Niall Ferguson

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Niall Ferguson (b. April 18, 1964 in Glasgow, Scotland) is an award winning Scottish historian specializing in financial and economic history. Currently associated jointly with the history department at Harvard University and Harvard Business School, he is also a prominent commentator on historical topics.

He is best known outside academia for his views on imperialism and colonialism; within the academy, his championing of counterfactual history is a subject of some considerable controversy. In 2006, Penguin Press published his most recent book, The War of the World, on the causes and consequences of war and genocide in the first half of the 20th century.

Contents

[edit] Biography

After attending The Glasgow Academy, he was educated as a Demy at Magdalen College, Oxford, graduating with a first-class honours degree. He is a weekly columnist for The Sunday Telegraph[1]. He was, until October 22, 2007, a columnist for the Los Angeles Times[2] .

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.

[edit] Academic career

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 John Herzog Professor in Financial History at Stern School of Business, New York University
2004-present Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History, Harvard University and William Ziegler Professor of Business Administration at the 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 resident faculty member of the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies.

[edit] Historian

Ferguson's frequent journalism and his revisionist reputation have led him to be compared to A. J. P. Taylor. 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. Nevertheless, his favorite historian is Fritz Stern whom Ferguson has praised as one of the few historians as well-versed in economic matters as in historical questions.

[edit] The Cash Nexus

In his 2001 book The Cash Nexus, which he wrote following a year as Houblon-Norman Fellow at the Bank of England [3], 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 presents a nuanced and partially apologetic view of the British Empire and points out some of the potential virtues of the U.S. taking a more active role in resolving conflict arising from the failure of states in a way that is reminiscent of the 19th century British Empire.

[edit] On World War I

Ferguson first became known more widely 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 may have proved more beneficial for Europe 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 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 Sir 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. Instead, Ferguson has accused London of unnecessarily allowing a regional war in Europe to escalate into a world 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 counterfactual 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.

[edit] 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. Ferguson wrote two volumes about the prominent Rothschild Family, being:

  • The House of Rothschild: Volume 1: Money's Prophets: 1798-1848
  • The House of Rothschild: Volume 2: The World's Banker: 1849-1999

The books 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 [4]

[edit] 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 predetermined. 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. His championing of the method - he edited a volume of counterfactual essays - was controversial within the field[1].

[edit] War of the World

The War of the World, published in 2006, had been ten years in the making and is a comprehensive analysis, of the savagery of the 20th century. Ferguson shows how a combination of economic volatility, decaying empires, psychopathic dictators, and racially/ethnically motivated (and institutionalised) violence resulted in the wars, and the genocides of what he calls "History's Age of Hatred". The New York Times Book Review named War of the World one the 100 Notable Books of the Year in 2006, while the International Herald Tribune called it "one of the most intriguing attempts by an historian to explain man's inhumanity to man"[5][6]. Ferguson addresses the paradox that whilst the Twentieth century was "so bloody" it was also "a time of unparalleled [economic] progress". As with his earlier work Empire[7], War of the World was accompanied by a Channel 4 television series [8] presented by Ferguson.

[edit] Henry Kissinger

Ferguson is currently working on a biography of former United States Secretary of State Henry Kissinger[9].

[edit] Commentator

As a commentator on events, Ferguson supported the 2003 Invasion of Iraq. Ferguson 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 ([10]). 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.[11]

[edit] Economic policy

In its August 15, 2005 edition, The New Republic published "The New New Deal", an essay by Ferguson and Laurence J. Kotlikoff, a Professor of Economics at Boston University. The two scholars called for the following changes to the American government's fiscal and income security policies:

  • Replacing the personal income tax, corporate income tax, FICA payroll tax, estate tax, and gift tax with a 33% Federal Retail Sales Tax (FRST), plus a monthly rebate, amounting to the FRST a household with similar demographics would pay if its income were at the poverty line. See also: FairTax;
  • Replacing the Old Age benefits paid under Social Security with a Personal Security System (PSS), consisting of private retirement accounts for all citizens, plus a government benefit payable to those whose savings were insufficient to afford a minimum retirement income;
  • 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 Harvard's Samuel J. Abrams explored attitudes towards immigration in Europe and the United States

Recently Ferguson was appointed as an Investment Management Consultant by GLG Partners focusing on geopolitical risk as well as current structural issues in economic behaviour relating to investment decisions. GLG is a UK based hedge fund manager, one of the world's largest, with a recent listing on the New York Stock Exchange.


[edit] Critical Reception

Niall Ferguson's work has received a range of responses from journalists, including praise from The Times[2] and The New York Review of Books[3], as well as criticism from a writer for British newspaper The Independent[4], Johann Hari. His revisionism has received praise from some historians, too, such as David Clay Large, who praised his study of the First World War[5], but others, such as Priyamvada Gopal, are critical of his views[6][7]. Benjamin Wallace-Wells, an editor of The Washington Monthly, has criticised Ferguson for making "sweeping, absolute claims" without sufficient support or any original research to back them up, and of contradicting the academic consensus for the sake of being contrarian.[8] Ferguson denies this [9].

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Niall Ferguson Interview: Conversations with History; Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley
  2. ^ Amazon.com: Empire How Britain Made the Modern World: Books: Niall Ferguson
  3. ^ Amazon.com: The War of the World: Books: Niall Ferguson
  4. ^ Johann Hari - Archive
  5. ^ Amazon.com: The Pity of War: Explaining World War I: Books: Niall Ferguson
  6. ^ Priyamvada Gopal: The story peddled by imperial apologists is a poisonous fairytale | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited
  7. ^ Niall Ferguson: We must understand why racist belief systems persist | Guardian daily comment | Guardian Unlimited
  8. ^ "Right Man's Burden" by Benjamin Wallace-Wells
  9. ^ Niall Ferguson: The empire rebuilder | 7 Days | The Observer

[edit] References

  • Snowman, Daniel (2004) "Niall Ferguson," History Today 54(10): 37-39.

[edit] 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)
  • (2003) Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order. Basic Books. 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: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and Lessons for Global Power, 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
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[edit] External links