Professor Peter H. Wilson

Professor Peter H. Wilson

History
University Academic Fellow and Chichele Professor of the History of War since 2015

I am the Chichele Professor of the History of War at the University of Oxford, a Fellow of All Souls College, and Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Before coming to Oxford in 2015, I held posts at the universities of Hull, Newcastle, and Sunderland, as well as visiting positions at the University of Münster, Germany, and at High Point University, North Carolina USA. Among other roles, I have been Principal Investigator of the ‘European Fiscal-Military System 1530-1870’ project funded by the European Research Council (2018-25) and was the founding President of the Society for the History of War.

Links
Email: peter.wilson@history.ox.ac.uk
History Faculty Web Profile
Research Areas
War in European and Global Development
Resource Mobilisation
History of the Holy Roman Empire

Selected Publications

Iron and Blood: A Military History of the German-speaking Peoples since 1500

(Penguin, 2022; Harvard University Press, 2023). 

Winner of the Wellington Medal for Military History 2023. Chinese, German, and Spanish translations.

Lützen

(Oxford University Press, 2018).

The Holy Roman Empire: A Thousand Years of Europe’s History

(Penguin, 2016) published in the US by Harvard University Press as The Heart of Europe: A History of the Holy Roman Empire (2016). 

Chinese, Italian, and Spanish translations. 

Korean translation in preparation. 

The Economist and Telegraph Book of the Year.

The Holy Roman Empire 1495-1806

 (Studies in European History Series) (entirely revised 2nd ed., Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2011). 

Chinese translation in preparation.

The Thirty Years War: A Sourcebook 

(Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2010)

Europe’s Tragedy: A History of the Thirty Years War

(London: Allen Lane/Penguin, 2009). 

Also published as The Thirty Years War: Europe’s Tragedy by Harvard University Press, 2009. 

Chinese, German, Macedonian, Polish, and Spanish translations. 

Society of Military History Distinguished Book Award 2011.

Teaching

I give various lectures on Roman Archaeology: "Roman Archaeology: Cities and Settlement under the Empire", in Michaelmas Term; "The Archaeology of the Roman Economy" in Hilary Term, and other Roman courses as required.

At Masters level I teach options on Greek and Roman Landscape Archaeology, The Archaeology of the Roman Economy, and the Middle Imperial Period (AD 70–250).