Blake Smith
Harper-Schmidt Fellow & Collegiate Assistant Professor, The University of Chicago
Blake Smith is a Harper-Schmidt Fellow in the University of Chicago Society of Fellows and a collegiate assistant professor in the Social Sciences Collegiate Division at the University of Chicago. His research, focusing on the French East India Company, has appeared in scholarly journals such as French Cultural Studies and the Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, as well as popular media such as The Wire and The Appendix.
Written by Blake Smith
essayArt
Art must act
Throughout decades of writing, Harold Rosenberg exhorted artists to resist cliché and conformity and instead take action
Blake Smith
essayRace and ethnicity
On prejudice
An 18th-century creole slaveholder invented the idea of ‘racial prejudice’ to defend diversity among a slaveowning elite
Blake Smith
ideaNations and empires
The Madras Observatory: from Jesuit cooperation to British rule
Blake Smith
ideaGlobal history
For centuries European aristocrats proudly claimed foreign ancestry
Blake Smith
essayGlobal history
Revolutionary heroes
If the sultan of Mysore had had a bit more luck, George Washington might be known as the Haider Ali of North America
Blake Smith
ideaHistory
Before Indiana Jones came Abraham Hyacinthe Anquetil-Duperron
Blake Smith
essayEconomic history
Slavery as free trade
The 18th-century thinkers behind laissez-faire economics saw slavery as a great example of global free trade
Blake Smith