Raymond Jonas

My most recent work concerns African resistance to European expansion. The Battle of Adwa: African Victory in the Age of Empire (Harvard, 2011) aims both to narrate this signal event in global history and to follow the Adwa story as it rolls through African and European diasporic communities. A companion web site BattleOfAdwa.org augments and extends this work.

Earlier work elaborated the political culture of counter-revolution, notably in art, architecture, and ritual. France and the Cult of the Sacred Heart: an Epic Tale for Modern Times (California, 2000) explores key features of the cold civil war that simmered for over a century after the Revolution of 1789. The Tragic Tale of Claire Ferchaud and the Great War(California, 2005) adopts the biographical form to follow an unusual personality as she navigates the boundary between divine inspiration and hysteria. Le Sacré-Cœur; histoire d’une dévotion du XVIe au XXe siècle (Geste, 2004) developed these themes for a francophone audience.

Industry and Politics in Rural France, 1870-1914 (Cornell, 1994) subverts the conventional story of the making of the European working class by focusing on unconventional members of it.

I am currently working on a global history of the Mexican Second Empire. Additional information can be found athttp://faculty.washington.edu/jonas/