David Priestland


David Priestland is a British historian. He teaches Modern History at the University of Oxford and is Fellow of St Edmund Hall.

Career

Priestland's research focuses on the history of the Soviet Union and the development of communism and neoliberalism.
He is an occasional political and cultural commentator for The Guardian and New Statesman.
In 2013, Priestland published a book Merchant, soldier, sage: a history of the world in three castes, which focuses mainly of a power-struggle between three castes fighting for a domination within a society. Priestland's main argument is that humanity has shifted from warrior-class oriented societies, through periods of sage dominance into a modern hegemony of merchants, which has only culminated in a current state of things - a dominance of businesspeople and billionaire entrepreneurs. In the book, Priestland' s voice is mostly critical of global capitalism, which has attracted some notable criticism from other academics.

Selected Works