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Crown Colony of Cyprus (after 1925) Αποικία του Στέμματος της Κύπρος ( Greek) Kıbrıs'ın taç kolonisi ( Turkish)
1925–1960
Flag of Cyprus Crown Colony Coat of arms
Cyprus in the 1930s. Cyprus in Dark Green and the United Kingdom in dark grey.
Status	British Protectorate (1878–1925) British Crown Colony (1925–1960)
Capital	Nicosia
Common languages	English [1] Greek Turkish
Religion	Christianity Islam
Government	British Protectorate (1878–1925) British Crown Colony (1925–1960)
Governor
• 1827 – 1916	Lord John Hay (First)
• 1957 - 1960	Sir Hugh Mackintosh Foot (Last)
Monarch
• 1878 – 1901	Queen Victoria (First)
• 1952 – 1960	Elizabeth II (Last)
History
• British protectorate under Ottoman suzerainty	1878
• Established	1925
• Independent as the Republic of Cyprus	16 August 1960
Area
1881	9,251 km2 (3,572 sq mi)
Population
• 1881	186,173
• 1921	310,715
• 1960	573,566
Currency	Cypriot pound (since 1879)
Preceded by Succeeded by Ottoman Cyprus Cyprus
Today part of	Cyprus   Akrotiri and Dhekelia   Northern Cyprus

British Cyprus was a British Protectorate which then established as a crown colony that existed in Cyprus from 1925 to 1960. Cyprus first became a British protectorate under Ottoman suzerainty was established over Cyprus by the Cyprus Convention of 4 June 1878. The United Kingdom declared war on the Ottoman Empire on 5 November 1914 and annexed Cyprus. Turkey recognised British possession of Cyprus by the Treaty of Lausanne on 24 July 1923 and the island became a Crown Colony on 10 March 1925. On 16 August 1960, Cyprus attained independence after the Zürich and London Agreement between the United Kingdom, Greece and Turkey. The UK retained the two Sovereign Base Areas of Akrotiri and Dhekelia

History

Cyprus as a Protectorate

Cyprus was a territory of the Ottoman Empire, lastly as part of the Vilayet of the Archipelago, since it was conquered from the Republic of Venice in 1570-71. In the aftermath of the Russo-Turkish War and the Congress of Berlin, three centuries of Ottoman administration came to an end when the Ottoman Empire assigned rights of administration and possession of Cyprus to Great Britain. ^[2] Cyprus was leased to the British Empire which de facto took over its administration in 1878 in exchange for guarantees that Britain would use the island as a base to protect the Ottoman Empire against possible Russian aggression. ^[3] This was done in exchange for United Kingdom's military support to the Ottoman Empire if Russia would attempt to take possession of territories of the Ottomans in Asia. ^[4] Great Britain signed the Convention of Defence Alliance on the 4th of June 1878 in Constantinople, it was given powers to enact laws and to regulate its consular and conventions relations and affairs for the island. However Cyprus theoretically belonged to the Ottoman Empire and could eventually be returned upon the fulfillment of certain criteria. In effect the real and only sovereign of Cyprus was Great Britain which exercised the administration of the island. The Anglo-Turkish Mixed Arbitral Tribunal held that the position of Cyprus was that of a protectorate, in the sense that it fell within the designation of a country under the protection of Great Britain, which in fact governed this island. ^[5]

The British faced a major political problem on the island. Greek Cypriots believed it their natural right to unite the island with Greece following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. The British authorities carried out the first census in 1881, the total population of Cyprus was 186,173, of which 137,631 (73,9%) were Greeks, 45,438 (24,4%) were Turks and 3,084 (1,7%) were minorities of Maronites, Latins and Armenians. ^[6] Bishop of Kitium Kyprianos addressed Sir Garnet Joseph Wolseley upon his arrival in Larnaca in a speech on the 22nd of July 1878 saying "We (Greeks) accept the change of the government, because we believe that Great Britain will eventually help Cyprus, just like with the Ionian islands, unite Cyprus with mother Greece". ^[7] Despite this, the island would serve Britain as a key military base in its colonial routes. By 1906, when the Famagusta harbor was completed, Cyprus was a strategic naval outpost overlooking the Suez Canal, the crucial main route to India which was then Britain's most important overseas possession.

Crown Colony

Following the outbreak of the First World War, Great Britain annexed Cyprus by an order in council of 5th of November 1914 in response to the decision of the Ottoman Empire to join the war on the side of the Central Powers. ^[3] Though the unilateral annexation was invalid, it was eventually recognised by Turkey in 1923 by article 20 of the Treaty of Lausanne. ^[8] The treaty brought advantages to the new Turkish state that compensated it for its loss of the island. ^[9] Turkey formally renounced all rights and titles to Cyprus, the island was proclaimed a Crown Colony on the 10th of March 1925. ^[10]

During World War II many enlisted in the Cyprus Regiment.

After World War II

At the conclusion of World War II, hundreds of thousands of Jewish Holocaust survivors and refugees sought a new life far from their destroyed communities in Europe. The Yishuv attempted to bring these refugees to Palestine but many were turned away or rounded up and placed in detention camps in Atlit and Cyprus by the British. Cyprus internment camps were camps run by the British government for internment of Jews who had immigrated or attempted to immigrate to Mandatory Palestine in violation of British policy. The camps operated from August 1946 to January 1949 and in total held about 51,000 persons. ^[11]

At its peak there were nine camps in Cyprus, located at two sites about 50km apart. They were Caraolos, north of Famagusta, and Dekhelia, outside of Larnaca. ^[12] The first camp, at Caraolos, had been used from 1916 to 1923 for Turkish prisoners of war. ^[13] The majority of Cyprus detainees were intercepted before reaching Palestine, usually by boat. ^{[13] [11]} Most of them were Holocaust survivors, about 60% from the displaced person camps and others from the Balkans and other East European countries. ^[11] They were mostly young, 80% between 13 and 35, and included over 6,000 orphan children. ^[11] A very small group of Moroccan Jews was also in the camps. ^[11]

In January 1950, the Church of Cyprus organized a referendum, which was boycotted by the Turkish Cypriot community, where 96% of Greek Cypriots voted in favour of enosis, meaning union with Greece. ^{[14] [15] [16]} Restricted autonomy under a constitution was proposed by the British administration but eventually rejected. In 1955 the EOKA organisation was founded, seeking independence and union with Greece through armed struggle. At the same time the Turkish Resistance Organisation (TMT), calling for Taksim, or partition, was established by the Turkish Cypriots as a counterweight. ^[17]

The Cyprus Emergency was a military action that took place against the British Empire primarily consisting of an insurgent campaign by the Greek Cypriot militant group, the EOKA, to remove the British from Cyprus so it could be unified with Greece. Both the British and EOKA were in turn opposed by the Turkish Cypriot group (TMT), which rejected union with Greece. However the EOKA campaign did not result in union with Greece but rather an independent republic, The Republic of Cyprus, in 1960.

Independence

On the 19 February 1959 in Lancaster House in London, between Turkey, Greece, the United Kingdom and Cypriot community leaders; Archbishop Makarios III for Greek Cypriots and Dr. Fazıl Küçük for Turkish Cypriots. On that basis, a constitution was drafted and agreed together with two further Treaties of Alliance and Guarantee in Zurich on 11 February 1960. As part of this, the Treaty of Guarantee was designed to preserve Bi-communal consociationalism and independent state of the Republic of Cyprus. Cyprus and the guarantor powers (the United Kingdom, Turkey, and Greece) promised to prohibit the promotion of "either the union of the Republic of Cyprus with any other State, or the partition of the Island". Article Three of the Treaty of Guarantee provides, "In so far as common or concerted action may prove impossible, each of the three guaranteeing Powers reserves the right to take action with the sole aim of re-establishing the state of affairs (i.e. Bi-communal consociational state) established by the present Treaty." ^[18] Cyprus was accordingly proclaimed an independent state on 16 August 1960.

Legacy

Akrotiri and Dhekelia

The Sovereign Base Areas of Akrotiri and Dhekelia ^[19], is a British Overseas Territory. The areas, which include British military bases and installations, as well as other land, were retained by the British under the 1960 treaty of independence, signed by the United Kingdom, Greece, Turkey and representatives from the Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities, which granted independence to the Crown colony of Cyprus. The territory serves an important role as a station for signals intelligence and provides a vital strategic part of the United Kingdom communications gathering and monitoring network in the Mediterranean and the Middle East.

The territory is composed of two Base Areas. One is Akrotiri, or the Western Sovereign Base Area, which includes two main bases at RAF Akrotiri and Episkopi, plus all of Akrotiri Village's district (including Limassol Salt Lake) and parts of eleven other village districts. ^[20] The other area is Dhekelia Cantonment, or the Eastern Sovereign Base Area, which includes a base at Ayios Nikolaos plus parts of twelve village districts. ^[21]

Government?

Crown colony, are dependent territories under the administration of United Kingdom overseas territories that are controlled by the British Government. As such they are examples of dependencies that are under colonial rule. In such territories, residents do not elect members of the British parliament. A Crown colony is administered by a governor who directly controls the executive and is appointed by " the Crown" — a term that in practice usually means the UK government, acting on behalf of the monarch.

Enosis

Widely known is the case of the Greek-Cypriots for union of Cyprus into Greece.

In modern times, apart from Cyprus, the call for Enosis is adopted among part of the Greeks living in southern Albania/ Northern Epirus. ^[22]

In 1828, modern Greece’s first president Ioannis Kapodistrias whose maternal ancestors were Greek Cypriots, ^{[23] [24]} called for union of Cyprus with Greece, and numerous minor uprisings took place. ^[25]

The enosis movement was the outgrowth of nationalist awareness among the ethnically Greek population of Cyprus (around 80% ^[26] between 1882 and 1960), coupled with the growth of the anti-colonial movement throughout the British Empire after World War II. In fact, the anti-colonial movement in Cyprus was identified with the enosist movement, enosis being, in the minds of the Hellenic population of Cyprus, the only natural outcome of the liberation of the Cypriot people from Ottoman rule and later the British rule.^{[ citation needed]} A string of British proposals for local autonomy under continued British suzerainty was roundly rejected.^{[ citation needed]}

In December 1949, the Cypriot Orthodox Church challenged the British colonial government to put the Enosis question to a referendum. As was expected, the colonial government refused, and the Church proceeded to organize its own illegal referendum which would take place in churches and be supervised by priests. The referendum took place on the two consecutive Sundays of 15 and 22 January 1950, with an overwhelming majority 95.7% of the people voted in favor of extricating the island from the British Empire and annexing it to the Kingdom of Greece. ^[27] It is said that the vote was marred by coercion as the Greek Orthodox church had told its congregation that it had to vote in favour of Enosis and failure to do so would have meant excommunication from the church. Unlike modern elections and referendums, which are decided by secret ballot, the 1950 referendum amounted to a public collection of signatures, not unlike a petition. ^{[28] [29]}

In 1955, the resistance movement EOKA was formed in Cyprus in order to end British rule and annex the island to Greece. It was gradually recognized, however, that enosis was politically unfeasible due to the presence of the Turkish community and its increasing assertiveness. Instead, the creation of an independent state with elaborate power-sharing arrangements among the two communities was agreed upon in 1960, and the fragile Republic of Cyprus was born.

The idea of enosis was not immediately abandoned, though. During the campaign for the 1968 presidential elections, Makarios III said that enosis was "desirable" whereas independence was "possible". This differentiated him from the hardline pro-enosis elements which formed EOKA B and participated in a military coup against him in 1974. The coup was organized and supported by the Greek government, which was still in the hands of a military junta. The Turkish government responded to the change of status quo by the invasion of Cyprus. The result of the events of 1974 was the geographic partition of Cyprus, followed by massive population transfers. The coup and subsequent events seriously undermined the enosis movement. The departure of Turkish Cypriots from the areas which remained under the Republic's effective control resulted in a homogeneous Greek Cypriot society in the southern two-thirds of the island. Greek Cypriots started to strongly identify with the Republic of Cyprus, which, since the partition, has lain under their community's exclusive political control.^{[ citation needed]}

Taksim

Taksim was the objective of Turkish Cypriots who supported a partition of the island of Cyprus into Turkish and Greek portions, a concept declared as early as 1957 by Dr. Fazil Küçük. ^[30] Turkish supporters of taksim felt partition was the only way to ensure that Cyprus would always have a Turkish presence and to prevent the assimilation or supposed ethnic cleansing of the Turkish population on the island, due to its majority Greek Cypriot population who disagreed in accordance with the international community.

Demographics

During (1955-1960) 6,759 Turks and 31,844 Greeks emigrated. ^[32] During (1961-1973) 9,760 Turks and 39,192 Greeks emigrated. ^[32] In total, during (1955-1973) 16,519 Turks and 71,036 Greeks emigrated. ^[32] Of the emigrated Turkish Cypriots in this period, only 290 went to Turkey. ^[32]

Economy

Although there was growing opposition to British rule, colonial administration had brought some benefits to the island. Money had gone into modernization projects. The economy, stagnant under the Ottomans, had improved, and trade increased. Financial reforms eventually broke the hold money lenders had over many small farmers. An honest and efficient civil service was put in place. New schools were built for the education of Cypriot children. Where only one hospital had existed during the Ottoman era, several were built by the British. Locusts were eradicated, and after World War II malaria was eliminated. A new system of roads brought formerly isolated villages into easy reach of the island's main cities and towns. Still, there was much poverty, industry was almost nonexistent, most manufactures were imported from Britain, and Cypriots did not govern themselves. ^[33]

Education

One of the most important institutional changes introduced during the period of British rule was the allocation of a small subsidy for the establishment of primary schools. A great increase in the number of primary schools throughout the island was made possible by the Education Law of 1895, which permitted local authorities to raise taxes to finance schools. In 1897 there were only 76 schools, run by voluntary and church donations; twenty years later there were 179. Colonial officials also subsidized teacher training and agricultural courses, but did not interfere with local and church authorities in the area of secondary education. As a result of a campaign against illiteracy launched by British authorities, the percentage of illiterate adult Cypriots fell from 33% in 1946 to 18% in 1960. Cite error: The <ref> tag has too many names (see the help page).

Gallery

• 
  English Telephone boxes survived and were ony painted green
• 
  Postbox in Nicosia, Cyprus
• 
  British cypriot passport
• 
  The British Army in Cyprus 1941
• 
  British Overseas
• 
  The British Army in Cyprus 1942
• 
  The British Army in Cyprus 1941
• 
  A Greek Cypriot demonstration in the 1930s in favour of Enosis
• 
  An enlargeable map of the Island of Cyprus showing Akrotiri and Dhekelia

See also

• Modern history of Cyprus
• British Empire
• Cyprus Regiment

References

External links

• [7]
• [8]