Niall Ferguson Family History

Niall Campbell Ferguson the historian was born on April 18th, 1964 to James and Molly Ferguson in Glasgow, Scotland.

He grew up in the Ibrox Park area of Glasgow as the elder child in a professional family.  His father was a doctor and his mother a physics teacher.  Both Niall and his younger sister Kate did well at school and went to Oxford University.  While at school Niall had admired the work of the historian AJP Taylor and chose history as his field of study.

The Historian in England.  Niall graduated with a first-class honours degree in history in 1985 and subsequently received his MA and DPhil from Oxford.  During that time his political views, at the time of Thatcher, moved to the right.  In the 1990’s he held a series of academic posts at Oxford and Cambridge before advancing to a professorship at Jesus College at Oxford in 2000.

Niall first made a name of himself with his 2003 book Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World.  Here he aroused controversy for his apparent support of British imperialism.  As one reviewer put it: “While acknowledging the sins of British colonialism, this book gives an enthusiastic nod to the Empire’s high moral character and its role in bringing a sometimes regressive and antagonistic world kicking and screaming into modernity’s fold.”

The Historian in America.  By 2003 Niall had begun dividing his time between England and America.

In 2004 he took up a permanent post as Professor of History at Harvard University.  This defection from Britain’s academic ranks was judged at the time of being as much the result of his star power as it was an admission that American academics of his reputation could command astronomical salaries.

Niall’s association with Stanford University, centering on the Hoover Institute, began when he was at Harvard.  In 2015, after twelve years at Harvard, he announced his move to Hoover as a senior fellow in residence.  He naturalized as a US citizen in 2018.

He has written further books, undertaken TV documentaries, advised politicians, and aired his views on many contemporary topics.  These have generally been pro-Republican, anti-Democrat, and have tended to be supportive of Trump’s plans in office.

Niall and Cancel Culture

In an interview with Peter Robinson of the Hoover Institute,  Niall recounted the humiliation that his wife Ayaan Hirsi Ali had endured at being disinvited from giving the commencement address at Brandeis University in 2014.    The University President had said that certain of her past statements were inconsistent with its core values because they were Islamophobic.

Niall saw this as a recurring phenomena for universities, including Harvard where he was then teaching, and “a curious illiberal turn.”  He became a critic of cancel culture and one of the most prominent supporters of anti cancel-culture.

He has said: “Wokeism has gone from being a fringe fashion to be the dominant ideology of the universities.”

Niall’s Forebears

Niall Ferguson is proud of his Scottish heritage.  He has hailed the Scottish Enlightenment of the 18th century as an important precursor for subsequent British and American history.   And – although growing up an atheist – he is respectful of the Calvinist tradition in Lowland Scotland.

However, coming from the west of Scotland, Niall has also been mindful of the advice that had been given to him by his grandfather – trust no one and tell them nothing.  There is little publicly available, either spoken or written down, about Niall’s own family history.

Niall’s Own Account.  Niall’s one reported account of his forebears comes from a newspaper interview.  It ran as follows:

“Both of my grandfathers fought in wars.

My father’s father John Ferguson fought in the First World War where he was shot and gassed and suffered permanent lung damage.  As a child I would sit on my grandfather’s knee while the old man huffed and wheezed.

My mother’s father fought the Japanese in Burma during the Second World War and contracted tuberculosis.  He would have the biggest influence on me.  He was a journalist.  He was the one who encouraged me to write.  I used to write plays and short stories at school, giving him things I had written as Christmas presents.  The relationship between us was intense.  We were on the same wavelength about so many things.

He had three great rules: trust no one, tell them nothing and to thine own self be true.  Those were his three great principles.  The west of Scotland is a tough place.

My father gave me a very strong sense of self-discipline and the moral value of work.  As a doctor who worked long hours and who was dedicated to his job, he signalled to me that work was a noble thing.

My mother encouraged my creative side.  We conspired one week, when there was a fabulous series of Greta Garbo films on television, that I would feign illness and we would watch the films together.

That combination of my father’s strict discipline and my mother’s sense that if something really valuable was to be had, then you could bend the rules a bit, was really valuable.”

His Ancestors and Empire.  Another thing about his forebears was that these Scots people had travelled.

Great-aunt Aggie had emigrated to Canada; while Uncle Ian had worked in India, Africa and the Gulf.  As for Niall’s own father, a Glasgow doctor, he had whisked his family off to do good works in Kenya for a couple of years in the 1960’s.  Hence Niall’s later interest in Empire.

Niall Ferguson’s Family Tree

• Niall Ferguson m. Susan (Sue) Douglas, newspaper editor (b. 1957) in 1987, divorced in 2011; rem. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Somali-born Dutch and American political writer (b. 1969) in 2011
• – Felix Douglas Ferguson (b. 1994), London investment banker, with Sue
• – Freya Douglas Ferguson (b. 1995), London jeweller, with Sue
• – Lachlan Douglas Ferguson (b. 1999), New York business, with Sue
• – Thomas Ferguson (b. 2012), with Ayaan
• – Ayaan Ferguson (b. 2017), with Ayaan