Cyprus was only ruled by military governors at the beginning . The first high commissioners , Sir Garnet Wolseley and Sir Robert Biddulph , were appointed by the Foreign Office ; their successors , civilians , were under the Colonial Office . The island's military importance waned with the conquest of Egypt in 1882 .

The infrastructure was gradually improved . Roads , bridges and railways were constructed , the ports improved , reafforestation projects were implemented and public health and hygiene expanded - the bases for the economic upswing . An important decision was taken in the education sector : classes were held in Greek or Turkish respectively ; the education system and curricula were based on the Greek and Turkish model .

Initially the Greeks , who accounted for about three quarters of population at the time of the British take-over , hoped that Britain would allow them to unite with Greece just like the other Greek islands . With the argument that the agreement with the Sultan would not allow this , their request was refused and any real right to take share in political decisions was prevented . There was , it is true , a nationally mixed 'Legislative Council', but the High - Commissioner with his right of veto was able to rule at any time in London's sense .

Union with Greece was contrary to the interests of the British who used the island as a base and source of revenue and did not want to grant it independence . Great Britain did , it is true , offer Greece Cyprus in 1915 in return for Greece's entry into the war - but , firstly at that time the Greeks wanted to preserve their neutrality and secondly , the gesture was dictated by the concrete interests of a particular historical moment : The offer was provoked by Bulgaria's entry on the Austrian-Turkish side . When Greece did indeed enter the war a year later on the British side , the latter did not repeat their offer .

Against this background , co-operation between the British and Turkish-Cypriots developed almost inevitably better than that between the British and the Greek-Cypriots . Here , as so often in their colonies , the British exploited the differences between the ethnic groups in the sense of 'divide et impera' - divide and rule . They treated the Greeks and the Turks in each case as Greeks and Turks , and by no means as Cypriots .

After the 1914-1918 war , the world had changed : the Ottoman Empire gave way to the Turkish Republic ; tensions with the Greeks living on the Aegean coast of Asia Minor led to corrections of the agreements made at the end of the war which were fixed in the Treaty of Lausanne of 1923 . One of the results of this treaty was that the Turks laid no further claim to Cyprus . The British argument against the union of the island with Greece was thus no longer valid , but that did not cause them to change their opinion .

In 1925 , Cyprus became a crown colony with the political rights of the inhabitants becoming more restricted rather than expanded . Also the share of Cypriot taxes levied on the island originally as a tribute to Turkey still had to be paid . This was accepted very reluctantly so long as Cyprus still profited from the world-wide economic upswing of the 'golden twenties' . But after it collapsed here as everywhere else in 1929 , the readiness for violent action spread . The cause of the disturbances was the 1931 budget ; the Greeks were no longer willing to accept the tribute payments . On 17 October , the Bishop of Larnaca proclaimed union with Greece and called for civil disobedience . He founded a radical party representing the Enosis idea (enosis : Greek for unity) . In Nicosia , insurgents burned down the colonial administration buildings . British soldiers brought from Egypt quickly suppressed the revolt , the leading figures were sent into exile and the Greek Cypriots had to pay for the damage caused . Civil rights were restricted , the press censured , the see of the Archbishop who had died in 1933 was not filled . All this did not prevent the Greek Cypriots with the Orthodox Church at their head from continuing to strive for union with Greece .

At the end of the thirties , the situation relaxed a little . Britain took cautious steps towards democracy and in 1941 permitted political parties . In the meantime , through the founding of the Turkish Republic , Turkish national awareness increased ; they founded pro-Turkish organisations . The polarisation of both ethnic groups took on irreversible dimensions .

After the Second World War too , the hopes of political self-determination were disappointed . The new Labour government in London did , it is true , endeavour to create representative governments in the colonies , but the Greek Cypriots were not striving for independence , but wanted union with Greece . The Archbishop elected in 1947 , Leontios of Paphos , coined the slogan 'Enosis and only Enosis' and rejected every other solution . An officer of Cypriot extraction , George Grivas , who was serving in the Greek army organised armed resistance (EOKA) from 1950 . Training camps and arms caches were established and in 1955 bloody disturbances broke out . EOKA's explosives blew up the colonial relationship , but did not lead to union with Greece .