David Abulafia

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FRHistS FBA
Abulafia in 2010
Born
David Samuel Harvard Abulafia

(1949-12-12) 12 December 1949 (age 74)
Twickenham
, England
Spouse
​
(m. 1979)​
Children2
Academic background
Alma materKing's College, Cambridge
Doctoral advisorR. C. Smail
Academic work
DisciplineHistory
InstitutionsGonville and Caius College, Cambridge
Notable works

David Samuel Harvard Abulafia

FRHistS FBA (born 12 December 1949) is an English historian with a particular interest in Italy, Spain and the rest of the Mediterranean during the Middle Ages and Renaissance. He spent most of his career at the University of Cambridge, rising to become a professor at the age of 50.[1] He retired in 2017 as Professor Emeritus of Mediterranean History. He is a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge.[2] He was Chairman of the History Faculty at Cambridge University, 2003-5, and was elected a member of the governing Council of Cambridge University in 2008. He is visiting Beacon Professor at the new University of Gibraltar, where he also serves on the Academic Board. He is a visiting professor at the College of Europe
(Natolin branch, Poland).

He is a Fellow of the British Academy and a member of the Academia Europaea. In 2013 he was awarded one of three inaugural British Academy Medals for his work on Mediterranean history. In 2020, he was awarded the Wolfson History Prize for The Boundless Sea: A Human History of the Oceans.[3]

Early life and education

Abulafia was born in

St. Paul's School and King's College, Cambridge
.

Academic career

Abulafia has published several books on

the UAE, Jordan, and Egypt.[citation needed
]

One of his most influential books is Frederick II: A Medieval Emperor, first published in England in 1988 and reprinted many times in several Italian editions. Here he looks at an iconic figure from the Middle Ages from a new perspective, criticizing the views of the famous German historian

Frederick II of Hohenstaufen
, whom Abulafia sees as a conservative figure rather than as a genius born out of his time.

He has been appointed

Abrahamic faiths
in the Mediterranean. Not confining himself to the Mediterranean, he has also written a much-praised book on the first encounters between western Europeans and the native societies of the Atlantic (the Canary islands, the Caribbean and Brazil) around 1492; this book is The Discovery of Mankind: Atlantic Encounters in the Age of Columbus (2008).

In 2011,

Mountbatten Literary Award from the Maritime Foundation,[4][5]
became a bestseller in UK non-fiction and was widely acclaimed. It has been translated into Dutch, French, Greek, Turkish, Spanish, German, Arabic, Italian, Korean, Chinese, Romanian and Portuguese, with further translations under contract.

Abulafia wrote The Boundless Sea: A Human History of the Oceans, published by Penguin in the UK and by Oxford University Press in the US in October 2019. This book applies a similar method to his history of the Mediterranean, looking at the people who moved across the open sea, and emphasizing the role of maritime trade in the political, cultural and economic history of humanity. It won the 2020 Wolfson History Prize.[3]

He was the chairman of Historians for Britain, an organisation that lobbies to

European Integration is "a myth used to silence other visions of European community". He has written opinion pieces criticising the UK's membership in the European Union, accusing the idea of European unity of being based upon "historical determinism".[6]
He recently wrote a article in the
Daily Telegraph titled "It would be uncivilised to give Greece the Elgin Marbles", where he wrote that they belong "in London, in a great universal museum, not in the narrow confines of Athens's Acropolis".[7]

Abulafia was appointed

Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2023 Birthday Honours for services to scholarship.[8]

Personal life

In 1979, Abulafia married Anna Brechta Sapir.[9] The couple have two adult daughters.[10]

Interviews

Main works

  • The Two Italies: Economic Relations between the Norman Kingdom of Sicily and the Northern Communes, Cambridge 1977
  • Frederick II: A Medieval Emperor, London 1988
  • A Mediterranean Emporium: The Catalan Kingdom of Majorca, Cambridge 1994
  • The Western Mediterranean Kingdoms, 1200–1500: The Struggle for Dominion, London 1997
  • The Discovery of Mankind: Atlantic Encounters in the Age of Columbus, New Haven, CT 2008
  • The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean, Oxford 2011
  • The Boundless Sea: A Human History of the Oceans, London 2019

Notes

  1. ^ "Cambridge University Reporter. Appointments". 10 January 2001.
  2. ^ "David Abulafia | Faculty of History University of Cambridge". www.hist.cam.ac.uk. Retrieved 30 November 2022.
  3. ^ a b "David Abulafia's 'The Boundless Sea' wins Wolfson History Prize 2020". The Wolfson History Prize. 15 June 2020. Retrieved 15 June 2020.
  4. ^ Academia Europaea
  5. ^ Lezard, Nicholas (1 May 2012). "The Great Sea by David Abulafia – review". The Guardian.
  6. ^ David Abulafia: The EU is in thrall to a historical myth of European unity, Daily Telegraph, 26 February 2015.
  7. ISSN 0307-1235
    . Retrieved 22 February 2024.
  8. ^ "No. 64082". The London Gazette (Supplement). 17 June 2023. p. B8.
  9. ^ "ABULAFIA, Prof. David Samuel Harvard". Who's Who 2017. Oxford University Press. November 2016. Retrieved 2 February 2017.
  10. ^ "PROFILE: Prof traces his roots back to pre-Inquisition". Jewish Telegraph. 2011. Retrieved 2 February 2017.

References

External links

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