Niall Ferguson
Niall Ferguson at the 40. St. Gallen Symposium in May 2010
Born	(1964-04-18) 18 April 1964 (age 48) Glasgow, Scotland
Nationality	British
Fields	International history, economic history, American and British imperial history
Institutions	Harvard University
Alma mater	Magdalen College, Oxford
Known for	Counterfactual history Economic history History of empire and imperialism
Influences	Thomas Hobbes, Norman Stone, A. J. P. Taylor, Kenneth Clark, Adam Smith, Karl Marx, John Maynard Keynes, David Landes
Spouse	Ayaan Hirsi Ali (m. 2011) «start: (2011-09)»"Marriage: Ayaan Hirsi Ali to Niall Ferguson" Location: (linkback:http://en-wiki.pop.wn.com/index.php/Niall_Ferguson)

Niall Campbell Douglas Ferguson (born 18 April 1964)^[1] is a British historian. His speciality is financial and economic history, particularly hyperinflation and the bond markets, as well as the history of colonialism.^[2]

Ferguson, who was born in Glasgow, is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University^[1]. He was educated at the private Glasgow Academy in Scotland, and at Magdalen College, Oxford.

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,^[3] all of which he has also 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. He is currently^[when?] a contributing editor for Bloomberg Television and a columnist for Newsweek. He is currently^[when?] working on the official biography of Henry Kissinger to whom he has been granted unprecedented access.

Early life[link]

Ferguson was born the son of a doctor father and a physics teacher mother in Glasgow on 18 April 1964, and lived for a time near Ibrox Park.^[4][5] He attended The Glasgow Academy.^{[citation needed]}

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.^[6] His journalist maternal grandfather encouraged him to write.^[6] 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.^[5] Of late 1970s Glasgow, Ferguson describes "the main industries" of the city as "sectarianism and strike action".^[5] He was brought up as and remains an atheist although he holds that the Ten Commandments remains a solid ethical code by which to live.^[7]

University of Oxford[link]

Ferguson received a Demyship (half-scholarship) at Magdalen College, Oxford, graduating with a first-class honours degree in History in 1985.^[8] While at Oxford he became best friends with Andrew Sullivan based on a shared love of right-wing politics and punk music.^[9] 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."^[5] 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.^[9] 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."^[9]

Regarding slights and criticism, Ferguson has stated: "Nobody should ever imagine that they can do that kind of thing to me with impunity. Life is long, and revenge is a dish that tastes best cold. I'm very unforgiving."^[10]

Career[link]

Academic career[link]

• 1983-1986 M.A. (Hons.) Magdalen College, Oxford
• 1987–88 Hanseatic Scholar, Hamburg and Berlin
• 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
• 2010-11 Philippe Roman Chair in History and International Affairs at the London School of Economics, located within LSE IDEAS, beginning in 2010^[11]

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.^[2][12] In June 2011 it was announced that he would join the professoriate of New College of the Humanities, a private college in London.^[13]

Business career[link]

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.^[14] GLG is a UK-based hedge fund management firm headed by Noam Gottesman.^[15]

Career as commentator[link]

In October 2007, Niall Ferguson left The Sunday Telegraph to join the Financial Times,^[16] where he is now^[when?] a contributing editor.^[17] He also writes for Newsweek.^[2]

Ferguson has often described the European Union as a disaster waiting to happen,^[18] 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.^[19]

Interests and views[link]

World War I[link]

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.^[8][9] 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.^[20] 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.^[21] 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)^[22]
• 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)^[23]
• 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) ^[24]
• 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)^[25]
• 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)^[26]
• That most people were happy with the outbreak of war in 1914 (Ferguson claims that most Europeans were saddened by the coming of war) ^[27]
• That propaganda was successful in making men wish to fight (Ferguson argues the opposite)^[28]
• That the Allies made the best use of their economic resources (Ferguson argues that the Allies “squandered” their economic resources) ^[29]
• That the British and the French had the better armies (Ferguson claims the German Army was superior)^[30]
• That the Allies were more efficient at killing Germans (Ferguson argues that the Germans were more efficient at killing the Allies)^[31]
• That most soldiers hated fighting in the war (Ferguson argues most soldiers fought more or less willingly)^[32]
• That the British treated German prisoners of war well (Ferguson argues the British routinely killed German POWs)^[33]
• 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)^[34]

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.^[35] 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.^[35]

Rothschilds[link]

Ferguson wrote two volumes about the prominent Rothschild family:

• The House of Rothschild: Volume 1: Money's Prophets: 1798–1848^[36]
• The House of Rothschild: Volume 2: The World's Banker: 1849–1999^[37]

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.^[17]

Counterfactual history[link]

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.^[38]

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."^[39]

Henry Kissinger[link]

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.^[40]

Colonialism[link]

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."^[2]

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".^[41]

Bernard Porter attacked Empire in The London Review of Books as a "panegyric to British colonialism".^[42] 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.'^[42]

Islam and Eurabia[link]

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?’,^[43] 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?',^[44] "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."^[45]

Iraq war[link]

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".^[2]

Economic policy[link]

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[link]

As scholar[link]

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."^[46]

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".^[47]

Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm has praised Ferguson as an excellent historian.^[48] However, he has also criticised Ferguson, saying, on the BBC Radio programme Start the Week, that he was a "nostalgist for empire".^[49] Ferguson responded to the above criticisms in a Washington Post "Live Discussions" online forum in 2006.^[50]

Exchanges with Krugman[link]

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.^{[51][52][53][54]}

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."^{[55][56][57][58]}

Personal life[link]

Ferguson married journalist Susan Douglas, whom he met in 1987 when she was his editor at the Daily Mail. They have three children.^[59] 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.^[60][61][62] Ferguson married Hirsi Ali in September 2011.^[63] News media^[who?] have reported that Hirsi Ali and Ferguson had a baby boy in late December 2011.^{[citation needed]} 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".^[2] 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.^[2]

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.^[6]

Ferguson's younger sister is a professor at the University of Pennsylvania.^[6]

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.^[4]

Bibliography[link]

[edit] 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,^[17] 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.

[edit] 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.^[64][65] In Colossus, Ferguson explores the United States' hegemony in foreign affairs and its future role in the world.^[66][67]

[edit] 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".^[68] 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,^[69] War of the World was accompanied by a Channel 4 television series presented by Ferguson.^[70]

[edit] 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.^[71]

[edit] 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".^[2] A related documentary Civilization: Is the West History? was broadcast as a six part series on Channel 4 in March and April 2011.^[72]

Publications[link]

This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.

• 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. http://books.google.com/books?id=mRO3xuoTTeoC&printsec=frontcover. 
• 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)^[70]
• 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) [1997]. Virtual History: Alternatives and Counterfactuals. New York: Basic Books. ISBN 0-465-02322-3. 
• Ferguson, Niall (1999) [1998]. 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[link]

• “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[link]

• 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)

See also[link]

• Anglosphere
• Chimerica

References[link]

Notes[link]

General references[link]

• Snowman, Daniel (October 2004). "Niall Ferguson". History Today 54 (10): 37–39. http://www.historytoday.com/MainArticle.aspx?m=30556&amid=30210444. Retrieved 14 July 2008. 
• Ferguson, Niall (1999). The Pity of War. New York: Basic Books. ISBN 978-0-14-027523-0. 

External links[link]

• Official website
• Niall Ferguson at the Internet Movie Database
• The Ascent of Money Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce
• Audio: Niall Ferguson in conversation The Forum, BBC World Service
• Hans Koning Still Not Over Over There? The Nation, August 1999 - Review of The Pity of War
• Martin Rubin A Banker to the Rescue WSJ.com, 26 June 2010
• Liaquat Ahamed Yesterday's Banker NYTimes.com, 30 July 2010
• Niall Ferguson and Peter Schwartz on Human Progress FORA.tv, 28 April 2008
• Niall Ferguson: Empires on the Edge of Chaos FORA.tv, 28 July 2010
• The Sun Sets in the West Oxonian Review, 4 April 2011 - Review of Civilization
• An Interview with Niall Ferguson, Oxonian Review, 9 April 2011
• In Depth with Niall Ferguson C-SPAN, 2 May 2004

Charlie Rose
Rose in May 2010
Born	Charles Peete Rose, Jr. (1942-01-05) January 5, 1942 (age 70) Henderson, North Carolina, U.S.
Education	Duke University B.A. (1964) Duke University J.D. (1968)
Occupation	Talk show host Journalist
Years active	1972–present
Notable credit(s)	Charlie Rose, 60 Minutes II, 60 Minutes, CBS News Nightwatch, CBS This Morning
Website
http://www.charlierose.com/

Charles Peete "Charlie" Rose, Jr. (born January 5, 1942)^[1] is an American television talk show host and journalist. Since 1991 he has hosted Charlie Rose, an interview show distributed nationally by PBS since 1993. He has also co-anchored CBS This Morning since January 2012. Rose, along with Lara Logan, has hosted the revived CBS classic Person to Person, a news program during which celebrities are interviewed in their homes, originally hosted from 1953 to 1961 by Edward R. Murrow.^[2]

Early life[link]

Rose was born in Henderson, North Carolina, the only child^[3] of Margaret Frazier and Charles Peete Rose, Sr., tobacco farmers who owned a country store.^[4][5] As a child, Rose lived above his parents' store in Henderson and helped out with the family business from age seven.^[6] Rose admitted in a Fresh Dialogues interview that as a child his insatiable curiosity was constantly getting him in trouble.^[7] A high school basketball star, Rose entered Duke University intending to pursue a degree with a pre-med track, but an internship in the office of Democratic North Carolina Senator B. Everett Jordan got him interested in politics.^[8] Rose graduated in 1964 with a bachelor's degree in history. At Duke, he was a member of the Kappa Alpha Order fraternity. He earned a Juris Doctor from the Duke University School of Law in 1968.^[6] He met his wife, Mary (née King), while attending Duke.^[3][4]

Career[link]

After his wife was hired by the BBC (in New York), Rose handled some assignments for the BBC on a freelance basis. In 1972, while continuing to work at Bankers Trust, he landed a job as a weekend reporter for WPIX-TV. His break came in 1974, after Bill Moyers hired Rose as managing editor for the PBS series Bill Moyers' International Report. In 1975, Moyers named Rose executive producer of Bill Moyers Journal. Rose soon began appearing on camera. "A Conversation with Jimmy Carter," one installment of Moyers's series U.S.A.: People and Politics, won a 1976 Peabody Award. Rose worked at several networks honing his interview skills until KXAS-TV in Dallas-Fort Worth hired him as program manager and gave him the late-night time slot that would become the Charlie Rose show.

Rose worked for CBS News (1984–1990) as the anchor of CBS News Nightwatch, the network's first late-night news broadcast. The Nightwatch broadcast of Rose's interview with Charles Manson won an Emmy Award in 1987.^[4] In 1990, Rose left CBS to serve as anchor of Personalities, a syndicated program produced by Fox Broadcasting Company, but he got out of his contract after six weeks because of the tabloid-style content of the show. Charlie Rose premiered on PBS station Thirteen/WNET on September 30, 1991, and has been nationally syndicated since January 1993. In 1994, Rose moved the show to a studio owned by Bloomberg Television, which allowed for improved satellite interviewing.^[9]

Rose was a correspondent for 60 Minutes II^[10] from its inception in January 1999 until its cancellation in September 2005, and was later named a correspondent on 60 Minutes.^[11]

Rose was a member of the board of directors of Citadel Broadcasting Corporation from 2003 to 2009.^[3] In May 2010, Charlie Rose delivered the commencement address at North Carolina State University.

On November 15, 2011, it was announced that Rose would return to CBS to help anchor CBS This Morning, replacing The Early Show, commencing January 9, 2012, along with co-anchors Erica Hill and Gayle King.

Cameo appearances[link]

Rose has appeared as himself in the 1998 film Primary Colors,^[12] in a 2000 episode of The Simpsons^[13] and in the 2008 movie Elegy.^[14] He and his show were also used in the Wes Anderson film The Royal Tenenbaums. He also appears as himself in the 2011 George Clooney directed film, The Ides of March.

[edit] Accusations of conflict of interest

While hosting the 2002 Coca-Cola Company shareholders' meeting, Rose said "few companies are able to connect as completely with consumers in the way that Coca-Cola is. It is a privilege to be associated with [The Coca-Cola family] ... This is the business of Coca-Cola: being part of a family, being worldwide, doing well and doing good at the same time."^[15] Afterward, Coca-Cola agreed to become what Rose called "a leading underwriter" of The Charlie Rose Show, paying "six or possibly seven figures."^[16] Even the Charlie Rose mugs used on his PBS show feature a Coca-Cola logo on one side.^[17][18] Although CBS News policy bars correspondents from doing commercials and product endorsements, the Washington Post reported CBS was "comfortable" with Rose's actions. Rose insists he "would never do a story on 60 Minutes II about anybody who underwrites my PBS show."^[16]

[edit] Quiet influence

The New York Times reported that Rose encouraged a discussion between the leaders of NBC and Fox, that led eventually to a mutual reduction in ad hominem attacks between Keith Olbermann and Bill O'Reilly on their respective news programs.^[19]

Rose has attended several Bilderberg Group conference meetings, including meetings held in the United States in 2008;^[20] Spain in 2010;^[21] and Switzerland in 2011.^[22] These unofficial conferences hold guests from North America and Western Europe, most of whom are political leaders and businessmen. Details of meetings are closed off to the public and strictly invitation-only, and critics^[who?] speculate the controversial nature of these meetings of highly influential people. Accusations from conspiracy theorists against The Charlie Rose show claim that it has become the US media outlet for Bilderberg.^{[23][unreliable source?]}

Personal life[link]

Rose's twelve-year marriage to Mary Rose (née King) ended in divorce in 1980. Mary is the sister-in-law of Morgan Stanley Chairman John J. Mack. Since 1993, his companion has been socialite and chairman of the New York City Planning Commission and director of the city department of planning Amanda Burden, a stepdaughter of CBS founder William S. Paley.^[24]

On March 29, 2006, after experiencing shortness of breath in Syria, Rose was flown to Paris and underwent surgery for mitral valve repair in the Georges-Pompidou European Hospital. His surgery was performed under the supervision of Alain F. Carpentier, a pioneer of the procedure.^[25] Rose returned to the air on June 12, 2006, with Bill Moyers and Yvette Vega (the show's executive producer), to discuss his surgery and recuperation.

In a 2009 Fresh Dialogues interview, Rose described his life as "great and glorious."^[7] He added, '"I get up every morning with a new adventure. The adventure is fueled by interesting people. I get a chance to control my own destiny. I do something that is immediately either appreciated or not. I get feedback."

Rose owns a 575-acre (2.33 km²) farm in Oxford, North Carolina, an apartment overlooking Central Park in New York City, a beach house in Bellport, New York, an apartment in Washington D.C.^[3] and an apartment in Paris, France.

References[link]