Professor Ronald Hyam

College positions: Emeritus Fellow, Emeritus Archivist

University position: Emeritus Professor in British Imperial History

Subject: History

Group membership: Chapel Affairs Committee

Professor Ronald Hyam is an Emeritus Fellow and a former President of Magdalene College.

Professor Hyam is an Emeritus Professor in British Imperial History at the University of Cambridge and the Archivist Emeritus at Magdalene.

Professor Hyam was educated at Isleworth Grammar School after which he did his National Service with the RAF (1954-1956, Instructor Training course). He was an undergraduate at St John's College, Cambridge from 1956 to 1960, where he received First Class honours in both parts of the Historical Tripos. His entire career since 1960 has been spent at Magdalene College Cambridge.

For most of his working life, he has been essentially an archival historian, exploiting especially the resources of The National Archives at Kew in order better to understand government policy towards the British Empire. His research took him to South Africa, Swaziland, Lesotho, India and Sri Lanka.

As a Fellow of the College, apart from teaching duties, his interests have focused on the College and the Old Libraries, the Archives, and the College Magazine (of which he was editor 1963-64, 1986-1997, and 2008-09). He is also an amateur calligrapher (exhibited, Ely Cathedral, 2016).

Research Interests

  • The history of Magdalene College
  • Recent social history
  • Government policy and Britain in world history
  • Southern Africa
  • History of race and sexuality in an imperial context

Qualifications

Cambridge University:

  • BA, History, University of Cambridge
  • MA, University of Cambridge
  • PhD, University of Cambridge
  • LittD. Imperial History, University of Cambridge

Career/Research Highlights

  • 1987-2005: Research editor and member of the Management Committee for British Documents on the End of Empire, a major collaborative project supported by the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London, the Leverhulme Trust, the British Academy, the Cambridge Smuts Memorial Fund, and The National Archives. Edited six books published between 1992 and 2000 (3,600 pages in total).
  • 1990-1992: Worldwide recognition for Empire and Sexuality: the British Experience (1990, 1991, 1992). The book was reviewed in Wasafiri: International Contemporary Writing, newspapers, and journals in Copenhagen, New Delhi, and Tokyo, as well as in Anglo-American, Commonwealth, and European journals. The Japanese translation was published by Kashiwashobo in 1998.
  • 1995: Served as a historical consultant for the BBC-TV six-part series Ruling Passions: Sex, Race, and Empire, based on Empire and Sexuality.
  • 2000: Smuts Distinguished Lecturer at the University of Cambridge.

KEY PUBLICATIONS

Understanding the British Empire, Cambridge University Press, 2010, 552 pp.

Britain's declining empire: the road to decolonisation, 1918-1968, Cambridge University Press, 2006, 464 pp. The Lion and the Springbok: Britain and South Africa since the Boer War, with Peter Henshaw, Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Britain's Imperial Century, 1815-1914: a study of empire and expansion, 3rd edn, Palgrave Macmillan, 2002, 377 pp.

Empire and sexuality: the British experience, Manchester and New York, Manchester University Press, 1990, 1991, 1992.

Reappraisals in British Imperial History, with Ged Martin, London and New York, the Macmillan Press, 1975.

The failure of South African expansion, 1908-1948, London, the Macmillan Press, 1972.

Elgin and Churchill at the Colonial Office, 1905-1908: the watershed of the Empire­ Commonwealth, London and New York, Macmillan, 1968.

A history of Magdalene College Cambridge, 1428-1988, co-author and general editor, Magdalene College Publications, 1994.

A history of Isleworth Grammar School, Isleworth GS, 1969.

Research articles in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography; Oxford History of the British Empire, vol 4; Historical Journal; Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, etc.; papers and pamphlets for Magdalene College (Magdalene Described, 2011), etc.