Martin Blinkhorn, History, Lancaster University

Research Interests

Research Interests

I retired as a full member of the Lancaster History Department in September 2006, but remain closely attached to it as a Leverhulme Emeritus Fellow. Throughout my forty years in the department my main fields of research and publication have been the history of modern Spain and the wider Mediterranean region and the history of fascism and the political far right in twentieth-century Europe.

My two most significant recent and continuing research projects arise from the first of these fields. One reflects an enduring interest (originally inspired by Eric Hobsbawm's books Primitive Rebels and Bandits), in the phenomenon of banditry: both generally and more specifically in the lands around the Mediterranean. Between 2006 and 2008 the Leverhulme Emeritus Fellowship will be supporting the completion of a longstanding programme of research into a characteristic activity of bandits, namely kidnapping for ransom. To be precise I am exploring the kidnapping of British subjects by Spanish, Italian, Greek, Bulgarian, Turkish and Moroccan brigands during the Victorian and Edwardian periods (1837-1910). The outcome will be a book, provisionally entitled: Kidnapped! British Encounters with Mediterranean Brigands, 1837-1910. The second project, Community, society and identity in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Gibraltar, has been a major collaborative one, generously funded over three and a half years (2002-6) by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and directed by my colleague Stephen Constantine and myself. Our co-authored book Community and Identity in Gibraltar since 1704, will be published by Manchester University Press.

Looking beyond these current activities, I am considering, in the light of a career-long interest in the history of Latin America (most notably Argentina and Cuba), writing something on Spanish America from the perspective of a still maturing Hispanist, Mediterraneanist and Europeanist.

Some 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