“The Vile Embroidery of Ruin”: Historic Famagusta between Ottoman and British Empires in Fin de Siècle Cyprus: 1878–1901

Abstract

This paper looks at the coexistence, and conflicting demands, of a developing imperial port and the preservation of a historic city on the island of Cyprus in the late nineteenth century. Emerging from three centuries of Ottoman rule into British administration, Famagusta began a transformation economically, ideologically, culturally and legally, to reinvent itself and reclaim some of its original importance. So rich in legend, and yet for centuries so totally abandoned, the city became the focus for subsequent heated debates concerning the past, present and future of its majestic architectural and artistic ruins. This paper follows those discussions, observes the attitudes of early British travellers and administrators, and reproduces in full for the first time, the short but important Famagusta Stones Law of 1891. Lastly, in observing the city's transfer from Sultan to Queen, other debates on regional nationalisms, and the creation/invention of a distant ‘Eutopia’, via urban conservation and revitalisation, emerge.