Imperial Control in Cyprus

Education and Political Manipulation in the British Empire

Antigone Heraclidou

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781786722515
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Modern British History
• Index: History

In Protectorate Cyprus, education was one of the most effective tools of imperial control and political manipulation used by the British. This book charts the cultural and educational aspects of British colonial rule in Cyprus and analyses what these policies reveal about the internal struggles on the island between the 1930s and the 1960s. Cyprus had been under British occupation since 1878, but it was only half a century later that educational policies acquired a strong political significance and became essential in preserving the British position on the island. The co-existence of two very strongly held and eventually conflicting national identities in Cyprus – Greek Orthodox and Turkish Muslim – inevitably led to the politicisation of education and culture on the island. Therefore, any attempts to impose British culture, language and ways of thinking onto Cypriots, or even to create a distinct Cypriot identity, had very limited success. Gradually, the education system reflected the shifting political developments in colonial Cyprus. By the start of the 1950s, schools had become a breeding ground for discontent and between 1955 and 1959 they were an indispensable part of the EOKA revolt. In this book, Antigone Heraclidou provides a new dimension to the understanding and origins of the deadlock that was to prove one of the most intractable in the final years of the British Empire.

CHAPTER 1

THE EDUCATION SYSTEM DURING THE FIRST FIFTY YEARS OF THE BRITISH ADMINISTRATION, 1878–1931

As was mentioned in the Introduction, the present chapter will provide background for the events leading to 1931 and for the broad context of educational change. Through a review of the literature, a comprehensive description of educational affairs in Cyprus from 1878 until 1931 will be attempted. Such a description will help us understand the significance of the educational reforms after 1931, the storms of protests they unleashed and, finally, their political implications. After 1920 the education system in Cyprus would enter a centralisation process which would be consolidated and fully implemented as the 1930s began. During this process, Cypriot communities were deprived of the extensive powers they enjoyed over the education system in favour of increased government control. This chapter provides a comprehensive picture of how the education system worked in Cyprus and the steps taken towards its centralisation up to 1931 in the context of the most important political developments during this period.

In 1878, when Britain acquired Cyprus from a declining Ottoman Empire, it was met with a warm welcome from the largely Greek population.¹ To them, Muslim authoritarian rule was to be replaced by a Christian, liberal power, and the fulfilment of the national aspirations of the Greek people of Cyprus now seemed more feasible – the long-desired aim of enosis, union of the island with the Kingdom of Greece, came into view. The Greeks of Cyprus expected the British to show the same generosity they showed in 1864 when Britain ceded the Ionian Islands to Greece. The Ionian example and, at a later stage, the liberation of Crete, would act as points of reference for the Greek Community. Holland remarks that although the enosis movement remained patchy and incidental in its extent for some years after 1878, nonetheless, compared with anti-colonial phenomena elsewhere in the British Empire, it exhibited a relatively high degree of continuity and fixity of purpose.²

Upon his arrival on the island, Sir Garnet Wolseley, the first High Commissioner to serve in Cyprus, was instantly impressed by the “danger of the Hellenic propaganda” encouraging annexation to Greece.³ The desire for union, although real and tangible, was until 1931 expressed peacefully by the majority of the population, especially by the Orthodox Church of Cyprus, which had acquired much power and many financial and political privileges during Ottoman rule. One-fourth of the population were Muslim Turkish who, despite the change of government, were willing to cooperate with the British authorities. The political developments which occurred during the British administration of Cyprus not only affected enosis but they also had a great impact on every aspect of life on the island, including its economy and, of course, education. From 1878 to 1960 education became increasingly subject to the changing political conditions which affected the island while it was part of the British Empire.

Given the doubt expressed in some quarters in Britain concerning the acquisition of Cyprus and its usefulness, the British Government used realpolitik arguments to justify its decision. The Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli (Lord Beaconsfield), claimed the island, together with Alexandretta on the adjacent coast of Asia Minor, afforded “the keys to Asia”, providing a commanding naval position in the eastern Mediterranean from which power might be projected in several directions. Even if Cyprus' value was to be somewhat diminished after the occupation of Egypt in 1882, Disraeli's decision struck a chord with British opinion when he argued that, “in taking Cyprus, the movement is not Mediterranean, it is Indian”.⁴

Britain's attachment to her Mediterranean possessions wasn't principally for economic reasons. The colonies were intended to be financially self-supporting and not become liabilities to the British Treasury,⁵ and in this, Cyprus was treated no differently than other British colonies. But in one respect it was distinctive: it was the only colony forced to directly subsidise the British Treasury, which it did through a mechanism that became known as the “Cyprus Tribute”. According to an annex to the Cyprus Convention, Britain undertook to pay the Porte the excess of revenue over expenditure, to be determined by the average of the five years prior to the day of the convention. The annual payment was eventually not made directly to the Porte, however, but to the British Treasury, to reimburse the bondholders of the Turkish Guaranteed Loan of 1855. Markides, in a recent study, actually ascertains that the reason Cyprus was chosen was not so much because of its strategic importance, but due to its capacity to raise enough revenue to secure half of the interest on the 1855 Crimean War loan, an amount not raised by the Egyptian tribute in 1877.⁶ The burden was widely seen as so inequitable that even Winston Churchill, during his visit to Cyprus in 1907 as Under Secretary of State for the Colonies, criticised it and warned that “wherever there is economic injustice there will also be found political discontent”.⁷ Cypriots were also heavily taxed. The Turks had left hardly any commodities untaxed, and inevitably indirect taxation weighed heaviest on the poorest classes. Taxation, including the Tribute, became the object of many memorials and deputations, and was to remain a thorny issue for Anglo-Cypriot relations until the end of the 1920s.⁸

Financial limitations were therefore the main reason the administration of education was left to local communities and the religious authorities. This was especially relevant with respect to the Greek Orthodox Church, which traditionally controlled education, a privilege it had enjoyed without interference or interruption under Ottoman rule. As Bryant aptly writes, religion in Cyprus was immanently political, and religion and education were inextricably entwined.⁹ Government aid to schools was essentially token, leaving the schools themselves dependent on fees from pupils and private donations.¹⁰ Both the Greek and Turkish communities in Cyprus followed largely in theory and practice the respective Hellenic and Ottoman systems of education: in the curriculum of the secondary school of Famagusta – established in 1899 – there was even a drawing lesson which involved depicting heroes of the Greek War of Independence.¹¹ Duties such as the appointment, dismissal, discipline, payment and promotion of elementary teachers; the establishment and maintenance of primary schools and the prescription of the school curriculum were shared by the Town or Village School Committees, the District Committees and the Boards of Education, all of which were separately provided for by Greek and Muslim communities. Each school was attached exclusively to one religion, as reflected in the management committees. The District Committees comprised four elected and two ex-officio members, that is, the District Commissioner and the Bishop of the District, and were responsible for the appointment and dismissal of teachers and to hear appeals from the Town or Village Committees. These Committees had between three and five elected members and had more or less the same responsibilities as the District committees in their areas. The two Boards of Education were composed partly of members elected by the District Committees, partly of persons nominated by Greek or Muslim members of the Legislative Council and partly of ex-officio members representing the religious interests of either ethnicity. Each Board was responsible for prescribing the curriculum used in schools and for recommending to the Government the grants to be allowed to the schools and the number of teachers to be appointed. Indeed, Lord Kimberley, Secretary of State for the Colonies in Gladstone's Liberal Government of 1882, supported the collaboration of the Government with the local authorities, and he unreservedly rejected the axiom declared by Wolseley's successor, High Commissioner Sir Robert Biddulph, that only by learning English would the inhabitants reach a higher civilisation and acquire “access to every branch of human knowledge”.¹²

During the first fifty years of British administration, Lord Kimberley's position was generally respected by all the subsequent Secretaries of State and Governors. According to Georghallides, Lord Kimberley laid down two principles regarding education. The first was that the educational policy should be suitable to the conditions of Britain's tenure in Cyprus, conditions which would hardly justify the Anglicising tendencies of the proposals earlier recommended by Biddulph and the Rev. Josiah Spencer, the first Director of Education. The second principle was that any action which would excite the islanders' opposition should be avoided; the aim of the Government should therefore not be the gradual assumption of responsibility of education but merely participation, in an auxiliary fashion, in the schools' financial and administrative arrangements.¹³ Crawshaw points out that Britain's educational policy in the early years appears to have been motivated by a general respect for classical learning and an overarching preoccupation with economy. She notes that the early British administrators, with their own grounding in the classics, found little reason to quarrel with a curriculum which was dedicated to the achievements of Ancient Greece no matter how much these might be taught for the purpose of furthering Greek irredentism.¹⁴ Persianis describes this educational policy, undertaken between 1878 and 1919, as laissez-faire, shaped above all by a scarcity of resources to support any alternative approach.¹⁵ A much more recent scholar, however, has argued that there lay behind the original decision by Lord Kimberley not to introduce English in the schools a British liberal reverence for Greek culture, and that this decision was freighted with consequences for relations between the occupying power and the majority population.¹⁶ This may be debated, since from the start the British were keen to avoid repeating in Cyprus their uncomfortable experience of facing an aroused Hellenism similar to that which had created so much trouble in their former Ionian Protectorate prior to 1864. What can be said for sure is that government education policy in Cyprus reflected the ambiguous and constrained nature of the occupation in the years after 1878.¹⁷

Stavrinides points out that the Church, under a modernising, secular British regime, soon realised it must remain alert to challenges to its authority and leadership of the Greek community, thus it continually reminded its flock they were of the Greek Orthodox faith and that the liberated mainland Greeks were their brothers. Therefore, Stavrinides argues, the emergent conception of “Helleno-Christian” ideals became the guiding force of Greek education in Cyprus, as it had been in Greece herself.¹⁸ Kelling equally maintains that the education system in Cyprus was emblematic of the tightrope on which British rule balanced: too much reform along anglicising lines would alienate the Greeks; too much support for Hellenic institutions, on the other hand, would lessen the always tenuous loyalties of the Greek–Cypriots to the new regime and encourage Greek nationalism and enosis.¹⁹

Throughout the British period, the form and administration of the education system in the Greek community of Cyprus underwent several changes which can be attributed to the social and financial conditions of the island. National aspirations, political aims and strategic interests exerted steady pressure on the education system and deepened the gap that always existed between the British authorities, on the one hand, and the Greek–Cypriot politicians and the Orthodox Church on the other. Yet, although some historians have analysed the transformations affecting the education system during the British administration, few of them have traced their consistent interaction with Cypriot political development. Exploring this linkage is a critical preoccupation of the present volume.

In 1878 the rate of illiteracy in Cyprus was significantly high, and secondary schools were only found in Nicosia, Limassol and Larnaca. Notwithstanding financial constraints, by the end of the century some progress had been made. Nicosia High School, which in 1896 was renamed the Pancyprian Gymnasium, found a new role, apart from serving as a secondary school, in the training of elementary school teachers.²⁰ Furthermore, the total numbers of the pupils and the schools increased. Katsiaounis explains that during the Ottoman period only Turkish schools were in receipt of state aid, with Greek schools making ends meet with communal contributions, but that under early British rule this discrimination was eliminated. Government aid had risen by 1886 to an average subsidy of £15,40 for each school. Whereas in 1881 there had been ninety-one schools on the whole island, by 1901 there were 273.²¹ This can be attributed not only to the increasing amounts provided to the schools, but also to the increasing demand for more and better education within Cypriot society. The desire for literacy motivated the more affluent villagers, no matter how ineffective the transportation system, to send their children to the towns where they could receive better education.²² To this argument Persianis adds that, even before the advent of British rule, there were signs of growing social mobility amongst Greek–Cypriots, with school attendance perceived as a key means for securing a better material future for their children.²³

The beginning of the twentieth century saw two additional educational developments. The first was the establishment of the English School in 1901 by the Director of Education, Rev. F.D. Newham. Newham and his colleagues were concerned fundamentally with the shaping of “character” and with training young men for government employment.²⁴ The other development was the extraordinary flourishing of the press. Greek newspapers began to appear almost immediately after the commencement of British occupation. In 1900 there were already seven, signifying a rapid expansion in the movement of ideas.²⁵ Meanwhile, a trend towards the promotion of archaeology emerged with the foundation of the Museum of Nicosia in 1883, which heralded a new cultural linkage between Britain and Cyprus.²⁶ The Cyprus Museum was established and was for a long time maintained entirely by private subscriptions since Lord Salisbury, more interested in science than in archaeology, refused to sanction the expense of sending an archaeologist from the British Museum to the new museum. It was an important step towards the promotion and protection of Cypriot culture and heritage and, despite Salisbury, a close link between the British Museum and the Cyprus Museum was to develop over time.

The spread of literacy and ideas in this period released forces which could not be fully controlled by the Greek clerical and lay establishment any more than they could by the British. As Katsiaounis explains, nurtured as an Ottoman institution, the Church had hitherto enjoyed dominion over a largely illiterate populace whose intellectual facilities did not extend beyond religious texts. Literacy as such, however, tended to produce self-awareness and consciousness, more exigent needs and higher aspirations. What is more, the emphasis of the whole set of ideas imparted to school children was shifting from Christianity to Hellenism, from religious faith to a more strictly cultural orientation.²⁷ This shift can be explained by the growth of nationalism, which was so intense at the beginning of the twentieth century and from which Greek irredentism could not be left untouched. According to Augustinos:

Hellenism is to Greeks a shared national culture, the growth and elaboration of which took place simultaneously with the creation and development of the nation state, in 1830. Politicians in Greece argued that if all the Greeks were brought within the frontiers of an enlarged state, the country would become economically self-sufficient and politically stable. It was a dream of salvation by expansion, of what became known as the Megali Idea.²⁸

Orthodox Christianity was no longer the sole connecting link between Greeks. The phenomenon of nationalism was increasingly based on secularism, on a common language, a common cultur...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword
• Introduction
• 1. The Education System During the First Fifty Years of the British Administration, 1878–1931
• 2. Making a British Atmosphere in Cyprus, 1931–5
• 3. Towards the End of “Palmerocracy”: British Educational Policy in Cyprus, 1936–9
• 4. Education and Politics in Wartime Cyprus, 1940–5
• 5. Education, Enosis and the Revival of Politics in Postwar Cyprus, 1945–50
• 6. A Chaotic Situation: The Role of Schools in the Preparation for the Revolt, 1950–5
• 7. Schools in Uproar: The EOKA Revolt and the End of British Rule in Cyprus
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Plates