Dick Geary (born Richard John Geary; December 1945 – 21 February 2021) was a British historian. He studied at City of Leicester Boys' Grammar School and

King's College, Cambridge King's College, formally The King's College of Our Lady and Saint Nicholas in Cambridge, is a List of colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college lies beside the River Cam and faces ...

, graduating with a degree in History in 1967. Geary's field of research was the European

labour movement The labour movement is the collective organisation of working people to further their shared political and economic interests. It consists of the trade union or labour union movement, as well as political parties of labour. It can be considere ...

and the intellectual history of

Marxism Marxism is a political philosophy and method of socioeconomic analysis. It uses a dialectical and materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to analyse class relations, social conflict, ...

. He specialized in German History, including the German Empire since 1871, the

Weimar Republic The Weimar Republic, officially known as the German Reich, was the German Reich, German state from 1918 to 1933, during which it was a constitutional republic for the first time in history; hence it is also referred to, and unofficially proclai ...

and

Nazism Nazism (), formally named National Socialism (NS; , ), is the far-right totalitarian socio-political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Germany. During Hitler's rise to power, it was fre ...

. More recently Dick Geary developed a second research focus on the history of

slavery Slavery is the ownership of a person as property, especially in regards to their labour. Slavery typically involves compulsory work, with the slave's location of work and residence dictated by the party that holds them in bondage. Enslavemen ...

. His methods included both

social history Social history, often called history from below, is a field of history that looks at the lived experience of the past. Historians who write social history are called social historians. Social history came to prominence in the 1960s, spreading f ...

and comparative studies. During his career Dick Geary worked at King's College, Cambridge and

Lancaster University Lancaster University (officially The University of Lancaster) is a collegiate public university, public research university in Lancaster, Lancashire, England. The university was established in 1964 by royal charter, as one of several new univer ...

, where he was responsible for the Department of

German Studies German studies is an academic field that researches, documents and disseminates German language, literature, and culture in its historic and present forms. Academic departments of German studies therefore often focus on German culture, German h ...

. He was one of the two original editors of ''

Contemporary European History ''Contemporary European History'' is an international peer-reviewed academic history journal founded in 1992 and published quarterly by Cambridge University Press. The journal covers the history of Europe from 1914 onwards and publishes three mai ...

'', an academic journal specialising in the history of Europe from 1918 onwards. Until his retirement in 2010 he was director of the institute on the History of Slavery at the

University of Nottingham The University of Nottingham is a public research university in Nottingham, England. It was founded as University College Nottingham in 1881, and was granted a royal charter in 1948. Nottingham's main campus (University Park Campus, Nottingh ...

. Geary died on 21 February 2021.

Selected works

* ''European Labour Protest 1848–1939'' (London: Croom Helm, 1981). * ''Karl Kautsky'' (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1987). * (editor) ''Labour and Socialist Movements in Europe before 1914'' (Oxford: Berg Publishers, 1989)."Reviews: Dick Geary, ed., Labour and Socialist Movements in Europe before 1914"
''European History Quarterly'', July 1991, 21: 404-407. * ''European Labour Politics from 1900 to the Depression'' (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1991). * ''Hitler and Nazism'' (London: Routledge, 1993).

References

External links

Dick Geary at the University Of Nottingham website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Geary, Dick 1945 births 2021 deaths British historians Alumni of King's College, Cambridge Historians of socialism Academics of the University of Nottingham Labor historians Academics of Lancaster University