James Vaughn | University of Chicago (original) (raw)

Books by James Vaughn

New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019

From Yale University Press: In this bold debut work, historian James M. Vaughn challenges the sc... more From Yale University Press:
In this bold debut work, historian James M. Vaughn challenges the scholarly consensus that British India and the Second Empire were founded in “a fit of absence of mind.” He instead argues that the origins of the Raj and the largest empire of the modern world were rooted in political conflicts and movements in Britain. It was British conservatives who shaped the Second Empire into one of conquest and dominion, emphasizing the extraction of resources and the subjugation of colonial populations. Drawing on a wide array of sources, Vaughn shows how the East India Company was transformed from a corporation into an imperial power in the service of British political forces opposed to the rising radicalism of the period. The Company’s dominion in Bengal, where it raised territorial revenue and maintained a large army, was an autocratic bulwark of Britain’s established order. A major work of political and imperial history, this volume offers an important new understanding of the era and its global ramifications.

London: Bloomsbury, 2019

From Bloomsbury: Examining the pivotal period between the end of the Seven Years' War and the da... more From Bloomsbury:
Examining the pivotal period between the end of the Seven Years' War and the dawn of the American Revolution, Envisioning Empire reinterprets the development of the British Empire in the 18th century. With exceptional geographical scope, this book provides new ways of understanding the actors and events in many imperial arenas, including West Africa, North America, the Caribbean, and South Asia.

While 1763 has long been seen as marking a turning point in British and British-colonial history, Envisioning Empire treats this epochal year, and the decade that followed, as constituting a discrete 'moment' in Imperial history that is significant in its own right. Exploring the programs and plans that sought to incorporate the vast new territories and millions of new subjects into the British state and imperial system, it demonstrates how the period between the end of the Seven Years' War and the beginning of the American Revolution was one of contested ideas about the future of British overseas expansion. By examining these competing imperial visions and designs from the perspective of Britain's new subjects as well as from that of British ministers, Envisioning Empire both illuminates and complicates the boundaries that have been drawn between the first and second British empires and reveals how the Empire was being conceived, discussed, and debated during an era of rapid transformation.

Articles and Chapters by James Vaughn

People Power: Popular Sovereignty from Machiavelli to Modernity, eds. Robert G. Ingram and Christopher Barker (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2022), 2022

This article reinterprets the origins of the American Revolution and more generally the origins o... more This article reinterprets the origins of the American Revolution and more generally the origins of the revolutionary upheavals of the later eighteenth century in light of the development of civil society in the early modern Atlantic world.

Envisioning Empire: The New British World from 1763 to 1773, eds. Robert A. Olwell and James M. Vaughn (London: Bloomsbury, 2019), 2019

This essay provides a revisionist interpretation of the metropolitan political and ideological co... more This essay provides a revisionist interpretation of the metropolitan political and ideological context surrounding the shift from the First to the Second British Empire following the Seven Years' War. It argues that the origins of the Second British Empire lay to an important degree in struggles between conservative-reactionary and radical political forces within Britain.

Envisioning Empire: The New British World from 1763 to 1773, eds. Robert A. Olwell and James M. Vaughn (London: Bloomsbury, 2019), 2019

This is the epilogue to the edited volume Envisioning Empire: The New British World from 1763 to ... more This is the epilogue to the edited volume Envisioning Empire: The New British World from 1763 to 1773 (eds. Robert A. Olwell and James M. Vaughn).

Britain and the World (11.1), 2018

During the 1670s and 1680s, the English East India Company pursued an aggressive programme of imp... more During the 1670s and 1680s, the English East India Company pursued an aggressive programme of imperial expansion in the Asian maritime world, culminating in a series of armed assaults on the Mughal Empire. With important exceptions, most scholarship has viewed the Company’s coercive imperialism in the later seventeenth century and the First Anglo-Mughal War as the results primarily, if not exclusively, of political and economic conditions in South Asia. This article re-examines and re-interprets this burst of imperial expansion in light of political developments in England and the wider English empire during the later Stuart era.

The article contends that the Company’s aggressive overseas expansion was pursued for metropolitan and pan-imperial purposes as much as for South Asian ones. The corporation sought to centralise and militarise the English presence in Asia in order both to maintain its control of England’s trade to the East and in support of Stuart absolutism. By the eve of the Glorious Revolution, the Company’s aggressive imperialism formed part of a wider political project to create an absolute monarchy in England and to establish an autocratic English empire overseas.

Platypus Review (62), 2013

This essay reconsiders the concept of the bourgeois revolution and provides a Hegelian-Marxist in... more This essay reconsiders the concept of the bourgeois revolution and provides a Hegelian-Marxist interpretation of the American Revolution and the wider Age of Revolution in the Atlantic world.

Africa, Empire and Globalization: Essays in Honor of A. G. Hopkins, eds. Toyin Falola and Emily Brownell (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2011), 2011

This chapter reconsiders the concept of social imperialism and provides a new interpretation of b... more This chapter reconsiders the concept of social imperialism and provides a new interpretation of both the origins of Britain's empire in India during the third quarter of the eighteenth century and the origins of Britain's empire in Africa during the later nineteenth century.

Podcasts and Talks by James Vaughn

Living Art, KPFT 90.1 FM Houston Pacifica Radio, 2020

This is a three-part interview on the American Revolution and the Left that aired on the Living A... more This is a three-part interview on the American Revolution and the Left that aired on the Living Art radio show on Houston KPFT 90.1 FM on July 9, July 16, and July 23, 2020.

Platypus Lecture Series on "The Legacy of the American Revolution," Platypus Affiliated Society, 2020

This lecture broadly surveys the development of British North America until 1754 in light of worl... more This lecture broadly surveys the development of British North America until 1754 in light of world history. Beginning in the Age of Discovery, its main focus is how the British Atlantic world became the epicenter of a profound transformation in the nature of the human community: the rise of bourgeois society. The lecture traces the radical transformation of everyday life that took place in the North American colonies from the mid-seventeenth to the mid-eighteenth century under the “empire of liberty” inaugurated by the English Revolution. It concludes with the outbreak of the French and Indian War, one theater in the “Great War for Empire” waged across the world between Bourbon absolutism and Britain’s revolutionary-parliamentary regime.

Platypus Lecture Series on "The Legacy of the American Revolution," Platypus Affiliated Society, 2020

This lecture examines the American Revolution as the epoch-making political transformation of thi... more This lecture examines the American Revolution as the epoch-making political transformation of thirteen British North American colonies into “the very spots where,” as Karl Marx wrote on behalf of the First International, “the idea of one great Democratic Republic had first sprung up, whence the first Declaration of the Rights of Man was issued, and the first impulse given to the European revolution of the eighteenth century.” From the global war waged between Whig Britain and Bourbon France in the mid-eighteenth century to the ratification of the Constitution in 1788, the lecture traces how the crisis of the greatest empire in world history led to the creation of a revolutionary republic. It considers the founding of the United States of America not as the origin of a nation-state but rather as the first self-conscious victory of bourgeois freedom over the Old Regime—of the New World over the Old.

Zero Books, Zero Squared Podcast, 2020

This podcast features a discussion of eighteenth-century bourgeois radicalism, Britain's "empire ... more This podcast features a discussion of eighteenth-century bourgeois radicalism, Britain's "empire of liberty," and the American Revolution.

New Books Network, 2019

This podcast discusses James M. Vaughn's "The Politics of Empire at the Accession of George III,"... more This podcast discusses James M. Vaughn's "The Politics of Empire at the Accession of George III," which was published by Yale University Press in February 2019. The book provides a new interpretation of eighteenth-century British politics and imperial expansion.

Faculty Seminar on British Studies, University of Texas at Austin, 2014

This recorded talk offers a revisionist interpretation of British politics and the ideological or... more This recorded talk offers a revisionist interpretation of British politics and the ideological origins of the American Revolution. It argues that the origins of the American Revolution lay in a struggle waged between conservative-reactionary and radical-reforming political forces throughout the British Empire during the 1760s and 1770s, from Boston to Bristol to Bombay.

15 Minute History, Not Even Past, University of Texas at Austin, 2013

This podcast offers a new interpretation of the origins and progress of the American Revolution i... more This podcast offers a new interpretation of the origins and progress of the American Revolution in the context of the global history of the eighteenth century.

15 Minute History, Not Even Past, University of Texas at Austin, 2013

This podcast offers a new interpretation of the origins and progress of the American Revolution i... more This podcast offers a new interpretation of the origins and progress of the American Revolution in the context of the global history of the eighteenth century.

Book Reviews by James Vaughn

New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019

From Yale University Press: In this bold debut work, historian James M. Vaughn challenges the sc... more From Yale University Press:
In this bold debut work, historian James M. Vaughn challenges the scholarly consensus that British India and the Second Empire were founded in “a fit of absence of mind.” He instead argues that the origins of the Raj and the largest empire of the modern world were rooted in political conflicts and movements in Britain. It was British conservatives who shaped the Second Empire into one of conquest and dominion, emphasizing the extraction of resources and the subjugation of colonial populations. Drawing on a wide array of sources, Vaughn shows how the East India Company was transformed from a corporation into an imperial power in the service of British political forces opposed to the rising radicalism of the period. The Company’s dominion in Bengal, where it raised territorial revenue and maintained a large army, was an autocratic bulwark of Britain’s established order. A major work of political and imperial history, this volume offers an important new understanding of the era and its global ramifications.

London: Bloomsbury, 2019

From Bloomsbury: Examining the pivotal period between the end of the Seven Years' War and the da... more From Bloomsbury:
Examining the pivotal period between the end of the Seven Years' War and the dawn of the American Revolution, Envisioning Empire reinterprets the development of the British Empire in the 18th century. With exceptional geographical scope, this book provides new ways of understanding the actors and events in many imperial arenas, including West Africa, North America, the Caribbean, and South Asia.

While 1763 has long been seen as marking a turning point in British and British-colonial history, Envisioning Empire treats this epochal year, and the decade that followed, as constituting a discrete 'moment' in Imperial history that is significant in its own right. Exploring the programs and plans that sought to incorporate the vast new territories and millions of new subjects into the British state and imperial system, it demonstrates how the period between the end of the Seven Years' War and the beginning of the American Revolution was one of contested ideas about the future of British overseas expansion. By examining these competing imperial visions and designs from the perspective of Britain's new subjects as well as from that of British ministers, Envisioning Empire both illuminates and complicates the boundaries that have been drawn between the first and second British empires and reveals how the Empire was being conceived, discussed, and debated during an era of rapid transformation.

People Power: Popular Sovereignty from Machiavelli to Modernity, eds. Robert G. Ingram and Christopher Barker (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2022), 2022

This article reinterprets the origins of the American Revolution and more generally the origins o... more This article reinterprets the origins of the American Revolution and more generally the origins of the revolutionary upheavals of the later eighteenth century in light of the development of civil society in the early modern Atlantic world.

Envisioning Empire: The New British World from 1763 to 1773, eds. Robert A. Olwell and James M. Vaughn (London: Bloomsbury, 2019), 2019

This essay provides a revisionist interpretation of the metropolitan political and ideological co... more This essay provides a revisionist interpretation of the metropolitan political and ideological context surrounding the shift from the First to the Second British Empire following the Seven Years' War. It argues that the origins of the Second British Empire lay to an important degree in struggles between conservative-reactionary and radical political forces within Britain.

Envisioning Empire: The New British World from 1763 to 1773, eds. Robert A. Olwell and James M. Vaughn (London: Bloomsbury, 2019), 2019

This is the epilogue to the edited volume Envisioning Empire: The New British World from 1763 to ... more This is the epilogue to the edited volume Envisioning Empire: The New British World from 1763 to 1773 (eds. Robert A. Olwell and James M. Vaughn).

Britain and the World (11.1), 2018

During the 1670s and 1680s, the English East India Company pursued an aggressive programme of imp... more During the 1670s and 1680s, the English East India Company pursued an aggressive programme of imperial expansion in the Asian maritime world, culminating in a series of armed assaults on the Mughal Empire. With important exceptions, most scholarship has viewed the Company’s coercive imperialism in the later seventeenth century and the First Anglo-Mughal War as the results primarily, if not exclusively, of political and economic conditions in South Asia. This article re-examines and re-interprets this burst of imperial expansion in light of political developments in England and the wider English empire during the later Stuart era.

The article contends that the Company’s aggressive overseas expansion was pursued for metropolitan and pan-imperial purposes as much as for South Asian ones. The corporation sought to centralise and militarise the English presence in Asia in order both to maintain its control of England’s trade to the East and in support of Stuart absolutism. By the eve of the Glorious Revolution, the Company’s aggressive imperialism formed part of a wider political project to create an absolute monarchy in England and to establish an autocratic English empire overseas.

Platypus Review (62), 2013

This essay reconsiders the concept of the bourgeois revolution and provides a Hegelian-Marxist in... more This essay reconsiders the concept of the bourgeois revolution and provides a Hegelian-Marxist interpretation of the American Revolution and the wider Age of Revolution in the Atlantic world.

Africa, Empire and Globalization: Essays in Honor of A. G. Hopkins, eds. Toyin Falola and Emily Brownell (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2011), 2011

This chapter reconsiders the concept of social imperialism and provides a new interpretation of b... more This chapter reconsiders the concept of social imperialism and provides a new interpretation of both the origins of Britain's empire in India during the third quarter of the eighteenth century and the origins of Britain's empire in Africa during the later nineteenth century.

Living Art, KPFT 90.1 FM Houston Pacifica Radio, 2020

This is a three-part interview on the American Revolution and the Left that aired on the Living A... more This is a three-part interview on the American Revolution and the Left that aired on the Living Art radio show on Houston KPFT 90.1 FM on July 9, July 16, and July 23, 2020.

Platypus Lecture Series on "The Legacy of the American Revolution," Platypus Affiliated Society, 2020

This lecture broadly surveys the development of British North America until 1754 in light of worl... more This lecture broadly surveys the development of British North America until 1754 in light of world history. Beginning in the Age of Discovery, its main focus is how the British Atlantic world became the epicenter of a profound transformation in the nature of the human community: the rise of bourgeois society. The lecture traces the radical transformation of everyday life that took place in the North American colonies from the mid-seventeenth to the mid-eighteenth century under the “empire of liberty” inaugurated by the English Revolution. It concludes with the outbreak of the French and Indian War, one theater in the “Great War for Empire” waged across the world between Bourbon absolutism and Britain’s revolutionary-parliamentary regime.

Platypus Lecture Series on "The Legacy of the American Revolution," Platypus Affiliated Society, 2020

This lecture examines the American Revolution as the epoch-making political transformation of thi... more This lecture examines the American Revolution as the epoch-making political transformation of thirteen British North American colonies into “the very spots where,” as Karl Marx wrote on behalf of the First International, “the idea of one great Democratic Republic had first sprung up, whence the first Declaration of the Rights of Man was issued, and the first impulse given to the European revolution of the eighteenth century.” From the global war waged between Whig Britain and Bourbon France in the mid-eighteenth century to the ratification of the Constitution in 1788, the lecture traces how the crisis of the greatest empire in world history led to the creation of a revolutionary republic. It considers the founding of the United States of America not as the origin of a nation-state but rather as the first self-conscious victory of bourgeois freedom over the Old Regime—of the New World over the Old.

Zero Books, Zero Squared Podcast, 2020

This podcast features a discussion of eighteenth-century bourgeois radicalism, Britain's "empire ... more This podcast features a discussion of eighteenth-century bourgeois radicalism, Britain's "empire of liberty," and the American Revolution.

New Books Network, 2019

This podcast discusses James M. Vaughn's "The Politics of Empire at the Accession of George III,"... more This podcast discusses James M. Vaughn's "The Politics of Empire at the Accession of George III," which was published by Yale University Press in February 2019. The book provides a new interpretation of eighteenth-century British politics and imperial expansion.

Faculty Seminar on British Studies, University of Texas at Austin, 2014

This recorded talk offers a revisionist interpretation of British politics and the ideological or... more This recorded talk offers a revisionist interpretation of British politics and the ideological origins of the American Revolution. It argues that the origins of the American Revolution lay in a struggle waged between conservative-reactionary and radical-reforming political forces throughout the British Empire during the 1760s and 1770s, from Boston to Bristol to Bombay.

15 Minute History, Not Even Past, University of Texas at Austin, 2013

This podcast offers a new interpretation of the origins and progress of the American Revolution i... more This podcast offers a new interpretation of the origins and progress of the American Revolution in the context of the global history of the eighteenth century.

15 Minute History, Not Even Past, University of Texas at Austin, 2013

This podcast offers a new interpretation of the origins and progress of the American Revolution i... more This podcast offers a new interpretation of the origins and progress of the American Revolution in the context of the global history of the eighteenth century.