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Book VII describes Birgitta’s pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1372. Within a chronological framework the book describes the outward journey from Rome, via Naples and Cyprus, to Jerusalem and Bethlehem. The two central visions are the crucifixion and nativity, both thought to have had an influence on subsequent depictions in Christian iconography and art. There are messages concerning the political situation in Cyprus and a secular political message is thereby woven into the devotional visions and underlines their contemporary impact. Birgitta’s death and some of her final messages to humankind are recorded at the end of the book.

It is with considerable reluctance that the EU has undertaken a key role in resolving the Cyprus conflict. In offering Cyprus the prospect of membership, the EU hopes that it will provide a sufficient incentive to both the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot communities to settle their differences––in particular, to persuade the latter that the economic benefits and minority safeguards provided by EU membership are sufficient to overcome the fears of domination that drive Turkish Cypriot desire for self‐rule. This chapter analyses the limits of economic incentives for achieving this purpose, and argues that the EU will need to address the regional (Greek‐Turkish) dimension of the dispute as well as the communal differences themselves. It remains unclear whether the admission of Turkey into the EU will suffice to bring the Turkish Cypriots into line.

Oren Yiftachel argues that consociational patterns of authority among elites, the restricted state authority, and the internal boundaries for rival communal groups open up a possibility of maintaining state borders intact with high levels of democratic stability. The author focuses on three bi‐ethnic states: Lebanon from 1943 to 1985, Cyprus from 1960 to 1974, and Belgium from 1963 to 1993. Theoretically, the author brings together discussion of public policy towards ethnic groups —particularly accommodation and consociation—and the role of ethnic geographies that highlight special factors of state integrity and cohesion.

This chapter discusses the future of Turkish settlers in Northern Cyprus. It examines the prospect of their repatriation to Turkey within the framework of the peaceful settlement of the conflict in Cyprus. Although ordinarily repatriation has a positive connotation of going home, in the case of the Turkish settlers, repatriation or homecoming may mean the displacement for another home. This chapter begins with a short overview of the history of the settler issue in Northern Cyprus and its evolution. It then considers the problems the prospect of repatriation may impose on the vision of a future unified Cyprus. It also discusses the modalities which are currently negotiated for addressing this issue. Because these modalities are framed in the shadow of international human rights law, the implications of some human rights standards for the conflict are also examined. Lastly, the proposed modalities are examined in comparison with the alternative solution for the settler issue which was adopted in the Baltic states during the 1990s.

In the late 1960s, the wider framework for and the basic structure of the North Atlantic alliance was being challenged on virtually all fronts at the same time, causing the need for a reappraisal of relationships. These challenges included: the continuing Cold War with the Soviet Union and its allies, where the confrontation continued, but was now being combined with détente (i.e. cooperation on important military, political, and economic issues); the change in the American–European relationship resulting from Europe striking out more on its own; the perceived decline of the US by the Nixon administration and its resulting need to cooperate with the other economic centres of the world; outside Europe, the combination of the rise of OPEC and the volatility of the Middle East, which highlighted a growing energy problem that was to prove quite troublesome in Atlantic relations; and the effect of the rise of Japan and the Pacific rim in redefining the role and importance of Western Europe in the world. All these redefinitions imposed a strain on American–European relations in the period 1969–1977, but even though the resulting conflicts were now more structural than they had been earlier, they were still contained within the alliance framework, for both the US and Western Europe still needed a certain degree of cooperation and mutual dependence. The four main sections following the explanatory preamble to this chapter discuss various aspects of this conflict and cooperation between the US and Western Europe. They are: The US, Western Europe, and Détente; Nixon–Kissinger's Reappraisal of European Integration, 1969–1976; The Southern Flank [of Europe], Communism, and the US—a discussion of the political situations in Portugal, Spain, Greece, Cyprus, Turkey, Italy (and Iceland); and Conflict, but Still Primarily Cooperation.

Following the Fourth Crusade, attempts were made to heal the schism by means of a reunion council. Although ultimately unsuccessful, these encounters did provide the East with the opportunity to refine its thinking on the filioque’s place (if any) in the theology of the Church. This was especially true following the gathering at Lyons in 1274, when three distinct “schools” of thought emerged in Byzantium. Most fascinating is the third (exemplified by Gregory of Cyprus and Gregory Palamas), which appeared to offer the best hope of resolving the crisis—speaking of the Spirit’s eternal (or energetic) “flowing forth” from the Son while simultaneously denying him any causal role in the Spirit’s hypostatic origin. Yet a majority of the Byzantines remained unconvinced by this position, forcing a divided Greek delegation to travel to Ferrara-Florence to negotiate union with the far more unified Latins.

The study of Cyprus's prehistoric and early historic past has been dominated by a tendency to see the island's social, economic, cultural, and even artistic development as the result of migrations, invasions, colonization, diffusion, or other external factors, whether Near Eastern or Aegean (or both) in origin. Such an approach distorts the long‐term history of Cyprus and precludes attempts to consider how insularity and local enterprise impacted on the islanders' identity and the emergence of a complex, hierarchical society. This introductory chapter sets the island of Cyprus in its Mediterranean island context, and provides initial comments on the volume's central themes: insularity, connectivity, and social identity. It summarizes the contents of each chapter and provides brief discussions of previous works that treat island archaeology and history, island identity, and ‘islandscapes’ throughout the Mediterranean world.

In the early years of the twenty-first century, two peace processes that were deemed promising came to a halt. In Cyprus, the Annan Plan was rejected by the majority of Greek-Cypriots and in Israel/Palestine, the Oslo Peace Process collapsed in the second intifada. This chapter provides a comparative exploration of the roles the refugees played as individuals and as groups in the eventual failure of various peace processes as well as the political issues that have contributed to such failure. It focuses on the Greek-Cypriot refugees and the Palestinian refugees as the treatment of the rights of these groups of refugees were deemed the most controversial issue in the peace processes. In this chapter, the historical conditions, legal statuses, access to political representations and the geopolitical factors that have influenced the manner with which the conflict and refugees are dealt with are explored and examined. The various sections of the chapter are devoted to the rationale behind the failure of the Annan Plan and the Oslo Peace Process and the role of the refugees in this failure. The chapter concludes with some suggestions about the implications of refugee issues in order to settle long-term conflict.

This chapter examines the local conditions, traditions, and forms of urban settlement in Cyprus during the Iron Age. It explains that almost to the very end of the Middle Bronze Age, Cyprus had remained a closed rural society, though it was by then completely surrounded by Mediterranean urban states and it was only by 1100 BC that new social and economic structures started to dictate the establishment and development of new population and power centers. The archaeological evidence of 800–600 BC stands testimony to the culmination of a long process of social evolution and urbanization.

Chapter 2 turns to nympholepsy understood as possession and looks at “real-life” nympholepts. It includes a survey of the archaeological evidence from caves and sanctuaries, including inscriptions and reliefs, built for the nymphs by ancient nympholêptoi. The word nympholêptos appears in an inscription found in a cave at Vari in Attica, which provides us with an example of a sanctuary established by a nympholept, Archedemos, in the fifth-century BC. The cave commemorates Archedemos’s encounter with the nymph through inscriptions and statues, including a portrait of the nympholept that shows him building the sanctuary that becomes the focus of his life. Pantalkes, a younger contemporary of Archedemos, built a comparable shrine in a cave at Pharsalos in Thessaly, which becomes a site of pilgrimage. We find another nympholept at Kafizin in Cyprus in a cave where there was cultic activity from 225 to 218 bce. These sanctuaries highlight the personal and transformative nature of the bond between men and nymphs and the ways in which religious experience engender poetic and artistic representations that come to be significant for the community.

The effects of the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1204 and the subsequent establishment of a Latin Empire in the area covered by the Orthodox Church as a result of the Fourth Crusade are discussed. The period covered is 1204–61. The different sections of the chapter address the following: the Latin patriarchate of Orthodox Constantinople (1204–61); ecclesiastical organization within the various Latin conquests—Greece and the Cyclades, Venetian Crete, and Cyprus; thirteenth century rival Byzantine Churches—Nicaea and Epirus; and the Nicaean Empire and Rome.

Following his triumphant return from the Congress of Berlin, Disraeli continued, though with less attention, to follow the still tense situation in the East. Through fresh threats, he managed to force Russia to withdraw its troops from Thrace, Eastern Rumelia, and Bulgaria. When it came to the demarcation of borders in the Balkans, he sided with the Albanian League, counting on the Albanians as the last allies of the Sultan. In the disagreements between the Porte and Austria‐Hungary, however, he sided with the latter. It was in Austria‐Hungary that, particularly in the western Balkans, he saw the ally of Britain. Finally, the occupation of Cyprus, the demands for reforms in Asia Minor and the proposed reforms to the Sultan's finances revealed the ambitions of Disraeli and Salisbury for Britain's advance into Asian Turkey, following the model of the advance into India.

This chapter deals with the historiography of the rise, consolidation, decline, and ending of British Imperial interests in the Middle East over some 200 years, from the late 18th to the late 20th centuries. Naturally, during this long period the circumstances of, and the rationale for, Britain’s acquisition of influence or territories in this extensive region varied substantially. Chronologically, the chapter starts with the development of Britain’s interest in Iran and Afghanistan at the end of the 18th century, and ends in the third quarter of the 20th century, with the independence of South Yemen (Aden) in 1967 and the creation of the United Arab Emirates in 1972. After this, apart from its continuing lease on the Dhekelia air base in Cyprus, Britain ceased to control any of the physical surface of the region. It is probably fair to say that the last twenty-five years have been the most productive in the historiography of the British Empire in the Middle East, although, increasingly, some of the best work has tended to treat the connection as secondary to some other narrative scheme.

This chapter focuses on the ruling families of Byzantium. These include the Macedonian dynasty, which gained acceptance as the legitimate ruling house by the early tenth century. So secure was it that it survived the minority of Constantine VII, the question mark over his legitimacy, and the catastrophic defeat inflicted by Khan Symeon of the Bulgars at Anchialos in 917. The educated elite of the capital ensured the empire's survival by managing enemies in a detached fashion, playing one off against another and integrating them where possible into the empire's ethos and religion. War was a distasteful necessity, to be waged only as a last resort. In the year 963, however, Nikephoros II was proclaimed emperor and war in the east was prosecuted relentlessly. During 965, Tarsus was captured and Cyprus, which for centuries had been jointly ruled by the Arabs and Byzantines, was returned to sole Byzantine rule.

This chapter assesses the EU's impact and effectiveness in promoting peacemaking in its neighbourhood through its contractual relations with conflict parties. It does so by focusing on five conflicts in the European neighbourhood: the conflicts in Cyprus, Turkey (and the Kurds), Serbia and Montenegro, Israel-Palestine, and Georgia (Abkhazia and South Ossetia). It establishes three ‘channels of influence’ through which, in the context of contractual relations, the EU may impact on these neighbourhood conflicts. The first is conditionality (both positive and negative); the second is social learning; and the third channel of influence is termed passive enforcement. It is argued that the process of experiential learning which passive enforcement implies gives rise to a subtler process of influence and change than conditionality, and may be perceived as less of an external imposition, embedded as it is in legal commitments voluntarily undertaken.

Chapter 4 focuses on Turkey and the Kurdish question particularly in relation to the country’s neighbors. It highlights the 1998 Öcalan incident when hundreds of thousands of Turkish citizens joined mass nationalist mobilizations to protest against third countries (Syria, Italy and Greece) (allegedly) supporting the PKK (Kurdistan’s Workers Party). It examines how Turkish elites framed foreign governments and the PKK as the parties solely responsible for the Kurdish uprising, making any potential compromise unimaginable for the next two decades. At the same time the chapter examines the progress made by Turkey in reaching better relations with Greece leading to the Helsinki compromise in 1999. The chapter looks at parliamentary records and political discourse in the years preceding this crucial 1998-9 period to identify the framing of Turkey’s foreign policy, explain variation in foreign policy outcomes and Turkey’s subsequent reactions to the civil wars in Iraq and Syria.