David Kenneth Fieldhouse

Who is David Kenneth Fieldhouse?

David Kenneth Fieldhouse, FBA is a prominent historian of the British Empire who between 1981 and 1992 held the Vere Harmsworth Professorship of Imperial and Naval History at the University of Cambridge. Arguably the world's "leading imperial economic historian" he is most well known for his book, Economics and Empire, 1830-1914, which offered a trenchant account of how political and strategic factors, rather than economic impulses, comprised the primary motors of European imperial expansion.

During the course of his career he held academic posts at the University of Canterbury, Oxford University, and Cambridge University. Upon his retirement from Cambridge in 1992 his former students and colleagues published a festschrift entitled, Managing the Business of Empire: Essays in Honour of David Fieldhouse.

Fieldhouse remains an active Emeritus Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge.