IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/43210.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Small debt, large problems in Cyprus: How even small debt in a British Colony led to the political crisis and violence in October 1931

Author

Listed:
  • Apostolides, Alexander

Abstract

During the interwar period Cyprus faced a small deficit, yet the inflexibility of the colonial finance structure created a political impasse. As a result the disagreements between the Colonial government and the Cypriot elected members of the islands legislative assembly sparked violence against the regime. Such violence would not have been possible if the already aggrieved political and economic situation allowed those with nationalistic agenda to undermine the legitimacy of the colonial regime. Although the traditional argument indicates that the 1931 riots were a purely nationalistic act, the disagreements of the colonial government and the actions of the leaders of the largest communities have to be understood within the sense of increasing crisis caused by the continual fall GDP. At the same time, the political situation was paralysed to react in a severe economic depression in part due to the disagreements between the Governor and the colonial office in London on one hand and the internal struggles for control within the Turkish and Greek communities. As a result the tinder for the violence in 1931 may have been nationalistic, but the fuel was provided by the prolonged economic crisis in Cyprus. The economic crisis influenced the political stagnation, reduced the ability of government to react and created a sense of imminent crisis that could only be averted through drastic action. Some commonalities may be seen with current events in Cyprus, especially in how government resists a structural reduction of government revenue just when public opinion and economic orthodoxy (of the time) seemed to suggest it.

Suggested Citation

  • Apostolides, Alexander, 2012. "Small debt, large problems in Cyprus: How even small debt in a British Colony led to the political crisis and violence in October 1931," MPRA Paper 43210, University Library of Munich, Germany.
  • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:43210
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/43210/1/MPRA_paper_43210.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Federico, Giovanni, 2005. "Not Guilty? Agriculture in the 1920s and the Great Depression," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 65(4), pages 949-976, December.
    2. Kate Phylaktis, 1995. "The Banking System of Cyprus," Palgrave Macmillan Books, Palgrave Macmillan, number 978-1-349-12868-6, October.
    3. Constantinos Stephanou, 2011. "The Banking System in Cyprus:Time to Rethink the Business Model?," Cyprus Economic Policy Review, University of Cyprus, Economics Research Centre, vol. 5(2), pages 123-130, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Sofronis Clerides, 2014. "The Collapse of the Cypriot Banking System: A Bird’s Eye View," Cyprus Economic Policy Review, University of Cyprus, Economics Research Centre, vol. 8(2), pages 3-35, December.
    2. Richard S. Grossman & Christopher M. Meissner, 2010. "International aspects of the Great Depression and the crisis of 2007: similarities, differences, and lessons," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 26(3), pages 318-338, Autumn.
    3. Apostolides, Alexander, 2012. "Copper and Foreign Investment: The development of the mining industry in Cyprus during the great depression," MPRA Paper 38758, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 13 May 2012.
    4. Thomas Delcey & Guillaume Noblet, 2024. "The Making of Informational Efficiency: Information Policy and Theory in Interwar Agricultural Economics," Post-Print hal-03227973, HAL.
    5. Wolf, Nikolaus, 2008. "Scylla and Charybdis. Explaining Europe's exit from gold, January 1928-December 1936," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 45(4), pages 383-401, September.
    6. Iulia Monica Oehler-Sincai, 2013. "Financial Contagion Reloaded: The Case Of Cyprus," Global Economic Observer, "Nicolae Titulescu" University of Bucharest, Faculty of Economic Sciences;Institute for World Economy of the Romanian Academy, vol. 1(1), pages 66-74, May.
    7. Yury D. Kvashnin, 2018. "The Republic of Cyprus as a Transit Point for Foreign Capital," Outlines of global transformations: politics, economics, law, Center for Crisis Society Studies, vol. 11(1).
    8. Michaelides, Alexander, 2014. "What Happened in Cyprus?," CEPR Discussion Papers 9993, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    9. DIMITRIOU Georgia & METAXAS Theodore, 2018. "Mapping Economic Crisis In South Europe: Greece, Portugal And Cyprus," Applied Econometrics and International Development, Euro-American Association of Economic Development, vol. 18(2), pages 41-54.
    10. Saleuddin, Rasheed & Coffman, D’Maris, 2018. "Can inflation expectations be measured using commodity futures prices?," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 37-48.
    11. Georgina Belem Carrasco Galvan & Jacqueline M. Vadjunec & Todd D. Fagin, 2024. "Lessons from the Archives: Understanding Historical Agricultural Change in the Southern Great Plains," Land, MDPI, vol. 13(2), pages 1-31, February.
    12. Apostolides, Alexander, 2011. "The growth of two small economies in the Great Depression: GDP estimation for Cyprus and Malta during the interwar period (1921-1938)," MPRA Paper 30276, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Debt Crises; Economic History of Cyprus; Current Crisis of Cyprus; Cyprus; Colonial History;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • N44 - Economic History - - Government, War, Law, International Relations, and Regulation - - - Europe: 1913-
    • N14 - Economic History - - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics; Industrial Structure; Growth; Fluctuations - - - Europe: 1913-

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:43210. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.