Julia Adams

Julia Adams, associate professor of sociology and the Arthur F. Thurnau Professor at the University of Michigan, will write a book on colonial governance in the East Indies between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries. She will focus on the role of imperial intermediaries, the rulers' colonial representatives, during the first great wave of European empire in the East Indies. How and when did Europe's first "men in the Indies" come to assert their status as increasingly autonomous colonial rulers? What forms of community and state did they create in the colonies and why? In addition to providing a fresh look at the construction of empire, Adams will synthesize existing approaches to studying imperial projects, contributing to the growing body of work emphasizing distinctions within the categories of rulers and ruled.

Working Papers

• The Rule of the Father: Patriarchy and Patrimonialism in Early Modern Europe
• Social Theory, Modernity, and the Three Waves of Historical Sociology