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Professor Martin Blinkhorn

Professor Emeritus of History

Degree: B.A., D.Phil. (Oxford), A.M. (Stanford), F.R.Hist.S.

Career Summary

I entered the Lancaster University History department in 1966 and retired forty years later in 2006. Since then I hanve been able to remain closely associated with the department, both as Emeritus Pofessor of History and, between 2006 and 2009, as Leverhulme Emeritus Fellow.

Research Interests

My main interests as regards research and writing have been and remain:

· modern and contemporary history of Spain, Italy and the wider Mediterranean region

· rural societies, protest and insurgency

· fascism and the political right in 20th-century Europe

The principal focus of my current work brings together the first and second of these areas and reflects a longstanding fascination (originally inspired by the path-breaking work of Eric Hobsbawm) with the phenomenon of banditry, both generally and more specifically in the lands around the Mediterranean. The 2006-9 Leverhulme Emeritus Fellowship supported the later stages of research into a characteristic activity of bandits, namely kidnapping for ransom. The project's distinctive theme, however, is international kidnapping. The perpetrators of the acts which provide the work's core were bandits (or brigands as they were more often known in Britain) - Spanish, Italian, Greek, Balkan, Turkish and Moroccan - and the captives (mostly) British. The period covered embraces the reigns of Victoria and Edward VII, i.e. 1837-1910.

A book based on this research, and provisionally entitled Kidnapped! British Encounters with Mediterranean Brigands, 1837-1910, will be published by Oxford University Press. As well as contributing to the historiography of banditry and the comparative social history of the Mediterranean region, which is how it was originally conceived, Kidnapped! (having like many scholarly projects assumed an unanticipated life of its own) will also propel me into the field of 19th- and early 20th-century British history. Among other things it will explain how, when, why and with what early results Britain came to adopt a policy on hostage-taking which remains in force today.

Where my writing plans will take me once Kidnapped! is out of the way - and, indeed, precisely when this will be - depend largely on the then state of my deteriorating sight. The most likely project at the moment seems to be a new, post-Hobsbawmian examination of banditry and its maritime sibling, piracy.

Recent publications

• Fascism and the Right in Europe, 1919-1945 (London: Longmans, 2000).
• Mussolini and Fascist Italy (3rd edn, London: Routledge, 2006)
• 'Liability, responsibility and blame: British ransom victims in the Mediterranean periphery, 1860-81', Australian Journal of Politics and History, 46 (3), 2000, 336-56.
• 'Route Maps and Landscapes: Historians, "Fascist Studies" and the Study of Fascism', Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, Winter 2004, 507-26.
• 'A question of identity: how the people of Gibraltar became Gibraltarians', in David Killingray and David Taylor, eds, The United Kingdom Overseas Territories: Past, Present and Future (London: Institute of Commonwealth Studies, 2005), 45-64.
• 'The Fascist Challenge', in Gordon Martel, ed., A Companion to Europe 1900-1945 (Oxford: Blackwells, 2005).
• 'Avoiding the ultimtae act of violence: Mediterranean bandits and the crime of kidnapping for ransom, 1815-1914', in Stuart Carroll, ed., Cultures of Violence: Interpersonal Violence in Historical Perspective (London: Palgrave-Macmillan, forthcoming 2007).

Associated Keyword: History

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