The Department of History

Doomsday Book
Paul Cheney

IN THIS SECTION

Faculty

Fredrik Albritton Jonsson

Guy Salvatore Alitto

Leora Auslander

Dain Borges

John Boyer

Mark Bradley

Matthew Briones

Susan Burns

Dipesh Chakrabarty

Paul Cheney

Kathleen Conzen

Edward Cook, Jr.

Bruce Cumings

Jane Dailey

Constantin Fasolt

Sheila Fitzpatrick

Cornell Fleischer

Rachel Fulton Brown

Michael Geyer

Jan Goldstein

Adam Green

Ramón Gutiérrez

Jonathan Hall

Cameron Hawkins

James Hevia

Faith Hillis

Thomas Holt

Rachel Jean-Baptiste

Adrian Johns

Walter Kaegi

James Ketelaar

Emilio Kourí

Amy Lippert

Jonathan Lyon

David Nirenberg

Emily Osborn

Moishe Postone

Robert Richards

Julie Saville

James Sparrow

Amy Dru Stanley

Christine Stansell

Mauricio Tenorio

Bernard Wasserstein

Alison Winter

John Woods

Tara Zahra

Visiting Faculty

Corinne Bloch

James Grossman

Alfredo Jocelyn-Holt

Dimitris Kousouris

Sarah Lopez

Valeria Manzano

Emeriti Faculty

Ralph Austen

Prasenjit Duara

Bentley Duncan

Hanna Gray

Harry Harootunian

Neil Harris

Ping-ti Ho

Ronald Inden

Halil Inalcik

Julius Kirshner

Emmet Larkin

William McNeil

Tetsuo Najita

Peter Novick

William Sewell

Ronald Suny

Noel Swerdlow

Associated Faculty

Muzaffar Alam

Michael Allen

Clifford Ando

Catherine Brekus

Alain Bresson

Jean Comaroff

John Craig

Fred Donner

Robert Fogel

R.H. Helmholz

Dennis Hutchinson

Rochona Majumdar

Paul Mendes-Flohr

John F. Padgett

Lucy Pick

Holly Shissler

Corey Tazzara

Paul Cheney

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

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

Media

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