History and Historicism in ‘British’ Cyprus and ‘French’ Tunisia: A Comparative Study of Colonial Architecture Across the Mediterranean

British and French colonial administrations exploited various aspects of the histories of Cyprus and Tunisia to justify their occupation of those countries during the late 19th and 20th centuries. There, archaeologists unearthed Greek, Roman, Christian, and medieval artifacts that testified to the Mediterranean’s rich, complex history and the various cultural networks that have bound it together. As the same time, designers created complementary historicist architectures that facilitated self- aggrandizing presentations suggesting that the European colonial presence was both historically precedented and superior. Architecturally, such claims can be seen in many of the government buildings, Christian churches, and antiquities museums built by colonizers in each context. This article presents an account of these colonial-era built environments constructed in Cyprus and Tunisia by Britain and France (1878–1960 and 1881–1956, respectively) through several conceptions of the Mediterranean cultivated by colonizers, including Ancient Greek and Roman, early Christian, and medieval Crusader lenses. It does this through an underutilized comparative thematic method that crosses the boundaries of European empires and is thus an approach with potential for application to other colonial situations. Ultimately, the article invites the development of additional comparative projects that span empires, geographies, and themes, in order to facilitate an understanding of salient colonial-era built environments and global architectural histories that transcend national borders and colonialist rhetoric.