Professor Abigail Green

Professor of Modern European History

Brasenose College

abigail.green@bnc.ox.ac.uk

My first book, Fatherlands: state-building and nationhood in 19th century Germany (2001), explored the tensions between state-building and nationhood in Germany through a comparative analysis of Hanover, Saxony and Wurtemberg. Shortlisted in the 2002 Das Historisches Buch awards.

Since then, my work has taken a number of different directions. I won the Sami Rohr Choice Award for Moses Montefiore: Jewish Liberator, Imperial Hero (2010), an exercise in global biography that was named a New Republic Best Book of 2010 and a TLS Book of the Year. As one of the pioneers of the international turn in modern Jewish history, I have also written extensively on Jewish humanitarianism and internationalism, always in conversation with other fields. Together with Vincent Viaene I edited Religious Internationals in the Modern World (2012), which examines this phenomenon comparatively across different religious traditions; more recently, with Jaclyn Granick I edited a special issue of the Journal of Modern Jewish Studies (2021) on 'Gendering Jewish Inter/nationalism'.

My next book, Liberalism: a Jewish History (forthcoming 2027), deals centrally with the revolutions of 1848 and their legacy across generations, which I trace through revolutionary families. This work has been supported by an AHRC Leadership Fellowship and a Leverhulme Major Research Project. It emerges from over a decade of collaborative initiatives that have taken me in many different, inter-related directions. In particular, I would mention the Oxford Seminar in Advanced Jewish Studies, which I led with Simon Levis Sullam, resulting in our co-edited volume: Jews, Liberalism, Antisemitism: a Global History (2020).

Working in partnership with colleagues at the National Trust, the AEPJ, Strawberry Hill House and Waddesdon Manor (many of which were sites of Jewish liberal sociability, politics and activism), I am also leading a major collaborative project on Jewish country houses which has both academic and more heritage-oriented dimensions. This work has been supported by the AHRC and the Claims Conference. The book I edited with Juliet Carey, Jewish Country Houses (2024) was a Daunts Book of the Year and a Country Life Architectural Book of the Year.

I welcome proposals from graduates that intersect with any of these broad research interests.

See page on Brasenose College website

Featured Publications

cd featured publication jewish country houses

Jewish Country Houses (Profile Editions, November 2024)

Through a series of striking case studies, this book explores the pan-European world of the Jewish country house, its architecture, its relationships and its things.

Country houses are powerful symbols of national identity, evoking the glamorous world of the landowning aristocracy. Jewish Country Houses tell a more complex story of prejudice and integration, difference and connection. Many had spectacular art collections and gardens. Some were stages for lavish entertaining, while others provided inspiration to the European avant garde.

cd featured publication religious internationals

Religious Internationals in the Modern World: Globalization and Faith Communities since 1750 (Palgrave Macmillan Transnational History Series, Sep 2012)

Tracing the emergence of 'Religious Internationals' as a distinctive new phenomenon in world history, this book transforms our understanding of the role of religion in our modern world. Through in-depth studies comparing the experiences of Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, Jews and Muslims, leading experts shed new light on 'global civil society'.

Moses Montefiore: Jewish Liberator, Imperial Hero (Harvard University Press, February 2010).

Humanitarian, philanthropist, and campaigner for Jewish emancipation on a grand scale, Sir Moses Montefiore (1784–1885) was the preeminent Jewish figure of the nineteenth century—and one of the first truly global celebrities. His story, told here in full for the first time, is a remarkable and illuminating tale of diplomacy and adventure. Abigail Green's sweeping biography follows Montefiore through the realms of court and ghetto, tsar and sultan, synagogue and stock exchange.

Fatherlands: State-Building and Nationhood in Nineteenth-Century Germany

Fatherlands is an original study of the nature of identity in nineteenth-century Germany, which has crucial implications for the understanding of nationalism, German unification and the German nation state in the modern era. The book approaches these questions from a new and important angle, that of the non-national territorial state. It explores the nature and impact of state-building in non-Prussian Germany.

In the Media

Turban confusion, Jewish heritage, Hong Kong Christian activists

BBC Radio 4

11 September 2021
(at 32.15mins)

‘The Walhalla Hall of Heroes’, part of Germany. Memories of a nation’

BBC Radio 4

10 October 2014

‘In Our Time: Moses Mendelssohn’

BBC Radio 4, Panel Member

15 March 2012

Current DPhil Students

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Teaching

I would be willing to hear from potential DPhil students regarding: European history in the long 19^th century, modern Jewish history.

I currently teach:

Prelims	FHS
GHIV	GH 11
Approaches Sociology	GH 12
Tocqueville	Nationalism in Western Europe
Meinecke & Kehr	Disciplines of History
HBI VI
1919: Remaking the World