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European Imperial Rule through Ottoman Land Law: British Cyprus, the Italian Dodecanese, and French Mandatory Syria
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2022
Abstract
This paper focuses on the articulation between property, sovereignty, and the construction of new political subjectivities in post-Ottoman provinces. Drawing on the cases of British Cyprus, the Italian Dodecanese, and French Mandatory Syria, it shows that European sovereign claims on these territories were pursued through the perpetuation of Ottoman land laws and the reorganisation of the judicial system responsible for implementing them. Dictated by the enduring legal uncertainty regarding the international status of these three provinces, this peculiar path to imperium did not deter European officials from working towards the ambitious goal of creating a class of individual peasant-proprietors, protected in their rights by colonial courts. Acknowledging the differences between these projects, their mutual influences, as well as their relative failure, the article contends that they nonetheless impel us to envision the transition from “Ottoman” to “European” rule as a gradual, multilayered process, instead of a sudden break.
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- Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Research Institute for History, Leiden University
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Bibliography
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Lewis, M. D. Divided Rule: Sovereignty and Empire in French Tunisia, 1881–1938. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014.Google Scholar
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Mommsen, W. J., and De Moor, J. A., eds. European Expansion and Law: The Encounter of European and Indigenous Law in 19th and 20th Century Africa and Asia. Oxford: Berg, 1992.Google Scholar
Mundy, Martha. “Village Authority and the Legal Order of Property (the Southern Hawran, 1876–1922).” In New Perspectives on Property and Land in the Middle East, ed. Owen, Roger, 63–92. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Nevzat, A. Nationalism amongst the Turks of Cyprus: The First Wave. Oulu: Oulu University Press, 2005.Google Scholar
Pagden, A. “Fellow Citizens and Imperial Subjects: Conquest and Sovereignty in Europe's Overseas Empires.” History and Theory 44:4 (2005): 28–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Philliou, C. “Communities on the Verge: Unraveling the Phanariot Ascendancy in Ottoman Governance.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 51:1 (2009): 151–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Provence, M. The Great Syrian Revolt and the Rise of Arab Nationalism. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rappas, A. “The Sultan's Domain: British Cyprus’ Role in the Redefinition of Property Regimes in the Post-Ottoman Levant.” International History Review 41:3 (2018): 624–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Renucci, F. “David Santillana, acteur et penseur des droits musulman et européen.” Monde(s) 7:1 (2015): 25–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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Said, E. W. Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient. London: Penguin Books, 1995.Google Scholar
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Strawson, J. “Revisiting Islamic Law: Marginal Notes from Colonial History.” Griffith Law Review 12:2 (2003): 362–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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Yazidi, B. La politique coloniale et le domaine de l'Etat en Tunisie. De 1881 à la crise des années Trente. Manouba: Editions Sahar, 2005.Google Scholar
Archives Diplomatiques du Ministère des Affaires Étrangères, La Courneuve and Nantes (AMAE-LC and AMAE-N)Google Scholar
- Acquisitions Extraordinaires, fonds Camille Duraffourd: 1AE/118Google Scholar
- Service Juridique. Mandat Syrie-Liban: 1 SL/250/12Google Scholar
- 50CPCOM Série Levant 1930–1940: SS Série Syrie-LibanGoogle Scholar
Archivio Storico Diplomatico-Ministero degli Affari Esteri, Rome (ASDMAE)Google Scholar
- Affari Politici-Dodecaneso, 1919–1930Google Scholar
- Affari Politici-Dodecaneso, 1930–1945Google Scholar
Cyprus State Archives, Nicosia (SA02)Google Scholar
- Secretariat Archives-OccupationGoogle Scholar
General State Archives-Dodecanese, Rhodes (GAK-D)Google Scholar
General State Archives of Greece-Dodecanese (GAK)Google Scholar
National Archives, London (NA)’Google Scholar
- FO: Foreign Office CorrespondenceGoogle Scholar
- CO: Colonial Office Correspondence Published Primary SourcesGoogle Scholar
Aristarchi, G., ed. Législation ottomane ou recueil des lois, règlements, ordonnances, traités, capitulations, et autres documents officiels. Constantinople: Imprimerie Frères Nicolaïdes, 1873.Google Scholar
Armao, Ermanno. Regio Governo di Rodi e Castelrosso e delle altre dodici isole occupate. Annuario amministrativo e statistico per l'anno 1922. Torino: G. B. Paravia & C., 1922.Google Scholar
Arminjon, P. Etrangers et protégés dans l'Empire ottoman. Tome Ier. Nationalité, Protection, Indigénat, Condition Juridique des Individus et des Personnes Morales. Paris : Librairie Marescq & Cie, 1903.Google Scholar
Bartram, A. “The Law of Wills and Succession in Cyprus: A Study in Comparative Legislation.” Journal of the Society of Comparative Legislation 12:2 (1912): 324–39.Google Scholar
Belin, F.-A. Etude sur la propriété foncière en pays musulman et spécialement en Turquie (rite hanéfite). Paris: Imprimerie royale, 1862.Google Scholar
Bryce, J. Studies in History and Jurisprudence. New York: New York University Press, 1901.Google Scholar
Lugard, F. The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa. London: Blackwood and Sons, 1922.Google Scholar
Sousa, N. The Capitulatory Régime of Turkey: Its History, Origin and Nature. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1933.Google Scholar
Temperley, H. “The Treaty of Paris of 1856 and Its Execution.” Journal of Modern History 4:4 (1932): 523–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ahmad, F. “Ottoman Perceptions of the Capitulations, 1800–1914.” Journal of Islamic Studies 11:1 (2000): 1–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anghie, A. “Finding the Peripheries: Sovereignty and Colonialism in Nineteenth-Century International Law.” Harvard International Law Journal 40:1 (1999): 1–71.Google Scholar
Anscombe, F. State, Faith and Nation in Ottoman and Post-Ottoman Lands. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Armitage, D. The Ideological Origins of the British Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Benton, L. “From International Law to Imperial Constitutions: The Problem of Quasi-Sovereignty, 1870–1900.” Law and History Review 26.3 (2008): 595–620.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Benton, L. Law and Colonial Cultures: Legal Regimes in World History, 1400–1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Benton, L. A Search for Sovereignty: Law and Geography in European Empires, 1400–1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.Google Scholar
Bosworth, R. “Britain and Italy's Acquisition of the Dodecanese, 1912–1915.” Historical Journal 13:4 (1970): 683–705.Google Scholar
Dirks, N. Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2001.Google Scholar
Eldem, E. “Ottoman Financial Integration with Europe: Foreign Loans, the Ottoman Bank and the Ottoman Public Debt.” European Review 13:3 (2005): 431–45.Google Scholar
Espinoza, Filippo Marco. Fare gli Italiani dell'Egeo. Il Dodecaneso dall'Impero ottomano all'Impero del fascismo. PhD diss., Università degli Studi di Trento, 2017.Google Scholar
Fitzmaurice, A. “Liberalism and Empire in Nineteenth-Century International Law.” American Historical Review 117:1 (2012): 122–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fitzmaurice, A. Sovereignty, Property, and Empire, 1500–2000. Ideas in Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017.Google Scholar
Georghallides, G. S. A Political and Administrative History of Cyprus: With a Survey on the Foundations of British Rule. Nicosia: Cyprus Research Centre, 1979.Google Scholar
Gosewinkel, D. “Introduction: Histoire et Fonctions de la Propriété.” Revue d'Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine 61:1 (2014): 7–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guha, R. Dominance without Hegemony: History and Power in Colonial India. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997.Google Scholar
Guignard, D. “Conservatoire ou révolutionnaire? Le sénatus-consulte de 1863 appliqué au régime foncier d'Algérie.” Revue d'histoire du XIXe siècle 41:2 (2010): 81–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guignard, Didier. “Les inventeurs de la tradition ‘melk’ et ‘arch’ en Algérie.” In Les acteurs des transformations foncières autour de la Méditerranée au XIX e siècle, ed. Guéno, Vanessa and Guignard, Didier, 49–93. Paris: Karthala, 2013.Google Scholar
Guinchard, S., and Debard, T., eds. Lexique des termes juridiques 2017–2018. Paris: Dalloz, 2017.Google Scholar
Hanley, Will. “When Did Egyptians Stop Being Ottomans.” In Multilevel Citizenship, ed. Maas, Willem, 89–109. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
İslamoğlu, Huri. “Towards a Political Economy of Legal and Administrative Constitutions of Individual Property.” In Constituting Modernity: Private Property in the East and West, ed. İslamoğlu, H., 3–34. London: IB Tauris, 2004.Google Scholar
Khoury, P. S. Syria and the French Mandate: The Politics of Arab Nationalism, 1920–1945. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1987.Google Scholar
Krasner, S. D. Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lefebvre, C., and Oualdi, M'hamed, eds. “Colonial Temporalities: Economics and Natural Experiment.” Special issue, Annales, Histoire, Sciences Sociales 77:4 (2017).Google Scholar
Lewis, M. D. Divided Rule: Sovereignty and Empire in French Tunisia, 1881–1938. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014.Google Scholar
Markides, D. The Cyprus Tribute and Geopolitics in the Levant, 1875–1960. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mehta, Uday S. “Liberal Strategies of Exclusion.” In Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World, ed. Cooper, Frederick and Stoler, Ann Laura, 59–86. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mitchell, T. Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-Politics, Modernity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mommsen, W. J., and De Moor, J. A., eds. European Expansion and Law: The Encounter of European and Indigenous Law in 19th and 20th Century Africa and Asia. Oxford: Berg, 1992.Google Scholar
Mundy, Martha. “Village Authority and the Legal Order of Property (the Southern Hawran, 1876–1922).” In New Perspectives on Property and Land in the Middle East, ed. Owen, Roger, 63–92. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Nevzat, A. Nationalism amongst the Turks of Cyprus: The First Wave. Oulu: Oulu University Press, 2005.Google Scholar
Pagden, A. “Fellow Citizens and Imperial Subjects: Conquest and Sovereignty in Europe's Overseas Empires.” History and Theory 44:4 (2005): 28–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Philliou, C. “Communities on the Verge: Unraveling the Phanariot Ascendancy in Ottoman Governance.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 51:1 (2009): 151–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Provence, M. The Great Syrian Revolt and the Rise of Arab Nationalism. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rappas, A. “The Sultan's Domain: British Cyprus’ Role in the Redefinition of Property Regimes in the Post-Ottoman Levant.” International History Review 41:3 (2018): 624–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Renucci, F. “David Santillana, acteur et penseur des droits musulman et européen.” Monde(s) 7:1 (2015): 25–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rubin, A. “Legal Borrowing and Its Impact on Ottoman Legal Culture in the Late Nineteenth Century.” Continuity and Change 22:2 (2007): 279–303.Google Scholar
Rubin, A. “Modernity as Code: The Ottoman Empire and the Global Movement of Codification.” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 59 (2016): 828–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Said, E. W. Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient. London: Penguin Books, 1995.Google Scholar
Schäebler, B. “Practicing Mushâ‘: Common Lands and the Common Good in Southern Syria under the Ottomans and the French.” In New Perspectives on Property and Land in the Middle East, ed. Owen, Roger, 63–92. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Seeley, J. R. The Expansion of England: Two Courses of Lectures. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1883.Google Scholar
Stoler, A. L. “On Degrees of Imperial Sovereignty.” Public Culture 18:1 (2006): 125–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Strawson, J. “Revisiting Islamic Law: Marginal Notes from Colonial History.” Griffith Law Review 12:2 (2003): 362–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thompson, E. Colonial Citizens: Republican Rights, Paternal Privilege, and Gender in French Syria and Lebanon. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Weaver, J. C. Great Land Rush and the Making of the Modern World, 1650–1900. Montreal: McGill-Queen's Press-MQUP, 2003.Google Scholar
Yazidi, B. La politique coloniale et le domaine de l'Etat en Tunisie. De 1881 à la crise des années Trente. Manouba: Editions Sahar, 2005.Google Scholar