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Jacob F. Field

English historian

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 30, 2025
Entity authorityQ38888561
Source-derived summary

Jacob Franz Field (born 1983) is an English historian of the early modern period and author. He has written several works of popular history as well as an account of the impact of the Great Fire of London.

Early life

Jacob Field was born in Lambeth, south London, in 1983. He studied modern history at the University of Oxford after which he undertook postgraduate study at Newcastle University, receiving his MLitt there in 2005. In 2005 he was awarded an Arts and Humanities Research Council grant to research and write his doctoral thesis on the socio-economic impact of the Great Fire of London for which he received his PhD from Newcastle in 2008.

Career

Field joined the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure at the University of Cambridge in 2008 where he researched Britain's occupational structure from the 14th to 19th centuries with particular reference to women's work and domestic service. In 2012 he moved to New Zealand, where he taught economic history at Massey University and the University of Waikato. He returned to England in 2016 where he began to work at the University of Cambridge on a research project examining the historical occupational structure of London.

He has written several popular history books and is best known for One Bloody Thing After Another: The World's Gruesome History. The inclusion of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's 1971 rallying-call for Bangladeshi independence in We Shall Fight on the Beaches: The Speeches That Inspired History attracted attention as it was the first time the speech had been published in book form.

Editorial summary

“Jacob F. Field” enters the record as english historian. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Jacob, Field and English can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA useful biographical orientation record, particularly for establishing names, roles and a first chronology. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1983, 2005, 2008, 2012—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1983-01-01. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Jacob, Field and English.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Jacob F. Field” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Jacob, Field and English provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 30, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q38888561. VIAF identifies the subject as 220673631. The Library of Congress control number is nb2012009917. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1983, 2005, 2008 and 2012.

Critical limits

Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
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Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Jacob F. Field”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Jacob F. Field primary sources, Jacob F. Field archive and Jacob research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Jacob F. Field” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.