I am a historian of modern Europe, its 19th and 20th-century empires, and the globalizing processes unleashed by the rise and fall of those empires. My current research looks at the history of the shipping routes that connect Europe, Africa, and Asia via the Suez Canal. The explosive growth of modern European imperialism depended on these transoceanic highways, and specifically on the new infrastructures that underpinned them: deep-water harbors, coal depots, telegraph cables, quarantine stations - the list could go on. But beyond serving as tools of empires, the sea lanes linking Europe to the Indo-Pacific were also contested and politicized in ways that historians are only beginning to explore. Focusing on France and the French Empire, my work reveals how shipping corridors “east of Suez” became inter-imperial arenas for conflicts over race and citizenship, labor rights and corporate power, and the boundaries of colonial sovereignty. Ultimately, I argue, these conflicts would wash onto Europe’s shores, causing a security crisis over migration, smuggling, and anti-colonialism. The research for this project took me to archives across France, Vietnam, the U.K., and U.S., thanks to funding from the Georges Lurcy Educational Trust, the French Embassy in the United States, the Society for French Historical Studies, and funders at the University of Chicago.

I am now a Postdoctoral Associate at Yale University’s Jackson School of Global Affairs, where I am writing my first book, Empire on the Line: Mobility, Politics, and the Ocean Corridors of French Colonialism, 1850-1950. At Yale, I am also the Assistant Director of the Maritime and Naval Studies Project (directed by Paul Kennedy), which supports innovative research in the field and encourages dialogue between scholars and practitioners. I welcome inquiries from anyone interested in this initiative.

Before Yale, I earned my PhD with distinction from the University of Chicago (modern Europe, 2021). I taught widely while at Chicago, both as a graduate student and as a Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow in the Social Sciences. One of my classes there won the Von Holst Prize for best course design (2019). Before Chicago, I earned an MA from New York University while cutting my teeth as a classroom teacher at Bronx International High School, where I worked with students who had recently migrated from Francophone regions of Africa. I studied my BA at Boston University and Sciences Po Paris.

You can reach me at charles.fawell@yale.edu.