Raymond Jonas

My work explores episodes and themes that connect Europe, Africa, and the Americas.

My current research shows how European and Mexican fears of American empire converged to establish a European monarchy on Mexican soil. Habsburgs on the Rio Grande: The Rise and Fall of the Second Mexican Empire (Harvard) is in press and will be available in early 2024.

The Battle of Adwa: African Victory in the Age of Empire (Harvard, 2011) represents the culmination of ten years of research on three continents – Africa, Europe and the US. The book both narrates this signal event in global history and follows 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) focusses on the basilica of Sacré-Coeur on Montmarte. It situates the basilica within 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.