Dr Michael Rapport
- Reader in Modern European History (History)
telephone:
0141 330 6462
email:
Michael.Rapport@glasgow.ac.uk
School of Humanities
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0541-4475Research interests
My primary areas of research interest include, firstly, the French Revolution (both within France and in pursuit of its wider geographical impact), secondly, the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars and, thirdly, the ‘domino’ revolutions, meaning such revolutionary waves as those of 1848 in Europe.
I am currently involved in three research projects:
- The first is on Paris during the Revolution, drawing comparisons with New York and London in the same period. The book (for Little, Brown) will seek to evoke a sense of place, but its scholarly purpose is to explore the relationship between urban space and revolutionary and popular politics, and to investigate the many ways in which the built environment was part of the wider evolution in democratic political culture in the late eighteenth-century Atlantic world. This work has been supported by two grants from the Carnegie Trust for the Universities in Scotland, in 2011 and 2012, for archival research in Paris and New York.
- The second project is an exploration of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars as a global conflict. This book (for Atlantic, London) traces the worldwide resonances of the conflict, engaging with such issues as imperialism, maritime and continental power, slavery and emancipation, trans-national cultural relations and ideas of human rights, conquest and ‘race’. This research has supported by a grant from the Carnegie Trust, in 2009, for research in the Archives Nationales d’Outre-Mer in Aix-en-Provence.
- The third project, on the ‘domino revolutions’, investigates and compares revolutionary waves, and involves collaboration with a number of colleagues (including my friend Dr. Kevin Adamson at the University of Stirling). We are investigating the ‘domino effect’ in modern revolutions, drawing comparisons between the phenomena as they arose, in particular, in Europe in 1848, Central and Eastern Europe in 1989 and the Middle East in 2011, but we are also taking other such movements into account, such as the revolutions in the late eighteenth-century Atlantic world, those of 1830 in Europe and the impact of the Russian Revolutions of 1905 and 1917. This work analyses the causes, course and effects of the rapid spread of revolution across time, space and cultures.
I am also completing a book on Europe from the fall of Napoleon in 1815 to the Revolutions of 1848 (for Palgrave). I am currently editing the Oxford Handbook to Europe in the Long Nineteenth Century.
I was born in New York, but I studied History at the University of Edinburgh, undertook my PhD thesis on the French Revolution at the University of Bristol (under the supervision of Professor William Doyle) and, after a short spell at the University of Sunderland, taught at the University of Stirling for seventeen years before joining the School of Humanities at Glasgow in February 2013. When not teaching, writing and researching, I enjoy hillwalking (although I am not a Munro bagger), visiting museums and historical sites, sampling real ale and spending time with my wife (who teaches Scottish history) and my daughter. We are currently training a guide dog puppy and are long-suffering followers of Scotland’s national rugby team.
Research groups
Grants
- 2012:
- Carnegie Trust (£1400): ‘The Black Cockade and the Tricolore: New York City and the French Revolution, 1789-1804’ (for research in the New York City Records, the New York Public Library and the New York Historical Society).
- 2011:
- Carnegie Trust (c. £1400): ‘Revolutionary Paris’ (for research in the Archives Nationales, Paris).
- 2009:
- Carnegie Trust (c. £1500): ‘Imperial Armageddon: the French Wars as a Global Struggle’ (for research in the Archives Nationales d’Outre-Mer, Aix-en-Provence).
- 2004:
- British Academy (£1140 in 2004): ‘Propaganda, Public Opinion and the Napoleonic State: the French Response to Trafalgar and Austerlitz, 1805-6’.
- 2000:
- British Academy (Overseas Conference Grant, £230): ‘A Community Apart? The Scots College in Paris during the French Revolution’, to the European Social Sciences History Conference, at the International Institute of Social History, the Free University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, April 2000.
- 1999:
- British Academy (£1000 in 1999), for research into the French occupation and annexation of Belgium.
Supervision
I can supervise doctoral students on subjects such as:
• The French Revolution (in France and its external resonances);
• The French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (including its global impact);
• The 1848 Revolutions.
…but I am open to suggestions related to the any aspects of eighteenth- or nineteenth-century Europe. I have supervised, or I am currently supervising, PhD students working on the following topics:
• Bourgeois Women, Taste and Décor during the early Third French Republic, 1871-1914.
• Emperor Maximilian of Mexico
• French travel writers in Scotland, 1780s-1820s.
• The impact of the Haitian Revolution on France.
• Kurdish nationalism and the treaty of Sèvres.
• Women and poverty during the French Revolution.
I am able to supervise masters students on subjects such as:
• The French Revolution (in France and its external resonances);
• The French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (including its global impact);
• The 1848 Revolutions.
• European history between 1815 and 1848.
• Revolutions in comparative perspective.
…but I am, again, open to suggestions. I have supervised, or I am currently supervising, Masters students working on such topics as:
• The British Army in the Napoleonic Wars
• Counter-Revolution in France during the 1790s.
• Marie-Antoinette during the French Revolution.
• Gender, Masculinity and Neo-classicism during the French revolutionary Terror.
• Abolitionism and the popular movement during the French Revolution.
• Prize-fighting in late eighteenth-century Britain.
• British perspectives on the French invasion of Egypt, 1798-1802.
• Dissidence in the German Democratic Republic.
• The Arab Spring: passive resistance on Tahrir Square.
• Women, SOE and the Resistance in Occupied France.
• Women and literature in nineteenth-century France.
Teaching
I currently teach on History 2B: ‘The Making of Modern Societies, 1500-2000’ and am developing Honours-level courses on Nineteenth-Century France, on the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars and on the Revolutions of 1848 in Europe. I will also be assuming responsibility for a final-year special subject on the French Revolution in the future.
Research datasets
Additional information
I have been a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society since 2000, was reviews Editor for the journal, French History (Oxford University Press) between 2001 and 2007 and Secretary of the Society for the Study of French History, in 2000-2006.
I have been involved in different forms of public engagement, including talks to cultural organisations, newspaper interviews, presentations at book festivals and some radio appearances, most recently on the 1848 Revolutions and the Arab Awakening. See:
- ‘The 1848 Revolutions’, In Our Time, BBC Radio 4, with Melvyn Bragg, Tim Blanning and Lucy Riall, 19 January 2012.
- ‘Will the Year 2011 Stand out in History?’ Have Your Say, No. 60, BBC World Service, 16 November 2011 (on 1848, 1968, 1989 and 2011).
- ‘Arab Revolutions’, The Sunday Edition, with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 7 March, 2011 (a programme on 1848 and the Arab Spring).
- ‘Europe’s 1848 Upheaval’, The World, BBC World Service, Public Radio International and WGBH in Boston, 9 February, 2011.
