The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace established its European Center after World War II with the aim of studying specific local and regional conflicts in Europe. Among these studies was a research project on the conflict in Cyprus and its multiple facets and manifestations during the years 1946-1959.

This is the first Cypriot conflict, which pitted Great Britain against the Greek Cypriots, who were seeking the union of the island with Greece, from the beginning of the anti-colonial movement at the end of World War II until the Zurich and London agreements in 1959, by which it was believed that a solution to the Cyprus issue had been reached.

The work was assigned to the French scholar François Clouzet, who was absolutely competent and additionally "neutral," meaning a citizen of a state not directly involved in the conflict. Clouzet is not interested in writing a study of the Cyprus issue as exclusively an international political problem where the politics of power among various major and minor powers intertwine and clash.

He undertakes something radically different. He aims to base his analysis of the Cyprus issue on the social and historical reality of the island and to examine the post-war political problem in conjunction with a comprehensive assessment of both the British administration and its handling, and the ethnic pluralism that characterizes the island's society and complicates the solution.

He also seeks to identify the "roots of the dispute," placing this analysis before his detailed historical review. He incorporates into his work a vast documentary material, drawn from printed sources that have only become accessible in recent years, from the press (British, Greek, Greek Cypriot, and Turkish) and from interviews (which the author attributes crucial importance to).

The titanic task of guiding the multinational team that assisted in the research, managing the rich but heterogeneous and uneven material, and ultimately composing his impressive study while attempting to understand the positions of all parties, the author accomplished commendably. It is worth noting that the translator of the book, Aristotelis Frydas (former ambassador, 1922-2010), had served in Cyprus as a young consul of Greece during the years of the Cypriot liberation struggle.