Prof Renaud Morieux
I specialise in transnational history, with a particular focus on Britain, France and their empires. My research interests include the history of migration, oceans, incarceration and the social history of war, between the eighteenth and the early nineteenth centuries.
Over the years, I have tried to keep a foot on both sides of the English Channel, which is sometimes quite a stretch.
I studied History at Ecole Normale Supérieure LSH, University Paris 1 - Panthéon Sorbonne, and University of Lille. I obtained the Agrégation d'Histoire in 1998. I joined the Faculty of History in 2011. I was previously a Maître de Conférences (Associate Professor) in Modern History at University of Lille (2006-2011). In September 2019, I obtained an Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches from EHESS.
I have held visiting fellowships in Cornell, EHESS, Harvard, Paris I-Sorbonne, Sciences Po, and Toronto. In 2014, I was awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize for History.
In March-April 2024, I will be a Visiting Professor at University Paris Cité.
Senior Fellow, Joint Centre for History and Economics (Cambridge) http://www.histecon.magd.cam.ac.uk/
Fellow, Royal Historical Society
Incarceration: An international journal of imprisonment, detention and coercive confinement (International Associate Editorial Board):
Monde(s). Histoire, Espace, Relations (Editorial Board): http://www.monde-s.com/
Past & Present (Editorial Board and Publications Editor): https://academic.oup.com/past
Revue d'Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine (International Editorial Committee): https://www.cairn.info/revue-d-histoire-moderne-et-contemporaine.htm
I am a historian of the borders between Britain and the rest of the world, in the 'long' eighteenth century.
A revised edition of my first book, published in French in 2008, was published in March 2016 with Cambridge University Press: The Channel. England, France and the Construction of a Maritime Border in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge Social and Cultural Histories series): http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/history/european-history-after-1450/channel-england-france-and-construction-maritime-border-eighteenth-century
The Channel won the 2017 Leo Gershoy Award awarded by the American Historical Association for 'the most outstanding work published in English on any aspect of 17th- and 18th-century European history'.
My book The Society of Prisoners: Anglo-French Wars and Incarceration in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford University Press, Past & Present Series, 2019), explores British and French concepts and experiences of war captivity in the long eighteenth century, on a global scale (Europe, the West Indies, St Helena).
My research on the history of customary international law and the law of the sea is venturing into new directions. See https://www.hist.cam.ac.uk/project/law-and-maritime-culture-1650-1850-workshop
I am currently working on two large projects:
- the first one focuses on political deportation in the Indian Ocean (Reunion, Mauritius, India) in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The project, which focuses on the British, Danish, and French empires, combines legal history, family history, the history of migrations, and oceanic history.
- the second one is a reflexive history of statelessness from the 1920s to the present. See https://www.hist.cam.ac.uk/project/statelessness-and-unsettlement-europe-1920s-present-reflexive-history
Supervisions
I am currently supervising the following PhD dissertations:
- Jake Bransgrove on The Associational World of Sir Joseph Banks (1743–1820)
- Adam Pountney on The Repatriation and Resettlement of Prisoners of War in Britain and France (c. 1918-c. 1928) [with Celia Donert]
- Tiéphaine Thomason on Oral Culture in the Eighteenth-Century French Atlantic
PhD dissertations previously supervised
- Sara Caputo on The British Navy as a Transnational Institution during the Napoleonic Wars. https://www.magd.cam.ac.uk/user/caputo
- Callum Easton on The 1797 Naval Mutinies at Spithead and the Nore [collaborative doctoral studentship with the National Maritime Museum (Greenwich) and The National Archives] https://www.hist.cam.ac.uk/people/callum-easton
- Christophe Gillain on French Noble Exiles in Europe in the Seventeenth Century https://www.hist.cam.ac.uk/people/christophe-gillain
- Ben Gilding on The British Empire and the Regulation of the East India Company (1773-1784). https://www.new.ox.ac.uk/ben-gilding
- Annalise Higgins on Interoceanic Canals and International Order (c. 1850-1920)
- Aoife O'Leary McNeice on International Philanthropy and the Great Irish Famine https://www.hist.cam.ac.uk/people/aoife-oleary-mcneice
- Callie Wilkinson on The British East India Company Residents at Indian Princely Courts (1793-1818). https://www.globaldisconnect.org/fellows/?lang=en
Together with Melissa Calaresu I convene the Eighteenth-Century seminar:
https://www.hist.cam.ac.uk/event-series/eighteenth-century
UG teaching:
Part IA, Paper O6 'The Global Eighteenth Century' [co-convenor]
Part II, Special Subject 'A Women's History of War (1750-1815)' [convenor]
Contact
Tags & Themes
Pembroke College
Trumpington St
Cambridge CB2 1RF
Key Publications
Books
The Society of Prisoners. Anglo-French Wars and Incarceration in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford University Press, 2019; paperback 2022)
Reviewed in American Historical Review; Canadian Journal of History; English Historical Review; Historical Journal (roundtable); Journal for Maritime Research; Journal of Social History [English]
Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales; Annales Historiques de la Révolution Française; Politix: Revue des Sciences Sociales du Politique [French]
Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung [German]
RUDN Journal of World History (Russian)
The Channel. England, France and the Construction of a Maritime Border in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge University Press, 2016; paperback 2017).
Winner of the 2017 American Historical Association's Leo Gershoy Award.
Shortlisted for the 2017 Kenshur Prize (best book in eighteenth-century studies, Indiana Center for Eighteenth-Century Studies).
Shortlisted for the 2017 Anderson Medal (Society for Nautical Research).
Reviewed in American Historical Review, English Historical Review, History Today, International Journal of Maritime History, Journal of British Studies, Times Higher Education, H-Soz-u-Kult (German), Klio (Hungarian), Revista Universitaria de Historia Militar (Spanish).
Une mer pour deux royaumes. La Manche, frontière franco-anglaise XVIIe-XVIIIe siècles (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2008). Winner of the 'Mémoires de la Mer' book prize 2009.
Reviewed in Annales HSS, Annales Historiques de la Révolution Française, Economic History Review, French History, Genèses. Sciences Sociales et Histoire, H-France, Journal of Modern History, Revue d'Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine, Outre-Mer. Revue d'Histoire.
Editor (with Alain Cabantous, Jean-Luc Chappey, Nathalie Richard, François Walter), Mers et montagnes dans la culture européenne XVIe-XIXe siècles (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2011).
Editor (with Jean-Pierre Jessenne and Pascal Dupuy), Le négoce de la paix: Les traités franco-britanniques et les relations entre les peuples de Louis XIV à Napoléon (Paris: Presses de la Société des Etudes Robespierristes, 2008).
Articles
- 'Lettres perdues: Communautés épistolaires, guerres et liens familiaux dans le monde maritime atlantique du XVIIIe siècle', Annales HSS, 78-2 (2023), pp. 333-373.
- ‘Atlantique, XVIe-XVIIIe siècle. Les pirates, l’Etat et la guerre sur mer’, L’Histoire, 500 (October 2022), pp. 36-45.
- ‘Le porto’, in Pierre Singaravelou, Sylvain Venayre (eds.), L’épicerie du monde. La mondialisation par les produits (Paris : Fayard, 2022), pp. 69-73.
- (with Jean-Paul Zuñiga), 'Preface' of Bapiste Bonnefoy, Au-delà de la couleur. Miliciens noirs et mulâtres de la Caraïbe (XVIIe-XVIIIe siècles) (Presses Universitaires de Rennes: 2022), pp. 11-15.
- 'Author's Response: Some Thoughts on War Prisons, the Law of Nations, and Historical Comparisons', in Historical Journal (August 2021), pp. 1-5. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0018246x2100039x
- 'Cartography and the Economy' (with Julian Hoppit), in Matthew H. Edney, Mary Sponberg Pedley (eds.), The History of Cartography, vol. 4: Cartography in the European Enlightenment (University of Chicago Press, 2020), pp. 360-67.
- 'Mer de la Manche: canal ou fossé?', in Christophe Charle and Daniel Roche (eds), L'Europe. Encyclopédie historique (Arles: Actes Sud, 2018), pp. 144-47.
- 'Oceanic Histories: a roundtable', with Clare Anderson, Jonathan Lamb, David Armitage, Alison Bashford, Sujit Sivasundaram, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, 19-2 (Summer 2018).
- 'Indigenous Comparisons', in John H. Arnold, Matthew Hilton, and Jan Rüger (eds), History after Hobsbawm. Writing the Past for the Twenty-First Century (Oxford University Press, 2017), pp. 50-75.
- 'Le dilemme de la sentinelle. Droit de la guerre et droits des prisonniers de guerre en Grande-Bretagne au dix-huitième siècle', Revue d'Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine, 64-2 (April-June 2017), pp. 39-67.
- '1662: Dunkerque, nid d'espions', in Patrick Boucheron (dir.), Histoire mondiale de la France (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 2017).
English translation: '1662 : Dunkirk, nest of spies', in Patrick Boucheron et at. (dir.), France in the World : A New Global History (New York: Other Press, 2019, pp. 345-50.
- 'Le monde du silence. Les savoirs de l'espace maritime en question (XVIIe-XIXe siècles)', in Isabelle Brian, Hervé Drévillon (ed.), Le lieu et le moment. Mélanges en l'honneur d'Alain Cabantous (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2015), pp. 153-67.
- ‘Anglo-French Fishing disputes and Maritime Boundaries in the North Atlantic (1700-1850)’, in Peter Mancall, Carole Shammas, (ed.), Governing the Sea in the Early Modern Era (Los Angeles: Huntingdon Library Press, 2015), pp. 41-75.
- ‘Patriotisme humanitaire et prisonniers de guerre en France et en Angleterre pendant la Révolution française et l’Empire’, in Laurent Bourquin et al., eds., La politique par les armes. Conflits internationaux et politisation, XVe–XIXe siècles (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes (2014), pp. 301-16. https://books.openedition.org/pur/50198?lang=en [open access]
- 'French prisoners of war, conflicts of honour and social inversions in England, 1744-1783', Historical Journal, 56/1 (2013), pp. 55-88. http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=8827345&fileId=S0018246X12000544
- 'Le littoral comme frontière. Les représentations historiques de la profondeur spatiale du rivage dans la France de l'époque moderne", in Coline Perrin (études réunies par), Un littoral sans nature? L'avenir de la Méditerranée face à l'urbanisation (Rome: Ecole française de Rome, 2013), pp. 10-11.
- ' "Tota la mar és la mateixda hidra". Aproximacions historiques comparades de les fronteres liquides (segles XVII-XIX)', in Òscar Jané i Eric Forcada, eds., L'Afrontera. De la dominació a l'art de transgredir (Cataroroja / Figueres / Perpinya: 2011), pp. 171-85.
-‘Les nations et les intérêts. Les manufacturiers, les institutions représentatives et le langage des intérêts dans le traité de commerce franco-anglais de 1786-1787’, in Christophe Charle, Julien Vincent, eds., La concurrence des savoirs. France-Grande-Bretagne, XVIIIe-XIXe siècles (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2011), pp. 39-74.
– ‘Des montagnes sous la mer. La géologie du 18e siècle et l’impossible distinction entre mers et montagnes’, in Alain Cabantous et al., eds., Mers et montagnes dans la culture européenne XVIe-XIXe siècles (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2011), pp. 127-145. https://books.openedition.org/pur/106181?lang=en [open access]
– ‘Mare Pacificum. Les îles de la Manche, entre trêves de Dieu et pratiques de neutralisation (XVe-XIXe siècles)’, in Jean-François Chanet, Christian Windler, dir., Les ressources des faibles. Neutralités, sauvegardes, accommodements en temps de guerre (XVIe-XVIIIe siècles), (Rennes: PUR, 2010), pp. 315-37. https://books.openedition.org/pur/105522?lang=en [open access]
– ‘La fabrique sociale des réseaux migratoires. Les ouvriers du lin entre Cambrésis, Pays-Bas autrichiens et Sussex dans la seconde moitié du 18e siècle’, in Irina Gouzévitch, Liliane Hilaire-Perez, eds., Les échanges techniques entre la France et l’Angleterre (XVIe-XIXe siècles). Réseaux, comparaisons, représentations (Paris: CDHTE-Cnam, 2010), pp. 43-57. https://journals.openedition.org/dht/1286 [open access]
- ‘Diplomacy from Below and Belonging: Fishermen and Cross-Channel Relations in the Eighteenth Century’, Past and Present, 202 (2009), pp. 83-125. http://past.oxfordjournals.org/content/202/1/83.full.pdf+html
– ‘La guerre des toponymes. 'La mer britannique' versus 'La Manche' (XVIIe-XVIIIe siècles)”, in Isabelle Laboulais, ed., Les usages des cartes (XVIIe-XIXe siècles). Pour une approche pragmatique des productions cartographiques (Strasbourg: Presses Universitaires de Strasbourg, 2008), pp. 167-83. https://books.openedition.org/pus/13396?lang=en [open access]
– (with Jean-Pierre Jessenne), ‘Introduction. Négocier ou combattre ? Les nations et les traités franco-britanniques (1713-1802)’, in Jean-Pierre Jessenne, Renaud Morieux, Pascal Dupuy, dir., Le négoce de la paix. Les nations et les traités franco-britanniques (1713-1802) (Paris: Société des études robespierristes, 2008).
- ‘An Inundation from Our Shores’. Travelling across the Channel around the Peace of Amiens’, in Mark Philp, ed., Resisting Napoleon. The British Response to the threat of invasion, 1797-1815 (London: Ashgate, 2006), pp. 217-40.
- ‘Mer-terroir ou mer-territoire ? Les querelles de pêche franco-anglaises au 18e siècle’, in Simonetta Cavaciocchi, ed., Ricchezza del Mare, Ricchezza dal Mare, Secc. XIII-XVIII (Prato: Le Monnier, 2006), pp. 971-95.
- ‘De la Manche à la Méditerranée. Frontières maritimes et nations pendant la Révolution française’, in Marcel Dorigny, Rachida Tlili Sellaouti, dir., Droit des gens et relations entre les peuples dans l’espace méditerranéen autour de la Révolution Française (Paris: Société des Études Robespierristes, 2006), pp. 13-21.
- ‘La Manche au XVIIIe siècle. La construction d’une frontière franco-anglaise’, Annales Historiques de la Révolution française, 343 (2006), pp. 167-74.
- ‘L’invention d’une frontière maritime : la Manche au XVIIIe siècle’, Revue d’Histoire des Sciences de l’Homme, 29 (2006), pp. 111-19.
- ‘Patriotisme, révoltes et révolutions dans les îles britanniques autour de la Révolution française’, dans Bélissa Marc, Cottret Bernard (éd.), Cosmopolitismes, Patriotismes en Europe et aux Amériques 1773-1802, Rennes, Les Perséides, 2005, pp. 43-58.
- « Die (zu) Große Nation. Grenzen und Wirtschaft während der Französischen Revolution », in Jahrbuch: Kulturwissenschaftliche Regionanforschung II (Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag GmbH, 2004), pp. 177-188.
- ‘Un populist turn dans l’historiographie du XVIIIe siècle anglais ?’, Revue d’Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine, 51 (2004), pp. 154-75.
- ‘ Des règles aux pratiques juridiques : le droit des étrangers en France et en Angleterre pendant la Révolution française (1792-1802)’, in Philippe Chassaigne, Jean-Philippe Genet, eds., Droit et société en France et en Grande-Bretagne, 12e-20es. : fonctions et représentations (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2003), pp. 127-47.
- ‘ La prison de l’exil. Les réfugiés de la Commune entre les polices françaises et anglaises (1871-1880)’, in Marie-Claude Blanc-Chaléard et al., eds., Police et Migrants. France 1667-1939 (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2001), pp. 133-50 https://books.openedition.org/pur/21047?lang=en [open access]
Electronic Publications
'Boat People, Then and Now. Making the Calais Crossing', Foreign Affairs, Monday, 7 September 2015:
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2015-09-07/boat-people-then-and-now
'William Godwin's Verax Letter, 25th May 1815', The Last Stand. Napoleon's 100 Days in 100 Objects, University of Warwick online exhibition, http://www.100days.eu/items/show/101
'Napoleon in Plymouth', The Last Stand. Napoleon's 100 Days in 100 Objects, http://www.100days.eu/items/show/160