J. P. Daughton
My most recent book, In the Forest of No Joy: The Congo-Océan Railroad and the Tragedy of French Colonialism (W. W. Norton, 2021), tells the story of one of the deadliest construction projects in history. Between 1921 and 1934, French colonial interests recruited -- most often by force -- more than 100,000 men, women, and children to work on a 500-kilometer stretch of rail between Brazzaville and the Atlantic Coast. In the end, tens of thousands of Africans were dead, killed by mistreatment, starvation, and disease. The book painstakingly recounts the experiences of local communities in the face of colonial economic development, considers why the railroad witnessed such extraordinary violence and suffering, and explores the strategies defenders of the train used to justify the loss of so many African lives.
I am also the author of An Empire Divided: Religion, Republicanism, and the Making of French Colonialism, 1880-1914 (Oxford University Press, 2006), a book that tells the story of how troubled relations between Catholic missionaries and a host of republican critics shaped colonial policies, Catholic perspectives, and domestic French politics in the decades before the First World War. Based on archival research from four continents, the book challenges the long-held view that French colonizing and “civilizing” goals were the product of a distinctly secular republican ideology built on Enlightenment ideals. By exploring the experiences of religious workers, one of the largest groups of French men and women working abroad, the book argues that many “civilizing” policies were wrought in the fires of discord between missionaries and anti-clerical republicans – discord that indigenous communities exploited in responding to colonial rule. A CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title, An Empire Dividedwas awarded the George Louis Beer Prize for the best book in international history from the American Historical Association, as well as the Alf Andrew Heggoy Book Prize from the French Colonial Historical Society.
Latest Publications
Journal Article on “Quotidian Violence in the French Empire, 1890-1940,” in eds. Louise Edwards, Nigel Penn, and Jay Winter, The Cambridge World History of Violence, Volume 4 – The Modern World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020).
Journal Article on “The ‘Pacha Affair’ Reconsidered: Violence and Colonial Rule in Interwar French Equatorial Africa,” Journal of Modern History 91 (September 2019): 493-524.
Book Chapter - "ILO Expertise and Colonial Violence in the Interwar Years", Palgrave, March 2013
Book Chapter - “Placing French Missionaries in the Modern World,” (with Owen White), in White and Daughton (eds.), In God’s Empire: French Missionaries and the Modern World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).
Journal Article on Behind the Imperial Curtain: International Humanitarian Efforts and Critique of French Colonialism in the Interwar Years,” Special Issue: Toward a French History of Universal Values: Charity, Human Rights, and Humanitarianism, French Historical Studies 34:3 (Summer 2011): 503-528.
Journal Article on When Argentina Was ‘French’: Rethinking Cultural Politics and European Imperialism in Belle-Époque Buenos Aires, Journal of Modern History 80, (December 2008).