Alexis Rappas

After an MA in International Relations at the University of Paris-1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and an MA in History at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Alexis Rappas earned his PhD in History and Civilizations at the European University Institute. He subsequently worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies, Princeton University, and at the Institut de Recherches et d’Etudes sur le Monde Arabe et Musulman in the frame of the LabexMed program. Since 2013 he teaches at Koç University, Istanbul, where he is currently Associate professor and Associate dean. His research focuses primarily on European colonialism in post-Ottoman settings.

The projet 

Title: Building sovereignty through property: the case of French mandatory Syria

Keywords: Mediterranean history, Post-Ottoman settings, Imperialism and colonialism, History of law, Property

Selected publications

• Cyprus in the 1930s: British Colonial Rule and the Roots of the Cyprus Conflict, London, Bloomsbury, 2020
• “European Imperial Rule through Ottoman Land Law: British Cyprus, the Italian Dodecanese and French Mandatory Syria,” Itinerario: Journal of Imperial and Global Interactions, 46(1), 2022, pp. 109-127 DOI:10.1017/S0165115321000358
• “Three Murders and a Mandate: On Property and French Sovereignty in Interwar Syria,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 48(5), 2021, pp. 850-872 DOI: 10.1080/13530194.2020.1719034
• “Jewish Refugees in Cyprus and British Imperial Sovereignty in the Eastern Mediterranean, 1933-1949,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 47(1), 2019, pp. 138-166 DOI: 10.1080/03086534.2018.1539729
• “The Sultan’s Domain: British Cyprus’ Role in the Redefinition of Property Regimes in the Post-Ottoman Levant,” International History Review, 41(3), 2019, pp. 624-649 DOI: 10.1080/07075332.2018.1447000
•  “The Domestic Foundations of Imperial Sovereignty: Mixed Marriages in the Fascist Aegean,” in Ulrike Lindner and Dörte Lerp (eds), New Perspectives on the History of Gender and Empire: Comparative and Global Approaches, London, Bloomsbury Academic Press, 2018, pp. 31-58
• “Memorial Soliloquies in Post-Colonial Rhodes and the Ghost of Mediterranean Cosmopolitanism,” Mediterranean Historical Review, 33(1), 2018, pp. 89-110 DOI: 10.1080/09518967.2018.1468682
• “Propriété et souverainetés impériale et nationale dans la Méditerranée orientale de l’entre-deux-guerres,” Revue d’Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine, 64(3), 2017, pp. 64-89  DOI : 10.3917/rhmc.643.0064
• “The Transnational Formation of Imperial Rule on the Margins of Europe: British Cyprus and the Italian Dodecanese in the Interwar Period,” European History Quarterly, 45(3), 2015, pp. 467-505 DOI: 10.1177/0265691415587684