Jack Gallagher (historian)
Jack Gallagher Cambridge School | |
---|---|
Institutions | |
Doctoral students | |
Notable works |
|
Notable ideas | Official mind |
Influenced | Wm. Roger Louis |
John Andrew Gallagher FBA (1 April 1919 – 5 March 1980), known as Jack Gallagher, was an historian of the British Empire who between 1963 and 1970 held the Beit Professorship of Commonwealth History at the University of Oxford and from 1971 until his death was the Vere Harmsworth Professor of Imperial and Naval History at the University of Cambridge.
Early life and career
Gallagher was born in
Scholarship
Gallagher's influential work "
Robinson and Gallagher argued that the
Reviewing the debate in the end of the 20th century, historian Martin Lynn argues that Gallagher and Robinson exaggerated the impact. He says that Britain achieved its goal of increasing its economic interests in many areas "but the broader goal of 'regenerating' societies and thereby creating regions tied as 'tributaries' to British economic interests was not attained." The reasons were
the aim to reshape the world through free trade and its extension overseas owed more to the misplaced optimism of British policy-makers and their partial views of the world than to an understanding of the realities of the mid-19th century globe.... the volumes of trade and investment... the British were able to generate remained limited.... Local economies and local regimes proved adept at restricting the reach of British trade and investment. Local impediments to foreign inroads, the inhabitants' low purchasing power, the resilience of local manufacturing, and the capabilities of local entrepreneurs meant that these areas effectively resisted British economic penetration.[6]
In 1974, he delivered both the Ford Lectures at Oxford on the theme of the Decline, Revival and Fall of the British Empire) as well as the Wiles Lectures at Queen's University Belfast.
In addition to being one of the most prominent theorists of imperial expansion, he also ensured a considerable legacy as a result of the large numbers of doctoral students at both Cambridge and Oxford whose work he either supervised or strongly influenced. Three of the more prominent ones include Christopher Bayly, Paul Kennedy, and Wm. Roger Louis.
When a team of students of Trinity College, Cambridge, won
Personal life
Gallagher was strongly-left wing in his youth, and whilst an undergraduate at Cambridge he was a convenor of the 'colonial group' of the university's Communist Party. The historian Eric Hobsbawm, a fellow student communist, described Gallagher as "brilliant, original and self-destructive", claiming that he never got out of bed before midday.[8]
Gallagher, who remained unmarried, died from heart failure and kidney failure in Cambridge on 5 March 1980.[1]
Works
- Africa and the Victorians: The Climax of Imperialism in the Dark Continent written with Ronald Robinson and Alice Denny (London, Macmillan, 1961) and Africa and the Victorians: The Climax of Imperialism in the Dark Continent (New York, St Martin's Press, 1961)
- The Decline, Revival and Fall of the British Empire. The Ford Lectures and Other Essays edited by Anil Seal (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1982)
See also
References
- ^ doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/45976. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- ^ Anil Seal's 'Preface' in John Gallagher and Anil Seal, The Decline, Revival and Fall of the British Empire (Cambridge, 1982), p. vii.
- ^ Robinson, Ronald and Gallagher, John, with Denny, Alice, Africa and the Victorians. The Official Mind of Imperialism, London and Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1981 (2nd paperback edition)
- ^ Gallagher, John and Robinson, Ronald, "The Imperialism of Free Trade", The Economic History Review, vol. VI, n. 1, 1953
- ^ Wm. Roger Louis, 'Historians I Have Known', Perspectives (May 2001) [1].
- ^ Martin Lynn, British Policy, Trade, and Informal Empire in the Mid-19th Century", (1999) 3:118-19
- ^ "University Challenge: 1974-5".
- ISBN 037542234X
Further reading
- Ronald Robinson, John Gallagher, Alice Denny. Africa and the Victorians: The Climax of Imperialism in the Dark Continent (1961)
- Andrew S. Thompson, ‘Gallagher, John Andrew (1919–1980)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online edition, Oxford University Press, September 2004; online edition, October 2007.