James P. Daughton

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.  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. He received a J. William Fulbright fellowship for research in France, as well as dissertation fellowships from the Harry Frank Guggenheim and Woodrow Wilson foundations.