ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview from the British occupation in 1878 to October 1915 when the island was offered to Greece. British rule ‘modernised’ Cyprus, facilitating significant population growth because of improvements to health, yet the island’s inconsequence to British imperialism meant there was little economic development, with the corresponding lack of employment for the growing population. Yet British rule changed Cyprus by shifting it onto a British rather than an Ottoman imperial road towards modernisation. For most of Ottoman rule, Cyprus was a backwater. It may have been occupied by the Ottomans for strategic reasons in 1570–1571 against Western control and broader influence in the eastern Mediterranean, but Cyprus was soon garrisoned by only a few troops and was a small fry in trade terms. Under the Ottomans there was little ethnic division and disturbances were mostly driven by power struggles amongst elites or economic inequalities amongst the lower-classes.
