David Armitage (historian)
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David Armitage (born 1965) is a British historian who has written on international and intellectual history. He is chair of the history department and Lloyd C. Blankfein Professor of History at
Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of highe ...
.


Life and career

Armitage was born in
Stockport Stockport is a town and borough in Greater Manchester, England, south-east of Manchester, south-west of Ashton-under-Lyne and north of Macclesfield. The River Goyt and Tame merge to create the River Mersey here. Most of the town is withi ...
, England and educated at
Stockport Grammar School Stockport Grammar School is a co-educational independent day school in Stockport, England. Founded in 1487 by former Lord Mayor of London Sir Edmund Shaa, it is the second oldest in the North of England, after Lancaster Royal Grammar School, ...
before attending
St Catharine's College, Cambridge St Catharine's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1473 as Katharine Hall, it adopted its current name in 1860. The college is nicknamed "Catz". The college is located in the historic city-centre of Cam ...
, where he read English as an undergraduate. After receiving his BA, he embarked on a PhD in English, initially intending to write his doctoral dissertation on Shakespeare's classical sources and the English neoclassical poets. During the course of his research, he became interested in the relationship between
republicanism Republicanism is a political ideology centered on citizenship in a state organized as a republic. Historically, it emphasises the idea of self-rule and ranges from the rule of a representative minority or oligarchy to popular sovereignty. ...
and
empire An empire is a "political unit" made up of several territories and peoples, "usually created by conquest, and divided between a dominant center and subordinate peripheries". The center of the empire (sometimes referred to as the metropole) ex ...
in the works of
John Milton John Milton (9 December 1608 – 8 November 1674) was an English poet and intellectual. His 1667 epic poem ''Paradise Lost'', written in blank verse and including over ten chapters, was written in a time of immense religious flux and politica ...
and was increasingly attracted to the discipline of
intellectual history Intellectual history (also the history of ideas) is the study of the history of human thought and of intellectuals, people who conceptualize, discuss, write about, and concern themselves with ideas. The investigative premise of intellectual hist ...
. Funded by a
Harkness Fellowship The Harkness Fellowship (previously known as the Commonwealth Fund Fellowship) is a program run by the Commonwealth Fund of New York City. This fellowship was established to reciprocate the Rhodes Scholarships and enable Fellows from several cou ...
, he took two years off from his PhD to retrain as a historian at Princeton's
Institute for Advanced Study The Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), located in Princeton, New Jersey, in the United States, is an independent center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. It has served as the academic home of internationally preeminent schola ...
. He was awarded his doctorate in history from Cambridge in 1992 with his dissertation ''The British empire and the civic tradition, 1656–1742'', a study of the relationship between English literature and Britain's imperial ventures in the Americas. After completing his PhD, Armitage remained at Cambridge until 1993 as a junior research fellow at Emmanuel College. He then joined the history faculty at
Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
during which time he spent 2000 and 2001 at Harvard University on a fellowship. He joined the faculty of Harvard in 2004, later becoming the Lloyd C. Blankfein Professor of History and Chair of the Department of History. In 2008 Harvard named him a Walter Channing Cabot Fellow for "achievements and scholarly eminence in the fields of literature, history or art".
Australian Academy of the Humanities The Australian Academy of the Humanities was established by Royal Charter in 1969 to advance scholarship and public interest in the humanities in Australia. It operates as an independent not-for-profit organisation partly funded by the Australia ...

Fellows: Armitage, David, FAHA
. Retrieved 19 June 2014.
He is a Fellow of the
Royal Society of Edinburgh The Royal Society of Edinburgh is Scotland's national academy of science and letters. It is a registered charity that operates on a wholly independent and non-partisan basis and provides public benefit throughout Scotland. It was established i ...
, the
Royal Historical Society The Royal Historical Society, founded in 1868, is a learned society of the United Kingdom which advances scholarly studies of history. Origins The society was founded and received its royal charter in 1868. Until 1872 it was known as the Histori ...
and the
Australian Academy of the Humanities The Australian Academy of the Humanities was established by Royal Charter in 1969 to advance scholarship and public interest in the humanities in Australia. It operates as an independent not-for-profit organisation partly funded by the Australia ...
. Armitage has written about
Atlantic history Atlantic history is a specialty field in history that studies the Atlantic World in the early modern period. The Atlantic World was created by the discovery of a new land by Europeans, and Atlantic History is the study of that world. It is p ...
,
digital humanities Digital humanities (DH) is an area of scholarly activity at the intersection of computing or Information technology, digital technologies and the disciplines of the humanities. It includes the systematic use of digital resources in the humanitie ...
and Big History. Armitage was married to Harvard history professor
Joyce Chaplin Joyce E. Chaplin (born July 28, 1960, in Antioch, California) is an American historian and academic known for her writing and research on early American history, environmental history, and intellectual history. She is the James Duncan Phillips Prof ...
.Potier, Beth (7 October 2004)
"Historian Armitage follows ideas where they take him"
''
Harvard Gazette Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of highe ...
''. Retrieved 19 June 2014.


Books

*''The Ideological Origins of the British Empire'' (
Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press is the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by King Henry VIII in 1534, it is the oldest university press in the world. It is also the King's Printer. Cambridge University Pr ...
, 2000) *''Greater Britain, 1516–1776: Essays in Atlantic History'' (
Ashgate Ashgate Publishing was an academic book and journal publisher based in Farnham (Surrey, United Kingdom). It was established in 1967 and specialised in the social sciences, arts, humanities and professional practice. It had an American office in ...
, 2004) *''The Declaration of Independence: A Global History'' (
Harvard University Press Harvard University Press (HUP) is a publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University, and focused on academic publishing. It is a member of the Association of American University Presses. After the retir ...
, 2007) *''Foundations of Modern International Thought'' (Cambridge University Press, 2012) *''The History Manifesto'' (with Jo Guldi, Cambridge University Press, 2014)Published as an
Open Access Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which research outputs are distributed online, free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 definition), or libre op ...
Boo

*''Civil Wars: A History in Ideas'' (Penguin Random House, 2017)


Edited volumes

*''Milton and Republicanism'' (with Armand Himy and
Quentin Skinner Quentin Robert Duthie Skinner (born 26 November 1940) is a British intellectual historian. He is regarded as one of the founders of the Cambridge School of the history of political thought. He has won numerous prizes for his work, including t ...
, Cambridge University Press, 1995) *''Bolingbroke: Political Writings'' (Cambridge University Press, 1997) *''Theories of Empire, 1450–1800'' (Ashgate, 1998) *''The British Atlantic World, 1500–1800'' (with Michael Braddick, Palgrave Macmillan, 2002) *''British Political Thought in History, Literature and Theory, 1500–1800'' (Cambridge University Press, 2006) *'' Shakespeare and Early Modern Political Thought'' (with Conal Condren and Andrew Fitzmaurice, Cambridge University Press, 2009) *''The Age of Revolutions in Global Context, c. 1760–1840'' (with
Sanjay Subrahmanyam Sanjay Subrahmanyam (born 21 May 1961) is a historian who specialises in the early modern period and in Connected History. He is the author of several books and publications. He holds the Irving and Jean Stone Endowed Chair in Social Sciences at ...
, Palgrave 2010) *'' Pacific Histories: Ocean, Land, People'' (with Alison Bashford, Palgrave, 2014) *'' A Cultural History of Peace in the Age of Enlightenment'' (with Stella Ghervas, Bloomsbury Academic, 2020)


References


External links


Faculty page
at Harvard University
"Eating One’s Own: Examining Civil War – A Conversation with David Armitage"
''Ideas Roadshow'', 2017 {{DEFAULTSORT:Armitage, David Alumni of St Catharine's College, Cambridge British historians Historians of the British Isles Historians of colonialism Harvard Fellows Columbia University faculty 1965 births Living people Historians of political thought Harkness Fellows