From the roots of slavery to the spread of AIDS, Stanford historian J.P. Daughton investigates the dark side of European humanitarianism.
J. P. Daughton is an associate professor of modern European history at Stanford who studies imperialism and the history of humanitarianism. A 2014-2015 Stanford Humanities Center Internal Faculty Fellow, Daughton is working on his book project, Humanity So Far Away: Violence, Humanitarianism, and Human Rights in the Modern French Empire, which contextualizes the development of European sensibilities regarding violence, global suffering, and human rights.
Based on research in archives on five continents, the project explores the central role that human suffering played as an experience, a moral concept, and a political force in the rise and fall of French imperialism from the late 1800s to the 1960s.
Daughton's previous publication, An Empire Divided: Religion, Republicanism, and the Making of French Colonialism, 1880-1914 (Oxford University Press), explores the story of how troubled relations between Catholic missionaries and republican critics shaped colonial policies....
Steve Castillo