PhD 2009 (History) University of Chicago

RESEARCH INTERESTS

Britain and the British Empire in the eighteenth century; colonial and Revolutionary British North America; the Age of Revolution in the Atlantic world; the history of liberal democracy

BIOGRAPHY

James M. Vaughn is a historian of the British Empire and the Atlantic world during the eighteenth century. His first book, The Politics of Empire at the Accession of George III: The East India Company and the Crisis and Transformation of Britain’s Imperial State (Yale University Press, 2019), provides new interpretations of the origins of British rule in India and of the global transformation of the British Empire during the third quarter of the eighteenth century. His current research focuses on the American Revolution and the origins of liberal modernity in global context, c. 1760-1815.

PUBLICATIONS

Co-editor with Robert G. Ingram, Capitalism: Histories. UK: Boydell and Brewer, 2025.