108 CYPRUS AND THE BALANCE OF EMPIRES
Naturally historians cannot ignore the linear prog-
ress of time as our perception of diachronical events
unfolds. Inherent in this term is the idea of pairings,
such as “past and present,” which logically leads to
other dichotomies such as “cause and effect,” “rise
and fall,” “formation and reformation,” “golden age”
and “dark age,” etc. Temporal pairings are often
correlated with spatial binaries, such as “center and
periphery,” “urban and rural,” “eastern and west-
ern,” “capital and tributary,” etc. Constructs such as
these are useful in organizing and presenting our
data.6 However, we should keep in mind that these
are merely rhetorical tools. Binary labels, in other
words, are historians’ constructs and not necessar-
ily historical facts.
Binary terms are often laden with derogatory,
erroneous judgments — like George Jeffery’s. He
seemed to be comparing Cyprus’ early Byzantine
architecture with its later Gothic buildings. This
temporal dichotomy was conjoined with the spatial
binary of “eastern /western.” In Jeffery’s day, architec-
tural historians linked Latin scholastic architecture
with the rise of modern “science”— therefore, in
contrast, Byzantine architecture was “unscientific”
by comparison.7 If cosmopolitan Gothic architec-
ture was located in the urban settings of Nicosia
and Famagusta, then, by comparison, monastic
Byzantine architecture was rural and constructed
by “half-savage peasants.”
Fortunately A.H.S. Megaw did not share the
same opinions as his predecessor. When we exam-
ine his entire corpus, we detect Megaw’s historical
perspective, cautious of his own subjective values.
But because the quantity of Cyprus’ Byzantine
archaeology was immense, Megaw continued to
use the binary model to help organize the material.
In his influential 1974 Dumbarton Oaks Paper arti-
cle, Megaw posed the question: Was architecture
on Cyprus Metropolitan or Provincial? Of course,
he was playing on the word metropolitan, which
means both “urban” and, in a Greek Orthodox con-
text, a bishop (or archbishop) below the rank of a
patriarch. On the one hand, if Cyprus was “metro-
politan” it could mean two things: first, either it was
subject to the patriarch of Constantinople, or sec-
ondly, that it was a large urban center. Historically,
in both cases, it was neither. On the other hand, if
Cyprus was “provincial,” it would mean that its
architecture was subjected to, and depended on,
the imperial capital of Constantinople. Such a lim-
ited question necessarily corralled the reader to
the narrow conclusion that Cypriot architecture
was “provincial.”
Megaw avoided elucidating what provincial
signified: Did the builders have some training in
Constantinople, or were the locals merely imita-
tors of the imperial master-builders? How were
typologies imported? And more conspicuously,
why are there no clear Constantinopolitan archi-
tectural types on the island? The reader was not
given a chance to consider whether Cypriots could
develop their own particular, insular architecture.
Likewise, he did not allow us to ponder the influ-
ence of the great schools of architecture of other
metropolises of the region, such as Alexandria,
Jerusalem, and Damascus. Instead, emphasis was
placed on the cohesion of the Byzantine Empire
and the importance of its capital.
Megaw’s binary model reflected the political
situation of his day. Fourteen years earlier Megaw
was part of the British colonial government in
Cyprus. At that time the most notable twentieth-
century monuments on the island were designed
by British architects and paid for by the colonial
government with subsidies sent from London. In
contrast, local building traditions were of timber
and mud-brick with no significant native architects
by imperial standards. Besides this, both Megaw
and Jeffery originally came to Cyprus as colonial
architects, and so their raison d’etre depended on
the idea that imperial structures were superior to
native ones. Moreover they witnessed the turbu-
lent years of the twentieth century when Cypriots
struggled for independence, often using violence
against symbols of British colonialism, such as the
burning of the imperial headquarters at Nicosia
in 1931.8
The British Empire modernized the urban
infrastructure and harbors, and introduced
electricity and railways on the island. Economic
benefits of being a member of the Empire
— funding, military protection, and moderniza-
tion — greatly outweighed what the island could
provide by itself alone, especially after decades of
Ottoman decline.9 Naturally it was viewed that the
charitable powers residing in London ushered the