A bridge too far for Niall Ferguson?

Sean Ennis

I have read many historians, from Margaret MacMillan to Ian Kershaw to Michael Burleigh to Richard Overy and Mark Mazower. All of them very good, but Niall Ferguson is still my favorite and I disagree with those who say his research and arguments are shallow, as they are not. For example The War of the World, is excellently researched and is intriguing. Academic historians are just snobby and jealous. Most of them, including many I know criticize him and have not even read his books. Ferguson makes his arguments accessible to the public and ask intriguing, big picture questions, while the snobs in academia write incredibly boring books. Its simple: jealousy and snobbery.

Nik Darlington

@Sean Ennis

Niall Ferguson is an impressive historian and public figure and his books are often a joy to read. DB is right to point out his status first and foremost as a financial historian. The Cash Nexus is excellent and the economic parts of Empire are the most compelling. His work on the Rothschilds banking dynasty was genuinely scholarly.

Even War of the Worlds had its beguiling and insightful triptych of causation.

@Sean Ennis is correct to make the case that Ferguson should be extolled for bringing decent history into people's living rooms and on to their bookshelves. And it is decent history, for the most part. There is certainly an element of jealousy in academe at all his millions and global influence.

But @Sean Ennis should be aware that this "excellent research" is not Ferguson's alone, or even - in the case of War of the World - mostly his. That book contains barely any original research and Ferguson employed a team of twelve researchers to compile the information for him.

This isn't a criticism as such. For a man in such demand as Niall Ferguson, with so many commitments and academic chairs around the world (as DB comprehensively covers, although I think he missed out his editorial role with the FT?), it is practically impossible for him to knock out the books and TV series at the rate that he does.

He is singularly one of the most impressive individuals I've ever met. Let us enjoy Ferguson for the accessible and exciting history that he produces but never forget that as a global intellectual celebrity, he left the world of scholarship far behind many years ago.

alleagra

It certainly is amazing to discover from this review that Niall Ferguson upholds British Imerialism on the grounds that Louis XIV, Hitler and Hirohito weren’t British.

David Blackburn

Sean Ennis,

Thank you for your comment. The War of the World is an excellent book and original in its presentation. But it's a work of synthesis - so too Empire, so too Collosus, except for the passages concerning finance, which is Ferguson's research field.

All of Ferguson's books are compelling popular history, as important to that genre as Macaulay. I think you have a point about snobbery and certainly Ferguson himself complains about its social manifestation, but, as I wrote above, I don't think his style helps. But what frustrates academics and many readers (including this one) is Ferguson's refusal to delve into a subject. His challenge to the post-colonial consensus on empire is important and exciting; so why not extend his research instead of just using the comparatively little he has done to support liberal intervention in the contemporary world? Besides, teleology is a highly suspect form of historical analysis and has been since Weber's critique of Marx.

PS: You mention War of the World, have you read Huw Strachan's history of WWI? To my mind it's the most accessible academic history of that conflict and its effects. In comparison to Ferguson's book on the subject, the depth of research and the insights that arise from it are staggering.

Pat Shuff

Ferguson contends that money and finance are as important or even more important than politics in the shapings of the world and history. Academics are financially illiterate and largely ignorant of all things money in any detailed way, finding politics and government primary in all that has gone before and presently.

Presently in the Eurozone events are being driven by access to credit markets or lack thereof, the willingness of lenders to lend and the credibility of the borrowers to pay back in full what has been lent on terms it has been lent, sovereignty has been ceded to the credit markets at the behest of the electorate that it be done. Leadership acquiesced to the demands of the followship but nobody wishes to point the finger of blame at the mirror.

You may not be interested in war but war is interested in you. Trotsky.

Finance too.

Ferguson knows this and has researched and written well on this point. Academics finding politics and government and state the be all and end all are concentrating on the secondary to the neglect of the primary out of ignorance of the real world which don't live, work or circulate in. And of course are smarter than everybody else.

For example the failure of European financiers to fund the south in the US civil war, repayment being dependent upon a southern victory which was in question, was key to the outcome and history. As was the fall of New Orleans calling into question the ability of the south to export its cotton backing cotton backed bonds. It was the money. The Chinese famines in the Mao era due to the need to collect up all the grain for repayment to their creditor, the Soviets, a financial decision. The fall of the wall and and cutting loose of the subsidized satellites of the Eastern Bloc and Cuba, a financial not political decision. Academic historians do not highlight the money aspects of historical events of epic proportion because they don't even know and no one in their profession can teach them.

Dan

I am not convinced by David Blackburn's argument. Strachan's book might be long, erudite and thoroughly researched but he goes too far in downplaying German responsibility for the war's outbreak. Holger Herwig, John Rohl, and indeed, Niall Ferguson have demonstrated otherwise persuasively.

Sean Ennis

David Blackburn,

Thank you very much for your thoughtful and considerate analysis of Ferguson. However I would like to point out extra things.

First while it is certainly true that Ferguson has relied on the help of his research students (though not all the time), this does not mean he is only one. If he is guilty of it then many "professional historians" (a title that I find know to be a used and abused term by many in academia), including many of his opponents, are guilty of to, as many of them have research assistants. This in many ways proves their double standards.
Secondly, many academic historians (not all) have become complacent and continually rehash and use dusty interpretations, instead of constantly questioning them and testing them. That is what I find annoying academic historians right now. They make it boring because they rarely like to question their long held beliefs and theories.

But thank you very much for your comment.

Sincerely,

Sean Ennis