Cypriots Transforming their Identity during the Early British Period: From a Class, Religious and Regional Identity to a Hellenic Ethno-Nationalist Identity

Benedict Anderson and Ernest Gellner famously argued that ethnic nationalism was an “imagined community” with no roots in the pre-modern period. Yet, it is a received wisdom among researchers that the majority of Greek Cypriots have always considered themselves to belong to the Greek nation and that from the early nineteenth century onwards wanted Cyprus’ union to Greece - enosis - under the leadership of their archbishops, called ethnarchs, who had supposedly kept the “Greekness” of the Orthodox Christians alive under oppressive Ottoman rule. The following communication will challenge these views by showing that it was not until well into the British period that an ethnic national identity became institutionalised at the elite level. Therefore, how can the identity of Cypriot Orthodox Christians be characterised in the Ottoman period? What was the impact of the British encounter with Cyprus on the identity of the Cypriot Orthodox elites? Were social and cultural agents and public material culture produced to sustain the new identity?.