Lewis Bernstein Namier (June 27 1888 – August 19 1960) was a significant English historian. He was born Ludwik Niemirowski in Wola Okrzejska in what was then Austria-Hungary and is today Poland. His familiy were secular-minded Jewish gentry. Namier was educated at universities of Lemberg in Austrian Galicia (modern Lviv, Ukraine), Lausanne, and the London School of Economics. At Lausanne, he heard Vilfredo Pareto lecture and whose ideas would have much influence on him.

He immigrated to England in 1906 and became a British subject in 1913. During World War I, he fought as private with 20th Royal Fusiliers in 1914–1915, and then various positions with Propaganda Department (1915–1917), Information Department (1917–1918) and finally with the Foreign Office (1918–1920). At the Versailles peace conference of 1919, Namier served as part of the British delegation. Namier’s area of responsibility at Versailles was Poland. After leaving the government, Namier served at Balliol College (1920–1921) before going into business. Later, Namier who was a long-time Zionist worked as political secretary for the Jewish Agency in Palestine (1929–31). He served as professor at the University of Manchester from 1931 until his retirement in 1953.

He is best known for his work on Parliament and its composition in the latter part of the eighteenth century, which by its very detailed study of individuals caused substantial revision to be made to accounts based on a party system. Namier's best known works were The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III, England in The Age of the American Revolution and the History Of Parliament series he edited later in his life. Namier used Prosopography or collective biography of every MP and peer who sat in the British Parliament in later the 18th century to reveal that local interests, not national ones, often determined how parliamentarians voted. Namier felt that prosopographical methods were the best ones for analyzing small groups like the House of Commons, but was opposed to the application of prosopography on larger groups.

In addition, Namier used other sources such as wills and tax records to reveal the interests of the MPs. In his time, Namier's methods were innovative and were quite controversial. Namier's obsession with collecting facts such as club membership of various MPs and then attempting to co-relate them to voting patterns led his critics to accuse him of "taking ideas out of history".

He also wrote on European history, and his later books Europe in Decay, In the Nazi Era and Diplomatic Prelude unsparing condemned the Third Reich and appeasement. As someone born Jewish (Namier had converted to Anglicanism), Namier was horrified by the Holocaust and his writings on German history have criticized for Germanophobia. Like the work of his friend Sir John Wheeler-Bennett, Namier's diplomatic histories are generally not well regarded by historians today largely because Namier was content to condemn appeasement without seeking to explain the reasons for it.

He was married twice and knighted in 1952. Namier held very right-wing views, and has been called the most reactionary British historian of his generation. Ironically, Namier’s principal protégé was the left-wing historian A.J.P. Taylor.

Work

• The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III, 1929.
• England in The Age of the American Revolution, 1930.
• Skyscrapers and other Essays, 1931. Contains his essays on Austrian Galicia.
• In the Margin of History, 1939.
• Conflicts: Studies in Contemporary History, 1942.
• 1848: The Revolution of the Intellectuals, 1944.
• Facing East: essays on Germany, the Balkans and Russia in the twentieth century, 1947.
• Diplomatic prelude, 1938–1939, 1948.
• Europe in Decay: A Study in Disintegration, 1936–40, 1950.
• Avenues of History, 1952.
• In the Nazi era, 1952.
• Basic Factors in Nineteenth-Century European History, 1953.
• Monarchy and the party system : the Romanes Lecture delivered in the Sheldonian Theatre 15 May 1952'', 1952.
• Personalities and powers, 1955.
• Vanished Supremacies; essays on European history, 1812–1918, 1958.
• Crossroads of Power: essays on eighteenth-century England, 1962.
• The House of Commons, 1754–1790, 1966, 1964, edited by John Brooke & Sir Lewis Namier.

References

• Colley, Linda Lewis Namier New York: St. Martin's Press, 1989.

• Namier, Julia Lewis Namier: A biography, London: Oxford University Press, 1971.

• Pares, Richard & Taylor, A.J.P. (editors) Essays Presented to Sir Lewis Namier, London: Macmillan Press, 1956.

See also

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