Renaud is a Professor of European History at the University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of Pembroke College. His research specialises in transnational history, with a particular focus on Britain, France and their oceanic empires. In 2019 he published The Society of Prisoners: Anglo-French Wars and Incarceration in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford UP). He also recently co-edited Ordering the Oceans, Ordering the World: Law, Violence, and European Empires (Past & Present, Nov. 2024), with Jeppe Mulich.

Political Deportation in the Indian Ocean

Between the 1780s and the 1820s, the Indian Ocean became one of the principal theatres of the global war waged by European imperial states, which also involved powerful regional actors. This project analyses the forced migrations of alleged sympathisers of the French Revolution between three main sites – French Reunion, Danish Tranquebar, and English-occupied Pondicherry – and some secondary ones – including Mauritius, the Cape of Good Hope, and St Helena. This research sheds light on the transformations of European oceanic empires, and examines the effects of transitions of sovereignty on governmentality and colonial societies at this critical juncture.