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

Covering both the North and the South of Cyprus with equal detail and objectivity, this guide includes features on the island's turbulent history and current politics. It provides accounts of the island's attractions, from the popular beach resorts to the remote hillside villages, and reviews of the best places to eat, drink and sleep for every budget.

A rich, varied history of conquerors and colonizers which recognizes the centrality of Cyprus to the Mediterranean world.

This engaging volume reveals how politics permeates all facets of museum practice, particularly in regions of political conflict. In these settings, museums can be extraordinarily influential for shaping identity and collective memory and for peace building. Using key Cypriote archaeological, historical, ethnographic, and art museums as examples, this book: provides a multifaceted and deeper understanding of how politics, conflict, national agendas, and individual initiatives can shape museums and their narratives; discusses how these forces contribute to the creation of, and conflict over, national, community and personal identities; examines how museums use inclusion and exclusion in their collections, exhibitions, objects and interpretive material as a way of selectively constructing collective memories. This book will be an important resource for museum professionals, as well as scholars interested in the effects of politics on museums and interpretations of the past.

This book analyses colonial and postcolonial writing about Cyprus, before and after its independence from the British Empire in 1960. These works are understood as ‘transportal literatures’ in that they navigate the liminal and layered forms of colonialism which impede the freedom of the island, including the residues of British imperialism, the impact of Greek and Turkish nationalisms, and the ethnolinguistic border between north and south. This study puts pressure on the postcolonial discipline by evaluating the unique hegemonic relationship Cyprus has with three metropolitan centres, not one. The print languages associated with each centre (English, Greek, and Turkish) are complicit in neo-colonial activity. Contemporary Cypriot writers address this in order to resist sectarian division and grapple with their deferred postcoloniality.

This anthology explores the dynamics of shared religious sites in Turkey, the Balkans, Palestine/Israel, Cyprus, and Algeria, indicating where local and national stakeholders maneuver between competition and cooperation, coexistence and conflict. Contributors probe the notion of coexistence and the logic that underlies centuries of "sharing," exploring when and why sharing gets interrupted—or not—by conflict, and the policy consequences. These essays map the choreographies of shared sacred spaces within the framework of state-society relations, juxtaposing a site's political and religious features and exploring whether sharing or contestation is primarily religious or politically motivated. Although religion and politics are intertwined phenomena, the contributors to this volume understand the category of "religion" and the "political" as devices meant to distinguish between the theological and confessional aspects of religion and the political goals of groups. Their comparative approach better represents the transition in some cases of sites into places of hatred and violence, while in other instances they remain noncontroversial. The essays clearly delineate the religious and political factors that contribute to the context and causality of conflict at these sites and draw on history and anthropology to shed light on the often rapid switch from relative tolerance to distress to peace and calm.