Niall Ferguson

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Niall Ferguson

Niall Ferguson (b. April 18, 1964 in Glasgow, Scotland) is British historian of modern imperialism. After attending The Glasgow Academy, he was educated as a Demy at Magdalen College, Oxford, graduating with a first-class honours degree. After two years as a Hanseatic Scholar in Hamburg and Berlin, he took up a Research Fellowship at Christ's College Cambridge University, in 1989, subsequently moving to a Lectureship at Peterhouse. He returned to Oxford University in 1992 to become Fellow and Tutor in Modern History at Jesus College, a post he held until 2000, when he was appointed Professor of Political and Financial History at Oxford University. Two years later he left for the United States to take up the Herzog Chair in Financial History at the Stern Business School, New York University, before moving to Harvard in 2004[1]. He is the Laurence Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University,and William Ziegler Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. Ferguson is also a Senior Research Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford University and a Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He is a specialist in financial and economic history, and is a weekly columnist for the Los Angeles Times[2]. Ferguson's most recent publication, The War of the World was published in 2006 by Penguin Press.

He is married to journalist Susan Douglas, whom he met in 1987 when she was his editor at the UK Daily Mail. They have three children: Felix, Freya and Lachlan.

Historian

Niall Ferguson is Laurence Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University, where he teaches in both the History Department and the Harvard Business School as the William Ziegler Professor of Business Administration. He also holds fellowships at Jesus College, University of Oxford, and at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. Ferguson was formerly the John Herzog Chair of Financial History at New York University (NYU), and Professor of Modern History at University of Oxford. He is a specialist in financial and economic history, and the Philosophy of History. Ferguson has earned a reputation as a revisionist who challenges left-wing history in favour of older right-wing notions. His neo-imperialism has attracted criticism. The left-wing journalist Johann Hari for example has described him as "an apologist for mass murder".[3] In a letter to the editor of the Independent on June 14th, 2006, Ferguson defended himself against Hari's attack:

According to Hari, I have argued that "there are great swaths of humanity inherently incapable of self-rule who must be forever subject to imperial masters". This is wrong. In Colossus I argued that a small number of failed states and rogue regimes would only stand a chance of becoming democracies if there were temporary suspensions or limitations of their sovereignty.

The point that I make in The War of the World is that one of the main reasons for the extreme violence of the 20th century is that so many empires declined and fell in the period. It is an empirically verifiable fact that violence tends to increase as empires unravel, as indigenous ethnic groups compete, often violently, for future shares of power. The peak of violent death (as opposed to death by starvation) in modern India was of course in 1947, as the British withdrew and Hindus and Muslims slaughtered one another.

Hari calls, in a somewhat sinister phrase, for an "act of intellectual hygiene". It is, however, he who must come clean. His Horrible History is about as serious as the latest product of Terry Deary's pen.[4]

Ferguson's wide profile in journalism and his revisionist reputation has led him to be compared to A. J. P. Taylor. Although Ferguson does list Taylor as a second-favorite historian and credits seeing Taylor on the television in the 1960s and 1970s as an inspiration to becoming an historian, his favorite historian is Fritz Stern whom Ferguson has praised as one of the few historians who are just as well-versed in economic matters as in historical questions.

The Cash Nexus

In his 2001 book The Cash Nexus, which Ferguson wrote following a year as Houblon-Norman Fellow at the Bank of England [5], Ferguson argued that the popular saying,"money makes the world go 'round", is wrong; instead he presented a case for human actions in history motivated by far more than just economic concerns. In the same book, Ferguson made a case against historians such as Paul Kennedy who argue that the United States is a politically and economically over-stretched power on the verge of collapse. If anything, Ferguson argues that United States is not sufficiently involved in the affairs of the world. In his books Colossus and Empire, Ferguson presented the British Empire as more good than bad, and expressed regret that the modern U.S could not be like the 19th century British Empire.

On World War I

He is best known for his 1998 revisionist book The Pity of War, which is an analytic account of what Ferguson considered to be the ten great myths of the Great War. The book generated much controversy, particularly Ferguson's suggestion that it would have been for the best for everyone if Britain had stayed out of the First World War in 1914, thereby allowing Germany to win. Ferguson has argued that the British decision to intervene was what stopped a German victory over France and Russia in 1914-1915. Furthermore, Ferguson expressed disagreement with the Sonderweg interpretation of German history championed by some German historians such as Fritz Fischer, Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Hans Mommsen and Wolfgang Mommsen who argued that the German Empire deliberately started an aggressive war in 1914 and that the Second Reich was little more than a dress rehearsal for the Third Reich. Likewise, Ferguson has often attacked the work of the German historian Michael Stürmer who argued that it was Germany's geographical situation in Central Europe that determined the course of German history.

On the contrary, Ferguson maintains that Germany waged a preventive war in 1914, a war largely forced on the Germans by reckless and irresponsible British diplomacy. In particular, Ferguson accused the British Foreign Secretary Edward Grey of maintaining an ambiguous attitude to the question of whether Britain would enter the war or not, and thus confused Berlin over just what was the British attitude towards the question of intervention in the war. Moreover, Ferguson denied that the origins of National Socialism can be traced back to Imperial Germany; instead Ferguson asserted the origins of Nazism can only be traced back to the First World War and its aftermath. Another controversial aspect of the Pity of War was Ferguson's use of counter-factual history. Ferguson presented a counter-factual version of Europe under Imperial German domination that was peaceful, prosperous, democratic and without ideologies like Communism and fascism. In Ferguson's view, had Germany won World War One, then the lives of millions would have been saved, something looking much like the present-day European Union would have been founded in 1914, and Britain would have remained an empire and the world's dominant financial power.

Rothschilds

Another area of interest for Ferguson is Jewish history, especially the Rothschild family. Ferguson credits the Rothschilds with helping to develop a stable international banking system in the 19th century facilitating great economic growth all over the world. The book won the Wadsworth Prize for Business History and was also short-listed for the Jewish Quarterly/Wingate Literary Award and the American National Jewish Book Award [6]

Counterfactual history

Ferguson is the leading academic champion of counterfactual history, and edited a collection of essays exploring the subject titled Virtual History: Alternatives and Counterfactuals (1997). Ferguson likes to imagine alternative outcomes as a way of stressing the contingent aspects of history. For Ferguson, great forces don't make history; individuals do and nothing is pre-determined. Thus, for Ferguson there are no paths in history that will determine how things will work out. The world is neither progressing nor regressing; only the actions of individuals will determine whether we live in a better or worse world.

Henry Kissinger

Ferguson is currently working on the biography of former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger[7].

Praise & Criticism

Many of Ferguson's peers praise his work, such as John Lewis Gaddis of Yale University[8], a renowned Cold War era historian, who characterized Ferguson as having unrivaled "range, productivity and visibility."[9] Of Ferguson, the well known British journalist Joan McAlpine said, "There is no Nobel prize for history, but if there was, Niall Ferguson would doubtless be a contender."[10] The London Times hailed him as the "most brilliant historian of his generation." [11] Harvard history professor and former dean of the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences William Kirby argued that Ferguson "argues big subjects with spirit, reason and evidentiary force.”[12]

While, in 2004 Time magazine named him as one of the world’s hundred most influential people[13]. The New York Times Book Review said of Ferguson:

“No contemporary historian rivals him in range, productivity and visibility of his scholarship. If the United States is preeminent in the world these days, then surely Ferguson is so within his profession.”[14]

The Economist added:

“Ferguson...combines a prodigious output with clear, fluent writing and the all-too-rare ability to blend economic analysis with that of politics.”[15]

Ferguson does have his detractors, such as Benjamin Wallace-Wells, an editor of The Washington Monthly. Wallace-Wells commented that

"The House of Rothschild remains Ferguson's only major work to have received prizes and wide acclaim from other historians. Research restrains sweeping, absolute claims: Rothschild is the last book Ferguson wrote for which he did original archival work, and his detailed knowledge of his subject meant that his arguments for it couldn't be too grand."

Wallace-Wells goes on to accuse Ferguson of making overly sweeping claims in his later works without sufficient support or any original research to back them up, and of contradicting the academic consensus for the sake of being contrarian.[16] Wallace-Wells' comments notwithstanding, many who disagree with Ferguson's views have a different opinion regarding the quality of his research. One dissenting reviewer argued that, "the quality of his research forces those of us who take a different view to raise our game."[17]

Commentator

As a commentator on events, Ferguson supported the 2003 Invasion of Iraq, though he has criticized many of its subsequent implementation and organizational problems.

Ferguson has often disparaged the European Union as a disaster waiting to happen and President Vladimir Putin of Russia for authoritarianism. In Ferguson's view, Putin's policies stand to lead Russia to catastrophes equivalent to those that befell Germany during the Nazi era. Ferguson has occasionally supported the policies of George W. Bush, especially his foreign policy, but sees the economic and financial policies of the Bush administration as potentially putting the economic health of the United States at serious risk and he opposed Bush's reelection in 2004 ([18]). Ferguson believes that if the United States does not sharply cut social spending in the next decade or so, then the drain on the Treasury by retiring Baby-boomers stands to create a serious financial crisis. In Ferguson's view, Bush has not done enough to cut what Ferguson calls "entitlements" in the area of social spending.

Peter Wilby described him as "almost the only right-wing columnist now worth reading", but has compared his imperialist views to those who support Stalin's Terror.[19]

In its August 15, 2005 edition, The New Republic published "The New New Deal", an essay by Ferguson and Laurence J. Kotlikoff, chairman of the economics department at Boston University. The two scholars advocated the following changes to the American government's economic and fiscal policies:

  • Replacing the personal income tax, corporate income tax, payroll tax, estate tax and gift tax with a 33% Federal Retail Sales Tax (FRST), plus a monthly rebate, paid to all households, equal to the amount of FRST paid by households with similar demographics living at the poverty line
  • Replacing the retirement benefits portion of Social Security with a Personal Security System (PSS), consisting of private retirement accounts for all citizens plus extra benefits to those who could not afford to save enough for a decent retirement
  • Replacing Medicare and Medicaid with a Medical Security System (MSS) that would provide health insurance vouchers to all citizens, the value of which would be determined by one's health
  • Cutting federal discretionary spending by 20%

A recent New Republic piece with Samuel J Abrams (Harvard) laid the groundwork for understanding attitudes toward immigration in Europe and the United States.

References

  • Snowman, Daniel "Niall Ferguson" pages 37 – 39 from History Today, Volume 54, Issue 10, October 2004.

Academic career

Previous academic positions Ferguson has held are:

1987-1988 Hanseatic Scholar
1989-1990 Research Fellow, Christ’s College, University of Cambridge
1990-1992 Official Fellow and Lecturer, Peterhouse, University of Cambridge
1992-2000 Fellow and Tutor in Modern History, Jesus College, University of Oxford
2000-2002 Professor of Political and Financial History, University of Oxford
2002-2004 Herzog Professor in Financial History at Stern School of Business, New York University
2004-present Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History, Harvard University

Bibliography

  • War of the World: History's Age of Hatred, 1914-1989, Allen Lane, 2006 ISBN 0-7139-9708-7 (Now a major Channel 4 series)
  • Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order. Basic Books. 2003. ISBN 0-465-02328-2.
  • 1914: Why the World Went to War, Penguin, 2005. ISBN 0-14-102220-5
  • Colossus: the Rise and Fall of the American Empire, Allen Lane, 2004. ISBN 0-7139-9770-2
  • Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World, Allen Lane, 2003. ISBN 0-7139-9615-3
  • The Cash Nexus: Money and Power in the Modern World, 1700-2000, London: Allen Lane/Penguin Press, 2001. ISBN 0-7139-9465-7
  • Virtual History: Alternatives and Counterfactuals, Macmillan Pub Ltd, 1997. ISBN 0-330-35132-X. Basic Books, 1999. ISBN 0-465-02322-3
  • The Pity of War: Explaining World War I, London: Allen Lane/Penguin Press, 1998. ISBN 0-14-027523-1. Basic Books, 1999, ISBN 0-465-05711-X
  • The House of Rothschild: The World's Banker, 1849-1999, Viking Books, 1999. ISBN 0-670-88794-3
  • The World's Banker: The History of the House of Rothschild, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1998, ISBN 0-297-81539-3
  • The House of Rothschild: Money's Prophets 1798-1848, Viking Books, 1998. ISBN 0-670-85768-8
  • Paper and Iron : Hamburg Business and German Politics in the Era of Inflation, 1897-1927, Cambridge University Press, 1995. ISBN 0-521-47016-1

External links

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