Dr Alex Middleton

My research is on nineteenth century British politics and ideas, and on political and social thought c. 1750-1950.

I teach papers across British, European, and world history, as well as intellectual history options. I supervise dissertations on modern Britain, its empire, and related aspects of modern political thought. I encourage inquiries from prospective graduate students with interests in these areas. 

Research Interests

My research is on British politics and political ideas in the nineteenth century. Its main aim is to understand better how political change in the globe's dominant power related to its international contexts. My work asks questions about the ideological divisions created by British imperial and foreign policy; about interactions with other European, Atlantic, and colonial polities; and about political, legal, and economic thought on connected themes. Much of my writing focuses on British Liberalism, but it casts a deliberately wide geographical net. I am more generally interested in the interfaces between politics, geopolitics, and intellectual history, and in forging links with other national-imperial histories.

I am completing a book called Rethinking Empire: English Liberalism and Imperial Government, 1820-1860, which argues that debates about Britain's machinery of imperial rule underpinned the formation of British Liberalism and the Liberal Party. It makes the case that modern imperial political thought, and the problem of 'liberalism and empire', can be better understood when connected with party politics and schemes of inter-imperial comparison. My next book will examine nineteenth century British visions of Latin American politics and society. It will argue that competing conceptions of the region responded to new convergences between Atlantic public spheres, and built bridges between the Iberian, Latin, and English-speaking worlds. But it will show that these visions also hinged on European geopolitical imperatives, and contested projects of 'informal empire', in the lengthening shadow of an imperially ambitious United States. There is a survey of some of the issues involved here. After that, I plan to work on a wider study of British Liberalism in relation to foreign liberalisms and legal regimes.

I also enjoy writing on the historiographies of politics, ideas, and empire. There is a list of my reviews and review essays on my college webpage. 

I am one of the editors of the English Historical Review, and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.