larnaca and Limassol, 3, 37, 51 Sand-dunes, 3; reclamation of, 7, 148-9 Sandwith, T. B., on status of Christians in Turkish period, 61 Sanitation, 133, 143 Saracens, 18, 21, 36, 194 Savorgnan, A., on waggon road from Nicosia to Kyrenia, 51n. Serfdom, 15, 20, 23, 42, 43, 44; abolition by Turkey, 54 Sesame: cultivation of, 26, 29, 76; production of, 198; export of, 76; use of oil, 29, 33 Seymour, T. D., on diet in bronze age, 10-11n. Sheep, 37; number of, 91, 180; sheep-folds, 37; export of sheepskins, 90 -wild, 7, 110 Ship-building, 9, 13, 36; cessation of, 19, 38 Shipping: in early eras, 18, 36, 55-6; in Turkish period, 111-2; in British period, 135, 156, 174-5 Sibthorpe, on forests in Troodos Mts., 105 Silk, 21, 34, 38; production in Venetian period, 47; in Turkish, 86-9, 98; in British, 180, 187, 204-6; silk manufactures, 46, 86, 187; trade in silk, 86-7 Silk-worm: introduction of, 21; taxation of, 87; attacked by disease, 88; importation of eggs, 89, 152, 180 Smuggling, 172 Sponge-fishing, 135, 209 Sugar-cane: introduction of, 21, 24; cultivation of, 25-7; disappearance of, 46, 49; sugar production, 47, 48 Sumac, export of, 35, 79, 186

218

INDEX

TAXES: in Turkish period, 62, 100-3; collected by church authorities, 57-8, 59; farming of, 101; collection of tithes, 101-2; effect of exorbitant, 103; changes in British period, 122-132; tax-collectors, 124-5, 129 "Technical Assistance," 159-161 Telegraph lines, 140-1 Terraces of stone, 31, 193-4 Textiles, 46, 86, 96, 98; competition from Manchester, 83, 186; of cotton, 34, 83, 86, 158; of wool, 34, 89, 178-80; of camel-hair, 21, 34, 35 Timber: export of, 9, 13, 36, 105, 106, 107; import of, 97, 99 Tithes: theory of, 101; collection of, 101-3; statistics of, 195 Tobacco: introduction of, 81; production of, 82, 203; imports of, 82, 187; decline and revival of production, 178; cigarette industry, 187 Tourism, 188 Trade: in neolithic period, 8; in bronze age, 9; in early iron age, 13; in Roman days, 17; in Byzantine period, 18, 20; in Lusignan period, 23, 38-9; in Venetian period, 45, 52; in Turkish period, 54-56, 59, 95-100, 114, 115; in British period, 156-9, 170-2; with orient, 22, 39, 44-5 Treaty of Lausanne, 117 Tribute to the Porte, 127-8, 164, 168, 172 Turkey, rule of, 54-117 Turpentine, 15; export of, 79 UMBER, 56, 79, 144, 184, 186 Unger, F., description of forests, 108n. VEGETABLES: cultivation in Lusignan period of, 29; new, 24, 38; export of, 98, 203 Vegetation zones, 6, 7, 107, 108 Venice: rule of, 43-53; seizure of Cyprus by, 41, 43; expelled by Turks, 53; trade with Cyprus in Lusignan period, 23, 34, 37-38 Viticulture, 33, 73, 150-1; vines attacked by blight, 73, 153. See also Wine WAGES, 115, 155 Water: supply of, 7, 14, 50, 112, 113, 133, 141-4, 165-6; conservation of, 14, 31; rights to, 144. See also Aqueducts, Wells Water-wheel, 30; introduction of, 20; used for grinding wheat, 20, 70 Wells, 30-31, 113, 142, 143, 165, 166 Wheat: cultivation of, 25-6, 150; export of, 14, 17, 43, 69; prohibition of export by Turkey, 54; quality of, 25, 150. See also Grain Wild, A. E, 159; makes first forest survey, 145-7 Wind-mills: at Nicosia, 20; used for grinding wheat, 21 Wines: export of, 23, 34, 38, 71-4, 140; production in Turkish period, 72-3; in British period, 199-201; taxes on, 73; transport of, 140; quality of, 140; "wine" roads, 139-40 Wolseley, Sir Garnet: first British High Commissioner, 118; administration of, 118 ff. Wool, 34, 89-90; export of, 90; textiles of, see Textiles

219

ANCIENT CYPRIOT COIN, MOTIF OF THE JACKET DESIGN. THIS BOOK IS SET IN ERIC GILL'S TIMES ROMAN TYPE AND PRINTED ON COLONIAL TEXT BY THE RUNGE PRESS LIMITED, OTTAWA. TYPOGRAPHY OF THE BOOK AND THE DUST JACKET DESIGN, ARE BY ALLAN HARRISON, MONTREAL.