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jp_daughton

JP Daughton

Assistant Professor of Modern European History
Co-Director, Humanities Postdoctoral Fellows Program
Co-Director, Stanford French Culture Workshop, Stanford Humanities Center

E-mail: daughton@stanford.edu

Full Contact Information

At Stanford Since 2004

Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley; M.Phil., Cambridge University; B.A., Amherst College

Research Interests

I am an historian of modern Europe and European imperialism with a particular interest in political, cultural, and social history, as well as the history of humanitarianism. 

My first book, An Empire Divided: Religion, Republicanism, and the Making of French Colonialism, 1880-1914 (Oxford University Press, 2006) tells the story of how troubled relations between Catholic missionaries and a host of republican critics shaped colonial policies, Catholic perspectives, and domestic French politics in the decades before the First World War.  Based on archival research from four continents, the book challenges the long-held view that French colonizing and “civilizing” goals were the product of a distinctly secular republican ideology built on Enlightenment ideals.  By exploring the experiences of religious workers, one of the largest groups of French men and women working abroad, the book argues that many “civilizing” policies were wrought in the fires of discord between missionaries and anti-clerical republicans – discord that indigenous communities exploited in responding to colonial rule. The book concludes by showing that, after decades of conflict, Catholics and republicans in the empire ultimately settled many of their disagreements by embracing a notion of French civilization that awkwardly melded both Catholic and republican ideals. But their entente came at a price, with both sides compromising much-cherished traditions for the benefit of establishing and maintaining colonial authority.  An Empire Divided thus offers a new perspective on French culture and politics during the fin de siècle, while demonstrating colonialism’s ability to reshape Europeans’ most profound beliefs.

My current project, entitled Humanity So Far Away: Violence, Suffering, and Humanitarianism in the Modern French Empire, places the successes and failures of the colonial “civilizing” impulses that I explored in my first book within the broader context of the development of European sensibilities regarding violence, global suffering, and human rights.  Based on research in archives on five continents, Humanity So Far Away explores the central role human suffering played as an experience, a moral concept, and a political force in the rise and fall of French imperialism from the late 1800s to the 1960s.  By looking at non-Europeans’ experiences in the Antilles, Indochina, the French Pacific, and West and Central Africa, it dissects the circumstances in which violence, privation, and suffering became routine in the daily lives of men and women living under imperial rule. 

In addition to considering the place that suffering played in imperial and national politics, Humanity So Far Away also considers how colonial practices increasingly intersected with efforts to establish norms of humane behavior – efforts most often led by non-state and international bodies, especially the League of Nations and the International Labor Organization.  Drawing on the methods of political, cultural, and intellectual history, my research ultimately aims to explore concretely the extent to which notions about empathy and humanitarianism spread (or failed to spread) from Europe to the outermost reaches of the globe in the twentieth century.  Thus, the focus is the colonial past, but my goal is to offer historical context for Europe’s – and the West’s more generally – perceptions of its obligations to the developing world today.

Current Research

Humanity So Far Away: Violence, Suffering, and Humanitarianism in the Modern French Empire (under contract with Oxford University press, expected 2011).

Courses Taught

  • The Witness in Modern History
  • Recounting the Encounter: Colonial Contact in the Americas, the Pacific, and Africa
  • Introduction to Modern Europe, 1789-Present
  • The Ethics of Imperialism
  • Cultures of Violence in Twentieth-Century Europe
  • Europe and the Colonial Experience
  • Modern Europe: The 19th Century
  • European Society and Politics, 1850-1945
  • Modern France
  • Modern Europe Research Seminar

Publications

Books:

  • In God’s Empire: French Missionaries and the Modern World (co-edited with Owen White) (Oxford University Press, forthcoming)
  • An Empire Divided: Religion, Republicanism, and the Making of French Colonialism, 1880-1914(New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).
        • Winner, George Louis Beer Prize (for best book in European international history), American Historical Association, 2007
        • Winner, Alf Andrew Heggoy Prize, French Colonial Historical Society, 2007
        • 2007 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title

Articles:

  • "Introduction: Placing French Missionaries in the Modern World,” (co-written with Owen White), in White and Daughton (eds.), In God’s Empire: French Missionaries and the Modern World (Oxford University Press, forthcoming).
  • “When Argentina Was ‘French’: Rethinking Cultural Politics and European Imperialism in Belle-Époque Buenos Aires,” Journal of Modern History 80 (December 2008): 831-864.
  • “Documenting Colonial Violence: The International Campaign Against Forced Labor during the Interwar Years,” Revue de l’Histoire de la Shoah, No. 189 (October, 2008).
  • "A Colonial Affair?: Dreyfus and the French Empire,” Historical Reflections / Réflexions historiques 31: 3 (Fall 2005): 469-84.
  • “Kings of the Mountains: Mayréna, Missionaries, and French Colonial Divisions in 1880s Indochina,” Itinerario: International Journal on the History of European Expansion and Global Interaction 25: 3/4 (2001): 185 - 217.
  • “Recasting Pigneau de Béhaine: French Missionaries and the Politics of Colonial History,” in Nhung Tuyet Tran and Anthony Reid (eds.), Viet Nam: Borderless Histories (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006).
  • “Sketches of the Poilu’sWorld: Trench Cartoons from the Great War,” in Douglas Mackaman and Michael Mays (eds.), World War I and the Cultures of Modernity (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2000).

Awards and Fellowships

  • Dean’s Fellow in the Humanities, Stanford University, 2008-2010
  • John Philip Coghlan Fellow, Stanford University, 2006-2008
  • American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Fellowship, 2006-2007
  • William and Flora Hewlett Endowment Fund Fellowship, Institute for International Studies, Stanford University, 2005
  • Stanford Humanities Postdoctoral Fellowship, Stanford University, 2002-2004
  • Pew Charitable Trust Postdoctoral Fellowship, Center on Religion and Democracy, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, 2002-2003
  • Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation Dissertation Fellowship, 2001-2002
  • Charlotte W. Newcombe Dissertation Fellowship, Woodrow Wilson Foundation, 2000-2001
  • Townsend Humanities Center Fellowship, U.C. Berkeley, 2000-2001
  • Mabelle McLeod Lewis Memorial Fellowship, Stanford, California, 2000-2001
  • Fellowship and Travel Stipend, Institute for Global Conflict and Cooperation, University of California, San Diego, 2000-2001
  • John Tracy Ellis Dissertation Prize, American Catholic Historical Association, 2000
  • Graduate Division Fellowship, U.C. Berkeley, 1999-2000
  • Henry Morse Stephens Memorial Travel Grant, U.C. Berkeley, 1999-2000
  • Sidney Hellman Ehrman Travel Grant, U.C. Berkeley, 1999-2000
  • J. William Fulbright Foundation Fellowship, France, 1998-1999
  • Allan Sharlin Memorial Fellowship, Institute for International Studies, U.C. Berkeley, 1998-1999
  • Social Science Research Grant, U.C. Berkeley, 1997
  • Research Grant, Center for German and European Studies, U.C. Berkeley, 1997
  • Mellon Summer Research Grant, U.C. Berkeley, 1997
  • Sather Fellowship, U.C. Berkeley, 1995-1996

Professional Service

  • Co-Director, Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in the Humanities Postdoctoral Program, Stanford University, 2008-present
  • Co-Director, Stanford French Culture Workshop, Stanford Humanities Center, 2003-Present
  • Editorial Board, Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development, 2009-Present
  • Judge, Alf Andrew Heggoy Book Prize, French Colonial Historical Society, 2009-2011
  • Organizing Committee, 2009 French Colonial Historical Society Conference, San Francisco
  • Book Review Advisory Panel, H-France, 2006-present
  • Appointments Committee, Department of History, 2005-06, 2007-08
  • Mentor, Sophomore Mentor Program, 2005-2006
  • Graduate Studies Committee, Department of History, 2004-2006French Culture Workshop, Stanford Humanities Center, 2003-Present
  • Book Review Advisory Panel, H-France, 2006-present
  • Appointments Committee, Department of History, 2005-06, 2007-08
  • Mentor, Sophomore Mentor Program, 2005-2006
  • Graduate Studies Committee, Department of History, 2004-2006, 2009-10
  • Fellowship Screener, International Dissertation Research Fellowships, Social Science Research Council, 2004-06
  • Program Committee, 2005 Society of French Historical Studies Conference