Cyprus had been a backwater of the…

Cyprus had been a backwater of the Ottoman Empire, but in the nineteenth century it again draws the attention of West European powers.

By the 1850s, the decaying Ottoman Empire is known as "the sick man of Europe," and various nations seek to profit at its expense.

Cyprus itself cannot fight for its own freedom, but the centuries of Frankish and Turkish domination have not destroyed the ties of language, culture, and religion that bind the Greek Cypriots to other Greeks.

By the middle of the nineteenth century, enosis, the idea of uniting all Greek lands with the newly independent Greek mainland, is firmly rooted among educated Greek Cypriots.

By the time the British take over Cyprus in 1878, Greek Cypriot nationalism will already have crystallized.