Redressing Power: Road Building in British Colonial Cyprus

Summary

Road building has always been essential to the process of colonisation. In Cyprus, British Colonial road building was part of a larger project to secure and civilise the island and its population, making it a model for how other countries should be administered in the Near East. The construction of roads between 1880 and 1900 focussed on establishing security and bringing order to the landscape and its people. In this presentation I focus on the multifaceted dimensions of the construction, use and maintenance of these roads during this initial period of road building. I bring together evidence from archaeological survey and archival documents to investigate how power was negotiated through British Colonial road building. This presentation investigates the murky nature of the colonial encounter on Cyprus while highlighting how the British Colonial Government’s attempt to control interaction through the construction of roads was met with varying levels of resistance.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Late Empires: the archaeology of recent colonialism and imperialism - 1860s to the present   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2013

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Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

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PaperId(s): 253