‘Recognising Merit’ in late British colonial Cyprus

Abstract

By interrogating the role of status symbols in Britain’s (de)colonial management practices, this article joins an emerging body of International Relation (IR) scholarship that conducts historical analyses of international status dynamics. Situated within the context of the age of the mid-20th century, at a time when empires were increasingly contested by their colonial subjects via near-simultaneous violent insurgency campaigns, this article aims to further our understanding on the (mis)use of imperial status symbols, using the case study of the British colony of Cyprus. Drawing upon unpublished material accessed via the Cyprus State Archives, the article reads this newly found material, such as Savingrams, Circulars and private correspondence between Empire officials in the metropole and the colony, to explore how Britain introduced several status symbols on its colonial subjects. The article argues that Britain did so, for a specific purpose, namely to maintain an informal empire as soon as ‘boots were off the ground’, by influencing and managing selected colonial subjects, thus safeguarding its imperial legacy. At the same time, the article investigates how these colonial subjects successfully leveraged the prospect of a lingering ‘British connection’, while simultaneously a large part of the Greek Cypriot community stood, and even fought, against this connection.