Ronald Angelo Johnson

Areas of Specialization

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 latest book Entangled Alliances: Racialized Freedom and Atlantic Diplomacy During the American Revolution will be released in October 2025 by Cornell University Press. Entangled Alliances is a reinterpretation of the American Revolution through analysis of diplomacy in the emerging United States during decades of hemispheric transformation. It brings to light the fascinating story of American patriots and rebels from Saint-Domingue (later Haiti) allying against European tyranny.

I am currently working on two book projects: the first, 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. The second, Shades of Color: Haitian Immigration and Black Identity in Early America, examines successive generations of Haitian immigrants to the United States from the Haitian Revolution throughout the nineteenth century.

My first book was Diplomacy in Black and White: John Adams, Toussaint Louverture, and Their Atlantic World Alliance. I am the co-editor of the book In Search of Liberty: African American Internationalism in the Nineteenth-Century Atlantic World.

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