The University of Chicago
1126 E. 59th Street, Mailbox 116
Chicago, IL 60637
Office: (773) 702-2631
Fax: (773) 702-7550
Email: cheney@uchicago.edu
On Leave: Autumn 2007
& Winter 2008
FIELD SPECIALTIES
French History; The Enlightenment; French Revolution; The Atlantic World; History of Political Thought;
and the Origins of Capitalism in World-Systems Perspective.
BIOGRAPHY
Paul Cheney is an historian of Europe with a specialization in eighteenth-century France. Before beginning his PhD training in history at Columbia University, he studied political economy at the New School for Social Research. He has taught at Columbia University, The European College of Liberal Arts (Berlin) and The Queen's University of Belfast.
Broadly, his field of interest is the contextual study of social and political thought. In a recent series of articles and in a forthcoming book, he explores how eighteenth-century writers approached what is now termed globalization. How, they asked, was the outward extension of European commerce-particularly into the periphery of its Atlantic colonial establishments-inwardly transforming the material, cultural and political world of Europe?
He is beginning a new research project, with the help of the Institut National d'Études Démographiques in Paris, on colonial administration and the sciences (both human and natural) of the Enlightenment.
PUBLICATIONS
"A False Dawn for Enlightenment Cosmopolitanism? Franco-American Trade during the American War of Independence," The William and Mary Quarterly, third series, vol. LXIII (July 2006), pp. 459-484.
"Finances, Philosophical History and the 'Empire of Climate': Enlightenment Historiography and Political Economy," Historical Reflections 31, no. 1 (2005), pp. 141-67.
"Les économistes français et l'image de l'Amérique: l'essor du commerce transatlantique et l'effondrement du 'gouvernement féodal,'" Dix-huitième siècle, no. 33 (2001), pp. 229-243.
"Constitution and Economy in David Hume's Enlightenment," in David Hume's Political Economy, eds. Margaret Schabas and Carl Wennerlind (London: Routledge, 2008).
"Lumières écossaises," Dictionnaire électronique Montesquieu [En ligne].
"Du genre à la méthode : l'histoire du commerce en économie politique," Commerce, population et société autour de Vincent Gournay (1748-1758) (éditions INED). Forthcoming, 2007.
The Enlightenment Science du Commerce : Colonial Expansion and the New European Political Order (Harvard University Press) Forthcoming.