Name: Jim Chrislip
Year in program: Seven
ABD Y/N: Yes
Primary supervisor: Charles Keith
Major field: Modern Europe
Minor fields: Modern Asia, Comparative Colonial
My dissertation focuses on the economic mobilization of French Indochina during World War One, focusing on those sectors deemed critical to the war effort like rubber, rice, mines, and various attempts at industrialization. These sectors are contextualized with relation to the colonial security apparatus and its operations to quell unrest, and the broader economic networks in Southeast Asia that were disrupted by the war.
This project relies predominantly on archival sources from the Archives d’Outre-Mer in Aix-en-Provence, France, with primary materials from both French and Vietnamese language sources.
I received my Bachelor’s Degree in History and French from Chapman University in 2012, and then spent a year teaching English in Dreux, France to high school students. Following several years as an educational human resources consultant, I received my Master’s Degree in World History from New York University in 2016, before arriving at MSU the next year.