Dr Padraic X. Scanlan is an Assistant Professor at our Department. He holds a BA (Hons) in History from McGill University and a PhD in History from Princeton University. He joined the Department in September 2015, after a postdoctoral at Harvard University in the Program Economics, History and Politics. He is also a Research Associate at the Joint Centre for History and Economics at the University of Cambridge.
Dr Scanlan’s research interests lie primarily in the British empire in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with a particular focus on the histories of slavery and emancipation.
In the Department, he teaches HY326 (Slavery, Capital and Empire in the British World) and HY423 (Empire, Colonialism and Globalisation). Watch him talk about HY326 here. He is also our Undergraduate Programme Admissions Tutor.
Dr Scanlan’s current book project, MacCarthy’s Skull: Slavery and Empire in Sierra Leone, is under contract with Yale University Press. The book is a history of the abolition of the British slave trade in Sierra Leone, the only British colony with an official anti-slavery mandate, in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. In 2016, he published two articles, “The Colonial Rebirth of British Anti-Slavery: The Liberated African Villages of Sierra Leone, 1815–1824” for The American Historical Review, and “Blood, Money and Endless Paper: Slavery and Capital in British Imperial History” for History Compass.
Dr Scanlan answered a few questions for us so we could get to know him better. Ladies and gentlemen, meet Dr Scanlan:
Where do you come from? Where and with whom do you live?
I am Canadian, although I've been an expatriate for the last seven years. I live in Cambridge with my wife, Catherine (who is also an historian!) and two cats, Ellie (marmalade, petite, calculating, ferocious) and Ike (tuxedo, lumbering, gormless, gentle).
Where did you grow up?
I grew up in Montreal, Quebec.
Why did you want to become an historian?
The great thing about being an historian is that you can study more-or-less anything you like; everything has a history and most of it is interesting. I think of history more as a method than a subject. Also, I am a terrible know-it-all, and 'historian' is a good cover story.
What is your favourite library and archive? And why?
For ease-of-use, and because it holds the lion's share of the records I've used in my work so far, I'd say The National Archives, at Kew (in Richmond). For overall grandeur (although not for insulation!), the Radcliffe Camera in Oxford. I also have a deep and permanent affection for Firestone Library, the main library at Princeton University, where I did my PhD. I spent months and months of my life on the C-Floor in the basement of the 'Stone...
If you had a time machine, where and what era would you go?
The 1790s, in London, just after the French Revolution turned the world upside down and before the Tory backlash against anyone and everyone sympathetic to the sans-culottes. The British empire might have been very different if the radicals and reformers of the 1790s hadn't been swiftly suppressed (although that was a pipe dream even then, as they were hopelessly outnumbered...) and I think it would thrilling to see that ferment in the flesh.
Which is your favourite place on the LSE campus and why?
I quite like my office, in Sardinia House - but I especially love the walk from the British Museum to Lincoln's Inn Fields to my office. It is quite surreal, to be a historian of Britain educated in North America and to find myself walking past first the treasure-house of the empire, then landmarks from Bleak House, then John Soane's Museum and the Royal College of Surgeons and then to realise that I just walked to work.
If you could give your younger student self some advice, what would it be?
I wish I could go back and tell my younger self, disaffected at McGill University, to not immediately lock in to a joint degree in History and Philosophy. Philosophy was a bust - I wish I had taken some Anthropology, some of the university's courses on the social studies of medicine - even a science course or two. I also wish I had taken Canadian history at the college level. The subject was so miserable and flag-waving in high school that I didn't realise how contentious, fascinating and important the history of Canada really is. I would have loved to learn it from professional historians, rather than government guidelines. Short version for LSE students: Don't decide on your courses for all three years during orientation week based on what you did in high school or what seems to be 'the done thing'!
What is the most dangerous thing you’ve ever done?
I once approached and photographed a torpid but malevolent-looking viper that was hanging from the branch of a tree in a national park in Thailand. I am not completely risk-averse, but I don't live on the edge.
What three items would you rush to save from a fire?
I'd love to say something romantic like an old book or a wedding keepsake, but if I am being honest with myself, I would save my passport, my laptop, and a particular blue accordion folder full of immigration documents and tax returns.
How do you like to relax?
I like to cook, and I like to snack on bits of whatever I'm cooking. I also like to run, and I play the banjo and the mandolin.
How many languages do you speak?
Let's say two and a quarter: English is my first language, I speak French relatively fluently and read and understand spoken French at a native-speaker level. I have three and half years of college German as well, although that has gone to seed.
What is your favourite fiction book?
That's hard to say. A book I try to re-read whenever university life gets me down is Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis, although it is cold comfort! I also love English Passengers by Matthew Kneale.
What is the most memorable place you have ever visited?
Freetown, Sierra Leone.