International Journal of Middle East Studies (2021), 1–2 BOOK REVIEW Cyprus Under British Colonial Rule: Culture, Politics, and the Movement Toward Union with Greece, 1878–1954. Christos P. Ioannides (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2019). Pp. 320. $120.00 cloth. ISBN: 9781498582032 Reviewed by Alexis Rappas, College of Social Sciences and Humanities, Koç University, Istanbul, Turkey (arappas@ku.edu.tr) Christos P. Ioannides’ Cyprus Under British Colonial Rule is the latest addition in the expanding field of studies on Cyprus under British rule. Written by an eminent political scientist, and drawing on a variety of sources, this book aims to be interdisciplinary in scope but misses the mark, as will be shown in the latter part of this review. Covering the period from the beginning of British colonial rule in Cyprus in 1878, to 1954, the year Greek Cypriots sought to internationalize their struggle for union with Greece, or enosis, this study’s main contribution is that it opens new vistas on Greek Cypriot popular culture under British rule. More specifically, it argues that Greek-Orthodox culture, which remained perfectly opaque to British colonial scrutiny, functioned as a powerful vector of politicization in rural Cyprus. The book’s main strength lies in its reliance on a source seldom, if ever, used so extensively in the frame of an analysis of Cyprus under British rule. Indeed, Ioannides draws on (at the risk of over-citing), a vast array of folk Greek Cypriot poems, created by poietarides (folk poets) of humble peasant origin, and often declaimed in the Cypriot dialect. Although they were later transcribed and published as pamphlets, these poems were, for a long time, “passed on orally from one generation to the next,” constituting in the process a “mnemonic culture,” all the more important in a society which remained largely illiterate deep into the 1920s (pp. 127–28). Aside from the precious information it provides on living conditions in rural Cyprus, this source, at the crossroads of written and oral culture, allows Ioannides to write a “history from below” and restore in the process some of the voice of the island’s peasant majority. What emerges from Ioannides’ analysis is a popular culture, which, if it cannot be said to constitute what subalternists called an “autonomous domain,” appears nevertheless as complex and layered. A major theme proceeding from the examination of folk poems concerns urban-rural connections in colonial Cyprus. On a relatively small island, the economy of which relied so decisively on agriculture, there could not exist a clear-cut separation between city and countryside and, consequently, “throughout the first half of the twentieth century, Cyprus remained village-oriented while urban centers were infused with rural ambiance” (p. 93, see also p. 73). The author examines these organic urban-rural links through different angles. Aside from the well-known question of moneylending, tying indebted farmers to usurious urbanites (pp. 78–82), Ioannides describes the panigyri (Chapter 5). This was (and still is) a periodical fair, ubiquitous throughout the Greek-Orthodox world, serving festive, religious, commercial and cultural functions. Placed under the patronage of a saint, some twenty-four important panygiria in Cyprus allowed farmers to “engage in direct trade, without an intermediary or a broker,” with both peasants and urbanites (p. 112). A second major linkage between city and countryside was the village coffeeshop. There, men would gather and listen to the “priest, the teacher and the mukhtar (village headman)” read the newspapers published in the island’s cities; there, wealthier farmers would recruit day laborers; there, poietarides would declaim their poems; there, finally, British colonial officials would occasionally listen to the grievances of the villagers and get an impression of the state of “public opinion” in Cyprus (pp. 133–4). Invigorating these urban-rural links is the profound religiosity suffusing Cyprus’ popular culture, Ioannides’ second theme of interest. The centrality of the village papas (priest), himself a peasant, the frequency and variety of religious festivities, and the elections of bishops in which both laymen and clergy participated, all converged to make the Orthodox Church socially the most far-reaching organization in the island (pp. 82–87, 93, 98). Ioannides provides a nuanced and persuasive analysis of the seamless © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press. Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Koç Üniversitesi, on 12 Jul 2021 at 08:37:09, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020743821000702 2 Book Review manner in which the Church could harness the faith of its flock and use it for political purposes. As an example of this “political soteriology,” the author shows how Makarios III (who became Archbishop in 1950 and would serve as the first president of independent Cyprus from 1960 to 1977), used in his sermons the Passion of Christ as an allegory of the island’s “Passion” under British colonial rule and “Resurrection” with enosis, its union to Greece (p. 154). What made the Church such a formidable adversary for the British, Ioannides argues, was that “[i]n order to fight [its] political message, they had to fight its religious message as well” and this “remained an impossible task since the two were indistinguishable” (p. 158). Establishing the Church’s social influence allows Ioannides to argue that enosis was largely diffused among the Greek Cypriot peasantry, something British colonial authorities had always denied, representing the latter as politically apathetic. Hence, the author provides a statistical analysis highlighting the high degree of rural participation in the October 1931 uprising, which famously culminated with the burning down of Government House. Yet the enosis that recurs in the poems cited by Ioannides is an interesting left-leaning form of nationalism. This blending of nationalism and communism in rural Cyprus constitutes the third major theme of Ioannides’ book. Focusing on Pavlos Liasides, the most famous Cypriot folk poet, the author shows the Greek Cypriot peasants’ sensitivity to the egalitarian teachings of Christianity and consequently their receptiveness to the political message of AKEL, the island’s communist party, which was formed in 1941 (pp. 214–19). Brimming with insightful data regarding the condition of Greek Cypriot peasants, Ioannides’ study suffers in multiple ways, however, from its lack of engagement with the most recent, and increasingly dense, scholarship on Cyprus under British rule.1 There is, first of all, practically no reference to the Turkish Cypriot community, save for a mention of a Turkish Cypriot folk poet and of the friendly dispositions towards the Muslim community on behalf of a number of Greek Cypriot folk poets (pp. 134–36). Yet in a book ostensibly focusing on the “movement toward union with Greece,” this imbalance, which could have been rectified by referencing recent studies on Turkish Cypriots, is not as problematic as the author’s portrayal of the enosis.2 Indeed by not engaging the work of constructivist scholars—the most striking absence here is Rebecca Bryant’s 2004 Imagining the Nation—Ioannides tends to provide a romanticized view of Greek nationalism in Cyprus. While his depiction of Greek-Orthodox rituals and festivities is rich and textured, it is also atemporal. Whatever the author writes for instance about the panygyri or Easter celebrations (Pascha) holds as true today in any part of the Greek-Orthodox world as it supposedly did for Cyprus under British rule (p. 96). This intense focus on an atemporal Greek-Orthodox “culture,” leads the author, perhaps unintentionally, to conflate the history of Cyprus with that of mainland Greece. Thus there are, throughout the book, numerous references to the history of the latter, without any obvious connection to that of the island (e.g., p. 192). Within this framework, it is not surprising that Ioannides invokes the “essence of Greece and its spirit that transcends time and space” (p. 45). What gets lost in the process is what Georges Balandier called “the colonial situation,” namely the very texture of the experience of British rule with its far-reaching social and cultural influence. Instead the latter is reduced to a disembodied and distant political force. A more dynamic representation of the transformation of Greek Cypriot culture under British rule would have required a sustained discussion with the rich anthropology of Cyprus.3 With this important caveat, Ioannides’ book remains an original and important study that considerably enriches our understanding of the political and social views of the Cypriot peasantry under British rule. As such, it will appeal both to historians of the island during that period and to students of peasant politics in the Eastern Mediterranean. doi:10.1017/S0020743821000702 1 A non-exhaustive list would include the works by Michalis N. Michael (2005), Andrekos Varnava (2009), Yiannos Katsourides (2015), Gail Dallas Hook (2015), Diana Markides (2014), Antigone Heraclidou (2017), none of which the author references. It is quite surprising that Anastasia Yiangou’s book on the Second World War in Cyprus (2010) is not referenced when Ioannides devotes an entire chapter (9) to the topic. 2 Among other studies: Altay Nevzat (2005), Altay Nevzat and Mete Hatay (2009), Ilia Xypolia (2017). 3 The works of Paul Sant Cassia (1982, 1986) or Yiannis Padadakis (1998, 2003, 2008) are conspicuously absent. Ioannides mentions only one article by Peter Loizos and not that author’s very relevant The Greek Gift (1975). Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Koç Üniversitesi, on 12 Jul 2021 at 08:37:09, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020743821000702