|
Cyprus BRITISH RULE
The sultan ceded the administration of Cyprus to
Britain in
exchange for guarantees that Britain would use the island
as a base
to protect the Ottoman Empire against possible Russian
aggression.
The British had been offered Cyprus three times (in 1833,
1841, and
1845) before accepting it in 1878.
In the mid-1870s, Britain and other European powers
were faced
with preventing Russian expansion into areas controlled by
a
weakening Ottoman Empire. Russia was trying to fill the
power
vacuum by expanding the tsar's empire west and south
toward the
warm water port of Constantinople and the Dardanelles.
British
administration of Cyprus was intended to forestall such an
expansion. In June 1878, clandestine negotiations between
Britain
and the Porte culminated in the Cyprus Convention, by
which "His
Imperial Majesty the Sultan further consents to assign the
island
of Cyprus to be occupied and administered by England."
There was some opposition to the agreement in Britain,
but not
enough to prevent it, and colonial administration was
established
on the island. Greek Cypriot nationalism made its presence
known to
the new rulers, when, in a welcoming speech at Larnaca for
the
first British high commissioner, the bishop of Kition
expressed the
hope that the British would expedite the unification of
Cyprus and
Greece as they had previously done with the Ionian
Islands. Thus,
the British were confronted at the very beginning of their
administration with the reality that enosis was vital to
many Greek
Cypriots.
The terms of the convention provided that the excess of
the
island's revenue over the expenditures for government
should be
paid as an "annual fixed payment" by Britain to the
sultan. This
proviso enabled the Porte to assert that it had not ceded
or
surrendered Cyprus to the British, but had merely
temporarily
turned over administration. Because of these terms, the
action was
sometimes described as a British leasing of the island.
The "Cyprus
Tribute" became a major source of discontent underlying
later
Cypriot unrest.
Negotiations eventually determined the sum of the
annual fixed
payment at exactly 92,799 pounds sterling, eleven
shillings, and
three pence. Governor of the island Ronald Storrs later
wrote that
the calculation of this sum was made with "all that
scrupulous
exactitude characteristic of faked accounts." The Cypriots
found
themselves not only paying the tribute, but also covering
the
expenses incurred by the British colonial administration,
creating
a steady drain on an already poor economy.
From the start, the matter of the Cyprus Tribute was
severely
exacerbated by the fact that the money was never paid to
Turkey.
Instead it was deposited in the Bank of England to pay off
Turkish
Crimean War loans (guaranteed by both Britain and France)
on which
Turkey had defaulted. This arrangement greatly disturbed
the Turks
as well as the Cypriots. The small sum left over went into
a
contingency fund, which further irritated the Porte.
Public opinion
on Cyprus held that the Cypriots were being forced to pay
a debt
with which they were in no way connected. Agitation
against the
tribute was incessant, and the annual payment became a
symbol of
British oppression.
There was also British opposition to the tribute.
Undersecretary of State for the Colonies Winston Churchill
visited
Cyprus in 1907 and, in a report on his visit, declared,
"We have no
right, except by force majeure, to take a penny of the
Cyprus
Tribute to relieve us from our own obligations, however
unfortunately contracted." Parliament soon voted a
permanent annual
grant-in-aid of 50,000 pounds sterling to Cyprus and
reduced the
tribute accordingly.
Data as of January 1991
|
