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Jeremy Black (historian)

British military historian

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 17, 2026
Entity authorityQ5975504 ↗
Source-derived summary

Jeremy Black (born 30 October 1955) is an English historian, who was formerly a professor of history at the University of Exeter. He is a senior fellow at the Center for the Study of America and the West at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US.

Black is the author of over 180 books, principally but not exclusively on 18th-century British politics and international relations, and was described in 2004 as "the most prolific historical scholar of our age". He has published on military and political history, including Warfare in the Western World, 1882–1975 (2001) and The World in the Twentieth Century (2002).

Background

Black studied at Queens' College, Cambridge, St John's College, Oxford, and Merton College, Oxford, before joining Durham University as a lecturer in 1980, where he earned his PhD and subsequently a professorship in 1994. His doctoral thesis was entitled British Foreign Policy 1727–1731, and completed in 1983. As a staff candidate he was not attached to any of the Durham colleges.

He was editor of Archives, journal of the British Records Association, from 1989 to 2005. He has served on the Council of the British Records Association (1989–2005); the Council of the Royal Historical Society (1993–1996 and 1997–2000); and the Council of the List and Index Society (from 1997). He has sat on the editorial boards of History Today, International History Review, Journal of Military History, Media History and the Journal of the Royal United Service Institution (now the RUSI Journal).

Awards and honours

In 2008, he was awarded the Samuel Eliot Morison Prize for lifetime achievement as afforded by the Society for Military History.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Jeremy Black (historian)” as british military historian. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Jeremy, Black and historian.

Editorial reviewA useful biographical orientation record, particularly for establishing names, roles and a first chronology. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1955, 2004, 1882, 1975—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1955-10-30. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Jeremy, Black and historian providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Jeremy Black (historian)”, the useful work is to connect “british military historian” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5975504. VIAF identifies the subject as 12327241. The Library of Congress control number is n84074881. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1955, 2004, 1882 and 1975.

Critical limits

A concise life account rarely captures disputed attribution, private networks or the changing language used to describe a career. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Jeremy Black (historian)” 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.