Timothy Charles William Blanning FBA (born 21 April 1942) is an English historian who served as Professor of Modern European History at the University of Cambridge from 1992 to 2009.
Timothy Charles William Blanning attended the King's SchoolinBruton. He went up to Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree and completing his doctorate there in 1967. In 1965, he was elected to a research fellowship at Sidney Sussex, and in 1968 was elected to a fellowship there. He was appointed to an assistant lectureship at the University of Cambridge in 1972, being promoted to lecturer four years later. He was promoted again to be Reader in Modern European History in 1987, and was appointed Professor of Modern European History in 1992. He retired in 2009, but remains at Cambridge as an emeritus professor.[1]
Blanning's first book, Reform and Revolution in Mainz, 1743–1803 (1974), offered a case study that examined the "German Problem", the idea that modern Germany began moving apart from Western Europe in political and cultural terms; Blanning sought to demonstrate that this process began in the eighteenth century, whereas earlier historians had emphasised the nineteenth century as a more important period.[2] His second book, The French Revolution in Germany: Occupation and Resistance in the Rhineland, 1792–1802, was published in 1983. The French Revolution was also the subject of Blanning's The Origins of the French Revolutionary Wars (1986), The French Revolution: Aristocrats versus Bourgeois? (1987) and The French Revolutionary Wars (1996). Blanning argues that Napoleon's actions in Germany did speed up the emergence of a German national consciousness; on the other hand it did nothing to modernize Germany's governance, economy, or culture.[3]
He turned to biography, covering the Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II in 1994. He has published biographies of George I (2017) and Frederick the Great of Prussia (2015),[1] the latter of which won the British Academy Medal in 2016.[4]
Since the early 2000s, Blanning's work has also focused on cultural histories of Europe, beginning in 2002 with his book The Culture of Power and the Power of Culture; this was followed by The Pursuit of Glory: Europe 1648–1815 (2006), The Triumph of Music: Composers, Musicians and Audiences, 1700 to the Present (2008) and The Romantic Revolution (2011).[1]
In 1990, Blanning was elected a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA).[5] In September 2016, he was awarded the British Academy Medal for his book Frederick the Great: King of Prussia (2015).[4] Blanning was awarded a Doctor of Letters degree by the University of Cambridge in 1998.[1]