Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies

Photo of Professor William Gallois

Professor William Gallois

Professor of the History of the Mediterranean Islamicate World | Assistant Director IAIS

W.Gallois@exeter.ac.uk

IAIS 3

Overview

I am currently engaged in a major research project looking at the production of images in the Islamicate world 1880-1945 C.E. This work aims to upend a series of commonly-held beliefs about art- and Islamic art in particular - in the modern age. It is centred on the production of a quintet of monographs, detailed below, alongside a series of public interventions in the form of exhibitions, articles and translation projects.

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Research

My most recent book project - A History of Violence in the Early Algerian Colony (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) - uses newly-uncovered archival evidence to present a detailed picture of the savagery of the early French colony. The book focuses on the argument that French atrocities and massacres were conceived of as 'natural' responses to the supposedly innate brutality of the Barbary Coast. It goes on to ask whether we can speak of there having been an Algerian genocide in the middle of the nineteenth century, comparing this case with that of other settler colonies such as Australia and America, where such genocidal moments are more widely acknowledged. That particular argument is the subjecty of a major review essay in the Journal of Genocide Research (2013) and a series of media interventions in Britain, France and North Africa.  The book is soon to appear in French, published by the leading Algerian publishing house, Casbah Editions.
 
The first review of my book (in French History) remarked, 'Gallois’ book will prove valuable above all to political and military historians by encouraging them to expand their conception of violence in all its forms. It also serves as a useful counterpoint to works of history that portray French imperial rule as relatively benign compared to a more brutal British model.' More recently, Patricia Lorcin's review in the American Historical Review noted that: 'Violence in its many forms, and colonial violence in particular, has been the focus of a wave of recent scholarly literature. Stimulated, no doubt, by the violence and imperialist activities of the twenty-first century, much of which has occurred in former colonial territories, one question that has preoccupied scholars with an interest in the subject is the extent to which violence in colonial territories was genocidal. In his thoroughly researched, cogently argued contribution to this literature, William Gallois looks at violence during the early years of military rule in French Algeria. When examining periods of conquest, as the military period was, the problem arises as to how to untangle the activities of warfare from those of massacres or genocide. The question is complicated further by the ongoing scholarly debate as to what exactly constitutes genocide. Gallois addresses these difficulties head on, engaging with the recent scholarship on genocide and evaluating the different stages of French military action in the colony.' In French Studies, Jim House noted that 'William Gallois has made an important contribution to the recent renewal of scholarship on the French conquest of Algeria [...] This timely, clear and eloquent analysis provides much food for thought, both for historians of the period and for those working on later colonial Algerian history and its legacies,' while in African Studies Quarterly, Samuel Kalman reckoned that 'the book clearly underlines the often extreme violence - physical, structural and symbolic - of the imperial system, and most importantly highlights what others have ognores: the prevalence of atrocities from 1830-1848, sanctioned by the metropolitan authorities and High Command alike. As a result, this work provides a very important contribution to the historiography of colonial Algeria'.
 
That constellation of projects drew on an earlier study - The Administration of Sickness: Medicine and Ethics in Nineteenth-Century Algeria (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008) - which examined the ways in which medicine came to emblemise the French 'civilizing mission' in Algeria, and the ways in which this project of medical imperialism failed in North Africa. This book, and accompanying articles, looked in particular at the experiences of Algerians in the French medical services, so as to try to understand the particular forms of disillusionment and resistance which emerged as responses to the 'mission civilisatrice'.
 
Earlier book projects included a comparative study of temporal cultures - Time, Religion and History (London: Longman, 2007) - which argued that historians have tended to ignore the central prop of their discipline (time), and that an examination of religious cultures reveals the atypical qualities of the western, empirical model of time upon which the discipline depends. The book was described by Markus Daeschel as being 'breathtakingly ambitious and crystal clear in its argumentation' while in the Journal of Global History Pene Corfield called it 'Thought-provoking, ambitious, immensely learned.' It has recently been the subject of a major review essay by Mark Cladis in History and Theory.
 

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Supervision

I welcome applications from students looking for PhD supervision or postdoctoral mentoring in any of my areas of areas of research expertise detailed under 'Research interests'.

I am also very happy to either supervise or co-supervise students across a wide range of topics in the history of the Middle East - the eclectic range of my current, brilliant students can be seen under the research students section of this page.

In terms of languages, I am happy to work with students working with material in French, Arabic, English, Catalan, Latin and Spanish.

Research students

I currently supervise and mentor a brilliant cohort of doctoral and postdoctoral researchers and welcome applications from across Middle East Studies:

Amira Toureche: Postcolonial history of Algeria and Rwanda

Hamdullah Baycar: Gulfi Self-Orientalisation

Baris Oktem*: Colonialism and the Refugee Crisis

Monica Ronchi: Histories of Psychiatric Repression in Algeria and Palestine

Ana Almuedo-Castillo: The Politics of Civil Marriage in Lebanon

Charlotte Sefton: Gender and Identity in the Sudanese Diaspora

Endika Rodriguez Garcia*: Settler Colonial Demographics in Mandate Palestine

Shenah Abdullah*: The History of Neoliberalism in the KRG

Yara Hawari*: The Memory Politics of the Nakba

Steve Nutt*: The Genealogy of Christian Zionist Colonialism

Jane Jackman*: Discursive Silencing in Debates on Israel-Palestine

Jihad Mashamoun*:  The Outsourcing of Political Dissent

Billie-Jeanne Brownlee: Lebanese Responses to the Syrian Refugee Crisis

* = co-supervision

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Publications

Copyright Notice: Any articles made available for download are for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and the copyright holder.

| 2024 | 2021 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2013 | 2012 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003 | 2000 | 1998 |

2024

  • Gallois W. (2024) Qayrawān The Amuletic City.

2021

  • Gallois W. (2021) An Illumination of a Floating World, AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW, volume 126, no. 2, pages 708-709, DOI:10.1093/ahr/rhab221. [PDF]
  • Gallois WRE. (2021) The Lure of Jihad: Post-Traditional Histories of Violence in the Islamic World, Violence in Islamic Thought from European Imperialism to the Post-Colonial Era, Edinburgh University Press.

2019

  • Gallois W. (2019) The lexical violence of imperial culture, Rethinking the History of Empire ISBN 9780367276584, Routledge.
  • Gallois W. (2019) Modernist history in the work of John Seed, RETHINKING HISTORY, volume 23, no. 2, pages 252-256, DOI:10.1080/13642529.2019.1586153. [PDF]

2018

2017

2016

  • Gallois W. (2016) Ethics and historical research, Research Methods for History: Second Edition, 229-246.

2013

  • Gallois W. (2013) Introduction, A History of Violence in the Early Algerian Colony, Springer Nature, 1-24, DOI:10.1057/9781137313706_1.
  • Gallois W. (2013) L’armée d’Afrique, A History of Violence in the Early Algerian Colony, Springer Nature, 52-80, DOI:10.1057/9781137313706_3.
  • Gallois W. (2013) Violence in Algeria, 1830–37, A History of Violence in the Early Algerian Colony, Springer Nature, 81-99, DOI:10.1057/9781137313706_4.
  • Gallois W. (2013) A Future Painted in Sombre Colours, A History of Violence in the Early Algerian Colony, Springer Nature, 122-144, DOI:10.1057/9781137313706_6.
  • Gallois W. (2013) An Algerian Genocide?, A History of Violence in the Early Algerian Colony, Springer Nature, 145-171, DOI:10.1057/9781137313706_7.
  • Gallois W. (2013) The Evolution of the Razzia, 1837–47, A History of Violence in the Early Algerian Colony, Springer Nature, 100-121, DOI:10.1057/9781137313706_5.
  • Gallois W. (2013) ‘Algeria’: The Archaeology of Barbary, A History of Violence in the Early Algerian Colony, Springer Nature, 25-51, DOI:10.1057/9781137313706_2.
  • Gallois W. (2013) Genocide in nineteenth-century Algeria, Journal of Genocide Research, volume 15, no. 1, pages 69-88, DOI:10.1080/14623528.2012.759395.

2012

  • Gallois W. (2012) Ethics and Historical Research, RESEARCH METHODS FOR HISTORY, pages 203-219. [PDF]

2011

  • Gallois W. (2011) Ethics and historical research, Research Methods for History, 201-219.
  • Gallois WRE. (2011) History and ethics, Research Methods for History, Edinburgh University Press. [PDF]
  • Gallois WRE. (2011) Dahra and the history of violence in early colonial Algeria, University of Nebraska Press, 3-25.

2010

  • Gallois W. (2010) Doctors, Honour and the Law: Medical Ethics in Imperial Germany, SOCIAL HISTORY OF MEDICINE, volume 23, no. 3, pages 707-708, DOI:10.1093/shm/hkq086. [PDF]
  • Gallois W. (2010) Shaping the Day: A History of Timekeeping in England and Wales 1300-1800, NUNCIUS-JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE, volume 25, no. 1, pages 166-167. [PDF]
  • Gallois W. (2010) Zen history, Rethinking History, volume 14, no. 3, pages 421-440, DOI:10.1080/13642529.2010.482799.
  • Gallois W. (2010) Rethinking History: Editorial, Rethinking History, volume 14, no. 3, pages 317-320, DOI:10.1080/13642529.2010.482787.

2009

  • Gallois W. (2009) The Administration of Sickness, Palgrave MacMillan.

2008

2007

2006

  • Gallois WRE. (2006) L’histoire du capitalisme de Doubai, Maghreb/Mashrek, volume 2006, no. 1, pages 45-68.

2005

  • Gallois W. (2005) 'Stella', MODERN LANGUAGE REVIEW, volume 100, pages 509-510. [PDF]
  • Gallois WRE. (2005) Andalusi Cosmopolitanism in World History, Cultural Contacts in Building Islamic Civilisation, Research Centre for Islamic History, Art and Culture, 59-109.
  • Gallois W. (2005) Emile Zola's forgotten history: Les Rougon-Macquart, French History, volume 19, no. 1, pages 67-90, DOI:10.1093/fh/cri003.

2004

  • Gallois WRE. (2004) Against Capitalism? French Theory and the Economy after 1945, After the Deluge: New Perspectives on Postwar French Intellectual and Cultural History, Lexington Books.
  • Gallois W. (2004) Todorov's gift of ethics to history, Canadian Review of Comparative Literature, volume 31, no. 2, pages 195-210.

2003

  • Gallois WRE. (2003) Towards a Typology of Moral Histories: Narrating Al-Andalus, Journal of Social Affairs, volume 20, pages 61-85.

2000

  • Gallois W. (2000) Zola, Peter Lang.

1998

  • Gallois WRE. (1998) The Forgotten Legacy of Emile Zola, Bulletin of the Emile Zola Society, volume 1998, no. 15, pages 7-12.

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Teaching

Modules taught

  • ARA1905 - Employability
  • POLM651 - State and Society in the Middle East

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Biography

I joined the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at Exeter in January 2013, having previously worked at the University of Roehampton, the School of Oriental and African Studies, the American University of Sharjah and Queen Mary, University of London.

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