Another year, another currency swap

A new year today – and two long standing currencies in the Mediterranean region are consigned to numismatic history as their respective nations join the expanding eurozone: the Maltese lira (or lira maltija) and the Cypriot pound.

The Cypriot pound has been around since the mid-Victorian period, and was decimalised long before the island nation secured independence from Britain. No surprise perhaps as Cyprus' pre-decimal coinage was one of the world's most fabulously complicated currencies, making the pounds, shillings and pence system of Cyprus' colonial masters look like a numerical teaser for infants.

Forty paras in a piastre, nine piastres in a shilling and twenty shillings in a pound. Got that? The decision in 1955 to go for a simple 1000 mils in a pound released trillions of Cypriot brain cells for deployment on something more productive that merely counting small change.

So half of Cyprus gets a new currency today. Not the northern portion of the island, though, as the Turkish Republic of North Cyprus sticks with the Turkish lira. As southern Cyprus shifts to the euro, it also drags a British Overseas Territory into the eurozone with it.

Conservatives from Tunbridge Wells will no doubt vent their spleens in letters to the media protesting at this improbable development, but residents on the British Sovereign Base Areas (SBAs) on Cyprus seem none too perturbed to be changing to the euro.

There are as many Cypriots as Brits living in the UK's two parcels of land in Cyprus, Akrotiri and Dhekelia. And the survival of these geo-political curiosities has been predicated on the close integration of their economies into that of Cyprus proper. So since Cyprus' independence in 1960, the SBAs have used the Cypriot pound, and with the demise of that currency, the SBAs now convert to the euro.

This is the fourth in a series of guest postings by Nicky Gardner and Susanne Kries of hidden europe magazine. The authors have no axe to grind with Tunbridge Wells, a rather attractive town in southeast England which combines Georgian elegance with a very conservative view of the world.