Welcome

This website presents a number of recent and older works that I have written in professional or personal contexts.

The first tab (History) is dedicated to three Works. The most recently published, Harry Washington et le Monde atlantique – L’extraordinaire histoire d’un esclave de George Washington [Harry Washington and the Atlantic World: The Extraordinary Story of One of George Washington’s Slaves], pays tribute to the figure of the fugitive slave and introduces the concept of the “Atlantic World.” The preceding work, Province of Freedom, From Abolition to Colonization relates the creation of a private colony in West Africa by a British charitable association. It sets the story within the context of the eighteenth-century debates on abolition and colonization. The Third book, Le Liberia une singulière histoire, fills the gap in the realm of the French language books since no other summary about this country has ever been published.

The second tab relates the book Financer les villes d’Afrique and its English version Financing Africa’s Cities which, despite being published in 2012 remains a reference for professionals, students and specialists on cities and Africa.

The third tab links to a presentation of Commons and Ocean, a book published in the second half of 2019, co-written with two anthropologist colleagues and a fellow economist, as well as recent forums in English and French on ID4D the development blog, on the theme of general commons and the Pacific in particular. Finally, a fourth tab lists older works, books (such as African markets, co-written by Laurence Wilhelm), leaflets (such as “Les collectivités locales et la crise financière” and its English version “Local Governments and the Financial Crisis: An Analysis”) articles (for example Le financement du développement urbain dans les pays émergents: des besoins et des paradoxes published in the Revue d’Economie Financière), concerning subjects such as urban development, investment financing, heritage and its economy, housing, etc. Some of the texts are available in English and all are free to download.

This collection reflects several decades of experience during which I have worked across a number of continents and seen my interests gradually evolve, ranging from cities and urban development to investment financing, then to environmental economics and finally to history, which I call ‘augmented’, i.e., drawing on sociology and economics. The Biography tab will shed light on this experience, these evolutions in interest and of course my future projects.

Thierry Paulais

Harry Washington pays tribute to the figure to the figure of the fugitive slave and introduces the concept of the Atlantic World.
Province of Freedom relates the creation of a private colony in Sierra Leone in the context of abolitionism and colonization
Liberia, a colony founded in 1822 by an American philanthropic society to welcome freed slaves and spread Christianity across the African continent, became a state in the full sense of the term in 1847.
Ce livre publié simultanément en français et en anglais est le résultat de quatre ans de travaux dans un programme de recherche cofinancé par l’AFD et par Cities Alliance.
This book was co-written with three colleagues- two anthropologists and an economist, and received funding from the AFD. It presents a new approach to the question of commons in Polynesia through case studies based on the lagoons of atolls.