Search

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link. Greek Cypriots became a key feature of early post-Second World War London. This article focuses on the case of the penultimate woman hanged in Britain, Styllou Christofi, who was executed in December 1954 for the murder of her German-born daughter-in-law, Hella. It outlines the emergence of the Cypriot community in London, tackles the image of the Cypriot in the British imperial imagination and investigates the hostility that this new community faced in Britain. The article investigates the nature of family in Cyprus and London and questions why Cypriots have received so little attention from historians, despite their numbers.

The histories of immigration control in Britain and Australia in the twentieth century are often contrasted, with Britain imposing few formal restrictions on Commonwealth migration until the 1960s ...

This article is devoted to the history of the implementation by the United Nations of the universals of gender policy that have developed in the context of the modern worldview. The author traces the evolution of the United Nations policy on the women's issue in the context of historical realities and on the basis of an analysis based on the most important documents of the UN. It corroborates the beginning of a qualitatively new stage in UN policy, which manifests itself in shifting the focus from the legal status of women to the gender equality discourse, and changes in social structures and relations between men and women. The sociocultural determinants of gender value orientations and behavioral stereotypes had developed in the context of various national traditions, and its role in adapting the universal concept of gender equality. The article analyzes the value gender guidelines of modern Chinese society and the West European version of gender policy. The conclusion indicates that there are varied ways to achieve gender balance in society and the need to develop a new gender universal concept that dialectically combines the general and the singular gender relations.

The articles that follow were selected and developed from two conferences happening almost simultaneously on opposite sides of the world. The first was the Eric Richards Symposium in British and Au...

In the 1970s Yusuf Islam (aka Cat Stevens) inspired a generation with his songs on anti-materialism, finding self and peace in such classic albums as Tea for the Tillerman (1970, US 3x platinum) an...

In summer 1916 the British Salonica Army and the Cypriot colonial government established the Cypriot Mule Corps (also known as the Macedonian Mule Corps). It was a staggering success in terms of recruitment, with over 12,000 men serving at one time or another in Salonica during the war and in Constantinople after the armistice, consisting of about 25% of the Cypriot male population aged 18–35. This article engages with three historiographical fields: British military history, British imperial history and Cypriot colonial and peasant and labouring history. All three are connected by the scope, the Great War and its immediate aftermath, and more specifically by the Cypriot Mule Corps. It brings Cyprus into the broader debate on the participation of the British non-settler empire in World War I. The main focus of the article is on the experiences of the men and their dependants. At the heart of this story is the power-imbalance in the relationship between the British coloniser, who desperately needed mule drivers, and the colonised Cypriots, mostly peasants and unskilled rural and urban labourers who enlisted because of the wages. The Cypriots had little control over the terms of their service, as the British progressively reduced their responsibilities to the men and their families, but because the British were desperate for their service they attempted to accommodate their grievances. Therefore, the article proposes to envisage the experience of Cypriot muleteers and their families through a theoretical framework borrowed from the Subaltern Studies Group. Homi Bhabha's ‘liminal space’, in which ‘negotiation’ can take place between colonised and coloniser, seems applicable here, even if dominated by the coloniser. When it suited them, such as when recruitment was at risk, the British not only listened but attempted to rectify the injustices, even showing flexibility; but when it did not they proved inflexible.

The role played by British colonial possessions during the Great War is only now starting to emerge in the last decade or so. This article aims to include Cyprus amongst those possessions that contributed enormously to the British war effort, such as India, Jamaica and the former settler colonies. Before the war Cyprus was an ‘inconsequential possession’ and during the first two years of the war it played a very minor role, when for the most part it served as a pawn to lure Greece into the war, which failed when Athens rejected the British offer to cede Cyprus to Greece in exchange for Greece coming to the military aid of Serbia in October 1915. From the summer of 1916, soon after the British and French signed the Sykes–Picot Agreement, the island became a bustling military and humanitarian base, while it also fed and fuelled the allied armies in Egypt, Macedonia and France. Its most significant contribution was undoubtedly the formation of the Cypriot Mule Corps in summer 1916. Until it was disso...

This article explores how mules were procured in Cyprus for the Salonica campaign and how they were treated by Cypriot muleteers in the British army in Macedonia. Cyprus provides an ideal case since over 6,000 mules were recruited for the Salonica campaign, presenting a sizeable sample for analysis of recruitment strategies and practices. Equally, since over 12,000 Cypriot muleteers served in the British army in Salonica and later in Istanbul during and after the Great War (from July 1916 to April 1920), the focus on the treatment of mules by Cypriot muleteers offers a significant sample. This article contributes to the growing historiography on the role of equines and their treatment and condition in the Great War. It argues that Cypriot mules were procured in significant numbers and became important to British supply and logistics in Salonica. Cypriot muleteers treated their mules relatively well, and therefore mules in Salonica, although overworked, were generally in reasonable condition.

This article aims to write the army transport mule, which has previously been neglected in the equine historiography of the conflict, into the story of the First World War. It does not aim to tell the entire story of the role of mules in the war, as this deserves fuller investigation. Instead, it focuses on how various British sources depicted the army transport mule and how the actual involvement and treatment of these animals on the Salonica Front accorded with these perceptions.

In this chapter, Philip Payton and Andrekos Varanava provide an introduction to the volume, illuminating its principal themes and introducing the several contributory chapters. It takes Australia as a case study to examine the complexity and diversity of the British Empire’s global immigration/emigration story, ranging across ethnicity, class, gender, indigenous–settler relations, and other considerations.

International audience

Throughout history, colonial and foreign legions have been a part of larger armies but rarely have they been as politically ‘loaded’ as the three proposed to the British government during the Great War. Cypriot, Armenian, and Jewish political elites proposed the formation of volunteer legions in the British army in late 1914 and early 1915. The primary sources show that they were initially rejected for political as well as military reasons. In 1916 the British agreed for the French to establish an Armenian legion, while in April 1917 the British agreed to establish a Jewish legion. When the French and British authorities accepted the Armenian Legion in the French army and the Jewish Legion in the British army respectively, the same political reasons for initially rejecting them were overcome or set aside. Imperialism was the key to understanding the initial rejecting of all three and the acceptance of those two: the Cyprus proposal threatened British rule in Cyprus and so was never accepted; the Armenian proposal did not play into British imperial interests, but once the British accepted French imperial interests in Cilicia in the Sykes–Picot Agreement the British accepted it; the Jewish Legion was accepted after the British embarked on their conquest of Palestine. Using British, French, and Cypriot archives, this article explores the official British reasoning for rejecting offers of Cypriot, Armenian, and Jewish legions and then accepting the latter two during the Great War.

Rolandos Katsiaounis was an eminent historian of Cypriot history. With his recent passing it is timely to consider his contribution to Cypriot social and labor history, especially in relation to identity and anti-colonialism, from the late Ottoman to the late British period, the period which his main works covered. Offering a critical understanding of many of his works, Varnava argues that Katsiaounis was a thorough empiricist and a pioneer of ‘history from below’, yet his close affiliation with AKEL also meant that Marxism drove his analysis, which was tinged with his close affinity to official AKEL positions. Thus it is important to understand the person beyond the historian as much as it is important to understand their use of evidence.

Yiannos Katsourides’ book about the history of the Communist Party of Cyprus is certainly timely. As he claims, almost nothing has been published in the English language on this political party, wh...

In the summer of 1916, the British Salonica Army and the Cyprus colonial government established the Cypriot Mule Corps (officially called the Macedonian Mule Corps), composed of mostly of Christian (Eastern Orthodox, and smaller numbers of Catholics, Armenians, and Maronites) and Muslim Cypriot muleteers and interpreters. These men served mostly in Salonica during the war and in Istanbul after the armistice. Although given the title of “Macedonian” Mule Corps, it was almost exclusively Cypriot in composition, with a staggering enlistment of about 12,000 Cypriots from every religious group in Cyprus. This article explores the formation of the corps, muleteer numbers, and recruitment strategies. It argues that there were both push and pull factors in understanding the striking enlistment of between 20 and 25 per cent of peasant and labouring men aged between 18 and 39.

In October 1916, the French government agreed with Armenian political elites to establish a Légion of Armenian volunteers in British Cyprus to fight the common Ottoman enemy. Despite British, French, and even Armenian rejections of such a Légion during different times throughout 1915 and early 1916, all sides overcame earlier concerns. Understanding how they managed to overcome these concerns will allow for this little-known episode in the history of the Great War in the eastern Mediterranean to contribute to the knowledge on (1) the complex French and British wartime stances towards this region, driven by imperialism and humanitarianism; (2) the ability of local elites to draw concessions from the Allies; (3) the important role played by local British and French colonial and military officers; and (4) broader historiographical debates on the responses to the Armenian Genocide. This article explores the origins of how theEntenteco-opted Armenians in their eastern Mediterranean campaigns, but also made them into pawns in the French and British reinvention of their imperial rivalry in this region in order to achieve their post-war imperialist agendas.

Scrutinizing and questioning contentious and failed policy decisions should result in discussing ‘ifs, buts, and maybes’, particularly when there are policy alternatives. This article scrutinizes and questions the British decision to reject Armenian proposals to form a legion of Armenian volunteers in 1914 and 1915, especially since in late 1916 the French, with British approval, established an Armenian legion (until 1919 called the Legion d'Orient); and because the first proposals for a legion were connected to British considerations, also overlooked, to land a force at Alexandretta. Nothing of substance has been published on the initial proposals to form an Armenian legion, and on its connection to the Armenian genocide and the proposed British landing at Alexandretta. By focusing on why the British rejected the proposal to form an Armenian legion and the implications, if any, for the Armenian genocide and the Allied discussions on where to attack the Ottoman empire during the first four months of 1915, this article offers important new insights into why the British and French failed to do anything to prevent the Armenian genocide, and got it wrong with their decision to land forces at Gallipoli in April 1915 instead of at Alexandretta. Imperialism lies at the heart of the explanation.

Compared to other countries, little has been written about the accounting history of Cyprus. This omission is surprising given the rich history of the island, today a Commonwealth and European Union member, with its own local accountancy body. This article aims to partly fill this vacuum. Despite Cyprus’s links to both Greece and Turkey, it was the experience of British rule that significantly influenced the development of accounting practice in Cyprus. Consequently, this article concentrates on the four decades immediately after the First World War until Cypriot independence in 1960, since this is the era in which the most notable developments in accounting practice occurred. This article traces these developments and their significant influences during that period. Like other country studies on the history of accounting, this article argues that the development of accounting evolved over time in response to the contingent political, economic, institutional and social factors, both at domestic and at international level.

This article explores the impact of civil-military relations and an unreliable – even disloyal – local population upon intelligence-gathering and counter-espionage in Cyprus, and therefore adds to the existing literature on British Near and Middle East military intelligence during the First World War. Drawing upon archives in Britain and Cyprus, and a range of published primary sources, a fresh contribution to First World War intelligence studies is offered through a focus on British counter-espionage efforts in Cyprus after 1916. The article covers Anglo-French intelligence cooperation on the Syrian and Cilician coast, the wartime loyalties of Cypriots and their value as spies, and insights into Ottoman and German human intelligence activity in the region. The primary focus is on the civil-military relations between the Cyprus colonial government and the military intelligence officers. It is argued that Cyprus acquired some importance as a post for intelligence-gathering and especially counter-espionage, but the problems derived from inadequate civil-military relations, disloyal Cypriot subjects, and the island’s status as a backwater hindered its development as a valuable asset in the Near and Middle East theatre.

First published by Maney Publishing who hold exclusive publishing rights. Deposited in UMER with permission of Maney Publishing

The historiography of the relationship between British and Greek liberalism and imperialism during the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century is surprisingly underdeveloped given the works on both these subjects separately. On the one hand, there is the very fine and timely edited volume Liberal Thought in the Eastern Mediterranean: Late 19 th Century until 1960s, which provides very valuable insights into Syria (especially), the Lebanon, and, to a lesser extent, the Ottoman Empire and Turkey, but excludes Greece, Egypt, Libya, Palestine, and Cyprus.1 Then there is Robert Holland and Diana Markides’s The British and the Hellenes, which takes an anachronistic approach to exploring British relations with “Greek” elites of various “Greek” islands and which places the relationship within the context of a struggle between British strategy, on the one hand, and Greek ethnonationalism and irredentism, on the other, without seriously questioning either.2 The authors attempt to explain these two themes without reference to the broader historical, theoretical, and comparative contexts, that is, within the vast literature on the ideas and policies of British imperialism and British imperial strategy, and the rise of ethnic-nationalism in the former Ottoman Empire and the role of European ideas and elites. Moreover, they do not question, but on the contrary they justify, Greek irredentism—or as will be argued later in this chapter, imperial expansion.

not available. Published version