Brief History of Cyprus

Cyprus is located at the Eastern Mediterranean within the boundaries of three continents, the Europe, Asia and Africa. The culture, society and modern political problems of Cyprus and its people has been rooted from its interesting histories way back in 9000 years. Throughout recorded history, it has been located on the frontier between the Eastern and Western civilizations and has participated in the trade that has been carried on and the warfare that has occurred foreign powers confronted each other in the area. The island is small, however, and never has had a large population. As a result, it was nearly always a pawn in both commerce and warfare and was controlled by whatever power was dominant. Cyprus never developed a unified culture of its own, and its people had little background to prepare them to govern themselves or to accept the individual responsibilities involved in self-government when the island was granted independence in 1960. Thus, this paper will discuss about the brief history of Cyprus from the Byzantine onwards. It will also tackle about the history of the two ethnic groups such as Greek and Turks.

This troublesome history that makes Cyprus divided into two regions was being attributed to the Greek and the Turks which conquer the Southern and the Northern part of the island. In more recent times, though never be a part of these two countries, Cyprus has hung precariously between Greece and Turkey. Indeed, the claim of these two ethnic communities on the island harks back to periods in time before the appearance of the Greek of Turkish nation state. The Greek-Cypriots point a Hellenic cultural legacy that stretches back to antiquity and privileges the arrival of Archaeans in Cyprus around 1200 B.C. while the Turkish-Cypriots locate their history in the Ottoman Turks conquering of the island of Cyprus in 1571 (Calotychos, 1998).