The Crisis of Modernity in Cyprus: A Review of Serkan Karas’s Talk on Technopolitics by Senalp Canlıbel
The arrival of British rule in Cyprus and the subsequent developments marked the start of a transition period on the island at the turn of the 20th century. Instead of the Mediterranean “El Dorado” that the British was expecting (Varnava 2009), they found a malaria-stricken and financially burdened island. Serkan Karas’s talk titled “Colonial Techno-politics in Cyprus: The (un)making of Famagusta Port and Railway Lines” departs from this point in history as he explains the technopolitics of the Famagusta port and the Cyprus Government Railway. Technopolitics involves the interplay of colonial politics, economic development, and expert knowledge. In the case of Cyprus, the politics is made up of layers of power. First, the colonial government in Cyprus and the imperial context in which they operate; second, the local political elite with which a colonial relationship has to be established; lastly, the experts (e.g. , engineers) that provided the practical framework and legitimacy in the decision-making process about such investments in the island’s infrastructure. According to Karas, these technological investments influence how the actors “perceive crisis” (Karas 2021: 6). Karas analyses the interaction of these actors in the context of the island’s economic and social crises at the time, and traces the design and implementation of these two[1] big projects and how they reflect the (re)production of the political structures. In this review, I will try to summarise Karas’s talk by first introducing the historical context, then discussing the actors' interaction during the design and implementation of the two projects.
Historical context is paramount to understand Karas’s research. At the local level, masses of farmers were experiencing financial turmoil as, among other things[2], the British created an efficient taxation system which raised funds to pay the Tribute[3] to French and British shareholders. In turn, a class of merchants and money-lenders were gaining economic and political power as impoverished farmers’ could not access alternative funds and were forced to lease or sell their lands (Rappas 2008). In 1900, 70 per cent of workforce in Cyprus was working in agriculture (Caruana-Galizia 2015). A crisis in agriculture could quickly become a general economic crisis.
The old social structure was decaying as the traditional millet system was giving way to liberal common law, disrupting the hierarchical power relations. The Constitution of 1882 served as a critical moment in this transition, as it established the crucial political institutions where local elites and colonial officials interacted: the Executive Council and the Legislative Council. Karas emphasizes the importance of the Legislative Council as one of the only two parliamentary institutions in all the British colonies, which could be seen as a performative act from the colonial government to signal the use of assimilation instead of force as their administrative approach in Cyprus (Karas 2021: 13). The composition of the Legislative Council reflected the changing political landscape in local politics. Greek Cypriots elected the traditionalist clergy, but also merchants and money-lenders as their economic hold over the population was increasing.
The last point that Karas mentions is the “metropolitan” context. Cyprus was losing its strategic and political importance for the British Empire. On the one hand , the British capturing Egypt in 1882 made Cyprus redundant to the imperial efforts in the Mediterranean. On the other hand, British possession of Cyprus as a colony was questioned in the British parliament. Consequently, the island was not prioritised in colonial funding. In fact, there is evidence that the colonial efforts to raise taxes for payments of the Tribute worsened the island’s economic condition as real wages fell (Caruana-Galizia: 2015). So not only was Cyprus being deprioritised as an imperial investment, but remarkable administrative revenue was being siphoned off to pay the rent of keeping Cyprus as it is.
Against this crisis-ridden context, Karas sets out the development of the two big projects. First, Karas regards Joseph Chamberlain’s appointment as the Secretary of State for the Colonies as the enabling moment, as he advocated for greater investment in colonial infrastructure. Cyprus became a part of this new colonial programme in order to address the crises of the island. The colonial government perceived this crisis and investment as an opportunity to legitimise their presence. Karas mentions that the colonisers believed Cypriots “developed material instincts” and as such economic development was an ideal way to gain local consent. The designs of the Famagusta port and the railways originated from the colonial government in Cyprus rather than the Colonial Office in London, a point Karas highlights. Experts were hired to produce engineering surveys and propose plans (that fell within the budget) back to the colonial government for approval. The final scheme involved the joint projects of railways and Famagusta harbour, plus investment in irrigation for the Messaoria region. It is misleading to picture this as a uniquely Cypriot experience of the British; elsewhere colonies saw similar infrastructure investment by the imperial powers as a way of gaining local support and achieving the economic potential of such overseas properties, a point Karas stresses (Karas 2021: 13-14; fn2).
The scheme provoked local vested interests. Larnaca was the main port where most of the trading happened until the British bias for Famagusta port and railways projects excluded Larnaca completely. Hence, Larnaca’s influential elite clashed with the colonial government using the Legislative Council since merchant interests were represented. Long hours of discussions and further populist provoking in Larnaca compelled the colonial government to provide Larnaca’s port with minor improvements without changing the original scheme itself, albeit now with a smaller budget. This negotiation phase shows a commonly neglected fact that the colonial government was willing to work with the consent of the “people”, more practically the local elites whose voice can be heard, rather than purely by coercion. There was a sensitivity to the different senses of identities and loyalties of British, Greek, and Turkish communities (Karas 2021: 15). The fact that in the legislative council Greek votes were balanced by British/Turkish votes most of the time was not a matter of certainty to any community, as alliances were shifting amidst the changing economic and social landscape. This tested the British attempt to rule by consent to limits (Karas 2021: 13-15).
At this point, it is beneficial to refer to the framework of Karas’s talk, technopolitics. Historiography of Cyprus, on both sides of the island, has been preoccupied with using circumstances of the past to explain the problems of today rather than explaining the past in its own terms. Technopolitics avoids this by systematically introducing the relevant actors and facts-on-the-ground to give a clear picture of interests, ambitions, and reasonings involved in the decision-making processes. Karas’s talk is dense with historical detail, but also has a clear structure that involves conflict, coordination, and compromise. We can trace how different layers of interests overlap (or not) across time and space, which suggests why techno is relevant to the story. By placing an economic prospect as the locus of the story, Karas finds all the actors interacting with a rationale that creates expectations. I would personally note the similarity in the method with the historical political economy literature[4].
The Q&A section of the seminar perhaps makes the above point all the more clear. Path-dependent nature of the historical narrative attracted questions about the legacy of these institutional frameworks for the Republic of Cyprus and Cyprus in general. A side remark Karas made about British thoughts on race also attracted a lively discussion, which may show that history remains one of the sources of today’s identity issues in Cyprus, despite the structured approach of Karas’s historiography.
Lastly, Karas’s talk raises questions about the effects of technology on the society. For instance, further research may complement Karas’s work by looking at the economic and demographic consequences of railways, a hotly debated topic in economic history, especially in colonial settings (Crafts 2010). More specifically to Cyprus, why did the Cyprus Government Railway fail to attract popular use? Historiography of Cyprus has much to gain by turning more attention towards the institutional, social, and economic histories that can give a “nuanced completeness” (Karas 2021: 6) of the past.
End-notes
[1] Further to the Port and the Railways, Karas’s book talks about the electrification and also the post-WWII colonial developments in Cyprus. I will keep the review within the scope of the topics covered in the seminar.
[2] Karas also mentions the rising crime rates (eg the infamous Hassanpoulia gang) as part of this general crisis.
[3] “The Cyprus Convention, which passed the island to British control, foresaw a payment of a certain amount to the Ottoman Sultan. This was the infamous ‘Tribute’. The terms stated that Britain would pay an amount from the excess of Cyprus revenue over expenditure. The amount was approximately £92,000.” (Karas 2021: 13)
[4] For an introduction to historical political economy, see Jenkins and Rubin (2022).
Photos
In courtesy of the Patticheion Municipal Museum Historical Archives & Research Centre of Limassol.
References
Caruana-Galizia, P. (2015), Strategic Colonies and Economic Development. The Economic History Review, 68: 1250-1276.
Crafts, N. (2010) The contribution of new technology to economic growth: Lessons from economic history. Revista De Historia Económica / Journal of Iberian and Latin American Economic History, 28(3), 409-440.
Jenkins, J. and Rubin, J. (2022) Historical Political Economy: What Is It?. In Jeffery A. Jenkins, and Jared Rubin (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Historical Political Economy. Oxford: OUP.
Karas, S. (2021) Constructive Imperialism, Experts and Crisis in Colonial Cyprus. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Rappas, A. (2008) The Elusive Polity: Imagining and Contesting Colonial Authority in Cyprus during the 1930s. Journal of Modern Greek Studies, 26(1): 363–397.
Varnava, A. (2009) British Imperialism in Cyprus, 1878–1915: The Inconsequential Possession. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Written by Senalp Canlıbel
