Cyprus as a degraded landscape or resilient environment in the wake of colonial intrusion

Abstract

Concerns about global warming, degradation of fragile ecosystems, and environmental and societal collapse have increased interest for lessons and/or solutions for today's environmental issues. Popular writers have turned to a classic degradation thesis of deforestation and presumed desertification within the Eastern Mediterranean as a cautionary tale of how past societies have committed ecological suicide. However, degradation and/or collapse is far more complex than the thesis permits, and uncritical adoption of such simplified stories encourages continued use of inaccurate assumptions about human–environment interaction. In Cyprus, such a degradation story materialized 150 y ago, and its promoters aimed to impress on readers their responsibility to reverse past environmental mistakes. Both the British Colonial authorities (1878–1960) and the post-Independence Cypriot government used it to justify their environmental policies. Unfortunately, this thesis was formed around several misunderstandings about Cypriot environments and society: (i) judgment of degradation without appropriate consideration of the difference between degradation and change; (ii) oversimplified representation of ruling powers and those people ruled; and (iii) denigration of the shepherd lifestyle and its presumed environmental impact. A multimethod approach using archival and field research offers a more nuanced understanding of the complexity of human–environment interaction, the underappreciated environmental and societal resilience of areas classified as degraded, and the importance of placing events within changing socioeconomic and political contexts. This study of natural resource management and environmental resilience illustrates that the practices that the colonial government viewed as unsustainable likely were sustainable.

Discussions of collapse frequently use past environmental theses as support for their arguments. The strength of such theses lies in the assumption that the interpretation accurately represents past environmental realities. Unfortunately, this often is not the case, and they should not be assumed to necessarily represent objective truth. Cyprus today is best known for its status as a militarily divided island. Before its political problems, however, the forests of Cyprus were perhaps the best known aspect of the island to the outside world. They are mentioned by classical authors and continue to be described through the centuries, especially by British colonial authors (1878–1960) who saw their role as rescuing them from perceived Ottoman (1571–1878) destruction. According to the commonly accepted narrative, the Cypriot environmental history of the last century and a half is a shining example of how a society, with the encouragement and help of British colonial scientists and administrators, chose to bring itself back from the brink of collapse. The only problem with this compelling historical account is that it is not accurate, but rather, it represents superficial conclusions based on nonindigenous, Eurocentric assumptions and intuitive arguments about the environment, the extent of centralized authority, the power of individuals, and the impact of non-environmental factors, such as money, in environmental decision-making processes. The role of this paper, informed by archival and field research, is to use a contextualized study of the Cypriot environmental thesis—a perceived past collapse and perceived subsequent rescue—to help inform our understanding of collapse today.

Cypriot Environmental History Thesis

The accepted thesis claims that when the British arrived on Cyprus in 1878 they found a severely degraded landscape, ruined by years of mistreatment by foreign rulers and a population of ignorant natives, who were fully accustomed to using the forests as though they were a free for all in destructive pursuits such as goat grazing and poorly practiced woodcutting and pitch production. Forward-thinking British foresters taught the residents to adopt what they viewed to be worthwhile, productive, typically agricultural lifestyles as opposed to the parasitic, partially transhumant goat rearing that they practiced on state forest land or fallow agricultural land or the inefficient woodcutting that they undertook on state land. They also taught the people to respect and appreciate nature through weekend jaunts to the forest, participation in an Arbor Day tree planting activity, or submission of a written work extolling his or her love of the forest to the Forest Journal (a trilingual publication in Greek, Turkish, and English).

This account of history appears in publications dating back to the early British colonial period as well as post-Independence publications (refs. 1–9 are a sampling). In sum, the British (and many following them) argued that, by the time that they left, they had taught the Cypriots to have a “forest conscience,” thereby saving the green jewel of the Eastern Mediterranean from imminent collapse.

Factoids as Pseudo-History

Rackham (10) informs us that a “fascinating aspect of anything to do with trees and woods is that there is a rival version” (ref. 10, p. 23). Within this context of multiple versions of forest history, he expresses concern with the presence of “pseudo-history,” defining this term as something that “has no connection with the real world, and is made up of factoids. A factoid looks like a fact, is respected as a fact, and has all the properties of a fact except that it is not true” (ref. 10, p. 23). Unfortunately, “pseudo-history … is all the history that most of the public … ever read; much of what passes for conservation is based upon it” (ref. 10, p. 25).

The Cyprus thesis is one of those pseudo-histories, a story composed of factoids. Furthermore, the factoids around which it is constructed are fairly common in other environmental accounts throughout the world, especially those accounts of the Mediterranean. Although the presence of these factoids and pseudo-histories is a matter of concern in and of itself, it is even more of a concern because they are used as historical support for some of the more popular alarmist theses today (11). If scholars and the general public could learn to recognize these factoids for what they are—questionable assumptions and statements regarding human–environment interaction supported by very little data—then perhaps we could move a step closer to recognizing the importance of data-grounded contextual information for combating current media-popular simplistic statements. This Cyprus case study can illuminate this discussion. Analysis of the Cyprus example can explicate the common factoids within its received environmental history, and in turn, such factoids can be more readily recognized when they appear in other theses describing the histories of different locations or the predicted outcome of other global environmental dilemmas. This paper focuses on three factoids, marshalling the empirical scholarship that questions them, and drawing from the Cypriot database to contradict their claims.

Factoid One: Prior Degradation Justifies External Rule

This factoid argues that previous ruling powers degraded the environment, and the current ruling power is justified in its role because it serves the noble deed of correcting the wrongs of the past and protecting the territory from the threat of collapse. This factoid is not limited to the past but also appears today as support for multinational organizations and non-governmental organizations appropriating or strongly influencing key decisions regarding land that is perceived as being under threat of environmental destruction. Key to this factoid is that the claim of degradation is unquestioned. This lack of questioning is unfortunate, because degradation may be intuitively perceived but not be real, both because of unfamiliarity with the typical vegetation or land use for that environment and for a political goal to justify the right of the ruler to rule.

Much scholarship (12–18) has questioned depictions of degradation both in the Mediterranean and elsewhere. Such examples illustrate that degradation is often a highly subjective attribute and that separating natural from human influences can be quite difficult. As Beinart and Coates (19) note,

[c]oncepts of nature are always cultural statements … Distinguishing degradation, especially long-term, from change or transformation—less emotive terms—is rarely easy. The natural world has such a deep and elaborate human imprint that we must confront the awkward reality that we may search in vain for a recognizable and definable state of nature (ref. 19, p. 3).

Blaikie (20) also struggles with the implications of the subjectivity of understanding environmental change when he asks how ecologists and pastoralists can construct two different readings for South Africa's environmental state.

Is it because there are “real” and objectively verifiable changes in the state of nature, such that the rate and direction of environmental change increasingly threatens humankind? Is it simply that the optic through which we view nature has changed? Or is it possibly the case that the politics of who holds the looking-glass has shifted, privileging some views over others? (ref. 20, p. 134).

Blaikie (20) argues that all of these options are valid, and indeed, they often coexist. This recognition complicates any broad sweeping regional statements either for or against degradation and clearly illustrates the need for an approach that starts from the local level.

As the works by Beinart and Coates (19) and Blaikie (20) note, political and cultural reasons factor into degradation claims, especially when depicting previous rulers as poor environmental stewards. These reasons vary depending on the study area, but for the earlier Ottoman Empire, there are clear advantages for Western authors to construct a history implying that the Ottomans were poor rulers. The construction of such a history builds on an East/West dichotomy that can be traced back over the millennia (21), positioning the West as “saviors” and the East as “destroyers.” This negative view of Ottoman rule is questioned by some authors, such as Meiggs (22) in the context of Greek forest destruction, but it is just as common to see the inaccurate thesis repeated unquestioningly (8, 23).

Cypriot Environmental History and Factoid One

Every account of Cypriot history going back to the late 1800s includes some variant of the story that British colonial officials rescued an island on the brink of ecological destruction. These views represent our first factoid, which is that degradation occurred in the past and must be remedied by the current ruling power. I will draw on multiple lines of evidence to counter this persistent factoid.

Geomorphological, dendrochronological, and archaeological evidence (17, 24–29), traveler's accounts and official reports (1–6, 30–36), and maps (37–40) were studied or examined. Conversations and unstructured interviews were conducted during fieldwork from 2003 to 2006 with forest officials and older Cypriots to piece together a multifaceted view of the island's environmental past. The combination of these sources indicates that the forests themselves, including areas described as degraded or lush, have changed little over the last century and a half, regardless of the presence or lack thereof of humans and goats (41). This finding is not to say that there have been no changes, especially in the minor forests. There has been abandonment of vineyards and terraced fields and subsequent reforestation by pine in some areas; there also was widespread change in certain areas because of clear-cutting during World War I and more scattered, selective yet extensive, felling during World War II. Generally, however, areas described as poorly covered and areas described as densely covered still match those descriptions today.

Intriguingly, the accepted degradation thesis does not appear in historical accounts until after the Western powers began to express interest in the then Ottoman territory.* This point illustrates the importance of considering political goals or cultural concerns in connection with accounts of degradation; the ascription of widespread degradation bolstered British right to rule. Furthermore, there are strong political motives for continuing the thesis up to the present day, because depictions of an environmentally detrimental Ottoman past can tie into current anti-Turkish polemics.

In sum, the pervasive nature of this factoid means that a degradation account can and should be questioned, because degradation is often subjective. Multiple lines of evidence must be examined, especially because factors completely separate from the environment itself can play subtle roles when environmental histories are constructed. Moreover, response to perceived threats should be carefully considered with such points in mind to ensure that we do not inadvertently cause environmental harm in our rush to stop perceived degradation that does not exist.

Factoid Two: Simplistic Apposition of Rulers and Subjects^†

Factoid two oversimplifies human behavior by lumping people into homogenous groups of rulers and subjects who are presented as behaving in stereotypical ways. There are multiple versions of this factoid depending on the past history of the region in question. The version most common in Middle Eastern or Mediterranean countries states that the “ignorant” native is damaging the environment and in need of education by colonial rulers or elites, presented as having advanced technical expertise, to rise above his/her damaging behavior. These damaging behaviors were presumably learned under the control of the previous ruler, which is presented as an all-powerful, greedy power. The implication of this factoid is that members of each group (prior rulers, current rulers, and natives) share universal characteristics. This implication is not the case in reality. If these characteristics do not exist, then generalized beliefs about the actions and motives of groups most likely will be incorrect.

Modern scholarship has repeatedly called for an “unpacking” of this production of an oversimplified ruler and subject dichotomy (21, 42–49). By presenting the prior rulers as being universally oppressive, it overextends their power. At the same time, it also denies the natives agency so that the knowledge and the power they could wield typically are not fully understood or recognized. Anderson (50), describing colonial policies in Kenya, touches upon this issue in his work when he notes that the indigenous people did not behave as one universal body, and some natives, in fact, worked with their rulers, adopting parts of the ruler mentality. In terms of the environment specifically, as shown more fully below, the factoid's description of their behavior is also inaccurate. In effect, both natives and current or former rulers are incorrectly presented as monolithic entities, and therefore, assumptions made about motives and behavior frequently are flawed and the importance of individual actions are downplayed.

Cypriot Environmental History and Factoid Two

The popular Cyprus environmental thesis includes multiple descriptions of “ignorant” natives destroying the island's environment under previous “incompetent” Ottoman rule and British colonial officials teaching them how to live a productive life. Both the natives and the colonial officials are all portrayed as behaving in their stereotypic ways. To examine this factoid, I used multiple lines of evidence, including conversation interviews, newspapers (Eleftheria, Empros, Alitheia, and Kypriakos Philax), weekly gazettes published by the colonial office, and petitions to the High Commissioner and government minute papers contained within the Cypriot State Archives (1878–1956) and British National Archives (1878–1960) (41). The picture that emerged is that the majority of Cypriots were not ignorant harbingers of environmental degradation and that colonial authorities did not all share the same mindset.

More specifically, contrary to what one might expect, on several occasions, the Cypriot elite, many of whom were educated in the West, expressed a stronger Western view of nature preservation (which required shifts in livelihoods) than the colonial officials. This behavior finds similarities with the recognition by Anderson (50) of the role of “modernizing” Africans. A notable example of the Cypriot behavior can be found in the passing of Cyprus’ Forest Law of 1889. This law placed the burden of proof of illegal forest produce possession on local inhabitants rather than government employees—an inhabitant was now guilty until proven innocent. It was proposed and passed by the Cypriot members of the Legislative Council (a government body of Greek and Turkish Cypriots and British colonial officers; see refs. 51 and 52) to the amazement of the British, who feared that it would be too unpopular among the people. The Principal Forest Officer especially expressed concern, because it was the strictest forest law in the colonies, and he wrote memos urging judges and commissioners to use the law gently lest unforeseen problems emerge.^‡ Therefore, in this instance, a group of elite Cypriots brought about a harsher law than the colonial authorities themselves.

Both the Cypriot elite and the Cypriot non-elite also behaved counter to the political narrative in their communications with the British colonial government. The Legislative Council members appropriated the British language and education regarding nature, but they turned it back to argue against British policies in criticizing speeches to the island's High Commissioner (for example, Legislative Council Statements from 1900, 1902, and 1906 found within the respective Cyprus Gazettes). The Cypriot non-elite also was neither voiceless nor powerless. Although many Cypriots could neither read nor write, this hurdle did not deter them from expressing their complaints to the High Commissioner through written petitions, transcribed for a small fee by individuals fluent in Greek or Turkish and English (SA1/2659/1884 and SA1/873/1884). As with the Legislative Council speeches, these petitions often emphasized an ideal highly emphasized by the British to the Cypriots to be appropriate civilized behavior, such as democracy and equality, as the primary support for the validity of the petition's claim (for example, SA1/3954/1884, SA1/385/1889, and SA1/3787/1885).^§ Such behavior certainly is not what one would expect from an uneducated native needing tutelage by the colonial powers.

In sum about this factoid, one must recall the fallacy of reducing our cast of characters to simplistic tropes. We cannot assume uniform reaction or actions among groups of people. Any attempt to explain power dynamics at such a broad level will most likely fail. The average person, who often is mute in the historical record, may not have been as powerless or willing to accept rules from above as the history suggests, and thus, she or he must be accorded her or his own agency. Furthermore, choices made that may affect an entire society may not be made by the entire society, but rather by a powerful individual or small circle of people. Within a colonial setting, these people are not necessarily the colonial rulers but may also be the indigenous elite.

Factoid Three: The Destructive Goat

The perceived negative impact of the pastoral economy, especially one centered on goats and transhumant herding, is another well-established factoid. This factoid draws its popularity from at least three components: an emphasis on private property and in turn a misunderstanding of the concept of commons, a concern with the effect of grazing on vegetation, and a concern with the causes and effects of fires and woodcutting and gathering and their connection to shepherds.

Turning to the first component, Western authors frequently perceived the commons to be a free for all (Hardin [53] has a more modern example of this concern with commons). However, the work of numerous scholars building on localized case studies has shown that this perception was and is not the case—instead, successful commons are governed by customary rules (Ostrom's work, such as ref. 54, is well-known; see also ref. 55). This misunderstanding of the commons had unfortunate consequences, especially for shepherds, because they typically did not own most of their grazing land. Instead, they drove their flocks over land viewed as commons, including both forests and privately owned fallow, in a complementary relationship with the farmers since the flocks fertilized the fields while they browsed on the vegetation.

In areas that were part of the Ottoman Empire and then became British or French possessions, this situation changed drastically owing to the Western (mis)understanding of commons and Ottoman land use laws. The land viewed by the inhabitants as “commons” was (re)interpreted by the new colonial powers to be “state land” (56). The colonialists associated state land with the concept of privately held land by the government that could be made to produce a profit for the government. This concept was radically different from indigenous understanding. This new conception of what had been used as common land meant that shepherds were now seen as parasites on others’ land, draining the value from it because of the perceived destructive nature of grazing.

This factoid also draws on a concern with the effect of grazing on vegetation. In Western literature, a concern with the potential negative impacts of goats on vegetation can be traced as far back as Virgil (Georgics, book II, lines 376–379). An especially strong belief that goats ruined forests emerged among French and British colonial scientists, who believed that grazing resulted in either cropped and misshapen trees or a lack of regeneration (57). Because open forests frequently doubled as grazing grounds, this belief had serious consequences for the shepherd.

This assumed negative impact of grazing on vegetation has frequently been questioned. Meiggs (22) provides examples to show that goats were often viewed positively within the classical period, contrary to Virgil's complaints, whereas in more modern periods, numerous authors (13, 15–17, 58–63) have illustrated that grazing is not necessarily an anathema to vegetation growth and that, in the correct situations, the two can coincide well. The fact that transhumance can be part of a successful polyculture subsistence pattern is seen in its long-term history of existence in many areas of the Mediterranean and Near East as well as a history of land use laws allowing for it.

The third component of this factoid is a concern with the causes and effects of “offenses,” mainly fires, which were frequently linked to shepherds. An expression of this idea in modern literature follows: “[b]ut it was mandatory to break the unholy alliance between fire and goats. Nothing so symbolized Cypriot insolence and British exasperation as the persistence of semiferal goat herds, and … the fires that traced their migrations” (ref. 64, p. 137). The assumption made in this factoid is that fires have a wholly negative effect on the landscape—just as grazing stunted regeneration, fires stunted regeneration, leaving denuded slopes at a higher risk for erosion.

Contrary to this negative view of fire, scholarship has shown that both grazing and fires can play an integral role in maintaining a sound ecology depending on the environment in which they are being practiced. As emphasized by the scholars above, disturbance is quite natural, but the Mediterranean environment is resilient. Grazing and burning, along with cutting, pruning, and coppicing, all can be part of a successful management system for a Mediterranean landscape (12, 65, 66).

The perceived reasons why fires were set also plays a key role in this factoid. People who use this factoid frequently argue that fires were set out of revenge or as a protest against the current rulers rather than to improve browsing. This view of natives rebelling against oppressive rule raises similar concerns to those raised by factoid two. Although the recognition that they could resist colonial policies is a positive thing, assigning the blame for fires solely to revenge-seeking natives overgeneralizes their actions and carries with it an image of natives so apathetic or ignorant about their environment that they would destroy it without cause.

Cypriot Environmental History and Factoid Three

This negative view of the pastoral economy and its three components are clearly present in the Cyprus thesis. Archival work, interviews, and a focus on informal land rules as well as the causes behind forest offenses, especially fires, can overturn this goat as scapegoat factoid for Cyprus. In the case of the first component, as was true in other British colonies, the British incorrectly assumed that the majority of the island's forests during the Ottoman period were used as an unregulated commons, free and open to all to use and abuse as they pleased. They also understood the Ottoman land laws to give the state ownership of areas used as commons. Thus, they were able to justify their own state claims to the forests and, in turn, their prohibitions of many of the activities that the inhabitants had been accustomed to carry out (8, 41, 56, 67, 68).

Their assumptions regarding the functioning of common land were incorrect. There were, indeed, customary rules regarding forest activities in such areas described as free and open to all by the British. The primary bodies regulating that use in several forests were the monasteries scattered throughout them. They had remained strong during the Ottoman period through their collaboration with the Ottomans (69, 70), and they are described by travelers (e.g., refs. 30–32) and secondary sources (71) as well as archival documents (SA1/2150, SA1/1894/1885, SA1/2451/1885, SA1/979/1892, SA1/1404/1894, and SA1/4652/1885) as having goats and well-developed gardens within the forest, implying that, counter to the factoid, goats could be kept without ruining the natural environment.

The archives contain many petitions from the monasteries during the British delimitation of forest land as state property (roughly 1882–1896) that emphasize their traditional rights over the lands and express their outrage at the abrogation of those rights (examples in SA1/1894/1885, SA1/2265/1885, SA1/3558/1885, SA1/5006/1885, SA1/3787/1885, SA1/2289/86, SA1/249/88, SA1/2252/1889, and SA1/2357/1890). The law came to the British aid in this process, because although the monasteries claimed rights over large areas of land, they often could not produce an official title deed to support that right and thus could not legally claim it (British recognition of this issue is seen in SA1/1513/1889). This problem was also apparent for several individual forest villages that claimed land within the forest (SA1/1472/1889, SA1/1474/1889, and SA1/2464/1894). Unfortunately for both the monasteries and the villages, the end result of the British misunderstanding of the customary land laws was that the inhabitants lost grazing grounds and in some cases cultivatable land, forcing them to overgraze flocks in excessively small areas and/or illegally graze flocks or cultivate state-owned land to support themselves (SA1/1095/1889, SA1/2178/1889, SA1/4652/1885, SA1/1472/1889, and SA1/2937/1893).

Related to the question of land use and the effects of grazing on the environment, the British also misunderstood the relationship between shepherds and agriculturalists in the Cypriot rural economy. They assumed that shepherds and agriculturalists could not mix well and were determined to teach this belief to the Cypriot (41). The work by Christodoulou (7) succinctly highlights this issue, noting that the first colonial forest officer on Cyprus “placed his hopes on the agriculturalist turning against the shepherd” (ref. 7, p. 110).

However, contrary to British assumptions, initially, shepherds and agriculturalists did work together on Cyprus by following a normal Mediterranean practice derived from common law (16, 59). There was a reciprocal agreement between the two, with the goats allowed access to fields after the harvest to graze on the stubble and fertilize the land before they were driven into the forests or onto other uncultivated land. Many agriculturalists, in fact, owned their own flocks (SA1/2464/1894, SA1/3658/1898, SA1/1680/1926/1, and SA1/1680/1926/2) (2).

The issue with this relationship and its lack of support in the colonial mindset not only centered on forest grazing but also on the British concern with intensifying agriculture. The traditional Cypriot agricultural system—one crop per year followed by multiple fallow years—was deemed inefficient, and the British aimed to replace it with one that involved no goats and limited fallow, if any (7). As the years passed, the British propaganda regarding goats and the “correct” mode of agriculture became more and more of a reality in some of the farmer's eyes until a much stronger tension arose between shepherds and farmers than had existed in the past (SA1/1164/1914, SA1/1680/1926/1, and SA1/1680/1926/2). In many ways, the British views concerning goats and farmers turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy. It was actually the British policies themselves, in terms of both their antigoat stance and their drive to delimit all land formerly used as common property as either private property or state-owned land, that seem to have caused tensions and hostility between farmers and shepherds to rise over the years (41). Thus, through an outward attempt to protect the environment while making it more efficient, in this instance the British instead disrupted the normal symbiosis between grazing and agriculture as well as deepened and/or created rifts in the society that were not fully present at the beginning.

Finally, the British also misunderstood the reasons behind many of the forest offenses, especially fires on state-delimited forest lands, and within their policy statements, they continuously assumed that the blame fell on upset shepherds seeking revenge (SA1/2136, SA1/535/1927, and SA1/857/1945/1) (4). Although, in less formal discussion, the British did acknowledge that some fires were caused by natural events, accidental, or set by shepherds to improve grazing grounds rather than wreak revenge, these explanations almost always remained informal explanations (examples in SA1/1680/1926/1 and SA1/1680/1926/2) (4). This insistence on the role of vengeful shepherds in lighting fires had serious consequences, because it did not allow a deeper understanding of the true situation. The historical record strongly suggests that, rather than strictly being expressions of resistance to the colonial authorities and/or a form of revenge, controlled fires were often carried out to improve grazing grounds. Contrary to the statement by Thirgood (8) regarding forest fires that “there was no realization on the part of these people of the damage they were inflicting on the forest or of the effect these practices would have” (ref. 8, p. 125), the inhabitants were fully aware of the effect as seen by their history of incorporating fire into their normal management schemes (SA1/857/1945/1, SA1/1972/1886, SA1/1011/1888, and SA1/2253/1891).

Furthermore, because the British policies had progressively taken away the traditional means of livelihood from the shepherds, fires as well as other actions classified as offenses, such as wood gathering, became an increasingly important means of survival for the people. As noted above, burning could produce dry fuel, and illegal cutting could produce timber for the market. Fires also could produce a number of short-term jobs in salvaging and replanting the burnt area (recognition of this possibility is in SA1/2381/1894 and SA1/460/1934/1).

The British decreed punishments to try to limit these offenses, but on account of their misunderstanding of why many of these were happening, their actions to try to limit the offenses may actually have increased them. The common forms of punishment—taking away grazing and woodcutting permits, taking away the ability to bid for government jobs (such as working burnt timber), and becoming stricter about applying the forest laws to their fullest extent—all were guaranteed to backfire if the reason the offenses were initially committed was not purely for revenge but rather out of desperation to sustain their livelihood (SA1/847/1928) (41, 67). The only option left to the Cypriot in that British-created reality, provided that she or he could not migrate to find work elsewhere, would be to repeatedly break the law. The worst possible scenario would have been jail and/or confiscation of the flock. Jail would provide food and shelter, and therefore, its level of undesirability would be tempered depending on one's state of poverty (SA1/712/1889) (70). Confiscation of the flock was a serious concern but also not a full deterrent. What use was a flock if they were dying of starvation on account of the lack of legal grazing areas? Furthermore, because of the changes made to the rural economy in response to the British policies, at least 50% of the shepherds did not own their own flocks by the 1930s and instead were hired by the flock owners, who often were agriculturalists. In such instances, the law specified that confiscation of the flock could not be enforced (SA1/1680/1926/1).

In sum, the past decades have recognized a reversal of many of the traditionally held views regarding the role of goats in the landscape that are basic to this factoid. Fears of degradation of the commons and, in turn, the need to emphasize private land rest on a misconception of commons as being equivalent with “free for all” areas, something that typically was not the case. Goats and vegetation, even forests, can coexist provided that proper carrying capacities are followed. The key is to determine who or what created or enforced these carrying capacities, limitations that frequently were not defined within formalized laws, and to ensure that outside rule, or in modern terms, assistance, does not disrupt their system without providing a viable alternative. Perhaps most importantly, a review of environmental offenses in the local political and economic context may just as likely reveal that these actions were undertaken as a resilient means of survival as that they were undertaken solely in pursuit of revenge.

Conclusion

Examining these common misconceptions in the context of the Cypriot environmental history exposes the flaws inherent in the factoids and underscores the utility of a multifaceted archival examination beyond the fieldwork phase in helping understand complexity and resilience in the environment. Although perceived prior degradation, whether by prior rulers or local inhabitants, can allow for an easily justifiable claim to control a region, degradation in a deeper historical sense is an easier assertion to make than to physically prove. The lines between degradation and change are readily blurred. It is also easy to assume that the behavior of groups of people can be described and predicted using a generic description of how the group as a whole should behave. Although such a supposition may allow easier modeling, it inaccurately reduces the complexity of socio-ecological behavior and subsistence systems. Given the inseparable interconnectivity of the environment and people, it is important to recognize this variability when examining environmental issues. Finally, care must be taken that intuitive assumptions are not blithely followed at the expense of facts derived from careful study of empirical data. This has been the case with the denigration of goats and shepherds in the landscape, a dislike informed by inaccurate beliefs about the commons, the effect of goats and fire on vegetation, and the reasons behind the offenses committed by shepherds. This may well be one of the most flagrant examples of misinformed colonial intrusion.

On a broader level, examination of such dubious narratives illustrates the need to highlight the role of resilience, whether of people or the environment. Human interactions with the environment can be damaging, but it need not always be that way. Similarly, people's behavior at times might seem to irrationally lead a society to devolve, but this finding is certainly not generally true. At times, such seemingly irrational behavior may be all that keeps people from abandoning the land. To try to alter that behavior out of a misplaced understanding of it may well cause more harm than good.

Also common to each of these factoids is an evident need to evaluate human–environment interaction against multiple sources of local, context-specific evidence rather than ecological assumptions. By applying this approach in this Cyprus case study, insights into colonial rule become apparent that would not have been uncovered during an investigation carried out at a broad generalized level, however seductive the more quickly yielded and simplified conclusions drawn from such an investigation might seem. More specifically, this research revealed that, within the British Colonial government, strong personalities had a greater impact than centralized policy procedures, and there was considerable dissonance among the members of the colonial government regarding appropriate environmental actions. Furthermore, partially owing to budgetary issues and nepotism, several of the colonial officers in charge at key times were woefully ignorant of the Cypriot environment. Decisions frequently were made not on the basis of sound environmental science but rather on the basis of what the budget would allow or what the colonial officials thought the Cypriots would accept without rebellion. What all of these points mean is that extreme care must be taken when using past histories as lessons for modern issues. Because the history hinges on such place- and time-specific issues as personalities and budgetary concerns, there is no reason to assume that the application of the same policies anywhere else would produce the same results.

A book review by Jared Diamond (72) emphasizes that we need realism, not feel good positive stories of human resilience, in our scholarly work if it is to see us through the coming uncertain environmental times. We do indeed need realism, but realism is not found by portraying past environmental histories in sweeping simplified accounts. Rather, we need to recognize and appreciate that the details are important, regardless of the amount of time that they may take to gather, that answers cannot be found quickly, that problems and answers may not be universally applicable, and that the end picture may not lend itself to neat summarization in a simplified media-popular portrayal.