David Priestland is a British historian. He teaches modern history at the University of Oxford and is Fellow of St Edmund Hall.^[1]

Career

Priestland's research focuses on the history of the Soviet Union and the development of communism and neoliberalism.^[2] He is an occasional political and cultural commentator for The Guardian and New Statesman.^[3][4] In 2013, Priestland published a book Merchant, Soldier, Sage: A History of the World in Three Castes, which focuses mainly on a power struggle between three castes fighting for domination within society. Priestland's main argument is that humanity has shifted from societies oriented towards a warrior-class, through periods of sage dominance into a modern hegemony of merchants, which has culminated in dominance by businesspeople and billionaire entrepreneurs.^[5] In the book, Priestland's voice is mostly critical of global capitalism, which has attracted some notable criticism from other academics.^[6][7]

Selected works

• Stalinism and the politics of mobilization: ideas, power, and terror in inter-war Russia. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007
• The Red Flag. Allen Lane 2009, ISBN 978-0-71399-481-0 (The three English-language editions 2009-2010 each have different subtitles: How Communism Changed The World; Communism and the Making of the Modern World; A History of Communism)
  • World History of Communism. From the French Revolution to today. Translated by Klaus-Dieter Schmidt. Siedler, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-88680-708-6
  • World History of Communism. Federal Agency for Civic Education, Bonn ISBN 978-3-8389-0055-1.
  • Russian edition: Красный флаг . история коммунизма, Krasnyi flag: Istorija kommunizma, ЭКСМО / EKSMO, Moskva 2011
• Merchant, soldier, sage: a history of the world in three castes. New York: Penguin Press, 2013