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Niall Ferguson
BornNiall Campbell Douglas Ferguson
(1964-04-18) 18 April 1964 (age 60)
Glasgow, Scotland
NationalityBritish
Alma materMagdalen College, Oxford
Known forEmpire: How Britain Made the Modern World
Spouses
Susan Douglas ​ ​(m. 1987; div. 2011)​
Ayaan Hirsi Ali ​(m. 2011)​
Scientific career
FieldsInternational history, economic history, American and British imperial history
InstitutionsHarvard University

Niall Campbell Douglas Ferguson (born 18 April 1964) is a British historian. He is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University. His speciality is international history, economic history, particularly hyperinflation and the bond markets, and British and American imperialism.

Ferguson's books include Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World, The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World and Civilization: The West and the Rest, all of which he has presented as Channel 4 television series.

In 2004, he was named as one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine. Since 2011, he has been a contributing editor for Bloomberg Television and a columnist for Newsweek. As of 2012, he is working on the official biography of Henry Kissinger to whom he has been granted unprecedented access.

Early life

Ferguson was born in Glasgow, Scotland on 18 April 1964. His father was a doctor and his mother a physics teacher. He attended The Glasgow Academy. He was brought up as and remains an atheist.

Ferguson cites his father as instilling in him a strong sense of self-discipline and of the moral value of work, while his mother encouraged his creative side. His journalist maternal grandfather encouraged him to write. Unable to decide on studying an English or a History degree at university, Ferguson cites his reading of War and Peace as persuading him towards History.

University of Oxford

Ferguson received a Demyship (half-scholarship) at Magdalen College, Oxford. Whilst there he became best friends with Andrew Sullivan, based on a shared affinity for right-wing politics and punk music. He became a Thatcherite by 1982, identifying the position with "the Sex Pistols' position in 1977: it was a rebellion against the stuffy corporatism of the 70s." While at university "He was very much a Scot on the make...Niall was a witty, belligerent bloke who seemed to have come from an entirely different planet," according to Simon Winder. Ferguson has stated that "I was surrounded by insufferable Etonians with fake Cockney accents who imagined themselves to be working-class heroes in solidarity with the striking miners. It wasn't long before it became clear that the really funny and interesting people on campus were Thatcherites."

He graduated with a first-class honours degree in History in 1985. He received his D.Phil from Magdalen College in 1989, and his dissertation was entitled "Business and Politics in the German Inflation: Hamburg 1914–1924".

Career

Academic career

Ferguson is a Senior Research Fellow of Jesus College, University of Oxford 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, and an advisory fellow of the Barsanti Military History Center at the University of North Texas.

In May 2010, he announced that Education Secretary Michael Gove in the UK's Conservative/Lib Dem government had invited him to advise on the development of a new history syllabus—"history as a connected narrative"— for schools in England and Wales. In June 2011, he joined other academics to set up the New College of the Humanities, a private college in London.

Business career

In 2007, 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 management firm headed by Noam Gottesman.

Career as commentator

In October 2007, Ferguson left The Sunday Telegraph to join the Financial Times where he was a contributing editor. He also writes for Newsweek.

Ferguson has often described the European Union as a disaster waiting to happen, and has criticised President Vladimir Putin of Russia for authoritarianism. In Ferguson's view, certain of Putin's policies, if they continue, may stand to lead Russia to catastrophes equivalent to those that befell Germany during the Nazi era.

Interests and views

World War I

In 1998, Ferguson published the critically acclaimed The Pity of War: Explaining World War One, which with the help of research assistants he was able to write in just five months. This 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 might 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 1914–15. 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. 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 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 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 confusing Berlin over just what was the British attitude towards the question of intervention in the war. Ferguson 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 could be traced back to Imperial Germany; instead Ferguson asserted the origins of Nazism could only be traced back to the First World War and its aftermath.

The "myths" of World War I that Ferguson attacked (with his counter-arguments in parentheses), are:

  • That Germany was a highly militarist country before 1914 (Ferguson claims Germany was Europe's most anti-militarist country)
  • That naval challenges mounted by Germany drove Britain into informal alliances with France and Russia before 1914 (Ferguson claims the British were driven into alliances with France and Russia as a form of appeasement due to the strength of those nations, and an Anglo-German alliance failed to materialize due to German weakness)
  • That British foreign policy was driven by legitimate fears of Germany (Ferguson claims Germany posed no threat to Britain before 1914, and that all British fears of Germany were due to irrational anti-German prejudices)
  • That the pre-1914 arms race was consuming ever larger portions of national budgets at an unsustainable rate (Ferguson claims that the only limitations on more military spending before 1914 were political, not economic)
  • That World War I was, as Fritz Fischer claimed, a war of aggression on the part of Germany that necessitated British involvement to stop Germany from conquering Europe (Ferguson claims that if Germany had been victorious, something like the European Union would have been created in 1914, and that it would have been for the best if Britain had chosen to opt out of war in 1914)
  • That most people were happy with the outbreak of war in 1914 (Ferguson claims that most Europeans were saddened by the coming of war)
  • That propaganda was successful in making men wish to fight (Ferguson argues the opposite)
  • That the Allies made the best use of their economic resources (Ferguson argues that the Allies “squandered” their economic resources)
  • That the British and the French had the better armies (Ferguson claims the German Army was superior)
  • That the Allies were more efficient at killing Germans (Ferguson argues that the Germans were more efficient at killing the Allies)
  • That most soldiers hated fighting in the war (Ferguson argues most soldiers fought more or less willingly)
  • That the British treated German prisoners of war well (Ferguson argues the British routinely killed German POWs)
  • That Germany was faced with reparations after 1921 that could not be paid except at ruinous economic cost (Ferguson argues that Germany could easily have paid reparations had there been the political will)

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 I, then the lives of millions would have been saved, something like the European Union would have been founded in 1914, and Britain would have remained an empire and the world's dominant financial power.

Rothschilds

Ferguson wrote two volumes about the prominent Rothschild family:

  • 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 were also short-listed for the Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Literary Award and the American National Jewish Book Award.

Counterfactual history

Ferguson in May 2010 at the 40. St. Gallen Symposium at the University of St. Gallen

Ferguson sometimes champions 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 has been controversial within the field.

In a 2011 review of Ferguson's book Civilization: The West and the Rest, Noel Malcolm (a Senior Research Fellow in History at All Souls College at Oxford University) stated (without mentioning counterfactuals) that: "Students may find this an intriguing introduction to a wide range of human history; but they will get an odd idea of how historical argument is to be conducted, if they learn it from this book."

Henry Kissinger

In 2003, former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger provided Ferguson with access to his White House diaries, letters, and archives for what Ferguson calls a "warts-and-all biography" of Kissinger.

Colonialism

Ferguson is critical of what he calls the "self-flagellation" that he says characterizes modern European thought.

"The moral simplification urge is an extraordinarily powerful one, especially in this country, where imperial guilt can lead to self-flagellation," he told a reporter. "And it leads to very simplistic judgments. The rulers of western Africa prior to the European empires were not running some kind of scout camp. They were engaged in the slave trade. They showed zero sign of developing the country's economic resources. Did Senegal ultimately benefit from French rule? Yes, it's clear. And the counterfactual idea that somehow the indigenous rulers would have been more successful in economic development doesn't have any credibility at all."

Richard Drayton, Rhodes Professor of Imperial History at the University of London, has stated that it is correct to associate "Ferguson with an attempt to 'rehabilitate empire' in the service of contemporary great power interests".

Bernard Porter attacked Empire in The London Review of Books as a "panegyric to British colonialism". Ferguson in response to this drew Porter's attention to the conclusion of the book, where he writes: "No one would claim that the record of the British Empire was unblemished. On the contrary, I have tried to show how often it failed to live up to its own ideal of individual liberty, particularly in the early era of enslavement, transportation and the "ethnic cleansing" of indigenous peoples." Ferguson argues however that the British Empire was preferable to the alternatives:

'The 19th-century empire undeniably pioneered free trade, free capital movements and, with the abolition of slavery, free labour. It invested immense sums in developing a global network of modern communications. It spread and enforced the rule of law over vast areas. Though it fought many small wars, the empire maintained a global peace unmatched before or since. In the 20th century too the empire more than justified its own existence. For the alternatives to British rule represented by the German and Japanese Empires were clearly – and they admitted it themselves – far worse. And without its empire, it is inconceivable that Britain could have withstood them.'

Islam and Eurabia

Matthew Carr wrote in Race & Class that "Niall Ferguson, the conservative English historian and enthusiastic advocate of a new American empire, has also embraced the Eurabian idea in a widely reproduced article entitled ‘Eurabia?’, in which he laments the 'de-Christianization of Europe' and its culture of secularism that leaves the continent 'weak in the face of fanaticism'." Carr adds that "Ferguson sees the recent establishment of a department of Islamic studies in his Oxford college as another symptom of 'the creeping Islamicization of a decadent Christendom'" and that in a 2004 lecture at the American Enterprise Institute entitled 'The end of Europe?', "Ferguson struck a similarly Spenglerian note, conjuring the term 'impire' to depict a process in which a ‘political entity, instead of expanding outwards towards its periphery, exporting power, implodes – when the energies come from outside into that entity’. In Ferguson's opinion, this process was already under way in a decadent 'post-Christian' Europe that was drifting inexorably towards the dark denouement of a vanquished civilisation and the fatal embrace of Islam."

Iraq war

Ferguson supported the Iraq war and is not necessarily opposed to future incursions in the world.

"It's all very well for us to sit here in the west with our high incomes and cushy lives, and say it's immoral to violate the sovereignty of another state. But if the effect of that is to bring people in that country economic and political freedom, to raise their standard of living, to increase their life expectancy, then don't rule it out".

Economic policy

In its 15 August 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, Federal Insurance Contributions Act tax (FICA), 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, 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 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%

Criticisms

As scholar

Fellow academics have questioned Ferguson's commitment to scholarship. Benjamin Wallace-Wells, an editor of The Washington Monthly, comments 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."

John Lewis Gaddis, a Cold War era historian, characterized Ferguson as having unrivaled "range, productivity and visibility" at the same time as criticising his work as being "unpersuasive". Gaddis goes on to state that "several of Ferguson's claims, moreover, are contradictory".

Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm has praised Ferguson as an excellent historian. However, he has also criticised Ferguson, saying, on the BBC Radio programme Start the Week, that he was a "nostalgist for empire". Ferguson responded to the above criticisms in a Washington Post "Live Discussions" online forum in 2006.

Exchanges with Krugman

In May 2009, Ferguson became involved in a high-profile exchange of views with economist Paul Krugman (winner in 2008 of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics) arising out of a panel discussion hosted by Pen/New York Review on 30 April 2009, regarding the U.S. economy. Ferguson contended that the Obama administration's policies are simultaneously Keynesian and monetarist, in an incoherent mix, and specifically that the government's issuance of a multitude of new bonds will cause an increase in interest rates. Krugman then extended the criticism to China and the European Union, as both pursued policies more in accord with Ferguson's stance than Krugman's.

Krugman argued that Ferguson's view is "resurrecting 75-year old fallacies" and full of "basic errors". He also stated that Ferguson is a "poseur" who "hasn't bothered to understand the basics, relying on snide comments and surface cleverness to convey the impression of wisdom. It's all style, no comprehension of substance."

In 2012, Jonathan Portes, the Director of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, noted that subsequent events had shown Ferguson to be wrong: "As we all know, since then both the US and UK have had deficits running at historically extremely high levels, and long-term interest rates at historic lows: as Krugman has repeatedly pointed out, the (IS-LM) textbook has been spot on."

Personal life

Ferguson married journalist Susan Douglas, whom he met in 1987 when she was his editor at the Daily Mail. They have three children. They separated in 2010 and divorced in 2011.

In February 2010 news media reported that Ferguson had separated from Douglas and started dating former Dutch MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Ferguson married Hirsi Ali in September 2011 and Hirsi Ali gave birth to their son in December 2011.

Ferguson dedicated his book Civilization to "Ayaan". In an interview with The Guardian, Ferguson spoke about his love for Ali, who, he writes in the preface, "understands better than anyone I know what Western civilisation really means – and what it still has to offer the world". Ali, he continued,

...grew up in the Muslim world, was born in Somalia, spent time in Saudi Arabia, was a fundamentalist as a teenager. Her journey from the world of her childhood and family to where she is today is an odyssey that's extremely hard for you or I to imagine. To see and hear how she understands western philosophy, how she understands the great thinkers of the Enlightenment, of the 19th-century liberal era, is a great privilege, because she sees it with a clarity and freshness of perspective that's really hard for us to match. So much of liberalism in its classical sense is taken for granted in the west today and even disrespected. We take freedom for granted, and because of this we don't understand how incredibly vulnerable it is.

Ferguson's self confessed workaholism has placed strains on his personal relations in the past. Ferguson has commented that:

...from 2002, the combination of making TV programmes and teaching at Harvard took me away from my children too much. You don't get those years back. You have to ask yourself: "Was it a smart decision to do those things?" I think the success I have enjoyed since then has been bought at a significant price. In hindsight, there would have been a bunch of things that I would have said no to.

Ferguson was the inspiration for Alan Bennett's play The History Boys (2004), particularly the character of Irwin, a history teacher who urges his pupils to find a counterintuitive angle, and goes on to become a television historian.

Bibliography

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, Ferguson argues 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.

Colossus and Empire

In his books Colossus and Empire, Ferguson presents reinterpretation of the history of the British Empire and in conclusion proposes that the modern policies of the United Kingdom and the United States, in taking a more active role in resolving conflict arising from the failure of states, are analogous to the 'Anglicization' policies adopted by the British Empire throughout the 19th century. In Colossus, Ferguson explores the United States' hegemony in foreign affairs and its future role in the world.

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 institutionalized) 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 of 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". Ferguson addresses the paradox that, though the 20th century was "so bloody", it was also "a time of unparalleled progress". As with his earlier work Empire, War of the World was accompanied by a Channel 4 television series presented by Ferguson.

The Ascent of Money

Published in 2008, The Ascent of Money examines the long history of money, credit, and banking. In it he predicts a financial crisis as a result of the world economy and in particular the United States using too much credit. Specifically he cites the China–America dynamic which he refers to as Chimerica where an Asian "savings glut" helped create the subprime mortgage crisis with an influx of easy money.

Civilization

Published in 2011, Civilization: The West and the Rest examines what Ferguson calls the most "interesting question" of our day: "Why, beginning around 1500, did a few small polities on the western end of the Eurasian landmass come to dominate the rest of the world?" He attributes this divergence to the West's development of six "killer apps" largely missing elsewhere in the world - "competition, science, democracy, medicine, consumerism and the work ethic". A related documentary Civilization: Is the West History? was broadcast as a six part series on Channel 4 in March and April 2011.

Publications

This list is incomplete; you can help by adding missing items. (August 2008)
  • Ferguson, Niall (2012). Henry Kissinger: A Life. Allen Lane.
  • Ferguson, Niall (2011). Civilization: The West and the Rest. The Penguin Press HC. ISBN 978-1-59420-305-3.
  • Ferguson, Niall (2010). High Financier: The Lives And Times Of Siegmund Warburg. New York: Penguin. ISBN 978-1-59420-246-9.
  • Ferguson, Niall (2008). The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World. London: Allen Lane. ISBN 978-1-84614-106-5.
  • Ferguson, Niall (2006). The War of the World: History's Age of Hatred. London: Allen Lane. ISBN 0-7139-9708-7. (also a Channel 4 series)
  • Ferguson, Niall (2003). Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power. New York: Basic Books. ISBN 0-465-02328-2.
  • Ferguson, Niall (2005). 1914. Pocket Penguins 70s S. London, England: Penguin Books Ltd. ISBN 0-14-102220-5.
  • Ferguson, Niall (2004). Colossus: The Rise And Fall Of The American Empire. Gardners Books. ISBN 0-7139-9770-2.
  • Ferguson, Niall (2003). Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World. London: Allen Lane. ISBN 0-7139-9615-3.
  • Ferguson, Niall (2001). The Cash Nexus: Money and Power in the Modern World, 1700-2000. London: Allen Lane. ISBN 0-7139-9465-7.
  • Ferguson, Niall (1999) . Virtual History: Alternatives and Counterfactuals. New York: Basic Books. ISBN 0-465-02322-3.
  • Ferguson, Niall (1999) . The Pity of War. New York: Basic Books. ISBN 0-465-05711-X.
  • Ferguson, Niall (1999). The House of Rothschild: The World's Banker, 1849–1999. New York, N.Y.: Viking. ISBN 0-670-88794-3.
  • Ferguson, Niall (1998). The World's Banker: The History of the House of Rothschild. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. ISBN 0-297-81539-3.
  • Ferguson, Niall (1998). The House of Rothschild. New York: Viking. ISBN 0-670-85768-8.
  • Ferguson, Niall (1995). Paper and Iron: Hamburg Business and German Politics in the Era of Inflation, 1897–1927. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-47016-1.

As Contributor

  • “Europa nervosa”, in Nader Mousavizadeh (ed.), The Black Book of Bosnia (New Republic/Basic Books, 1996), pp. 127–32
  • “The German inter-war economy: Political choice versus economic determinism” in Mary Fulbrook (ed.), German History since 1800 (Arnold, 1997), pp. 258–278
  • “The balance of payments question: Versailles and after” in Manfred F. Boemeke, Gerald D. Feldman and Elisabeth Glaser (eds.), The Treaty of Versailles: A Reassessment after 75 Years (Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 401–440
  • “‘The Caucasian Royal Family’: The Rothschilds in national contexts” in R. Liedtke (ed.), ‘Two Nations’: The Historical Experience of British and German Jews in Comparison (J.C.B. Mohr, 1999)
  • “Academics and the Press”, in Stephen Glover (ed.), Secrets of the Press: Journalists on Journalism (Penguin, 1999), pp. 206–220
  • “Metternich and the Rothschilds: A reappraisal” in Andrea Hamel and Edward Timms (eds.), Progress and Emancipation in the Age of Metternich: Jews and Modernisation in Austria and Germany, 1815–1848 (Edwin Mellen Press, 1999), pp. 295–325
  • “The European economy, 1815–1914” in T.C.W. Blanning (ed.), The Short Oxford History of Europe: The Nineteenth Century (Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 78–125
  • “How (not) to pay for the war: Traditional finance and total war” in Roger Chickering and Stig Förster (eds.), Great War, Total War: Combat and Mobilization on the Western Front (Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 409–34
  • “Introduction” in Frederic Manning, Middle Parts of Fortune (Penguin, 2000), pp. vii-xviii
  • “Clashing civilizations or mad mullahs: The United States between informal and formal empire” in Strobe Talbott (ed.), The Age of Terror (Basic Books, 2001), pp. 113–41
  • “Public debt as a post-war problem: The German experience after 1918 in comparative perspective” in Mark Roseman (ed.), Three Post-War Eras in Comparison: Western Europe 1918-1945-1989 (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2002), pp. 99–119
  • “Das Haus Sachsen-Coburg und die europäische Politik des 19. Jahrhunderts”, in Rainer von Hessen (ed.), Victoria Kaiserin Friedrich (1840–1901): Mission und Schicksal einer englischen Prinzessin in Deutschland (Campus Verlag, 2002), pp. 27–39
  • “Max Warburg and German politics: The limits of financial power in Wilhelmine Germany”, in Geoff Eley and James Retallack (eds.), Wilhelminism and Its Legacies: German Modernities, Imperialism and the Meaning of Reform, 1890-1930 (Berghahn Books, 2003), pp. 185–201
  • “Introduction”, The Death of the Past by J. H. Plumb (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp. xxi-xlii
  • “Globalization in historical perspective: The political dimension”, in Michael D. Bordo, Alan M. Taylor and Jeffrey G. Williamson (eds.), Globalisation in Historical Perspective (National Bureau of Economic Research Conference Report) (University of Chicago Press, 2003)
  • “Introduction to Tzvetan Todorov” in Nicholas Owen (ed.), Human Rights, Human Wrongs: Oxford Amnesty Lectures (Amnesty International, 2003)
  • “The City of London and British imperialism: New light on an old question”, in Youssef Cassis and Eric Bussière (eds.), London and Paris as International Financial Centres in the Twentieth Century (Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 57–77
  • “A bolt from the blue? The City of London and the outbreak of the First World War”, in Wm. Roger Louis (ed.), Yet More Adventures with Britainnia: Personalities, Politics and Culture in Britain (I.B. Tauris, 2005), pp. 133–145
  • “The first ‘Eurobonds’: The Rothschilds and the financing of the Holy Alliance, 1818–1822”, in William N. Goetzmann and K. Geert Rouwenhorst (eds.), The Origins of Value: The Financial Innovations that Created Modern Capital Markets (Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 311–323
  • “Prisoner taking and prisoner killing in the age of total war”, in George Kassemiris (ed.), The Barbarization of Warfare (New York University Press, 2006), pp. 126–158
  • “The Second World War as an economic disaster”, in Michael Oliver (ed.), Economic Disasters of the Twentieth Century (Edward Elgar, 2007), pp. 83–132
  • “The Problem of Conjecture: American Strategy after the Bush Doctrine”, in Melvyn Leffler and Jeff Legro (eds.), To Lead the World: American Strategy After the Bush Doctrine (Oxford University Press, 2008)

Television documentaries

  • Empire (2003)
  • American Colossus (2004)
  • The War of the World (2006)
  • The Ascent of Money (2008)
  • Civilization: Is the West History? (2011)
  • China: Triumph and Turmoil (2012)

BBC Reith Lectures

In May 2012 the BBC announced Niall Ferguson was to present its annual Reith Lectures - a prestigious series of radio lectures which were first broadcast in 1948. Ferguson's series of four lectures titled The Rule of Law and its Enemies examine the role man-made institutions have played in the the economic and political spheres..

In the first lecture, titled The Human Hive, Ferguson argues for greater openness from governments saying they should publish accounts which clearly state all assets and liabilities. Governments, he said, should also follow the lead of business and adopt the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles and, above all, generational accounts should be prepared on a regular basis to make absolutely clear the inter-generational implications of current fiscal policy. In the lecture, Ferguson says young voters should be more supportive of government austerity measures if they do not wish to pay further down the line for the profligacy of the baby boomer generation.

The first lecture was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and The BBC World Service on Tuesday, 19 June 2012. The lectures are also available as a BBC podcast.

See also

References

Notes

  1. Biography Niall Ferguson
  2. http://history.fas.harvard.edu/people/faculty/ferguson.php
  3. "Niall Ferguson Says China `Hard Landing' Unlikely". bloomberg.com. 2011-09-29. Retrieved 17 June 2012.
  4. "Spain Bank Crisis Is Not Over, Niall Ferguson Says". bloomberg.com. 2012-06-11. Retrieved 17 June 2012.
  5. Nedelkoff, Robert (2011-09-18). "Niall Ferguson On Interviewing Henry Kissinger". Retrieved 17 June 2012. for eight years on a biography of Henry Kissinger
  6. ^ Smith, David (18 June 2006). "Niall Ferguson: The empire rebuilder". The Observer. Guardian News and Media.
  7. ^ Templeton, Tom (18 January 2009). "This much I know: Niall Ferguson, historian, 44, London". The Observer. Guardian News and Media.
  8. Tassel, Janet (2007). "The Global Empire of Niall Ferguson". Harvard Magazine. Retrieved 17 June 2012.
  9. Ferguson, Niall (2008-01-04). "Niall Ferguson on Belief". Big Think. Retrieved 17 June 2012. Recorded on: October 31, 2007
  10. ^ Duncan, Alistair (19 March 2011). "Niall Ferguson: My family values". The Guardian. Guardian News and Media.
  11. ^ Niall Ferguson, Senior Fellow Hoover Institution, 30 November 2011
  12. ^ Robert Boynton Thinking the Unthinkable: A profile of Niall Ferguson The New Yorker, 12 April 1999
  13. Dissertation abstracts international: The humanities and social sciences, Volume 53, Pages 3019-3391 University Microfilms., 1993. p. 3318
  14. "LSE IDEAS appoints Professor Niall Ferguson to chair in international history". London School of Economics. 2009-03-25. Archived from the original on 2010-03-28. Retrieved 17 June 2012. Philippe Roman Chair in History and International Affairs, for 2010-2011
  15. ^ William Skidelsky (20 February 2011). "Niall Ferguson: 'Westerners don't understand how vulnerable freedom is'". The Observer. Guardian News and Media. Retrieved 24 February 2011.
  16. Higgins, Charlotte (31 May 2010). "Empire strikes back: rightwing historian to get curriculum role". guardian.co.uk. Guardian News and Media. Retrieved 31 May 2010.
  17. Cook, Chris (2011-06-05). "Star professors set up humanities college". Financial Times. Retrieved 17 June 2012.(registration required)
  18. "Meet The Hedge Fund Historian". Forbes.com. 30 September 2007. Retrieved 20 December 2008.
  19. "GLG Company Description". Retrieved 20 December 2008.
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  40. Ferguson, Niall (1999). The House of Rothschild: Money's Prophets, 1798–1848. Vol. Volume 1. New York: Penguin Books. ISBN 0-14-024084-5. {{cite book}}: |volume= has extra text (help)
  41. Ferguson, Niall (2000). The House of Rothschild: The World's Banker 1849–1998. Vol. Volume 2. New York: Penguin Books. ISBN 0-14-028662-4. {{cite book}}: |volume= has extra text (help)
  42. Kreisler, Harry (3 November 2003). "Conversation with Niall Ferguson: Being a Historian". Conversations with History. Regents of the University of California. Retrieved 15 July 2008.
  43. Malcolm, Noel (13 March 2011). "Civilisation: The West and the Rest by Niall Ferguson: review". The Telegraph. The patient testing of evidence must give way to startling statistics, gripping anecdotes and snappy phrase-making. Niall Ferguson is never unintelligent and certainly never dull. Students may find this an intriguing introduction to a wide range of human history; but they will get an odd idea of how historical argument is to be conducted, if they learn it from this book
  44. Hagan, Joe (27 November 2006). "The Once and Future Kissinger". New York Magazine. Retrieved 14 July 2008.
  45. "Letters: The British empire and deaths in Kenya". The Guardian. 16 June 2010.
  46. ^ Tell me where I’m wrong London Review of Books, 19 May 2005
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  48. Niall Ferguson The end of Europe? American Enterprise Institute Bradley Lecture, 1 March 2004
  49. Attention: This template ({{cite doi}}) is deprecated. To cite the publication identified by doi:10.1177/0306396806066636, please use {{cite journal}} (if it was published in a bona fide academic journal, otherwise {{cite report}} with |doi=10.1177/0306396806066636 instead.
  50. Benjamin Wallace-Wells Right Man's Burden Washington Monthly, June 204
  51. "The Last Empire, for Now". New York Times. 25 July 2004. Retrieved 5 May 2012.
  52. Globalisation, democracy and terrorism, Eric Hobsbawm (Abacus 2008)
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  55. Economist Paul Krugman Slams German Austerity Spiegel International, 21 June 2010
  56. Euro-austerity unpopular ... in US, Paul Krugman quotes RFI, 28 June 2010
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  58. US political figures attack European austerity measures guardian.co.uk, 11 June 2010
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  61. The Conscience of a Liberal
  62. Black cats NYTimes.com, 17 August 2009
  63. Portes, Jonathan (June 25, 2012), Macroeconomics: what is it good for? [a response to Diane Coyle], retrieved 2012-06-26{{citation}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
  64. Lynn, Matthew (23 August 2009). "Professor Paul Krugman at war with Niall Ferguson over inflation". Times Online. Retrieved 25 October 2009.(subscription required)
  65. Gray, Sadie (14 February 2010). "PROFILE: Niall Ferguson". Times Online.(subscription required)
  66. Hale, Beth (8 February 2010). "The historian, his wife and a mistress living under a fatwa". Mail Online. Associated Newspapers.
  67. "Niall Ferguson and Ayaan Hirsi Ali". The Independent. 25 February 2010.
  68. Eden, Richard (18 December 2011). "Henry Kissinger watches historian Niall Ferguson marry Ayaan Hirsi Ali under a fatwa". The Telegraph. Retrieved 27 September 2011.
  69. Numann, Jessica (30 December 2011). "Ayaan Hirsi Ali (42) bevalt van een zoon". Elsevier. Retrieved 30 December 2011.
  70. "Ayaan Hirsi Ali gives birth to baby boy". DutchNews.nl (online magazine. 30 December 2011. Retrieved 09 June 2012. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
  71. "Ayaan Hirsi Ali is bevallen van zoon Thomas". Volkskrant. 30 December 2011. Retrieved 09 June 2012. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
  72. Porter, Andrew (April 2003). "Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World". Reviews in History. Institute of Historical Research, University of London. Retrieved 17 February 2011.
  73. Wilson, Jon (8 February 2003). "False and dangerous: Revisionist TV history of Britain's empire is an attempt to justify the new imperial order". guardian.co.uk. Guardian News and Media. Retrieved 17 February 2011.
  74. Waslekar, Sundeep (July 2006). "A Review of: Colossus by Prof Niall Ferguson". StrategicForesight.com. Strategic Foresight Group. Retrieved 17 February 2011.
  75. Roberts, Adam (14 May 2004). "Colossus by Niall Ferguson: An empire in deep denial". The Independent. Retrieved 17 February 2011.
  76. "100 Notable Books of the Year". New York Times. 22 November 2006. Retrieved 14 July 2008.
  77. Ferguson, Niall. "Empire and globalisation". Channel 4. Retrieved 14 July 2008.
  78. ^ "The War of the World". Channel 4. Retrieved 14 July 2008.
  79. McRae, Hamish (31 October 2008). "The Ascent of Money, By Niall Ferguson". The Independent. Retrieved 30 November 2008.
  80. "Civilization: Is the West History?". Retrieved 4 April 2011.
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  82. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-18456131

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