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Academic career

• 1987—88 Hanseatic Scholar
• 1989—90 Research Fellow, Christ’s College, University of Cambridge
• 1990—92 Official Fellow and Lecturer, Peterhouse, University of Cambridge
• 1992—2000 Fellow and Tutor in Modern History, Jesus College, University of Oxford
• 2000—02 Professor of Political and Financial History, University of Oxford
• 2002—04 John Herzog Professor in Financial History at Stern School of Business, New York University
• 2004, continuing. Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History, Harvard University and William Ziegler Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School.
• 2010, continuing. Philippe Roman Chair in History and International Affairs at the London School of Economics, located within LSE IDEAS, beginning in 2010.

Ferguson is 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, and an advisory fellow of the Barsanti Military History Center at the University of North Texas.

In May 2010 he announced that the Education Secretary in Britain's newly elected Conservative/Lib Dem government had invited him to write a new history syllabus..."history as a connected narrative"... for schools in England and Wales.

In the award-winning play The History Boys, by one of Ferguson's detractors, Alan Bennett, Ferguson is used as an inspiration for the character of Irwin, the "iconoclastic" and controversialist history teacher who tells his students to regard Carry On films as cultural artifacts rather than only appreciating the classics such as Walt Whitman and then Irwin becomes a "dumbed-down" TV personality and finally a "manipulative" political minister; Ferguson reacted that he "practically jumped out of the stalls" when he noticed his name in the introduction as he went to see the play and "Alan Bennett has had his fun but I’d like you to sit down while we look at some spreadsheets and graphs comparing my sales with Alan Bennett." Ferguson goes on to say that he thinks many viewers liked Irwin (even if Bennett intended the opposite), and The Guardian's reviewer...a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and critically-acclaimed in the visual arts -- posited that without teachers like Irwin (or Ferguson) who challenge the conventional wisdom, "we would soon end up with the kind of cloying, patriotic narrative that envelops public history in America and elsewhere." In contrast, he found the teachers whom Bennett offered as an alternative to Irwin to be bad teachers: the character of Mrs. Lintott for boring the students with memorization of names, dates and places, and Bennett's protagonist, Hector, for giving the students "off-piste [off-track] intellectualism" and a "mechanistic" Victorian teaching style compared to Irwin.

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, Niall Ferguson left The Sunday Telegraph to join the Financial Times, where he is now a contributing editor.

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.

World War I

In 1998 Ferguson published the critically acclaimed The Pity of War: Explaining World War One. 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 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.

The “myths” of World War I that Ferguson attacks, with his counter-arguments in parentheticals, 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 part of Germany that necessitated British involvement to stop Germany from conquering Europe (Ferguson claims 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 chose 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 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 have easily 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 One, 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 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 was controversial within the field.

Henry Kissinger

In 2003, former United States 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 the man.

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, 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%.

A recent New Republic piece with Harvard's Samuel J. Abrams explored attitudes towards immigration in Europe and the United States.

As scholar

A few 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 renowned 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".

Eric Hobsbawm has praised Ferguson as an excellent historian. However, he has also criticised Ferguson, saying, on the BBC Radio Program "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.

Exchange with Krugman

In May 2009, Ferguson became involved in a high-profile exchange of views with economist Paul Krugman (then the most recent Economics Nobel Prize winner) arising out of a panel discussion hosted by Pen/New York Review on April 30, 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 has argued that Ferguson's view is "resurrecting 75-year old fallacies" and full of "basic errors". He has 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." J. Bradford DeLong of Berkeley agreed with Krugman, concluding "Niall Ferguson does indeed know a lot less than economists knew in the 1920s".

However, in the weeks after that exchange, market interest rates did rise, and on May 30 Ferguson claimed this as vindication of his position. Krugman, at first, stated that the increase in interest rates reflects an improvement in market sentiment. But then on June 29, 2010, investors took notice as Krugman acknowledged that he believed there was risk of a "depression" and as of June 2010 the interest rates are back down again.

Ferguson criticized Krugman in his December 7, 2009 Newsweek cover story, "An Empire at Risk," accusing that Krugman's partisanship caused him to change his position between 2003 and 2004. Ferguson wrote:

Now, who said the following? 'My prediction is that politicians will eventually be tempted to resolve the [fiscal] crisis the way irresponsible governments usually do: by printing money, both to pay current bills and to inflate away debt. And as that temptation becomes obvious, interest rates will soar.' Seems pretty reasonable to me. The surprising thing is that this was none other than Paul Krugman, the high priest of Keynesianism, writing back in March 2003. A year and a half later he was comparing the U.S. deficit with Argentina's (at a time when it was 4.5 percent of GDP). Has the economic situation really changed so drastically that now the same Krugman believes it was 'deficits that saved us,' and wants to see an even larger deficit next year? Perhaps. But it might just be that the party in power has changed.

After attending The Glasgow Academy, Ferguson received a Demyship (half-scholarship) at Magdalen College, Oxford, graduating with a first-class honours degree in History in 1985.

He is married to journalist Susan Douglas, whom he met in 1987 when she was his editor at the Daily Mail. They have three children. In February 2010 the Daily Mail reported that, following a series of affairs, Ferguson had left his wife for former Dutch MP and feminist critic of Islam Ayaan Hirsi Ali. A similar story in The Independent was followed by the publication of a correction, noting that Ferguson's marriage had broken down before he met Ali.

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. Ferguson also made a case against historians such as Paul Kennedy who argued 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.

Colossus and Empire

In his books Colossus and Empire, Ferguson presents a nuanced and partially apologetic view 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 came to regard his earlier advocacy of American hegemony in foreign affairs in The Cash Nexus as unrealistic. In his view, the Iraq War was largely a consequence of domestic politics, including interdepartmental rivalries within the U.S. government.

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 [economic] 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.

Publications

[1]

• (also a Channel 4 series)

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.), 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.), The Historical Experience of British and German Jews in Comparison (J.C.B. Mohr, 1999)
• “Academics and the Press”, in Stephen Glover (ed.), Journalists on Journalism (Penguin, 1999), pp. 206—220
• “Metternich and the Rothschilds: A reappraisal” in Andrea Hamel and Edward Timms (eds.), 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 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.), 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.), 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.), 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.), 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.), Globalization in Historical Perspective (National Bureau of Economic Research Conference Report) (University of Chicago Press, 2003)
• “Introduction to Tzvetan Todorov” in Nicholas Owen (ed.), 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.), 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 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.), 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)

Notes

General references