Humanities at Stanford

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James P. Daughton
Associate Professor of Modern European History, Co-Director of the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars Postdoctoral Program

Biography

J.P. Daughton is a historian of modern Europe and European imperialism with a particular interest in political, cultural, and social history. He explores how expansionist and colonialist policies in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries shaped both European and non-European societies, with particular interest in nineteenth and twentieth-century France and the history of French colonialism and imperialism.  His first book, An Empire Divided: Religion, Republicanism, and the Making of French Colonialism, 1880-1914 (2006), examines how conflict between religious missionaries and a host of anticlerical critics defined French colonial policies and “civilizing” ideologies in the empire, especially in Indochina, Madagascar, and Polynesia.  An Empire Divided has been awarded two book prizes: the Alf Andrew Heggoy Prize of the French Colonial Historical Society for best book on French colonialism published in 2006, and the George Louis Beer Prize for the best book in International History, from the American Historical Association.  He is currently working on a second book that considers how Europeans understood and responded to instances of violence and humanitarian crises caused or exacerbated by colonialism.  In addition to conducting archival research in France, Italy, and Tahiti, he was a visiting fellow in the Faculty of History at the National University of Vietnam, Hanoi. He was awarded the John Tracy Ellis Dissertation Award from the American Catholic Historical Association in 2000, and received a J. William Fulbright fellowship for research in France, as well as dissertation fellowships from the Harry Frank Guggenheim and Woodrow Wilson foundations.

Key Works

• Humanity So Far Away: European Empires, International Organizations, and the Discovery of Global Suffering.   In progress.
• An Empire Divided: Religion, Republicanism, and the Making of French Colonialism, 1880-1914. Oxford University Press, 2006.

Prof. Daughton in the News

• French Colonial Historical Society 2007 Alf Andrew Heggoy Book Prize
• American Historical Association 2007 George Louis Beer Prize