Research

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Resources on Atlantic World history:

Companion to the book Rogue Revolutionaries

Cover of the book Rogue Revolutionaries, historical research on the Age of Revolutions. Explosion of a ship at seaMy book Rogue Revolutionaries: The Fight for Legitimacy in the Greater Caribbean (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020) revives a lost and fleeting world of cosmopolitan radicalism through the interconnected stories of men who launched revolutions and their own independent countries.

Rogue Revolutionaries won the Gilbert Chinard Book Prize from the Society for French Historical Studies.

Introduction and Table of Contents here

You can listen to my interviews about Rogue Revolutionaries for the New Books Network and for Sea Control in an episode on maritime insecurity.

I have curated this guide to some of the archives referenced in the book: they are a great start for anyone wishing to do research on Atlantic world history.

The online companion to the book includes maps, original source material, and a cast of characters. 

Another resource on Atlantic world history is this collection of the original sources used in the book.

Haitian Odysseys

Photograph of a nicely dressed woman in Haiti standing near a chair, holding an umbrella.
Carte de visite, Haitienne, ca 1870, Ethnology Museum, Berlin

If you’re interested in Haiti, the African Diaspora, French history, migration, gender and family history, have a look at this Story MapJS. It follows the Granville family on their journeys across the Atlantic Ocean in the nineteenth century. This map highlights how free people of African descent navigated travel and racial boundaries and challenged white supremacy. 

Paths Across Waters: Black British History in the North East 

Another resource on Atlantic World history is Paths Across Waters. The site contains original essays on Afro-Caribbean and African people in the North East of England. You can follow the project on Twitter (#PathsWaters) and learn more about the multicultural past of places such as Newcastle, North Shields, and Sunderland.

Logo for the Paths Across Waters project: two men smiling and holding each other in fron of a sign saying West Indies House, Newcastle
West Indies Merchant Seamen’s Hostel, Newcastle, 1941 @IWM

Freedom of movement in the North Atlantic

I am currently working on a history of international travel in the North Atlantic world (1770-1870). This project examines the complicated origins of the right to freedom of movement as defined by the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, “Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.” And yet, no one questions today that individuals categorized as suspicious, namely criminals or terrorists, may be restricted or even barred from traveling freely.

By looking at debates around diplomatic protection, criminalization of service in foreign militaries, and identification papers (passports), this project reveals how freedom of movement became a testing ground for ideas about nationality, race, and gender. This project shows not only how states tried to control the mobility of their members, but also how legislation affected individuals on the ground and how these individuals resisted these laws.

To get a sense of my new project, see my post on the British Library’s American Collections blog “The Perils of Diplomatic Protection.” 

Review of the Haitian Society of History, Geography and Geology

I’m a writer and editor for the online resource around the Revue de la Société Haïtienne d’Histoire, de Géographie et de Géologie. This index aims to maximize the impact of Francophone research on Haiti in the English-speaking world.

Publications

  • “Celebrating African culture in the North East of England, 1930s-1940s,”Anti-Racism in Modern Britain: Histories and Trajectories, Manchester University Press, forthcoming. This article traces a multifaceted campaign to dispel stereotypes and discriminations around Africans and people of the African diaspora. Unlike other pan-African movements, this campaign brought together people of both middle-class and working-class backgrounds.

  • “Protecting foreigners: the refugee crisis on the Belize – Yucatán border, 1847–1871,” Law and History Review 39, no.1 (2021): 69 – 95. This article considers the role of migration in forming political, legal, and spatial geographies in Belize (then British Honduras), a region with weak state institutions and disputed borders. This article was the runner-up for the 2022 Elizabeth Eisenstein Essay Prize.
  • “A la croisée des révolutions et des lois: exilés napoléoniens aux Etats-Unis” [Between revolutions and laws: Napoleonic exiles in the United States] in Les Français et les États-Unis, 1789-1815, ed. Tangi Villerbu, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2017: 55-67. This article examines the impact of former Napoleonic officers on the Early Republic of the United States.
  • “Des Français indignes de ce nom: rester français en Louisiane” [To be unworthy of the French name: staying French in Louisiana] in Français? La nation en débat entre colonies et métropole, XVIe-XIXe siècle,ed. Cécile Vidal. Paris: EHESS, 2014: 187-208. This article demonstrates the fluidity of citizenship and nationality in the decades following the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 and how people turned this fluidity to their advantage.
  • “The pen and the sword: print in the revolutionary Caribbean” in L’Atlantique révolutionnaire. Une perspective ibéro-américaine, eds. G. Entin, A.E. Gómez, F. Morelli, C. Thibaud. Paris: Perséides, 2013: 26-40
  • “Les vagabonds de la république: les révolutionnaires européens aux Amériques” [The vagabonds of the republic: European revolutionaries in the Americas] in Les empires  atlantiques des Lumières au libéralisme (1763-1865), eds. C. Thibaud, F. Morelli, and G. Verdo. Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2009: 67-82

Copies of my articles are available upon request.