Owen White
Resources and Links
Biography
Owen White is a historian of imperialism and colonialism with a particular interest in modern France and its empire. He grew up in the U.K., receiving his B.A. from the University of Exeter and his doctorate from the University of Oxford. His most recent book, The Blood of the Colony, about the rise and fall of the Algerian wine industry, was awarded the Eugen Weber Book Prize in Modern French History. His other publications include a book about the mixed-race population of French West Africa and two edited volumes: one (with J. P. Daughton) on French missionaries, the other on social organization in modern empires. He is currently co-editing the Cambridge Companion to the French Empire and researching African responses to colonial taxation.
Professor White teaches a variety of courses in European and world history and the history of empires to undergraduate and graduate students. In 2020 he received the University of Delaware’s Excellence in Teaching Award. He holds the H. Fletcher Brown Chair of Humanities and this year is serving as interim chair of the Department of History.
Publications
Books:
The Blood of the Colony: Wine and the Rise and Fall of French Algeria (Harvard University Press, 2021)
Children of the French Empire: Miscegenation and Colonial Society in French West Africa, 1895-1960 (Oxford University Press, 1999)
Edited Volumes
(with J.P. Daughton): In God’s Empire: French Missionaries and the Modern World (Oxford University Press, 2012)
The Rise and Fall of Modern Empires, Volume I: Social Organization (Ashgate, 2013)
Articles and Book Chapters
“Great Men in Greater France: Léon Poirier’s L’Appel du silence and Brazza, ou l’épopée du Congo,” French Colonial History, 2019
"Roll Out the Barrel: French and Algerian Ports and the Birth of the Wine Tanker," French Politics, Culture and Society, summer 2017
(with Elizabeth Heath): "The French Empire and the History of Economic Life," French Politics, Culture and Society, summer 2017
