Vere Harmsworth Professor of Imperial and Naval History explained

The Vere Harmsworth Professorship of Imperial and Naval History is one of the senior professorships in history at the University of Cambridge. After the Beit Professorship of Colonial History at Oxford (founded in 1905) and the Rhodes Professorship of Imperial History at King's College London (founded in 1919), it is the third oldest chair in its subject in the world.

In 1919 Harold Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Rothermere endowed a "Professorship of Naval History" at Cambridge with a donation of £20,000, in memory of his son Vere who was killed at the Battle of Ancre in November 1916.^[1] In 1932 the Royal Empire Society successfully campaigned for Cambridge to accept the renaming of the chair to "The Professorship of Imperial and Naval History", under which rubric a new professor was appointed in 1934.^[2] Among the holders of this prestigious chair, only Admiral Sir Herbert Richmond has specialized in naval history, while the others have tended to be scholars of imperial history.

Vere Harmsworth Professors

• John Holland Rose (1919–1933)
• Admiral Sir Herbert Richmond (1934–1936)^[3]
• Eric Anderson Walker (1936–1951)^[4]
• Edwin Ernest Rich (1951–1971)
• John Andrew Gallagher (1971–1980)^[1]
• David Kenneth Fieldhouse (1981–1992)^[1]
• Sir Christopher Alan Bayly (1992–2013)^[1]
• Alison Bashford (2013–2017)^[1]
• Samita Sen (2018–Present)

References

1. Web site: The Vere Harmsworth Professorship of Imperial and Naval History . cam.ac.uk . University of Cambridge . 1 February 2019.
2. Book: Barry Dennis Hunt. Sailor-Scholar: Admiral Sir Herbert Richmond 1871–1946. 1982. Wilfrid Laurier University Press. 978-0-88920-104-0. 217 .
3. Richmond . Herbert . Naval History and the Citizen: The Inaugural Lecture of the Vere Harmsworth Professor of Imperial and Naval History in the University of Cambridge . International Affairs . 1934 . 13 . 5 . 715–716 . 10.2307/2602915 . 1 February 2019. 2602915 .
4. Book: Ronald Hyam. Understanding the British Empire. 20 May 2010. Cambridge University Press. 978-1-139-78846-5. 513–.