Professor James Belich

Retired - Beit Professor of Global and Imperial History

Balliol College

01865 (2)77736

james.belich@balliol.ox.ac.uk

Most of my early work was on the history of New Zealand in global context. My books included a two-volume history of New Zealand, Making Peoples (1996) and Paradise Reforged (2001), as well as The New Zealand Wars (1986), which became a television documentary series. More recently, I turned to the comparative history of settler societies and their relations with indigenous peoples, an interest which produced Replenishing the Earth: The Settler Revolution and the Rise of the Anglo-world. My current research interests are becoming increasingly diverse. They continue to include settler societies, imperialism, and racial ideas, but now also extend to global history and the origins of European expansionism in the late medieval and early modern eras.

Research Interests

Origins of West Eurasian expansionism
Global nodes, global orders
The Black Death and global history

See page on Balliol College website

'The Black Death and European Expansion', in James Belich, John Darwin, Margret Frenz, Chris Wickham, eds., The Prospect of Global History, (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 240 pp., 2016)

The Prospect of Global History takes a new approach to the study of global history, seeking to apply it, rather than advocate it. The volume seeks perspectives on history from East Asian and Islamic sources as well as European ones, and insists on depth in historical analysis. The Prospect of Global History will speak to those interested in medieval and ancient history as well as modern history. Chapters range from historical sociology to economic history, from medieval to modern times, from European expansion to constitutional history.

Replenishing the Earth. The Settler Revolution and the Rise of the Anglo-World, 1783-1939, (Oxford and New York, Oxford University Press, 2009).

Why are we speaking English? Replenishing the Earth gives a new answer to that question, uncovering a 'settler revolution' that took place from the early nineteenth century that led to the explosive settlement of the American West and its forgotten twin, the British West, comprising the settler dominions of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa.

Professor James Belich

'The Black Death and European Expansion', in James Belich, John Darwin, Margret Frenz, Chris Wickham, eds., The Prospect of Global History, (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 240 pp., 2016)

Replenishing the Earth. The Settler Revolution and the Rise of the Anglo-World, 1783-1939, (Oxford and New York, Oxford University Press, 2009).

Current DPhil Students

Teaching

Research Centre

Projects

Publications

Prelims	FHS
	General History XIX: Imperial and Global History, 1750-1914