DAVID A. CAMPION

Dr. Robert B. Pamplin Jr. Associate Professor of History
Miller Center 409 | MSC 41

Lewis & Clark College
615 S Palatine Hill Road
Portland, Oregon 97219, USA

Tel: 503.768.7435 | Fax: 503.768.7418
Email: campion@lclark.edu




COURSES ---------------RESEARCH & TEACHING ---------------PUBLICATIONS ---------------LIFE EXPERIENCES



EDUCATION

M.A., Ph.D., History
University of Virginia

B.A., History & English
Georgetown University




























COURSES

SOUTH ASIA SURVEYS:
HIST 259 India in the Age of Empire
HIST 217 The Emergence of Modern South Asia

BRITISH SURVEYS:
HIST 221 Tudor & Stuart Britain, 1485-1688
HIST 222 Britain in the Age of Revolution, 1688-1815
HIST 224 The Making of Modern Britain, 1815-present

SPECIAL TOPICS:
HIST 298 London Through the Ages
HIST 298 Literature and History of 20th-century Britain
HIST 298 Literature and History of Modern Ireland
HIST 298 Modern East Africa

UPPER LEVEL COURSES:
HIST 300 Historical Materials
HIST 328 The British Empire
HIST 397 Topics in Military History

READING COLLOQUIA:
HIST 400 Empire and Independence in the Modern World
HIST 400 Modern India
HIST 400 Politics and Society in Modern Ireland

RESEARCH SEMINARS:
HIST 450 The Victorians
HIST 450 20th-century Britain and Empire
HIST 450 The British Raj: India 1857-1947

FIRST-YEAR SEMINARS:
CORE 107 The War to End All Wars
CORE 120 Orwell: Conscience of the 20th Century




RESEARCH AND TEACHING

My research interests focus primarily on the British Empire in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—particularly in North India and Ireland. I have studied the influence of Irish revolutionaries in the development of Indian nationalism and am currently working on a book about the Indian Police during British colonial rule. My scholarly interests tend to focus on the effects of cross-cultural contact, particularly in a colonial setting. I am especially interested in colonial policing since it was one of the most controversial aspects of the colonial experience, as well as the most revealing. In British India, policing was the function of colonial control in which Europeans interacted most closely with Indians. My research has included visits to over a dozen archives in India and Britain—including Scotland Yard—as well as interviews with present-day officers of the Indian Police Service and surviving British police officers and wives from the days of colonial rule.

My teaching focuses on Britain and the British Empire from the sixteenth century to the present day. I also teach courses on Modern Ireland and South Asia. I am primarily interested in having students consider how the history of Britain has helped shape society in Ireland, India, and America as well as how the experience of empire affected the development of British culture and society at home and abroad. My courses encourage students to grapple with different historical interpretations and to sharpen their ability to think critically in class discussion and in their research and writing.

My research and teaching have been supported by the William J. Fulbright Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Andrew J. Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Institute of Indian Studies, and the Rotary International Foundation.




SELECT PUBLICATIONS

ARTICLES AND BOOK CHAPTERS:
"War, Patriotism, and the Romantic Nationalism of Patrick Pearse and Subhas Chandra Bose." (under review)
"The Irish Free State, the Indian National Congress, and the Politics of 'Dominion Status', 1921-1935." (under review)
"The Colonial Past in Hong Kong's Present" in Janel Curry and Paul Hanstedt (eds.), Reading Hong Kong, Reading Ourselves (Hong Kong: The City University of Hong Kong Press, 2014).
"Nationalism in Britain, the British Empire, and the British Commonwealth." in Peter N. Stearns (ed.), Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern World (Oxford University Press, 2008).
"Railway Policing and Security in Colonial India, c.1860-1930." in Roopa Srinivasan (ed.), Themes in India's Railway History (New Delhi: Foundation Books, 2006).
"Policing the Peelers: Parliament, the Public, and the Metropolitan Police, 1829-1833" in Matthew Cragoe and Antony Taylor (eds.), London Politics, 1760-1914 (London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).
"Authority, Accountability, and Representation: The United Provinces Police and Dilemmas of the Colonial Policeman in British India, 1902-1939." Historical Research (76:2) May 2003.

REVIEWS:
Yasmin Khan, India at War: The Subcontinent and the Second World War (Oxford 2015) in Journal of Military History (81:4) 2017.
Eddy Kent, Corporate Character: Representing Imperial Power in British India, 1786-1901 (Toronto 2014) in Canadian Journal of History (51:3) 2016.
Niall Whelehan, The Dynamiters: Irish Nationalism and Political Violence in the Wider World, 1867-1900 (Cambridge, 2012) in Journal of Modern History (87:1) 2015.
James Hevia, The Imperial Security State: British Colonial Knowledge and Empire-Building in Asia (Cambridge 2012) in H-Soz-u-Kult, July 2014.
Simon Gunn and James Vernon (eds.), The Peculiarities of Liberal Modernity in Imperial Britain (Berkeley, 2011) in Journal of World History (25:3) 2014.
"The Secrets of British Intelligence": a review of Keith Jeffery, The Secret History of MI6, 1909-1949 (Penguin, 2010) and Christopher Andrew Defend the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5 (Random House, 2009) in History: Reviews of New Books (41:2) 2013.
Madhusree Mukerjee, Churchill's Secret War: The British Empire and the Ravaging of India during World War II (New York, 2010) in History: Reviews of New Books (39:3) 2011.
Laura Bear, Lines of the Nation: Indian Railway Workers, Bureaucracy and the Intimate Historical Self (New York, 2007) in H-Travel, March 2011.
Robert Travers, Ideology and Empire in Eighteenth-Century India: The British in Bengal (Cambridge Studies in Indian History and Society) (Cambridge, 2007) in Canadian Journal of History (44:2) 2009.
"The Man who Built Ireland": a review of John P. McCarthy, Kevin O'Higgins: Builder of the Irish State (Dublin and Portland OR, 2006), in University Bookman (46:1) 2008 [text].
"Musharraf's Tempest": a review of Owen Bennett Jones, Pakistan: Eye of the Storm (New Haven and London, 2003), in University Bookman (45:1) Winter 2007 [text] and (45:2) 2007 [text].
Barry Godfrey and Graeme Dunstall (eds), Crime and Empire, 1840-1940: Criminal justice in local and global context (Cullompton, 2005), in Journal of British Studies (45:1) 2006.
Simon J. Potter, News and the British World: The Emergence of an Imperial Press System, 1876-1922 (Oxford, 2003), in Albion (36:4) 2004.
Paul C. Winther, Anglo-European Science and the Rhetoric of Empire: Malaria, Opium, and British Rule in India, 1756-1895 (Lexington, 2003) in Canadian Journal of History (39:3) 2004.
Ian Talbot and Gurharpal Singh (eds), Region and Partition: Bengal, Punjab and the Partition of the Subcontinent (Oxford, 1999), in Commonwealth & Comparative Politics (40:1) 2002.

IN PROGRESS:
Book manuscript: Watchmen of the Raj: The Dilemmas of Colonial Policing in British India, 1870-1931
Article draft: "The Kanpur Riot of 1931: Nationalism, Communalism, and the Crisis of Policing in Late Colonial India."
Article draft: "Maltese Falcons: Defense Strategists, Churchmen, and Nationalists in the Decolonization of Malta."




LIFE EXPERIENCES

I was born in Madrid and grew up in New York City. After college in Washington DC, I served in the US Navy for four years and then entered graduate school in Virginia. During my time as a graduate student I lived for a year in Northern India followed by a year in London. I have been a member of the history faculty at Lewis & Clark since 2002 and have led overseas programs in East Africa (2008), Australia (2014), and London (2018). In 2006 I walked the Camino de Santiago, a 500-mile pilgrimage across Northern Spain, and in 2009-10 I was a Fulbright scholar in Hong Kong.

Created by campion@lclark.edu | Updated May 2023