ABSTRACT
This chapter unpacks the story of encounters between Cypriots and Armenians of the Legion d'Orient. This necessitates understanding the history of the island, especially as regards identity formation and rural life under British rule since 1878 and the understanding of the Christian–Muslim ‘divide’ in the island, particularly in the rural lower classes, which is little explored alongside the nationalism of the educated urban upper and middle classes. The chapter draws upon various archives from London, Paris and Nicosia, and the relevant historiographies. It breaks new ground by fully exploring the incidents from a social, imperial and military perspective. The chapter shows a limited colonial agency in the face of an alien group introduced, albeit it temporarily, by the British colonial power. Village-community and class identity, which crossed religious differences, trumped ethno-religious identity in a colonial Cyprus still transitioning from a pre-modern Ottoman system to a mildly modernist British system.
