Neighbours on Paper: A Contribution to the History of Multiscript Printing in Colonial Cyprus

Abstract

In Cyprus the introduction of printing coincided with the beginning of the British occupation. Thereafter, all printed documents had to address a multilingual audience as English, Greek, and Ottoman Turkish were in use. This article focuses on a distinctive characteristic of the local printing history namely the practice of multiscript printing and the visual appearance of multilingual documents that addressed a linguistically multifarious society. For comparative reasons two different kinds of documents are examined: multilingual administrative documents and advertisements. The analysis of the documents provides insights into the practice of multiscript printing, i.e. the technical resources (printing methods and available types), the skills of printers, and the typographic conventions applied on multilingual documents. In conjunction with archival evidence these documents become mirrors of political convictions, social norms, and commercial transactions that linked a peripheral printing trade with the European centres.