Ronald Angelo Johnson
Ralph and Bessie Mae Lynn Chair of History & Associate Professor
On Research Leave Fall 2024
Areas of Specialtization
Early America, Diplomacy, African Diaspora, Haiti
Education
Ph.D., Purdue University
M.Div., Boston University School of Theology
M.A., Johns Hopkins University (SAIS)
B.A., Texas State University
Academic Interests & Research Narratives
My research embraces a transnational approach to the history of the early United States in the Atlantic world, with emphases on the African diaspora, diplomacy, Haiti, and religion.
I am currently working on two book projects: the first, Entangled Alliances: Racialized Freedom & Atlantic Connections during the American Revolution (under contract with Cornell University Press), examines acts of rebellion by American colonists and rebels of color in Saint-Domingue (later Haiti). The second, We Are All Equal: Turmoil and Triumph in the Early United States and Revolutionary Haiti (under contract with Princeton University Press), is a diplomatic history of race and revolution, illustrating that Americans and Haitians shared important understandings of liberty.
My first book Diplomacy in Black and White: John Adams, Toussaint Louverture, and Their Atlantic World Alliance was published in 2014. I am the co-editor of In Search of Liberty: African American Internationalism in the Nineteenth-Century Atlantic World, published in 2021.
I serve as the co-editor of the Journal of the Early Republic.
Follow Dr. Johnson on:
Threads: @ronaldangelojohnson
Instagram: @ronaldangelojohnson
LinkedIn: Ronald Angelo Johnson