British rule

In 1878, under the Cyprus Convention, the island passed to British administration: formally it remained Ottoman and its taxes went to Istanbul, but everything was run from London’s offices. In 1914, when the Ottoman empire entered the war on Germany’s side, Britain annexed Cyprus, and in 1925 declared it a crown colony.

What changed

Roads, harbours, sanitation and English-style courts appeared. The Cyprus Government Railway ran from 1905 to 1951, linking Famagusta, Nicosia and Morphou; it was dismantled as unprofitable, and today only embankments and a few station buildings remain.

Much of it bred quiet resentment, above all the “Tribute”: Cyprus was made to pay a sum against an old Ottoman debt, so the island’s money went to cover somebody else’s obligations. In 1931 the discontent broke out in revolt — a crowd burned down the governor’s house in Nicosia, after which the constitution was suspended and direct rule imposed.

Antiquities

It was under the British that Cypriot archaeology became a science. The Cyprus Museum was founded in 1882 — until then antiquities left the island freely, and the consul Cesnola’s collection had already gone to New York. The Department of Antiquities, to which the island owes the protection of its monuments, was created in 1935.

From 1927 to 1931 the Swedish Cyprus Expedition worked here — the first truly systematic excavations, which established the chronology still in use.

The end of the colony

The demand for enosis, union with Greece, was heard from the first decades of British rule. In 1955 the EOKA campaign began and continued until 1959. Cyprus became independent on 16 August 1960, and the republic’s first president was Archbishop Makarios III, a monk of Kykkos Monastery. Britain kept two sovereign bases, Akrotiri and Dhekelia.

Periods end, but the catalogue does not end with them: nearly everything built earlier went on living through these eighty years — Apostolos Andreas Monastery was rebuilt in the early twentieth century, and it was then that the lace of Pano Lefkara became an export.