History

"This article explores the impact of civil-military relations and an unreliable – even disloyal – local population upon intelligence-gathering and counter-espionage in Cyprus, and therefore adds to the existing literature on British Near and Middle East military intelligence during the First World War. Drawing upon archives in Britain and Cyprus, and a range of published primary sources, a fresh contribution to First World War intelligence studies is offered through a focus on British counter-espionage efforts in Cyprus after 1916. The article covers Anglo-French intelligence cooperation on the Syrian and Cilician coast, the wartime loyalties of Cypriots and their value as spies, and insights into Ottoman and German human intelligence activity in the region. The primary focus is on the civil-military relations between the Cyprus colonial government and the military intelligence officers. It is argued that Cyprus acquired some importance as a post for intelligence-gathering and especially counter-espionage, but the problems derived from inadequate civil-military relations, disloyal Cypriot subjects, and the island’s status as a backwater hindered its development as a valuable asset in the Near and Middle East theatre.

Keywords

Military intelligence, First World War, Cyprus, civil-military relations, disloyal subjects,
Near and Middle East"

Archbishop Sophronios III was undoubtedly one of the most important of the archbishops of Cyprus in the modern era. There are three reasons for this: 1) he was one of the longest serving archbishops, serving from October 1865 to May 1900; 2) he was archbishop during one of the most significant periods of transition for Cyprus and its people, the ending of Ottoman rule and the start of British rule; and 3) he was the last of the 'old' and first of the 'new' ethnarchs. This chapter uses British, Cypriot and Ottoman archives to place these three themes into their appropriate historical context in order to provide a meaningful analysis of Sophronios as archbishop, ethnarch and as a person.

Scrutinizing and questioning contentious and failed policy decisions should result in discussing ‘ifs, buts, and maybes’, particularly when there are policy alternatives. This article scrutinizes and questions the British decision to reject Armenian proposals to form a legion of Armenian volunteers in 1914 and 1915, especially since in late 1916 the French, with British approval, established an Armenian legion (until 1919 called the Legion d'Orient); and because the first proposals for a legion were connected to British considerations, also overlooked, to land a force at Alexandretta. Nothing of substance has been published on the initial proposals to form an Armenian legion, and on its connection to the Armenian genocide and the proposed British landing at Alexandretta. By focusing on why the British rejected the proposal to form an Armenian legion and the implications, if any, for the Armenian genocide and the Allied discussions on where to attack the Ottoman empire during the first four months of 1915, this article offers important new insights into why the British and French failed to do anything to prevent the Armenian genocide, and got it wrong with their decision to land forces at Gallipoli in April 1915 instead of at Alexandretta. Imperialism lies at the heart of the explanation.

In October 1916, the French government agreed with Armenian political elites to establish a Légion of Armenian volunteers in British Cyprus to fight the common Ottoman enemy. Despite British, French, and even Armenian rejections of such a Légion during different times throughout 1915 and early 1916, all sides overcame earlier concerns. Understanding how they managed to overcome these concerns will allow for this little-known episode in the history of the Great War in the eastern Mediterranean to contribute to the knowledge on (1) the complex French and British wartime stances towards this region, driven by imperialism and humanitarianism; (2) the ability of local elites to draw concessions from the Allies; (3) the important role played by local British and French colonial and military officers; and (4) broader historiographical debates on the responses to the Armenian Genocide. This article explores the origins of how the Entente co-opted Armenians in their eastern Mediterranean campaigns, but also made them into pawns in the French and British reinvention of their imperial rivalry in this region in order to achieve their post-war imperialist agendas.

The 100th anniversary of the outbreak of the Great War seemed a timely occasion on which to call a meeting of leading international scholars to conduct a critical investigation into some lesser-known aspects of the relationship between the conflict and the British Empire. That the conference, entitled British Empire and the Great War: Colonial Societies/Cultural Responses, took place in Singapore, and was organised by a Northern Irish academic resident there and a Cypriot domiciled in Australia, again, seemed most relevant. The problematique of the conference focused on a decentralisation of sociocultural analysis, away from the more predictable metropolitan perspectives, to make way for an analysis of contrasts and complementarities of ideology throughout the geographical and ethnic extremes of both the "formal" and "informal" empire. From Singapore to Australia, Cyprus to Ireland, India to Canada, South Africa to Mesopotamia, New Zealand to Argentina, and around the rest of the British imperial world, further complexities and interlocking themes were addressed relating to an array of subjects including: imperial and colonial history, war and society, war and culture, art history, cultural studies, diaspora, loyalties/disloyalties, music history, photography, propaganda, education, pacifism, gender studies, class and race structures/relations. Of particular interest was how different strata and subsets of imperial society shaped and were shaped by the experience of total war; and how disparate societies and cultures-in all their manifestations and on their various "home fronts"-shaped and were shaped by it.

Research published on the recruitment and enlistment of non-settler colonial populations varies in both quality and quantity. There is a great deal published on India, the West Indies, and the informal empire in China, but little on Africa and the Pacific, and nothing on Cyprus and Malta. There were, of course several official and personal accounts published during and immediately after the war, but most of these celebrated the Indian contribution. In more recent times there have been
numerous publications, mostly articles, on the fighting and labouring contributions of the non-settler colonists to the British war effort, especially on Indians, West Indians, and Chinese, but also on a smaller scale on Africans and Fijians. This article aims to explore the participation of Cypriots, first focussing on the numbers and an analysis of the backgrounds of these men, and secondly on British recruiting strategies.