Professor Peter H Wilson

Grant Professor of History

Phone: 01482 465382
Email: p.h.wilson@hull.ac.uk

PETER H WILSON joined the Department as GF Grant Professor of History in January 2007, having worked previously at the universities of Sunderland and Newcastle-upon-Tyne. In addition, he taught at High Point University, North Carolina, in 2011, and has been a visiting fellow at the University of Münster, Germany. He did his BA at Liverpool and PhD at Jesus College Cambridge. He is a specialist in early modern German history, particularly the political, military, social and cultural history of the Holy Roman Empire between 1495 and 1806. He is also interested in the impact of war in wider European and world development from the seventeenth century to around 1900.

Between 2002 and 2009 he coordinated the German History Society’s series of annual workshops on early modern German history with Dr Michael Schaich at the German Historical Institute, London. He is one of the curators of the international exhibition to mark the tricentenary of the birth of Frederick ‘the Great’, held in Potsdam in 2012 (http://www.spsg.de/index_10135_de.html). He is also currently Director of Research and Deputy Head of Department.

Teaching

He has taught a wide variety of European, and some British and American history in the past.

Main teaching commitments include

• 20490 Fear, Faith and Family in Early Modern Europe
• 20192 Thinking about the Past
• 20297 War in European History 1500-1815
• 20299 The Thirty Years War (special subject)
• 20730 Themes in Military History (MA core module)
• 20574 Experiencing the German Past (MA core module)
• 20711 War and Peace in Early Modern Central Europe (MA option)

Postgraduate Supervision

I am happy to supervise postgraduate research on most aspects of European history 1500-1800, especially the social, cultural, political or military history of German-speaking Europe, as well as war in eighteenth and nineteenth-century world history.

Publications

Books

• The Holy Roman Empire, 1495-1806 (fully revised and expanded edition, Palgrave, 2011)
• Europe's Tragedy: A History of the Thirty Years War, Penguin Press, June 2009; published in the USA as 'The Thirty Years War: Europe's Tragedy', by Harvard University Press, October 2009. Society for Military History Distinguished Book Award 2011
• Shinsei Rôma Teikoku 1495-1806 (Iwanami Shoten Publishing, Tokyo, 2005)
• From Reich to Revolution: German History 1558-1806 (Palgrave, 2004) Available from Palgrave
• Absolutism in Central Europe (Routledge, 2000)
• The Holy Roman Empire 1495-1806 (Macmillan, 1999)
• German Armies: War and German Politics 1648-1806 (UCL Press, 1998)
• War, State and Society in Württemberg, 1677-1798 (Cambridge University Press, 1995)

Books Edited

• edited with Robert Evans and Michael Schaich, The Holy Roman Empire, 1495-1806 (OUP, 2011)
• The Thirty Years War: A Sourcebook (Palgrave, 2010)
• (with Alan Forrest at York) The Bee and the Eagle: Napoleonic France and the End of the Holy Roman Empire, 1806 (Palgrave, 2009)
• A Companion to Eighteenth-Century Europe (Blackwell, 2008) Available from Blackwell
• Warfare in Europe 1815-1914 (Ashgate, 2006)
• 1848: Year of Revolution (Ashgate, 2006)

Articles

• Over 50 articles in German, American, Canadian, French and British journals and edited collections, and over 150 shorter pieces in academic and commercial media.

Forthcoming Books

• The Holy Roman Empire 1495-1806, Chinese translation (Peking University Press, 2012)
• edited with Robert Evans, The Holy Roman Empire 1495-1806: A European Perspective (Brill, 2012) 

Other Information and Interests