Conservative Gadfly Challenges Liberal Assumptions

Historian Niall Ferguson uses counterfactuals to argue against the necessity of WWI yet in favor of recognizing the beneficial parts of the British empire

Scottish-American Historian Niall Ferguson routinely comments on the news. He’s a go-to guy for journalists hungry for oversimplified, pithy, and provocative opinions or sound bites. Cold War II between Russia, China vs. the US, and Europe “is becoming WWIII,” he says. The British Empire was more good than bad, and made the modern world, while Americans remain in denial about their empire, which will be their undoing both at home and abroad, he contends.

He’s a media favorite because he’s both an intellectual and a popularizer who doesn’t disdain questions that ask him to characterize the great forces of history in good vs. bad terms. And he likes to pepper his talks with speculative “what if” questions that journalists and the public love.

Yet Ferguson can hold his own in scholarly discussions and debates as well. He’s Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and a senior fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University.