Hugh Francis Kearney was a British historian, and Amundson Professor Emeritus of the University of Pittsburgh. He was the author of several articles on early modern economic history, a biography on Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford, and the acclaimed book British Isles: A History of Four Nations, which advocated a multi-national "Britannic" approach, rather than an Anglo-centric approach to their history, historiography and sociology.
Career
Born in Liverpool, Kearney read History at Peterhouse, Cambridge in the 1940s. He met his wife while teaching at University College Dublin where she was an undergraduate. Kearney became, in 1962, one of the first academics at the still-under-construction "plate glass university", University of Sussex, where he taught in a temporary Nissen hut before the arts faculty buildings were completed. Kearney went on to teach courses on contemporary Britain; poetry, science and religion in seventeenth century England; religion and literature in the age of Pascal, and the politics and literature of Yeats and Joyce. Kearney made modern Irish history his major research interest, especially focusing on Ireland's relationship with the United Kingdom, and the British nations. While at Sussex, Kearney spent three months at the Folger Library in Washington D.C., where he wrote an article Puritanism, Capitalism and the Scientific Revolution. During his time at Sussex, he also took a sabbatical in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In 1970 Kearney left Sussex to become Richard Pares Professor of history at the University of Edinburgh, and in 1975 moved on to the University of Pittsburgh, where he was Amundson Professor of British History until 1999. While at Sussex, Kearney edited Problems and Perspectives in History in which he contributed the volume Origins of the Scientific Revolution. As result of this, he came to contribute a volume in the new World University Library that was translated into German, Spanish and Japanese. In 1969 Kearney contributed three chapters on the 17th century in John Cruikshank's Sussex-based series French Literature and its Background. Kearney further published his work on 17th century universities in Scholars and Gentlemen: Universities and Society in Pre-Industrial Britain. A gap of almost 20 years followed before the publication of his later works, The British Isles: A History of Four Nations and the collection of essays, Ireland: Contested Ideas of Nationalism and History.
Works
''The British Isles: A History of Four Nations''
In 1989 Kearney published The British Isles: A History of Four Nations, to strong reviews in the Times Literary Supplement, History Today, The Spectator and the New YorkReview of Books. It was printed by the Cambridge University Press as a general reader book with plate sections in hardback and paperback, and the Canto edition of 1995, which had an extended bibliography, was reprinted twice. A second edition was published by Cambridge in 2006, which included a new chapter on the nineties and post-devolution Britain.
''Ireland: Contested Ideas of Nationalism and History''
In 2007 Kearney cast his "Britannic" perspective on Ireland in a collection of essays published by the New York University Press in the USA, and by Cork University Press in Ireland. According to the NYUP, "Kearney contends that Ireland represents a striking example of the power of nationalism" and offers "his revisionist 'four nations' approach to Irish history."
Personal life
Kearney's daughter is Martha Kearney, a presenter of Radio 4's The World at One and Today programmes. Kearney's son is Hugh Kearney, a high school history teacher.
