Princeton University

Harold James, who holds a joint appointment as Professor of International Affairs in the Woodrow Wilson School, studies economic and financial history and modern German history. He was educated at Cambridge University (Ph.D. in 1982) and was a Fellow of Peterhouse for eight years before coming to Princeton University in 1986. His books include a study of the interwar depression in Germany, The German Slump (1986); an analysis of the changing character of national identity in Germany, A German Identity 1770-1990 (1989) (both books are also available in German); and International Monetary Cooperation Since Bretton Woods (1996). He was also coauthor of a history of Deutsche Bank (1995), which won the Financial Times Global Business Book Award in 1996, and he wrote The Deutsche Bank and the Nazi Economic War Against the Jews (2001). His most recent works are The End of Globalization: Lessons from the Great Depression (2001), which is also available in Chinese, German, Greek, Japanese, Korean, and Spanish, and Europe Reborn: A History 1914-2000 (2003); The Roman Predicament: How the Rules of International Order Create the Politics of Empire (2006) and Family Capitalism: Wendels, Haniels and Falcks (2006; also available in German, Italian and Chinese). In 2004 he was awarded the Helmut Schmidt Prize for Economic History, and in 2005 the Ludwig Erhard Prize for writing about economics. He is also Marie Curie Visiting Professor at the European University Institute. 

Current Project

Professor James is currently working on a book on the history of the corporation in modern Europe, a study of the 1929 crash, and a study of the history of European monetary integration.

Teaching Interests

Professor James regularly teaches courses on the history of financial crises, on 20th-century economic history, and on modern German history. He has also taught EPS 300 (Introduction to Modern European Politics and Society).

For reviews of recent books, see:

http://www.zeit.de/2004/35/P-James
http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=2208464
http://www.eh.net/bookreviews/library/0776.shtml
http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=797234

Education

• January 1994 Visiting Fellow, Institut für die Wissenschaft vom Menschen, Vienna
• 1989 92 Jonathan Dickinson Bicentennial Preceptorship, Princeton University
• 1982 Research Fellow of Institut für europäische Geschichte Mainz
• PhD University of Cambridge 1982
• Ellen MacArthur Prize for Economic History, Cambridge University 1982
• Historical Tripos, Cambridge University: Part I 1977 (first class with distinction); Part II 1978 (first class)
• Educated Perse School, Cambridge, and Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge