What I’m working on at the moment... “Rulers of the Route: How Shipping Companies Became Subcontracted Sovereigns of the French and British Empires ‘east of Suez.’”

And... "Half the Battle: Transporting France's Empire West of Suez in the First World War"

Just out... “Effervescent Seas: Racialized Labor and Mobile Militancy on the Steamship Highways of the French Indo-Pacific.” French Historical Studies, Vol. 47, No. 3 (August 2024). Read it here.

Coming soon... “Regulating and Controlling Mobilities: Ships and Sea Lanes in a World of Empires,” in A Cultural History of Transport and Mobility, Volume 4: The Age of Steam, ed. Frances Steel (Bloomsbury, 2025).

Also coming soon... “Administrer ‘le chef-lieu maritime de tout l’Extrême-Orient’ à la veille de la Grande Guerre. Une crise des circulations impériales vue depuis le port de Sài Gòn,” in Du port au monde. Une histoire globale des ports indochinois (1858-1956), eds. J.F. Klein, S. Le Galloudec, T.H Nguyen (Bordeaux: Presses universitaires de Nouvelle-Aquitaine, 2025)

Before that... “Les Messageries maritimes au-delà de Suez au début du XXe siècle : souveraineté et luttes syndicales dans les zones grises de l’Empire français.” Revue d’histoire maritime 33 (8/2023): 107-122.

And before that... “Anti-labour repression in the in-between spaces of empire. The Compagnie des Messageries Maritimes and the steamship workers of the ‘China Line’ (1900–20),” in Corporate Policing, Yellow Unionism, and Strikebreaking, 1890-1930: In Defence of Freedom, eds. M. Milan and A. Saluppo (New York: Routledge. 2021), 117-133. (review) (review)

My first book, Empire on the Line: Mobility, Politics, and the Ocean Corridors of French Colonialism, 1850-1950, explores the transoceanic routes that connected France to its 19th and 20th-century colonies in Asia and Africa. These routes are often imagined only as logistical pipelines in an age of steam and coal. As the book shows, though, oceanic corridors ‘east of Suez’ were also remarkably tough places to govern. The many empires that crowded into these narrow sea lanes faced the challenges of connectivity: from solving impossibly complex questions of jurisdiction to stamping out disease; and from policing passengers to controlling the multi-racial proletariat that kept shipping lines running. Though authorities tried to contain the fractious politics of these maritime highways, ultimately they could not prevent a wave of illicit migration, labor militancy, smuggling, and anticolonial activism from washing onto Europe’s shores.

I’m also co-editing a volume on the coordination of political, economic, and military strategies during the First World War and its aftermath.

My next book project explores the invention of “the Indo-Pacific” as a geographical concept. That term is typically understood as a 21st-century neologism tailor-made for a new era of great power rivalry. My project, by contrast, traces the roots of this regionalization to late-19th and early-20th century developments, from the rise of geopolitics as field of study to the industrialization of mobility.

“Connecting the French Empire.” Teaching Module in World History Commons.

“In-between Empires: Steaming the Trans-Suez Highways of French Imperialism (1830s-1930s),” in the Merchant Marines at the Heart of Globalization Blog (MARCOMO)

“Floating Neighbourhoods: Living Together in the ‘east of Suez’ ships of the French and British Empires, 1870s-1930s,” in the Mobile Domesticities Blog.

“Engineering Imperialism,” in Past & Present Blog.