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J.P. Daughton

Associate Professor of Modern European History

Co-Director, Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars Postdoctoral Program

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.

My current project, entitled Humanity So Far Away: Violence, Suffering, and Humanitarianism in the Modern French Empire, places the successes and failures of colonial “civilizing” projects 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.  The book 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.

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

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

Publications

Books:

Articles:

  • “Behind the Imperial Curtain: International Humanitarian Efforts and the Critique of French Colonialism in the Interwar Years,” Special Issue: Toward a French History of Universal Values, French Historical Studies (forthcoming).
  • “Placing French Missionaries in the Modern World,” (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 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’s World: 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
  • Mentor, Sophomore Mentor Program, 2005-2006
  • Graduate Studies Committee, Department of History, 2004-2006