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A black-and white photo of two ruined churches, in a flat landscape with grass and palm trees.

Ruins and Visions of Empire: Famagusta and the Quest for Revival in the Late Nineteenth Century

‘Ruin’ was the primary term used by countless visitors to describe the Cypriot port town of Famagusta during the period of Ottoman rule (1571–1878), to the extent that the two terms became almost synonymous. A notable example is Namık Kemal (1840–88), the foremost Ottoman thinker and a critic of the Tanzimat reforms (1839–76), who left a lasting mark on modern Turkish political thought and literature by reworking the concepts of vatan (fatherland) and hürriyet (liberty). Stripped of his freedom and imprisoned in Famagusta  between 1873 and 1876, he evoked the city’s uncanny atmosphere, a deserted urban landscape marked by ruins that signalled both a prosperous past and a post-apocalyptic present: ‘As I gazed out the window and saw plains full of ruins and piles of stones as if the mountains had been shattered, I felt as if Raphael’s trumpet had been blown—but I hadn’t heard it.’1 Despite the intensity and desolation of the cityscape, he soon drafted a memorandum at the behest of the island’s governor. This proposal outlined a port renovation project intended to revive Famagusta as a major commercial harbour in the Eastern Mediterranean and as a base for military operations—capable of projecting power into the empire’s Arabian provinces and beyond, especially in the aftermath of the Suez Canal’s opening in 1869.2

Nevertheless, Ottoman ambitions for Famagusta were never realized. In 1878, the administration of Cyprus was transferred to the British Empire as part of a defensive agreement between the two powers against the Russian advance. This shift in governance sparked keen interest in London regarding the island’s condition and potential. British photographers played a notable role in documenting and promoting Cyprus, among them John Thomson, who captured the image reproduced above. Thomson was particularly perceptive in his observations of Famagusta, echoing Kemal’s earlier impressions: ‘It is a place of ruins, a city of the dead, in which the traveller is surprised to encounter a living tenant. It, however, affords shelter to some six hundred Turks, whose wretched abodes are found scattered among the ruins of old Gothic churches and chapels.’3

Thomson’s portrayal of decay in the Ottoman East was coupled with a self-declared aim to revitalize the city and restore its former prosperity. He even alludes—albeit cautiously—to the rebuilding of the port while presenting a photograph of it (see picture below). This reference resonates with contemporary debates surrounding the British takeover of Cyprus and the reconstruction of ruined Famagusta, a military stronghold and key naval base, aligned with Britain’s wider imperial ambitions in the Eastern Mediterranean to control the Suez Canal and secure communication routes to India. Thus, in both the Ottoman and British eras, from the standpoint of revival and the desire to assert maritime authority, the city’s ruins became palimpsests upon which new imperial visions were inscribed in the effort to resurrect a once-thriving hub of the Eastern Mediterranean.

Black and white photograph of a harbour wall, with half a dozen small boats moored on a calm sea.
‘Famagusta Harbour’, in Thomson, Through Cyprus with the Camera, ii. 46. Courtesy of the University of St Andrews Libraries and Museums, ID: Photo DS54-T5-46.

Researching the Competing Visions for Famagusta

Entitled ‘Reviving a Ruined City between Communities and Empires: Competing Visions for Famagusta in Cyprus, 1840s–1870s’, my dissertation examines local initiatives alongside Ottoman, French, and British (trans-)imperial attempts to regenerate the historically marginalized port town of Famagusta. Its aim is to explore how different empires and communities engaged with the urban space, and how these interactions evolved over time and in relation to one another.

In terms of research material, the dissertation introduces and examines competing urban planning projects and debates on Famagusta through a comparative archival reading of a rich, multilingual source base spanning several countries. In doing so, it traces how a range of actors—Ottoman bureaucrats, French entrepreneurs, British consuls, later colonial administrators, and, not least, Muslim and Christian Cypriots—perceived, experienced, and ultimately re-imagined the city in relation to one another. In this respect, it advances a trans-imperial and trans-local perspective on the history of the Eastern Mediterranean while foregrounding the often-overlooked agency of local communities vis-à-vis imperial designs. It thereby seeks to make an original contribution that moves beyond methodological or ideological national(ist) frameworks and forms of nation-centrism or Eurocentrism that obscure the island’s multifaceted past.

In this regard, my research examines the diverse, multi-agent efforts to transform the Cypriot town of Famagusta into a thriving port city during the second half of the nineteenth century, specifically between the 1840s and the 1870s. Using this case study, I aim to develop a trans-imperial and trans-communal understanding of Famagusta’s urban regeneration, in order to grasp and demonstrate the entanglements linking the Ottoman, French, and British Empires with Cypriot (Muslim and Christian) communities through the spatial domain. Accordingly, my research offers a historical analysis of a wide range of local, imperial and global (f)actors from a micro-spatial perspective. Finally, by examining this multi-agent dialogue in relation to local, regional and global dynamics—such as environmental challenges, the opening of the Suez Canal (1869), the American Civil War (1861–1865) and the ensuing cotton famine—my dissertation sheds light on the historical contexts and the (im)possibilities within which these actors operated.

Trans-Imperial Archival Research in London

Such a comparative imperial history project required engaging with diverse sources in Greek, Ottoman Turkish (various forms), English, and French, encompassing both official documents and narrative accounts. My aim in applying to the German Historical Institute London was to expand and deepen my research in archives and libraries in the UK. My two-month research stay (July and August 2025) proved highly beneficial particularly in enabling the development of a comparative perspective, from which new questions and avenues for further research have emerged.

My examination of British diplomatic correspondence from the final decades of Ottoman rule before the British takeover in 1878 proved crucial in sharpening both the scope and the analytical depth of my research. Working through the dispatches exchanged between the Consulate of Cyprus, the Embassy in Istanbul, and the Foreign Office in London allowed me not only to reconstruct complex institutional networks and channels of knowledge circulation, but also to gain a clearer understanding of how British officials interpreted, negotiated, and responded to Ottoman policies and French interests concerning Famagusta, the island as a whole, and the wider Eastern Mediterranean. Engaging closely with this material made it clear that British attention to the city was shaped simultaneously by inter-imperial rivalry and by detailed local observation and intelligence gathering. This dynamic was particularly evident in the multilingual character of the diplomatic registers themselves, which incorporated documents and references in French, Ottoman Turkish, and Greek, thereby significantly enriching my trans-imperial reading of competing urban designs for Famagusta.

In conjunction with the pre-1878 Foreign Office documentation, my examination of post-1878 material relating to Cyprus and Famagusta in the Colonial Office collection enabled me to assess whether, and to what extent, earlier consular practices and modes of reporting remained relevant and provided a foundation for the subsequent British administration. This research also offered an opportunity to trace the Ottoman historical legacy—both in terms of institutional continuity and imperial perception—and to examine its selective appropriation by British colonial authorities in Famagusta. Reading British documentation alongside Ottoman material held in Istanbul was particularly revealing, as it brought to light long-overlooked trans-imperial connections. One such example is the British reconstruction of Famagusta’s port, made possible by a local financial institution that originated in the Ottoman period. Specifically, my research highlighted the long-term role of çekirge akçesi (the ‘locust fund’), an Ottoman-era mechanism used to finance public works, which British authorities repurposed in 1898 to secure loans from London for the successful renovation of the port. In light of this inter-imperial co-option, my research argues that the British period did not constitute a complete rupture with the Ottoman past, notwithstanding conventional Eurocentric assumptions—such as those advanced by the photographer Thomson, who, like many British agents in the nineteenth century, portrayed the Ottoman East as a space of complete decay and stagnation in order to legitimize British expansion in the region.


Featured image: ‘Ruins at Famagusta’, in Thomson, Through Cyprus with the Camera, ii. 45. Courtesy of the University of St Andrews Libraries and Museums, ID: Photo DS54.T5-47.

  1. Namık Kemal, Rüya ve Mağusa Mektubu (Kahire, 1908), 59–60. []
  2. Mithat Cemal Kuntay, Namık Kemal: Devrinin İnsanları ve Olayları Arasında (Istanbul, 2010), vol. ii, pt. 1, 374–80. []
  3. John Thomson, Through Cyprus with the Camera in the Autumn of 1878, 2 vols. (London, 1879), ii. 45; Nicos Philippou, ‘Between East and West: John Thomson in Cyprus’, Cyprus Review, 25/1 (2013), 111–31. []

The text only may be used under licence Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial No Derivatives 4.0 International. All other elements (illustrations, imported files) are “All rights reserved”, unless otherwise stated.


OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Okcan Yıldırımtürk (March 9, 2026). Ruins and Visions of Empire: Famagusta and the Quest for Revival in the Late Nineteenth Century. German Historical Institute London Blog. Retrieved April 10, 2026 from https://doi.org/10.58079/15u49


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