Dzavid Dzanic

Dzavid Dzanic is a historian of modern Europe, with a focus on France and the French Empire. He studies the intersection between imperialism, religion, law, and diplomacy. His book manuscript, The Civilizing Sea: The Ideological Origins of the French Mediterranean Empire, examines the history of French imperial expansion in Egypt, Italy, and Algeria between the 1789 Revolution and the beginning of the Third Republic in 1870. The Civilizing Sea represents the first attempt to locate the ideological origins of French imperialism in the multiple Mediterranean entanglements between Catholic and Islamic ideas, consular views on international law, and the Roman past. Dzavid has visited archives in France, Italy, Spain, Croatia, Montenegro, and the United Kingdom. His research has been supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), the Krupp Foundation, and the History Department at Harvard University.  

He has taught courses on modern world history; early world history; modern France, Europe, and the Middle East; as well as historical methods and historiography.

• HIST 2320: Modern World History

• HIST 3000: Historical Methods

• HIST 3350: Modern Europe, 1789 to 1919

• HIST 3375: Revolution & Napoleonic Europe

• Modern Western Europe

• French Empire

• Mediterranean

• Intellectual History

• Historiography

Peer-Reviewed Articles

• “The Regency of Tripoli in French Imperial Thought.” The Maghreb Review 45, no. 2 (2020): 347-371.

• “Informal Empire and International Law in Tunisia after the French Revolution.” Journal of North African Studies 25, no. 3 (2020): 386-414.

• “Between Fanaticism and Loyalty: Algerian Prisoners within the French Mediterranean Empire.” Journal of North African Studies 20, no. 2 (2015): 204-224.

• “’Le germe de la liberté’: les républicains du Bas-Canada et les révolutions européennes de 1848.” Mens: Revue d’histoire intellectuelle de l’Amérique française 9, no. 1 (2008): 35-80.

Book Reviews

• Review of L’Algérie et la France: deux siècles d’histoire croisée, by Gilbert Meynier; Le désordre colonial: l’Algérie à l’épreuve de la colonisation de peuplement, by Hosni Kitouni. Journal of North African Studies 25, no. 3 (2020): 476-78.

• Review of Incidental Archaeologists: French Officers and the Rediscovery of Roman North Africa, by Bonnie Effros. Modern & Contemporary France 27, no. 4 (2019): 524-25.

• Review of Sétif, la fosse commune: massacres du 8 mai 1945, by Kamel Beniaiche. Journal of North African Studies 23, no. 5 (2018): 901-4.

• Review of Imperial Unknowns: The French and British in the Mediterranean, 1650-1750, by Cornel Zwierlein. Mediterranean Historical Review 33, no. 1 (2018): 122-25.

• Review of Beyond Timbuktu: An Intellectual History of Muslim West Africa, by Ousmane Oumar Kane. Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses 47, no. 1 (2018): 140-42.

• Review of The Idea of the Muslim World: A Global Intellectual History, by Cemil Aydin. Journal of Religious History 42, no. 2 (2018): 298-301.

• Review of La conquête de l’Algérie: la dernière campagne d’Abd el-Kader, by Jacques Frémeaux. Modern & Contemporary France 25, no. 2 (2017): 232-33. 

• Review of French Mediterraneans: Transnational and Imperial Histories, edited by Patricia M. E. Lorcin and Todd Shepard. Journal of North African Studies 22, no. 2 (2017): 303-6. 

• Review of La France en terre d’islam: empire colonial et religions, XIX^e-XX^esiècles, by Pierre Vermeren. Journal of North African Studies 22, no. 2 (2017): 306-8.