Dr. Joe Borsato is an award-winning scholar of sovereignty and diplomacy, whose work examines how Indigenous peoples shaped the formation of European empires in the early colonial Atlantic and Pacific worlds.
His first book, based on his SSHRC-supported PhD dissertation (Queen's, 2020-2025), which is currently under contract and undergoing review with an academic press, draws on archival research from a dozen European and North American archives and libraries to centre Indigenous peoples, including the Mi'kmaq, Abenaki, Beothuk, Inuit, Cree, Powhatans, Kalinagos, Yao, Arromaia, and Wiapoco, demonstrating that Indigenous diplomats shaped the first century of English colonization in the Americas. He is the author of peer-reviewed journal publications including Global Intellectual History, the Journal of History, and Ethnohistory, plus two more forthcoming articles with the Sixteenth Century Journal and Acadiensis (co-authored) in 2027.
With the generous support of a Chris Kobrak Fellowship (2026-2028) from the Canadian Business History Association, Joe's second project traces how Indigenous peoples influenced the formation of merchant companies through trans-oceanic diplomacy. He is investigating the travels of Cree diplomats who contributed to the formation of the Hudson's Bay Company, as well as the trans-oceanic travels of Mi'kmaw and Kalinago diplomats in Europe, shedding light on the global scope of Indigenous diplomacy.
Joe's archival research has received fellowship support from the British Library's Eccles Institute, the Huntington Library, the John Carter Brown Library, the London Community Foundation, the Renaissance Society of America, and Marsh's Library, as well as awards from the French Colonial Historical Society and the Northeast Conference on British Studies.
Beyond his academic research, Joe also works as a consultant, policy analyst, and grant writer with ten years of professional experience, partnering closely with Indigenous communities and environmental organizations in British Columbia to decolonize and decarbonize non-profit programming. In applying his research in practical contexts by promoting Indigenous sovereignty and environmental stewardship in the twenty-first century, he has also curated museum exhibitions on the Tŝilhqot'in War of 1864 and on Indigenous revitalization in the Pacific Northwest.
In addition to working as a historical consultant on Aboriginal Rights and Title projects, he currently teaches courses in Indigenous, European, and global history and delivers critical-AI workshops at Queen's University, where he received the 2025 Queen's History Departmental Award for Excellence in Teaching.
"To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man." - William Shakespeare, Hamlet (1601), 1.3.58.
Book Reviews
Winchcombe, Rachel. Encountering Early America. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2021. In Journal of British Studies 62:2 (2023).
Pluymers, Keith. No Wood, No Kingdom: Political Ecology in the English Atlantic. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021. In Ethnohistory 70:2 (2023).
Stern, Philip. Empire, Incorporated: The Corporations that Built British Colonialism. Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2023. In Global Intellectual History (2024, see pre-print here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23801883.2024.2311792).
“‘Fay que nous puissions vaincre nos ennemis’: Kalinago Warfare and Diplomacy on Early Seventeenth-Century Liamuiga.” Forthcoming with The Sixteenth Century Journal, Q2 2027
By exploring the relations between the Kalinagos of Liamuiga (St. Christopher, St. Kitts) and the Spanish, French, and English empires, this article argues that the Kalinagos' diplomatic and military strategies played crucial roles in the formation of all three European empires. Analyzing sources across four languages, the article demonstrates that historians need to recentre Indigenous peoples in early Caribbean history.
“‘Contra ius gentium’: The Mendoza-Drake Dispute and English Legal Arguments for Empire, 1580 – 1585," 11:4 (2026) Global Intellectual History: 565-596.
In this article, I interrogate a large volume of archival documents relating to a case study of an Anglo-Spanish dispute about the uses of the law of nations and natural law for settling questions over piracy and sovereignty in the Atlantic and Pacific during the early 1580s. The article is based on my Honours thesis which I previously completed at the University of Calgary. It is available in pre-print view here: https://www-tandfonline-com.proxy.queensu.ca/doi/full/10.1080/23801883…;
"'To Rule by Customes': Powhatan Assertions of Territorial Possessions against the Virginia Company, 1607 - 1624." In Ethnohistory 72:3 (2025): 277-312.
This article, which was featured as one of the top five most-read articles in the journal of Ethnohistory in 2025, examines Powhatan efforts to defend their land rights against the first permanent English colony in the Americas. In taking a Powhatan perspective on early colonial America, this article incorporates some of my dissertation research in the Colonial Office Papers of the National Archives of the United Kingdom to demonstrate that the Powhatan people of the Chesapeake made profound and effective assertions of territorial possessions against the Virginia Company of London in the early seventeenth century.
“‘We should sowe and reape in peace’: Algonquian Foundations of Colonial Insecurity in the Correspondence of the Virginia Company.” The Journal of History 59:2 (2024): 208-237.
As part of a special issue on the history of genocide, this article explores a case study in the history of the concept of genocide. Specifically, it looks at the impact of Algonquian nations' agency on the Virginia Company's uses of natural law and the law of nations amidst the company's efforts to colonize in the Chesapeake region during the early seventeenth century. In analyzing archival records from company members, the article argues that Algonquian peoples induced a profound moral insecurity in the company due to ambiguities in natural law and the law of nations.
The Departmental Award for Excellence in Teaching, Queen’s University Department of History, 2025
W. J. Eccles Prize (Best Paper by a Graduate Student), French Colonial Historical Society (FCHS), 2025
Congress Graduate Merit Award, Canadian Historical Association (CHA), 2024
Honourable Mention for the David Underdown Prize (NECBS), 2023
Over a dozen fellowships and scholarships with international organizations
