Benjamin Madley
Associate Professor
Benjamin Madley is an historian of Native America, the United States, and colonialism in world history. Born in Redding, California, he spent much of his childhood in Karuk Country near the Oregon border where he became interested in relationships between colonizers and Indigenous peoples. He writes about Native Americans as well as colonialism in Africa, Australia, and Europe, often applying a transnational and comparative approach.
Madley is the author of more than a dozen peer-reviewed book chapters and journal articles. His book chapters have been published in four edited volumes. His nine articles have appeared in journals ranging from The American Historical Review to European History Quarterly and Pacific Historical Review.
Yale University Press published his first book, An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846-1873. This book received the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for History, the Raphael Lemkin Book Award from the Institute for the Study of Genocide, the Charles Redd Center / Phi Alpha Theta Award for the Best Book on the American West, the California Book Awards Gold Medal for Californiana, the Heyday Books History Award, and the Norman Neuerburg Award from the Historical Society of Southern California. It was also named a New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice, an Indian Country Today Hot List book, a Choice magazine Outstanding Academic Title, and a Caroline Bancroft History Prize Honor Book. True West Magazine named Madley the Best New Western Author of 2016. In 2018, he received the California Commendation Medal from the Military Department of the State of California. According to former California Governor Jerry Brown, "Madley corrects the record with his gripping story of what really happened: the actual genocide of a vibrant civilization, thousands of years in the making."
Madley's current research explores Native American labor in the making of the western United States.
Madley earned a B.A. in History at Yale University in 1994. That same year, he won a Henry Fellowship to attend Oxford University, where he then completed an M.St. in Modern European History. In 2009, he earned a Ph.D. in History at Yale. Before coming to UCLA, he was an Andrew Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the History Department and Native American Studies Program at Dartmouth College from 2010 to 2012.
Degrees
Ph.D., History, Yale University, 2009
M.Phil., History, Yale University, 2005
M.A., History, Yale University, 2005
M.St., History, Oxford University, 1995
B.A., History, Yale University, 1994, summa cum laude
Awards
Robert W. Cherny Award from the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association for the best article in U.S. labor and political history in the Pacific Historical Review and/or by any PCB-AHA member, 2020
Charles Redd Center / Phi Alpha Theta Award for the Best Book on the American West, 2018
California Commendation Medal from the Military Department, State of California, 2018
Norman Neuerburg Book Award from the Historical Society of Southern California, 2018
Los Angeles Times Book Prize for History, 2017
Raphael Lemkin Book Award from the Institute for the Study of Genocide, 2017
California Book Awards Gold Medal for Californiana, 2017
Caroline Bancroft History Prize Honor Book from the Denver Public Library, 2017
San Francisco Public Library Laureate, 2017
Choice magazine Outstanding Academic Title, 2016
True West Magazine Best New Western Author, 2016
Heyday Books History Book Award from Heyday Books Publishing, 2016
Phi Alpha Theta / Westerners International Dissertation Prize, 2010
Yale University Fredrick W. Beinecke Dissertation Prize, 2009
Arrell M. Gibson Award for best article of 2008, in any journal, on Native American History, 2009
Oscar O. Winther Award for best article of 2008 in The Western Historical Quarterly, 2009
Selected Publications
BOOK
An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846-1873 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016).
JOURNAL ARTICLES
"California's First Mass Incarceration System: Franciscan Missions, California Indians, and Penal Servitude, 1769-1836," Pacific Historical Review 88:1 (January, 2019), 14-47.
"Genocide in the Golden State: A Response to Reviews by William Bauer, Jr., Margaret Jacobs, Karl Jacoby and Jeffrey Ostler," Journal of Genocide Research 19:1 (March, 2017), 154-163.
"Understanding Genocide in California under United States Rule, 1846-1873," The Western Historical Quarterly 47:4 (Winter, 2016), 449-461.
"Reexamining the American Genocide Debate: Meaning, Historiography, and New Methods," The American Historical Review 120:1 (February, 2015), 98-139.
"'Unholy Traffic in Human Blood and Souls:' Systems of California Indian Servitude under U.S. Rule," Pacific Historical Review 83:4 (November, 2014), 626-667.
"California's Yuki Indians: Defining Genocide in Native American History," The Western Historical Quarterly 39:3 (Autumn, 2008), 303-332.
"From Terror to Genocide: Britain's Tasmanian Penal Colony and Australia's History Wars," Journal of British Studies 47:1 (January, 2008), 77-106.
"From Africa to Auschwitz: How German South West Africa incubated ideas and methods adopted and developed by the Nazis in Eastern Europe," European History Quarterly 35:3 (July, 2005), 429-464.
"Patterns of Frontier Genocide, 1803-1910: The Aboriginal Tasmanians, the Yuki of California, and the Herero of Namibia," Journal of Genocide Research 6:2 (June, 2004), 167-192.
BOOK CHAPTERS
"California and Oregon's Modoc Indians: How Indigenous Resistance Camouflages Genocide in Colonial Histories" in Andrew Woolford, Jeff Benvenuto, and Alexander Laban Hinton, eds., Colonial Genocide in Indigenous North America (Durham: Duke University Press, 2014), 95-130.
"The Genocide of California's Yana Indians" in Samuel Totten and William S. Parsons, eds., Centuries of Genocide: Essays and Eyewitness Accounts (New York: Routledge, 2012), 16-53.
"Tactics of Nineteenth Century Colonial Massacre: Tasmania, California and Beyond" in Philip G. Dwyer and Lyndall Ryan, eds.,Theatres of Violence: Massacres, Mass Killing and Atrocity Throughout History (New York: Berghan Books, 2012), 110-125.
"When 'The World Was Turned Upside Down': California and Oregon's Tolowa Indian Genocide, 1851-1856" in Adam Jones, ed., New Directions in Genocide Research (New York: Routledge, 2011), 170-196.
BOOK REVIEWS & REVIEW ESSAYS
"Command, Control, and Genocide: A Review of The Vandemonian War," Journal of Genocide Research 20:3 (July 2018), 467-471.
Catherine M. Cameron, Paul Kelton, and Alan C. Swedlund, eds., Beyond Germs: Native Depopulation in North America (Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 2015) in The Journal of American History 103:4 (March 2017), 1022-1023.
Deborah and Jon Lawrence, Violent Encounters: Interviews On Western Massacres (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2011) in The Western Historical Quarterly 43:2 (Summer, 2012), 224-225.
Saul Friedländer, The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945 (New York: Harper Perennial, 2007) in Journal of Genocide Research 12:3 (Autumn, 2010), 279-280.
Richard T. Stillson, Spreading the Word: A History of Information in the California Gold Rush (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006) in The Western Historical Quarterly 39:1 (Spring, 2008), 79-80.
Frank Baumgardner, Killing for Land in Early California: Indian Blood at Round Valley, 1856-1863 (New York: Algora Publishing, 2005) in The Americas 64:2 (October, 2007), 279-280.
William D. Rubinstein, Genocide: A History (Harlow: Longman, 2004) in European History Quarterly 36:2 (April, 2006), 332-334.
DOCUMENTARY FILM PARTICIPATION
Namibia: Genocide and the Second Reich, a 60-minute BBC documentary (first aired December 7, 2004).
Research
Native American labor in the making of the western United States
Graduate Students
Preston S. McBride
William Wood
Current Courses by Term
North American Indian History, Precontact to 1830
Topics in History: World
Teaching Apprentice Practicum
Advanced Historiography: American Indian Peoples
American West
Teaching Apprentice Practicum
Previous Courses by Term
Advanced Historiography: American Indian Peoples
North American Indian History, 1830 to Present
North American Indian History, Precontact to 1830
Capstone Seminar: History -- World History
Topics in History: Science/Technology
Advanced Historiography: American Indian Peoples
North American Indian History, 1830 to Present
Advanced Historiography: American Indian Peoples
North American Indian History, 1830 to Present
North American Indian History, Precontact to 1830
Capstone Seminar: History -- World History
Topics in World History
Advanced Historiography: American Indian Peoples
North American Indian History, 1830 to Present
North American Indian History, Precontact to 1830
Capstone Seminar: History -- U.S.
Topics in History: U.S.
Advanced Historiography: American Indian Peoples
North American Indian History, 1830 to Present
North American Indian History, Precontact to 1830
Introduction to U.S. History: 1790 to 1900
North American Indian History, 1830 to Present
Capstone Seminar: History -- U.S.
Topics in History: U.S.
North American Indian History, Precontact to 1830
Previous Courses by Course
Advanced Historiography: American Indian Peoples
2018 Spring Quarter
2017 Spring Quarter
2016 Spring Quarter
2015 Spring Quarter
2014 Spring Quarter
Advanced Historiography: American Indian Peoples
2018 Spring Quarter
2017 Spring Quarter
2016 Spring Quarter
2015 Spring Quarter
2014 Spring Quarter
North American Indian History, 1830 to Present
2018 Spring Quarter
2017 Spring Quarter
2016 Spring Quarter
2015 Spring Quarter
2014 Spring Quarter
2013 Spring Quarter
North American Indian History, Precontact to 1830
2017 Fall Quarter
2015 Fall Quarter
2014 Fall Quarter
2014 Winter Quarter
2013 Winter Quarter
Topics in History: Science/Technology
2017 Fall Quarter
Capstone Seminar: History -- World History
2017 Fall Quarter
2015 Fall Quarter
Topics in World History
2015 Fall Quarter
Capstone Seminar: History -- U.S.
2014 Fall Quarter
2013 Spring Quarter
Topics in History: U.S.
2014 Fall Quarter
2013 Spring Quarter
Introduction to U.S. History: 1790 to 1900