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2017 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

4. The Reconstruction of the Public Sphere: The Hegemony of Nationalism

Author : Yiannos Katsourides

Published in: The Greek Cypriot Nationalist Right in the Era of British Colonialism

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

This chapter analyses the pivotal role of nationalism—which was translated into the political demand for union with Greece (enosis)—in the transformation of Cyprus’s political landscape; my examination covers the agents, the nature and the mechanisms through which nationalism spread in Cyprus. As argued in previous chapters, societal change involves more than economic reforms and the rise of new social strata; it involves perceptual changes. Therefore, the battle of ideas is crucial in processes of change. Greek nationalism was the defining ideology and mechanism through which the rupture with the traditional order of things took place at the level of ideas. Nationalism played an important role in the politicisation of Cypriot society and contributed to the development of anti-colonial sentiment and organisation. Ethnicity was politicised via nationalism and gradually replaced (and was mixed with) religion as the defining factor in identity, i.e., Greek/Turkish rather than Christian/Muslim.

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For example, the first to scholarship students who were sent to the Theological School of the University of Athens were Sophronios and Kyprianos who became later on Archbishop and Bishop of Kitium respectively.

The author makes his assessment based on a series of articles of parliamentarian Kyriakos Rossides republished in Eleftheria, 30 March, 3 April, 6 April, 10 April 1929.

The newspapers that he worked for were Evagoras, Kypriaki Epitheorisi (Cypriot Review), and Kypriakos Fylax (Cypriot Sentinel). Katsiaounis (1996, 210) regards Katalanos as the most outstanding personality of the nationalist movement.

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The three Greek parliamentarians who voted for the law were Chatzieftichios Chatziprokopis, Neophytos Nikolaides and Panayiotis Kakoyiannis. As a result of the public outcry, none of the three parliamentarians ran as candidates in the 1930 elections.

‘Temptation of the teachers’, article by P. Loizides in Eleftheria, 29 June 1929, 1, and 6 July 1929, 2; ‘Turning the teachers into employees’, article by Antis Triantafyllides in Eleftheria, 7 August 1929, 1; ‘The new draft law on education’, Eleftheria, 27 November 1929, 2; ‘The draft law on education. The amendments which have been made’, Eleftheria, 11 December 1929, 2.

Cyprus was the island’s first newspaper and appeared in Larnaca in August 1878, ten weeks after the arrival of the British. Alitheia (Truth) was published in Limassol in December 1880 by Aristotelis Palaiologos, a Greek from Istanbul. Stasinos was published for the first time in Larnaca in 1881 by Themistocles Theocharides, a teacher who lived in Cyprus. Salpinx (The Trumpet) was published in 1884 by Stylianos Chourmouzios and Enosis (Union) in Larnaca in 1885 by Christodoulos Kouppas. No newspaper was published in Nicosia until 1881 when Neon Kition (New Kition) moved there from Larnaca. Stasinos, which was renamed The Voice of Cyprus, also moved to Nicosia in 1887. For more details, see Sophokleous (1995).

Cyprus Blue Book 1923, 165. The number of each newspaper’s circulation is based on their editors’ declaration and concerns the average circulation rate per publication.

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Title: The Reconstruction of the Public Sphere: The Hegemony of Nationalism
Author: Yiannos Katsourides
Publisher: Springer International Publishing
Book: The Greek Cypriot Nationalist Right in the Era of British Colonialism
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-55534-8

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-319-55536-2

Copyright Year: 2017
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55536-2_4