Michael Roberts (historian)

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Michael Roberts (born May 21, 1908 in Lytham St Annes , Lancashire , † December 31, 1996 ) was a British historian who mainly dealt with Swedish history from the 16th to 18th centuries.

Life

Michael Roberts, the son of an engineer, went to school in Brighton and studied history in Oxford (Worcester College) from 1927. He graduated with top marks in 1930 and won a scholarship to Princeton, where he was in 1931. In 1932 he won the Gladstone Memorial Prize with a medieval work and became a lecturer and tutor at Merton College, Oxford and briefly assistant lecturer at the University of Liverpool. In 1935 he received his doctorate from Oxford with a dissertation on the Whig Party in the early 19th century. 1935 to 1953 he taught as a professor at Rhodes University College in Grahamstown in South Africa, where he decided to turn to Swedish history and studied the language. He served in East Africa during World War II and was head of the British Council in Stockholm from 1944 to 1946. From 1954 until his retirement in 1973 he was Professor of Modern History at Queen's University Belfast .

plant

Roberts wrote, among other things, a biography of Gustav Adolf , which was highly praised by Hugh Trevor-Roper and Christopher Hill, among others . In 1980 he published a book based on extensive archival studies on British diplomacy and Sweden in the 18th century. In addition to early modern Swedish history, he also dealt with British history.

Based on studies of the military history of Sweden and the Netherlands between 1560 and 1660, in his inaugural lecture in Belfast in 1955 he formulated the influential thesis of the Military Revolution (Revolution in Military Affairs, RMA) in the early modern period, which was introduced in Europe through the introduction of new tactics and innovations led to significant improvements in warfare and standing armies based on professionally trained infantrymen. Central figures were Moritz von Nassau , who was based on Roman models, and Gustaf Adolf , who, for example, assigned artillery to the infantry units and carried out new offensive, shock-like cavalry attacks. This was later taken up by Geoffrey Parker , among others , and supplemented by earlier developments in the Italian Renaissance (such as fortification improvements), and also by Clifford J. Rogers , who continued the revolution into the time of the Hundred Years War and the rise of dominance Infantry and artillery brought forward on the battlefield. But the thesis also found critics ( Jeremy Black , who postponed the actual revolution to a later time, especially the time of Louis XIV, and Christopher Duffy ).

Michael Roberts also translated poems by Birger Sjöberg and Carl Michael Bellman into English.

Memberships and honors

He was a member of the British Academy (Fellow, 1960), the Royal Irish Academy and the Kungliga Vitterhets Historie och Antikvitets Academies and an honorary doctorate from Stockholm University , Queen's University Belfast and Rhodes University . Roberts received the Swedish North Star Order .

Fonts

  • The Military Revolution, 1560-1660 , Belfast 1956, reprinted in his essays in: Swedish History , London, 1967, pp. 195-225.
  • The Whig Party, 1807-1812 , Macmillan 1939.
  • Gustavus Adolphus. A History of Sweden 1611-1632 , 2 volumes, Longmans 1953, 1958.
  • Essays in Swedish History , London 1967.
  • Sweden as a great power, 1611-1697 , London 1968.
  • The early Vasas. A History of Sweden 1523-1611 , Cambridge 1968.
  • Gustavus Adolphus and the Rise of Sweden , London 1973.
  • The Swedish imperial experience, 1560-1718 , Cambridge 1979.
  • British Diplomacy and Swedish Politics, 1758-1773 , 1980.
  • The Age of Liberty. Sweden 1719-1772 , Cambridge 1986.
  • From Oxenstierna to Charles XII. Four studies , Cambridge University Press 1991.
  • with AEG Trollip: The South African Opposition 1939–1945 , London 1947.
  • The naive historian. An undelivered inaugural . In: Comment , Volume 18, 1995, p. 3.

literature

  • John Bossy , Peter Jupp (Ed.): Essays presented to Michael Roberts, sometime Professor of modern history in the Queen's University of Belfast . The Blackstaff Press, Belfast 1976.
  • Geoffrey Parker: Michael Roberts, 1908-1996 . In: Proceedings of the British Academy . tape 115 , 2002, pp. 333-354 ( thebritishacademy.ac.uk [PDF]).
  • Paul Maylam: Michael Roberts (1908-1996). A profile . In: South African Historical Journal , Volume 36, 1997, pp. 269-276.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Geoffrey Parker: The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West, 1500-1800 . Cambridge 1988. The book is dedicated to Roberts.
  2. ↑ Louis Reynolds, Zoe Vince: Revolutionary Thinking: The "Military Revolution", "Military-Technical Revolution" and "Revolution in Military Affairs" . Birmingham War Studies, 2012.
  3. ↑ Clifford Rogers (Ed.): The Military Revolution Debate: Readings on the Military Revolution of Early Modern Europe . Boulder, Colorado 1995.
personal data
SURNAME Roberts, Michael
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British historian
DATE OF BIRTH May 21, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Lytham St Annes , Lancashire
DATE OF DEATH December 31, 1996