Dr Bernard Attard

I am a historian whose main interest has been in the connected histories of empire and the global economy from the late eighteenth century. I completed my undergraduate degree and masters at the University of Melbourne before moving for doctoral work to the University of Oxford. I also have a Graduate Diploma in Economics. Before joining the University in 1998, I held positions at London University and at the University of New England in Armidale, Australia. My recent work about the intellectual history of informal empire has led to invitations to speak at the University of Münster in Germany and an international panel at the 2025 Eighth European Congress on World and Global History in Växjö, Sweden. As a teacher, I am particularly interested in the pedagogy of teaching empire to young people in diverse, post-colonial societies like modern Britain and have welcomed the opportunity to contribute as an academic consultant to a recent study of the teaching of the British Empire, migration and belonging in English secondary schools funded by the Pears Foundation and conducted by researchers at University College, London, and the University of Oxford.

My principal research interest is the political economy of British imperialism, particularly with reference to international capital markets and the white settler colonial societies in Australia and New Zealand. Considerable qualitative and quantitative research has been funded by the ESRC and contributed to my current project about British business and political conflict in Australia in the early twentieth century, which has also been funded by the British Academy. My work has also expanded to the history of ideas of ‘empire’ from the mid-nineteenth century.

Selected publications since 2000:

(2024). We, Us and Them: “Robinsonian Collaboration” in a British World. In J. Mann & B. Zielinski (Eds.), Reflecting on the British World: Essays in Honour of Carl Bridge (pp. 13-38). New York: Peter Lang.

(2023). Informal Empire: The Origin and Significance of a Key Term. Modern Intellectual History, 20(4), 1219-1250. Open Access.

(2016). Imperial central banks? The Bank of England, London & Westminster Bank, and the British Empire before 1914. In O. Feiertag & M. Margairaz (Eds.), Les banques centrales et l'etat-nation (pp. 189-212). Paris: Presses de Science Po

(2013). The London Stock Exchange and the Colonial Market: The City, Internationalisation and Power. In C. Dejung & N. P. Petersson (Eds.), The Foundations of Worldwide Economic Integration: Powers, Institutions, and Global Markets, 1850-1930 (pp. 89-111). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

(2013). Wakefieldian investment and the birth of new societies, c. 1830 to 1930. In C. Lloyd, J. Metzer & R. Sutch (Eds.), Settler Economies in World History (pp. 371-402). Leiden: Brill.

(2013). Bridgeheads, 'Colonial Places' and the Queensland Financial Crisis of 1866. Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 41(1), 11-36. 

(2012). Making the colonial state: development, debt and warfare in New Zealand, 1853-76. Australian Economic History Review, 52(2), 101-27. 

(2007). From Free-trade Imperialism to Structural Power: New Zealand and the Capital Market, 1856-68. Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 35(4), 505-527. 

(2007). New Estimates of Australian Public Debt and Capital Raised in London, 1849-1914'. Australian Economic History Review, 47(2), 155-177. 

(2004). Moral Suasion, Empire Borrowers and the New Issue Market during the 1920s. In R. C. Michie & P. Williamson (Eds.), The British Government and the City of London in the Twentieth Century (pp. 195-214). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

(2000). Making a Market: The Jobbers of the London Stock Exchange, 1800-1986. Financial History Review. 7(1), 5-24

(2000). Between Empire and Nation: Australia's External Relations 1901-39. C. Bridge & B. P. Attard (Eds.), Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing.

I am happy to supervise research students across all my areas of interest and expertise including the histories of imperialism the international economy the London capital market Australia and the global middle class.

I convene, or have recently convened, the following undergraduate modules:

• HS1000 Making History
• HS2329 A World Connected: Welfare, Economy and Government since 1945
• HS3614 Britain's Imperial Economy: Power, Wealth and Colonialism, 1830-1914 

I also contribute as a lecturer and tutor to:

• HS1002 The Shock of the Modern 
• HS1012 Global History

Finally, I supervise students working on dissertations for HS3510.

Contemporary Australia