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Punch and the British occupation of Cyprus in 1878

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2016

Andrekos Varnava
Andrekos Varnava*
Affiliation:
University of Melbourne
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Extract

This article explores the criticisms levelled by the satirical illustrated newspaper Punch at the Beaconsfield Government’s decision to occupy Cyprus in July 1878. The Government’s public response to these in the media and Parliament will be analysed through the iconography of cartoons, poems and satirical commentaries and placed in their historical context. While historians have tended to use the cartoons as light-hearted comic relief and the poems and commentaries not at all, such material has real substance. The peculiar acquisition of Cyprus by the Beaconsfield Government excited passions, both euphoric and reproachful, in British political and newspaper circles. In order to determine the extent to which Punch’s arguments were accurate, this article compares the actual policies with the views of the Beaconsfield Government and with those of Punch.

Type
Articles
Information
Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies , Volume 29 , Issue 2 , 2005 , pp. 167 - 186
Copyright
Copyright © The Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies, University of Birmingham 2005

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References

Notes

1 See Dwight Lee, E., Great Britain and the Cyprus Convention Policy of 1878 (Cambridge, MA, 1934)Google Scholar.

2 Publication ceased in 1992, but Punch was relaunched, with much fanfare, by Mohamed Al Fayed in September 1996. Publication has again been discontinued.

3 Price, R.G.G., A History of Punch (London 1957) 46–83 Google Scholar.

4 Ibid., 111-13.

5 Ibid., 110, 113.

6 Punch or the London Charivari, 20 July 1878, 19, hereafter Punch. Although the Anglo-Turkish Convention was signed on 4 June 1878, it was not made public until the Congress of Berlin had almost ended, on 8 July — over a month later.

7 Price, A History of Punch, 74.

8 Simpson, Roger, Sir John Tenniel: Aspects of His Work (New Jersey 1994) 58-9Google Scholar.

9 Price, A History of Punch, 74.

10 See Blake, Robert, Disraeli (London 1966), facing 708 Google Scholar.

11 See the map entitled ‘Cyprus’, captioned ‘Marriage of the Earl of Beaconsfield and Miss Cyprus observed by Mr Gladstone’, in Shirley, Rodney W., Kitchener’s Survey of Cyprus 1878-1883: The First Full Triangulated Survey and Mapping of the Island (Nicosia 2001) 36 Google Scholar, figure 8.

12 See Gladstone’s famous pamphlet, Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East (London 1876)Google Scholar.

13 Gladstone was speaking at Southwark on 21 July. See Magnus, Philip, Gladstone: A Biography (London 1954) 252 Google Scholar.

14 The speech was given at a lavish banquet at which he and Lord Salisbury were entertained in the Riding School at Knightsbridge. Morley, John, The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, 3 vols (London 1903) 579 Google Scholar.

15 Punch, 27 July 1878, 27.

16 Punch, 3 August 1878, 46.

17 Price, A History of Punch, 114, 118-19.

18 Shirley, Kitchener’s Survey of Cyprus 1878-1883, 15.

19 Anon., , Cyprus: Its Value and Importance to England (London 1878) 5 Google Scholar.

20 Hansard (Commons), vol. 252, 1 June 1880, Col. 898.

21 Disraeli, Benjamin, Tancred: or, The New Crusade (1847), Book IV, Chapter 1, 280-2Google Scholar.

22 Punch, 31 August 1878.

23 Hansard (Lords), Lord Oranmore and Browne, 241, 15 July 1878, 1433-4.

24 Ibid.

25 Ibid., The Duke of Richmond and Gordon, 241, 15 July 1878, 1434-5.

26 Ibid., Lord Beaconsfield, 242, 23 July 1878, 27.

27 The Times, 8 August 1878, 8.a.

28 Ibid., 9 August 1878, 5.a.b.d.

29 The Illustrated London News, Saturday 10 August 1878, 13.

30 The Times, 13 August 1878, 3.d.

31 Forbes, Archibald, ‘The “Fiasco” of Cyprus’, The Nineteenth Century 4 (October 1878), 609-26, 617Google Scholar.

32 Ibid., 617.

33 Ibid., 615.

34 Punch, 19 October 1878, 173.

35 See Gladstone, W.E., Midlothian Speeches, 1879 (Leicester 1971)Google Scholar.

36 Hansard (Commons), 241, 11 July 1878, 1243.

37 He said, ‘... there is no harbour in the large or extended sense of the word; but there are excellent roadsteads’. Hansard (Lords), 241, 11 July 1878, 1225-6.

38 Hansard (Lords), 241, 15 July 1878, 1435.

39 Ibid., 242, 23 July 1878, Col. 22.

40 ibid., 23-4.

41 Ibid., 27.

42 Ibid., 28.

43 Punch, 3 August 1878, 45.

44 The Times, 8 August 1878, 7.c.

45 Wolseley’s diary was edited by Anne Cavendish and published by the Cyprus Popular Bank Cultural Foundation as SirWolseley, Garnet, Cyprus 1878: The journal of Sir Garnet Wolseley, ed. Cavendish, Anne, Cyprus Popular Bank Cultural Centre (Nicosia 1991)Google Scholar; it is hereafter cited as Wolseley, diary.

46 Wolseley, diary, 31 July 1878, 33.

47 Wolseley, diary, 31 July 1878, p. 33.

48 Wolseley Papers, British Library, MSS 41324, Wolseley to Salisbury, 12 August 1878, ff. 9. Wolseley’s exact words to Salisbury were: ‘Nicosia is no more than a cess-pit of filth.’

49 Wolseley Papers, 41324, Wolseley to Salisbury 3 September 1878, ff. 19-20.

50 Paper entitled ‘Maintaining Britishness in a Setting of their Own Design: The Troodos Hill Station in Cyprus during the Early British Occupation’, given at the British World Conference III, University of Melbourne, 2-4 July 2004.

51 Ibid., 31 October 1878. The tour was documented in The Times. See, ibid., 2 November 1878, 5.c; ibid., 4 November 1878, 5; ibid., 5 November 1878, 7. They were accompanied by: First Naval Lord Admiral George Wellesley; Sir Massey Lopes, a Lord Commissioner of the Admiralty; Admiral Sir W. Houston Stewart, Controller of the Navy; Algernon Egerton, First Secretary to the Admiralty; Captain Codrington, of the Royal Navy and the private secretary to the First Lord; R. Dalyell, private secretary to Colonel Stanley; Captain Fitzgeorge, of the Intelligence Department of the War Office; Lord Colville of Culross; Sir Henry Holland; and Sir George Elliot.

52 Punch, 30 November 1878, 251. The reference to Solon is to the Athenian lawmaker who introduced political, economic and constitutional reforms to the Athenian State.

53 Wolseley Diary, 1 November 1878, 120; ibid., 5 November 1878, 125; The Times, 19 November 1878, 10.a.

54 Wolseley Diary, 4 November 1878, 123-4.

55 Lang, Robert Hamilton, ‘Cyprus — Is it Worth Keeping?’ Macmillan’s Magazine 40 (1879) 441-8Google Scholar, 443.

56 Wolseley Diary, 5 November 1878, 126.

57 Hansard (Commons), Colonel Stanley, 249, 8 August 1879, 507.

58 Smith, W.H., diary, 3 November 1878, in Maxwell, Herbert, Life and Times of the Right Hon. William Henry Smith, M.P., 2 (London 1893) 355 Google Scholar.

59 Wolseley Diary, 3 November 1878, 123.

60 Ibid., 4 November 1878, 124.

61 Reports Made to the Admiralty on the Anchorages etc. of the Island of Cyprus, 2244 (London 1879), 3. Rawson, a distinguished naval officer, who hoisted the British Flag at Nicosia, and was for one month Military Commander to the Government, had reported on the defence of the Suez Canal in 1878.

62 Ibid., 3.

63 Ibid.

64 Memorandum on the anchorages of Cyprus; and on other questions, chiefly nautical, connected with that Island, by the hydrographer to the Admiralty (accompanied with a plan of Famagousta harbour from an Admiralty survey in progress), 1878, in Reports Made to the Admiralty on the Anchorages etc. of the Island of Cyprus, 2244 (London 1879).

65 Hansard (Lords), 244, 21 March 1879, 1411.

66 Ibid., 1413.

67 Ibid., 1413-14.

68 Ibid., 1414-15.

69 Ibid.

70 Ibid., 1416.

71 Ibid., 1417.

72 Punch, 4 January 1879, 310.

73 Ibid.

74 Cosmo Monkhouse, The Life and Work of Sir John Tenniel, R.I. (London 1901) 6 Google Scholar, 15.