by Oracle » Sun Apr 18, 2010 9:40 pm
I can’t get hold of the original paper by Michael Given but it is referred to by Miltiades Hatzopoulos in his own thesis from which these extracts are presented.
They go some way towards painting a picture of how much the British Colonialists tried to revise the history of this island to manipulate the natives and strengthen their hold on the island
Extracts from the article on Cypriot Archaeology, Modern Numismatics and Social Engineering.
This article examines the use of numismatic iconography by the British colonial administration of Cyprus in order, initially, to legitimise its possession of the island and, subsequently, to promote an Eteocypriot, an “authentic Cypriot”, identity as counter-poison against Greek nationalism.
In this endeavour of social engineering, archaeological items and
other symbols from Cyprus’ past played a prominent part. The outbreak of the Cypriot guerrilla war for union with Greece in 1955 highlighted the bankruptcy of this operation. Nevertheless, British efforts to evade Cyprus’ overwhelmingly Greek past – and present – continued unabated, even after the formal recognition of the island’s independence.
Stanley Casson described archaeological research in Cyprus as “a strange
and sad history” and deplored the first years of British rule as “a long record of destruction by neglect”. Furthermore, he denounced the archaeological excavations carried out during that period as practically reduced to tomb robbing. In fact, the aim of excavations was to enrich the collections of foreign museums, which until 1905 were authorised to carry away at least one third of the finds, rather than to increase scientific knowledge.
The fundamental, albeit controversial, study of the archaeological policies - or rather of the ideological orientations in the field of archaeology – promoted by the British colonial authorities in Cyprus remains Michael Given’s article “Inventing the Eteocypriots: Imperialist Archaeology and the Manipulation of Ethnic Identity”, published in volume XI of the Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology in 1998. In this paper the British archaeologist highlighted the way the colonial authorities in Cyprus used history and archaeology in order to counter the Greek national movement.
The author mentioned among other items, but without further elaboration, the reproduction of archaeological monuments on “postage stamps, coins,
postcards, tourist posters and official publications”, all symbolical works of art laden with ideological significance.
Since 1928 it had already been deemed necessary at the highest level to
promote “Cypriot patriotism” as the most effective counter-poison against
Greek nationalism. The effect of this new policy was visible in the new, 1930 version of The Handbook of Cyprus edited by the governor himself, R. H. A. Storrs, along with the Assistant Secretary to the Government, B. J. O’Brien, which systematically underplays the Greek element’s contribution to the history of Cyprus.
This brief presentation of Given’s views on the manipulation of the
monuments of Cypriot history by the colonial authorities for the consolidation of British rule on Cyprus.
The ideological message is clear. The commemorative piastre coin of 1928, and afterwards the other silver coins declare that Britain, by assuming the government of Cyprus in 1878, was simply coming back to her own; she was not conquering but recovering a land that she owned as “won by the spear”, even though Richard had sold the island.
Although all find their inspiration in antiquity, practically none of them recalls its Greek character. Three out of five (50, 5 and 3 mil coins) figure items from the Bronze Age or the first period of the Iron Age: according to Pridmore, a not otherwise specified “Mycenaean ivory found at Enkomi” (50 mils), “a bronze panel found at Curium” (5 mils) and “a design of an iron-age vase in the Cyprus Museum” (3 mils). Only a trained archaeologist might recognise in them some affinity with the Greek world.
Even the subjects on the 100 and 25 mil coins with figures from a less distant past, respectively an otherwise unidentified “painting on a jug found in Cyprus” and “a Greek coin found at Soli”, have no special connection with classical antiquity. It may be implicitly admitted that Cyprus is something more than her British rulers symbolised by the crowned bust of Elizabeth II on the obverse, but that Cypriots are not Greek (or Turkish for that matter), but Levantines, descendants of some particular but unidentified people of the Near East.
The third numismatic period (1928-60), which again coincides with Given’s
third archaeological period (c.1930-1960), is characterised by strong British reaction to the mounting Enosis movement. Two successive phases can be distinguished. During the first, which finds its expression in the late coinage of George V and that of George VI, the British authorities seemed to react negatively by stressing their imperial pretensions and by claiming rights of indefinite sovereignty emanating from the conquest of the island.
Ernest Bevin, the British Foreign Secretary, wrote in a 1946 secret
memo “our whole policy towards Cyprus will have to be reviewed, for we have starved the Cypriots, treated them very badly, and must mend our ways”.
This new policy would be implemented through the projection of a more accessible, more “popular” image of royal power and through a rapprochement with the local population, provided though that the latter was willing to disclaim its Greek character and to don its “authentic Cypriot” identity.
The above observations do not invalidate the caveat submitted by Given. On the contrary, they confirm the overlap and “time lag” which he perceived between the “production” of ideological discourse by historians and archaeologists and its exploitation by the colonial authorities, who seem to lag behind by one phase and only at the very end catch up with the ideological developments. But the attempt to befriend the Cypriot population hesitantly implemented at the end of the 1940s and based, moreover, on the exclusion of self-definition and self-determination, was insufficient, tragically belated and far from realistic. In the early hours of the first of April 1955, four months before the circulation of the new – and last – numismatic issue of colonial Cyprus, the armed struggle of EOKA had begun, initiating half a century of violence.
Even after the forced renouncement of British sovereignty and the
recognition of Cypriot independence, measures were taken in order to foil the Greek-Cypriots’ suggestion that the new coinage of the Republic of Cyprus might include motifs from the specifically Greek past of the island, such as figures of Aphrodite and Dionysos or a ram and a bull from ancient coins of Salamis and Paphos. Finally, all human figures were excluded, and only plants or animals were deemed acceptable (a mouflon for the 100 mil coin, a bunch of grapes for the 50 mil, a cedar cone for the 25 mil, the same ancient sailing ship for the 5 mil coin and two ears of corn.
Only on the new coinage, minted in 1983 after the introduction of the new cents denomination in replacement of mils, does a theme clearly evoking the Greek past of the island make its first appearance. The reverse of the elegant 50 cent coin carries a reproduction of the reverse of a silver
issue of the ancient kingdom of Marion figuring the abduction of Europa and bearing in syllabic script the Greek legend ...
