Niall Ferguson | Academic Influence

Why Is Niall Ferguson Influential?

By Sara L. Austin, EdD

Niall Ferguson was born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1964 and attended The Glasgow Academy. He received a demyship from Magdalen College in Oxford and graduated with his Doctor of Philosophy in 1989. He has credited his family for instilling within him a love for writing and critical thought. His reading of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace at the age of 15 inspired him to make his career studying history.

At times a polarizing figure, Ferguson has taught at institutions on both sides of the Atlantic, from Jesus College in Oxford to Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He is the author of several books and produced numerous documentaries. His series, The Ascent of Money won an International Emmy award for Best Documentary in 2009.

In recent years, Niall Ferguson has drawn some criticism for his right-wing leanings, though he seems to relish his role as historical provocateur. In fact, he at times seems to enjoy a “devil’s advocate” role, pushing for counterfactual approaches to understanding history by focusing more on hypotheticals.

In 2012, Ferguson worked with the BBC to present four Reith Lectures examining economics and politics. These lectures, The Human Hive, The Darwinian Economy, The Landscape of Law, and Civil and Uncivil Societies, examined the interplay of politics with fiscal policy.

Ferguson became a naturalized American citizen in 2018 and is now a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.

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According to Wikipedia, Niall Campbell Ferguson is a Scottish historian based in the United States who is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and a Senior Faculty Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University. Previously, he was a professor at Harvard, the London School of Economics and New York University, a visiting professor at the UK New College of the Humanities, and a senior research fellow at Jesus College, Oxford, England.

Niall Ferguson's Published Works

Number of citations in a given year to any of this author's works

Total number of citations to an author for the works they published in a given year. This highlights publication of the most important work(s) by the author

Published Papers

Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power (2003) (537)
The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World (2008) (444)
Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World (2002) (416)
Colossus: The Price of America's Empire (2005) (312)
The Cash Nexus : Money and Power in the Modern World (2001) (261)
Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire (2004) (228)
The Empire Effect: The Determinants of Country Risk in the First Age of Globalization, 1880-1913 (2004) (218)
Civilization: The West and the Rest (2011) (216)
Virtual History: Alternatives And Counterfactuals (1997) (212)
The pity of war (1999) (185)
The Shock of the Global: The 1970s in Perspective (2010) (139)
The Pity of War: Explaining World War I (1999) (113)
The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West (2006) (111)
The world's banker : the history of the house of Rothschild (1998) (99)
Translocating lions into an inbred lion population in the Hluhluwe‐iMfolozi Park, South Africa (2008) (96)
Prisoner Taking and Prisoner Killing in the Age of Total War: Towards a Political Economy of Military Defeat (2004) (92)
Political Risk and the International Bond Market between the 1848 Revolution and the Outbreak of the First World War (2006) (80)
‘Chimerica’ and the Global Asset Market Boom* (2007) (77)
PUBLIC FINANCE AND NATIONAL SECURITY: THE DOMESTIC ORIGINS OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR REVISITED (1994) (74)
Illusions of Empire: Defining the New American Order (2004) (72)
The Great Degeneration: How Institutions Decay and Economies Die (2013) (70)
The House of Rothschild: The World's Banker, 1849-1999 (2000) (66)
Hegemony or Empire (2003) (63)
The House of Rothschild: Money's Prophets, 1798-1848 (1998) (62)
The House of Rothschild (1999) (58)
A World Without Power (2004) (56)
The End of Chimerica (2009) (56)
The Pity of War (2000) (52)
The Degeneration of EMU (2000) (51)
The world's banker (1998) (48)
The war of the world : history's age of hatred (2007) (47)
Civilization: The Six Killer Apps of Western Power (2012) (27)
Constraints and room for manoeuvre in the German inflation of the early 1920s (1996) (26)
Complexity and Collapse (2010) (25)
“Weimar on the Volga”: Causes and Consequences of Inflation in 1990s Russia Compared with 1920s Germany (2000) (22)
The End of Chimerica: The End of Chimerica (2011) (22)
Going Critical: American Power and the Consequences of Fiscal Overstretch (2003) (22)
Osteoporosis in Focus (2004) (20)
Is Everything Empire? Is Empire Everything? (2006) (19)
High Financier: The Lives and Time of Siegmund Warburg (2010) (18)
Paper and Iron: Hamburg Business and German Politics in the Era of Inflation 1897-1927 (1997) (17)
British Imperialism Revisited: The Costs and Benefits of "Anglobalization" (2003) (17)
The Square and the Tower: Networks and Power, from the Freemasons to Facebook (2018) (16)
Central Bank Balance Sheets: Expansion and Reduction Since 1900 (2015) (16)
The unconscious colossus: limits of (& alternatives to) American empire (2005) (16)
The 'Thin film of gold': monetary rules and policy credibility (2012) (15)
A powerful leap from chaos (2000) (14)
Earning from History?: Financial Markets and the Approach of World Wars (2008) (13)
Germany and the origins of the First World War: new perspectives (1992) (13)
Economics, Religion and the Decline of Europe (2004) (12)
Siegmund Warburg, the City of London and the financial roots of European integration (2009) (11)
Kissinger: 1923-1968: The Idealist (2015) (11)
INTRODUCTION:: Crisis, What Crisis? The 1970s and the Shock of the Global (2010) (10)
THE DESCENT OF FINANCE (2009) (10)
The "Thin Film of Gold": Monetary Rules and Policy Credibility in Developing Countries (2008) (10)
Last word on point:counterpoint: High-frequency ventilation is/is not the optimal physiological approach to ventilate ARDS patients. (2008) (9)
The City of London and British Imperialism: New Light on an Old Question (2005) (9)
The Next War of the World (2006) (9)
An Empire in Denial: The Limits of US Imperialism (2003) (8)
The End of the Liberal Order (2017) (7)
Who Broke the Bank of England (2009) (7)
“The Thin Film Of Gold”: The Limits Of Monetary Commitments (2005) (6)
Keynes and the German Inflation (1995) (6)
The Balance of Payments Question: Versailles and After (1998) (5)
Globalization in Interdisciplinary Perspective. A Panel (2003) (4)
Paper and iron (1995) (4)
The False Prophecy of Hyperconnection (2017) (4)
The world's banker, 1849-1999 (1999) (4)
Does the 21st Century Belong to China?: Kissinger and Zakaria vs. Ferguson and Li: The Munk Debate on China (2011) (3)
The Second World War as an Economic Disaster (2007) (3)
The Origins and Course of the German Economic Crisis November 1923 to May 1932 (1996) (3)
The Middle Parts of Fortune: Somme and Ancre, 1916 (1977) (3)
WHAT ’ S SO DIFFERENT ABOUT A COUNTERFACTUAL ? (2000) (3)
The Meaning of Kissinger (2015) (3)
Making Chimerica great again (2018) (3)
Globalization without Gunboats? (2003) (2)
'We're an Empire Now': The United States Between Imperial Denial and Premature Decolonization (2005) (2)
Smallpox Eradication and the Rise of Global Governance (2010) (2)
Money's prophets 1798-1848 (1999) (2)
This Time Europe Really is on the Brink (2012) (2)
Paper and iron: Introduction (1995) (1)
The Empire Effect: Country Risk in the First Age of Globalization, 1880-1913 (2005) (1)
1914 : why the world went to war (2005) (1)
The Case for Hypocrisy (2004) (1)
The German Communists and the rise of Nazism (1992) (1)
The G‐2: Are America and China Headed for Divorce? (2010) (1)
Europe between Brussels and Byzantium: Some Thoughts on European Integration (2003) (1)
The Empire Slinks Back (2015) (1)
How (Not) to Pay for the War: Traditional Finance and “Total” War (2000) (1)
The political economy of revolution (1995) (1)
Great War, Total War: How (Not) to Pay for the War (2000) (1)
Niall Ferguson-The War of the World (2007) (1)
Virtual History: Alternatives and Counterfactuals@@@What If? The World's Foremost Historians Imagine What Might Have Been (2000) (1)
FINANCIAL GLOBALIZATION (2006) (0)
"Today's Demagogues Remind Me of the Events of the 1930s": An Interview with Vladislav Inozemtsev (2008) (0)
Reviewers for Volume 31 (2007) (0)
Complex Adaptive Systems: A New Blueprint to Analyze Imperial Collapse (2010) (0)
Reviews : Mark Roseman, Recasting the Ruhr, 1945-1958. Manpower, Economic Recovery and Labour Relations, Oxford and Providence, Berg, ISBN 0-85496-606-4, 1992; xv + 358 pp.; £42.00 (1994) (0)
"Civilization. The West and the Rest", Niall Ferguson, London 2011 : [recenzja] / Arkadiusz Stasiak. (2011) (0)
"The War of the Word : history's age hatred", Niall Ferguson, London 2007 : [recenzja] / Jakub Polit. (2009) (0)
Wars, Revolutions and the International Bond Market from the Napoleonic Wars to the First World War (1999) (0)
Book Reviews (2005) (0)
Globalization in Interdisciplinary Perspective (2003) (0)
Regulation and Deregulation In a Time of Stagflation: Siegmund Warburg and the City of London in the 1970s (2015) (0)
The Rise of the Rothschilds: the Family Firm as Multinational (2016) (0)
Epilogue: Hitler's inflation (1995) (0)
Public Debt as a Postwar Problem: The German Experience after 1918 in Comparative Perspective (2002) (0)
Central bank rules in historical perspective (2014) (0)
The sinews of war (1995) (0)
Financial Systems, Economic Growth, and Globalization in the Era of the Cold War (2017) (0)
Questioning the Theory of Hegemonic Continuum (2006) (0)
Introduction (2003) (0)
Dissolution and liquidation (1995) (0)
'The Generation Game.' Conflict and Change between the Generations in Modern Germany: 1991 Regional Conference, University of Keele, 19-20 April 1991 (1991) (0)
Editorial (2004) (0)
Business and Politics in the German Inflation: Hamburg, 1914-24 (1991) (0)
The Historical Review/La Revue Historique (2020) (0)
Si EE UU no mandara (2004) (0)
The Coming Tsunami of Trash (2006) (0)
Paper and Iron: Hamburg Business and German Politics in the Era of Inflation, 1897-1927. (1997) (0)
Paper and iron: The legacy of the inflation (1995) (0)
History and Neorealism: Realism and risk in 1938: German foreign policy and the Munich Crisis (2010) (0)
Book Notes (2013) (0)
Paper and iron: Relative stabilisation (1995) (0)
Benedetto Cotrugli, Book of the Art of Trade (Libro del’arte dela mercatura) (2017) (0)
Food and the First World War (1991) (0)
You Shouldn't Have to Burn Cars to Get a Better Life—Ask My Bolivian Cleaning Lady (2005) (0)
Book Reviews such as market-driven capitalism in England, managerial “industrial leviathans” in the United States and Germany, and accelerated government-directed development in Japan, (2014) (0)
Contemporary Russia and Weimar Germany: High Inflation and Political Crisis in Comparative Perspective (1997) (0)
Globalization’s Second Death? (2006) (0)
Metternich and the Rothschilds: “A Dance With Torches on Powder Kegs”? (2001) (0)
Comment on Fisman and Werker's "Local Company Politics: A Proposal" (2007) (0)
Your money or your life (1994) (0)
Paper and iron: The failure of ‘fulfilment’ (1995) (0)
New Books at a Glance (2001) (0)
Bankers: Beyond Conspiracy Theory (1993) (0)
Why Churchill Opposed Torture (2006) (0)
Europe's Feeble War on Unemployment (2013) (0)
Human History (2019) (0)
American Empire: a review essay Empire: the rise and demise of the British world order and the lessons for global power by (2004) (0)
Eurabia, U.K (2005) (0)
The perfect storm: lack of international cooperation and flawed policies will prolong the recession (2009) (0)
Versailles and Hamburg (1995) (0)
L'empire à la mode Ferguson (2004) (0)
Introduction: Imperialisms: Early Modern to Premodernist (0)
When Germany was not so odd (1997) (0)

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