The Department of History

Doomsday Book
Paul Cheney

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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

Shiela Fitzpatrick

Cornell Fleischer

Rachel Fulton

Michael Geyer

Jan Goldstein

Adam Green

Ramón Gutiérrez

Jonathan Hall

Cameron Hawkins

James Hevia

Thomas Holt

Rachel Jean-Baptiste

Adrian Johns

Walter Kaegi

James Ketelaar

Emilio Kourí

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

Louis Granados

James Grossman

Alma Guillermoprieto

Joanna Guldi

Qunyu Tan

Emeriti Faculty

Ralph Austen

Prasenjit Duara

Bentley Duncan

Charles Gray

Hanna Gray

Harry Harootunian

Neil Harris

Ping-ti Ho

Ronald Inden

Halil Inalcik

Barry Karl

Friedrich Katz

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

Jean Comaroff

John Craig

Fred Donner

Robert Fogel

Dennis Hutchinson

Rochona Majumdar

Paul Mendes-Flohr

Jennifer Palmer

Lucy Pick

Holly Shissler

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

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 currently at work on two projects: a series of articles on scientific and administrative practices in the French Antilles; and a book-length study on court capitalism in eighteenth-century France.

Publications

Revolutionary Commerce: Globalization and the French Monarchy (Harvard University Press). In press: forthcoming Spring 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.

"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-huitiéme siécle, 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).

"Lumiéres 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.

“The Colonial Machine Dismantled: Knowledge and Empire in the French Atlantic,” co-authored with Loïc Charles. Under Review.

“Bordeaux / Glasgow: The Port City as Intellectual Milieu." Under Review.