Africa Table - Colonial Africa and the Diamond Trade

Join the Center for African Studies for our weekly lunchtime lecture series.

Speaker: Steven Press, Assistant Professor, Department of History, Stanford University

Steven Press is an Assistant Professor of History and an affiliated member of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, the Center for African Studies, and Stanford Law School’s Center for Law and History.

Press' first book, Rogue Empires: Conmen and Contracts in Europe's Scramble for Africa (published Spring 2017 with Harvard University Press), draws on archival work in ten countries and three languages. The manuscript offers a new approach to understanding the European Scramble for Africa by examining one of its pivotal projects: empires run by companies and individual adventurers.

In a recent article in the Journal of Modern History, Press has uncovered the exchanges between Germany, China, and Cuba that led to the USA's lease for Guantanamo Bay in 1903. His earlier work on post-Napoleonic European nationalism appeared in Central European History. 

Press received his B.A. from Vanderbilt University and his A.M. and Ph.D. from Harvard University. He taught at Harvard and Vanderbilt before coming to Stanford. His research interests include European sovereignty, international relations, and commodity networks.