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Room:
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Email:
Office Hours:
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FAB 3.48 (Faculty of Arts Building)
+44 (0)24 76524421 (internal extension 24421)
Charles.Walton@warwick.ac.uk
Mon 4-5pm; Thur 11am-12pm
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Academic Profile
Charles Walton is a historian of France and Director of the European Historical Research Centre. Before joining the History Department at Warwick, he taught at Yale University, the University of Oklahoma (Norman) and Sciences Po (Paris). His research focuses on Ancien Régime, Enlightenment and Revolutionary France, with emphases on human rights, political economy and socio-economic justice.
His prize-winning book, Policing Public Opinion in the French Revolution: the Culture of Calumny and the Problem of Free Speech (2009, paperback 2011, French translation 2014), explores the themes of honour, speech, public opinion and political violence. It shows how debates over limits to free expression contributed to political radicalisation before and during the Revolution. He has edited a collection of essays in honour of Robert Darnton on print culture and the Enlightenment, Into Print: Limits and Legacies of the Enlightenment (2011).
More recently, his research has centred on the history of social rights. He is co-editor (with Steven L. B. Jensen) of Social Rights and the Politics of Obligation in History (Cambridge, 2022) and editor of a special issue of French History on social rights (2019).
RECENT
New: 'Abstract and Embodied: the Political Economy of the French RevolutionLink opens in a new window', with Charly Coleman, French History (2024)
Social Rights and the Politics of Obligation in HistoryLink opens in a new window (Cambridge, 2022), co-edited with Steven L. B. Jensen (2022; paperback 2025)
For reviews, hereLink opens in a new window and hereLink opens in a new window.
Open Global Rights
Moving towards a new history of social rightsLink opens in a new window (2022)
What the French Revolution can tell us about Social RightsLink opens in a new window (2021)
Podcast: Clear and Present DangerLink opens in a new window, episode 32, 'Policing Opinion in the French Revolution' (2019)
2022 ReviewLink opens in a new window and reviewLink opens in a new window
Postgraduate students
I welcome applicants interested in pursuing MA and/or PhD research projects in eighteenth-century European History involving France. Please feel free to contact me to discuss your interests.
Current and recent doctoral students
Jeremy Goh: 'Globalizing from the Periphery: Chinese banking transnationalism in colonial Singapore, Malaya, and China (1900-1950)'
Claire Rioult: 'War by other means? British and French commercial diplomacies and the Spanish market (1783-1808)’
Ronan Love: 'Revolutionary Debts: The Politics of Financial Obligation in the French Revolution'
Publications
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Books & edited collections
- Revolution, Art, and Medicine in French History. Essays in honour of Colin Jones, edited with Cathy McClive (Florida State University), special issue of French History 38: 1 (2024)
- Social Rights and the Politics of Obligation in HistoryLink opens in a new window (Cambridge University Press, 2022, paperback 2025), (co-edited with Steven L. B. Jensen)
- Social Rights in French HistoryLink opens in a new window, editor of special issue of French History (December 2019)
- Into Print: Limits and Legacies of the Enlightenment. Essays in Honor of Robert Darnton (Penn State University Press, 2012), (edited)
- Policing Public Opinion in the French Revolution: the Culture of Calumny and the Problem of Free Speech (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009; paperback edition 2011).
Articles & Essays
- 'Socioeconomic Rights', with Glauco Schettini (Yale University), in Dan Edelstein and Jennifer Pitts (eds.), Cambridge History of Rights, Volume 4: Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (Cambridge, 2025)
- 'Abstract and Embodied: The Political Economy of the French RevolutionLink opens in a new window', with Charly Coleman (Columbia University), French History 38: 1 (March 2024)
- 'Colin Jones: Fox and Hedgehog Historian of France', with Sarah Easterby-Smith, Cathy McClive and Richard Taws, French History 38: 1 (March 2024)
- 'Who Pays? Social Rights and the French Revolution', in Jensen and Walton (eds), Social Rights and the Politics of Obligation in History (Cambridge, 2022).
- 'Not "Second Generation Rights": Rethinking the History of Social RightsLink opens in a new window' in Jensen and Walton (eds), Social Rights and the Politics of Obligation in History (Cambridge, 2022).
- 'The French Revolution: A Matter of Circumstances?Link opens in a new window', French History and Civilization vol. 9 (2020).
- 'Why the Neglect? Social Rights and French Revolutionary HistoriographyLink opens in a new window', in Charles Walton (ed.), French History (special issue on 'Socioeconomic Rights and Duties', December 2019)
- 'Capitalism's Alter Ego: The Birth of Reciprocity in Eighteenth-century FranceLink opens in a new window', Critical Historical Studies 5: 1 (2018), 1-43.
- 'Piketty’s Provocative Contradiction: Economic Determinism versus Historical Contingency in Capital in the Twenty-First CenturyLink opens in a new window', Allegoria, No. 71-72, 2016.
- 'Clubs, Parties, Factions' in David Andress (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the French Revolution (Oxford: OUP, 2015)
- 'French Revolutionary Studies: Challenges and Potential Ways Forward' (keynote address) and 'Reciprocity and the French Revolution' (abstract) in Alex Fairfax-Cholmeley and Colin Jones (eds.), e-France: New Perspectives on the French Revolution. vol. 4 (2013).
- ‘Between Trust and Terror: Patriotic Giving in the French Revolution’ in David Andress (ed.), Experiencing the French Revolution (Oxford: SVEC, 2013)
- ‘The Fall from Eden: The Free Trade Origins of the French Revolution’ in Suzanne Desan, Lynn Hunt, and William Nelson (eds.), The French Revolution in Global Perspective (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2013)
- ‘Public Opinion and Free-market Morality in Old Regime and Revolutionary France’ in Massimo Rospocher, ed. Beyond the Public Sphere: Opinions, Publics, Spaces in Early Modern Europe (XVI-XVIII) (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2012)
- ‘Les graines de la discorde: Print, Public Spirit, and Free Market Politics in the French Revolution’ in Charles Walton (ed.), Into Print: Limits and Legacies of the Enlightenment (2011)
- ‘La opinión pública y la política patológica de la Revolución Francesa’ in Ayer, 80: 4 (2010)
- ‘La liberté de la presse dans les cahiers de doléances de 1789’ in Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine (jan-mars, 2006)
- ‘Charles IX and the French Revolution: Law, Vengeance, and the Revolutionary Uses of History’ in European Review of History/Revue européenne d’histoire, 4: 2 (1997)
Public Writings & Media
- 'The Missing Half of Les MisLink opens in a new window' for Foreign Affairs (2013). A review of Tom Hooper's film Les misérables.
- 'Revolution and Redistribution: Reflections on France and EgyptLink opens in a new window', for La Vie des Idées/Books and Ideas (2013). Version françaiseLink opens in a new window traduit par Emilie L’Hôte ici).
- 'When Free Speech Becomes a Kind of FundamentalismLink opens in a new window', The Conversation (Jan 8, 2015). Reflections on the Charlie Hebdo tragedy of 2015.
- ' "The Right to Spit in the Face of Others": The Changing Meanings of Free Speech in HistoryLink opens in a new window', Dialogue no. 11 (spring 2015), p. 34-37.
- Podcast: 'Policing Opinion in the French Revolution'Link opens in a new window, Clear and Present Danger: A History of Free Speech, episode 32 (2019).
- 'What the French Revolution can tell us about the history of social rightsLink opens in a new window', Open Global Rights (July 2021)
- 'Moving towards a new history of social rightsLink opens in a new window', Open Global Rights (April 2022)
- Podcast: 'The French Revolution', The Sound of HistoryLink opens in a new window, hosted by Will Redley (October 2022)
Teaching
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