Robin Blackburn
British historian
Robin Blackburn (born 1940) is a British historian, a former editor of New Left Review (1983–1999), and emeritus professor in the department of sociology at Essex University.
Background
Blackburn was educated at Hurstpierpoint College, Oxford University and the London School of Economics. Between 2001 and 2010, he was distinguished visiting professor of historical studies at The New School in New York City. He is an emeritus professor in the department of sociology at Essex University. He has been a regular contributor to New Left Review since 1962, and he was the journal editor from 1983 to 1999.
Blackburn has written essays on the collapse of Soviet Communism, on the "credit crunch" of 2008, and of books on the history of slavery and on social policy. Four of his books—The Reckoning: From the Second Slavery to Abolition, 1776–1888 (2024), American Crucible: Slavery, Emancipation and Human Rights (2011), The Making of New World Slavery: From the Baroque to the Modern, 1492–1800 (1997) and The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery, 1776–1848 (1988)—offer an account of the rise and fall of colonial slavery in the Americas, contributing to the emerging field of "Atlantic history". He has also published histories of Social Security, and critiques of the "financialisation of everyday life" and of the privatisation of pension provision.
In 1997, he was awarded the Deutscher Memorial Prize for his book The Making of New World Slavery: From the Baroque to the Modern, 1492–1800.
Selected works/articles
"Prologue to the Cuban Revolution".
“Robin Blackburn” enters the record as british historian. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Robin, Blackburn and British can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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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 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2742180. VIAF identifies the subject as 56634593. The Library of Congress control number is n50008574. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1940, 1983, 1999 and 2001.
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This entry incorporates text from “Robin Blackburn” 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.