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Niall Ferguson

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Niall Ferguson
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Niall Ferguson

Niall Ferguson (b. April 18, 1964 in Glasgow, Scotland) is a well-known and widely published British historian of modern imperialism. He is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University, 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.

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Historian

Ferguson is probably the best known British historian alive today in North America. Ferguson is incumbent Professor of History at Harvard University and is currently Herzog Professor in Financial History at Stern School of Business, New York University, and Visiting Professor of History and Senior Research Fellow at Jesus College, University of Oxford. He is an specialist in financial and economic history. Ferguson has earned a reputation as a revisionist who challenges many of the long-standing orthodoxies in history. Ferguson's wide profile in journalism and his revisionist reputation has led him to be compared to A.J.P. Taylor, though the comparison is not entirely apt: there is a very wide gulf between both the beliefs and methods of Ferguson and Taylor. However, Ferguson does list Taylor as an second-favorite historian and credits seeing Taylor on the televison in the 1960s and 1970s as an inspiration to becoming an historian. Ferguson's favorite historian is Fritz Stern, who Ferguson has praised as one of the few historians who are just as well-versed in economic matters as they are in historical questions. 
In his 2001 book The Cash Nexus , Ferguson argued that the popular saying,"money makes the world go 'round," is wrong; instead he presented an case for human actions in history more motivated by far then just economic concerns. In the same book, Ferguson made an case against those historians such as Paul Kennedy, who argued that the United States was an politically and economically over-stretched power on the verge of collapse. If anything, Ferguson argued that United States was not sufficiently involved in the affairs of the world. In his books Colossus and Empire, Ferguson presented the British Empire as an essentially benevolent institution and expressed regret that the modern U.S could not be like the 19th century British Empire.    

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, particulary 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 and allowed Germany to win the war. Ferguson has argued that the British decision to intervene was what stopped an German victory over France and Russia in 1914-1915.  Furthermore, Ferguson expressed disagreement with the Sonderweg interpretation of German history championed by such 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 then a dress rehearsal for the Third Reich. Likewise, Ferguson has often attacked the work of the German historian Michael Stürmer who has argued that it was Germany's geographical situation in Central Europe that determined the course of German history. 

On the contrary, Ferguson maintained that Germany waged a preventive war in 1914, a war largely forced on the Germans by reckless and irresponsible British diplomacy. In particular, Ferguson has accused the British Foreign Secretary Edward Grey of maintaining an ambiguous attitude to the question of whatever 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 be saved, something looking much like the present-day European Union would have been founded in 1914 and Britain would remain an Empire and the world's dominant financial power. 


Ferguson is the leading academic champion of Virtual history. Ferguson likes to imagine alternative outcomes to history 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 which will determine how things will work out. The world is neither progressing nor regressing; only the actions of individuals will determinate whatever we live in a better or worse world.  

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 that allowed tremendous economic growth all over the world.



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 a catastrophes equivalent to those that befell Germany during the Nazi era. Ferguson has generally 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 ([link]). 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".


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:





Reference



Academic Career

Previous academic positions Ferguson has held are:



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




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