Department of History | The University of Chicago

The University of Chicago
Department of History
1126 E. 59th Street, Mailbox 116
Chicago, IL 60637
(773) 702-2631 -- Office
(773) 702-7550 -- Fax
Email: cheney@uchicago.edu
On Research Leave: 2011-2012

Field Specialties
French History; The Enlightenment; French Revolution; The Atlantic World; History of Political Thought; and Early Modern Capitalism.

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 his recent work, 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 currently at work on two projects: a series of articles on scientific and administrative practices in the French Antilles; and a micro history of plantation life in eighteenth-century Saint-Domingue (present day Haiti).

Publications
Revolutionary Commerce: Globalization and the French Monarchy (Harvard University Press, 2010)

"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. (Link requires subscription access).

"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, 2010.

Recent Graduate Courses

The French Revolution
Old Regime France
Atlantic Worlds c. 1700-1800
Political Economy and the Invention of Society, c.1680-1830
Montesquieu and the Enlightenment (with Robert Morrissey, Romance Languages and Literature)
Revolutionary Culture in Eighteenth-Century France and America (with Eric Slauter, department of English)

Media

“The French Revolution,” radio interview on WGN Chicago, Extension 720, March 22, 2011 [link to audio file]

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Paul Cheney

Assistant Professor of Modern European History
Ph.D. Columbia University 2002