Fighting EOKA: The British Counter-Insurgency Campaign on Cyprus, 1955-1959

by David French

Drawing upon a wide range of unpublished sources, including files from the recently-released Foreign and Commonwealth Office 'migrated archive', Fighting EOKA is the first full account of the operations of the British security forces on Cyprus in the second half of the 1950s. It shows how between 1955 and 1959 these forces tried to defeat the Greek Cypriot paramilitary organisation, EOKA, which was fighting to bring about enosis, that is the union between Cyprus and Greece.

By tracing the evolving pattern of EOKA violence and the responses of the police, the British army, the civil administration on the island, and the minority Turkish Cypriot community, David French explains why the British could contain the military threat posed by EOKA, but could not eliminate it. The result was that by the spring of 1959 a political stalemate had descended upon Cyprus, and none of the contending parties had achieved their full objectives. Greek Cypriots had to be content with independence rather than enosis. Turkish Cypriots, who had hoped to see the island partitioned on ethnic lines, were given only a share of power in the government of the new Republic, and the British, who had hoped to retain sovereignty over the whole of the island, were left in control of just two military enclaves.

348 pages, Hardcover

First published May 19, 2015

About the author

David French was born in Essex in 1954 and educated at the University of York and King's College London. After briefly holding teaching posts as North London Polytechnic, the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, and Herriot-Watt University, he spent twenty-seven years at University College London. The author of nine previous books, he is a former Fellow of the Woodrow Wilson Centre in Washington DC, a recipient of the Arthur Goodzeit Prize of the New York Military Affairs Symposium, and a three-times winner of the Templer Medal awarded by the Society for Army Historical Research. He is now Professor Emeritus at UCL, a Fellow of both the Royal Historical Society and the Historical Association, and a Vice-President of the Army Records Society.

Reviews

[Rupert Hague-Holmes · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you want a brilliantly researched book to understand the EOKA insurgency campaign to achieve union with Greece, this is the book to read. It’s well structured and explains in detail the “why” and “how”.