Faculty

Peter Baldwin

Professor

Peter Baldwin is interested especially in the historical development of the modern state––a broad field that has led him in many different directions.

Two aspects of his work unify it. First, he has attempted to understand contemporary issues in a long historical perspective, whether that be the class coalitions that cemented the modern welfare state, the 19C public health strategies that provided the template by which the AIDS epidemic was fought a century later, the battles over intellectual property stretching back three centuries that inform, indeed determine, our current battles over copyright, downloading and internet piracy, or the ever-growing role of law as the socializer of last resort in modern society. Second, he has studied the development of the state trans-nationally, using detailed and often archival sources in half a dozen languages to marry a broad comparative approach to rigorous empiricism. His books have dealt above all with France, Germany, Britain, Sweden, Denmark and the United States. He has published works on the comparative history of the welfare state, on social policy more broadly, on public health, and on the history of copyright. Other interests have included Nazi Germany and historiography. His latest book is a global history of the development of law and crime over the past 2000 years. He has forthcoming books on Open Access and on the Covid-19 pandemic.

Degrees

PhD History Department, Harvard University, 1986

MA History Department, Harvard University, 1980

BA Philosophy Department, History Department, Yale University, 1978

Selected Publications

Athena Unbound: Why and How Academic Knowledge Should Be Free for All (MIT Press, 2023)

Command and Persuade: Crime, Law, and the State across History (MIT Press, 2021) (click for pdf)

Fighting the First Wave: Why the Coronavirus Was Tackled So Differently across the Globe (Cambridge University Press, 2021)

The Copyright Wars: Three Centuries of Trans-Atlantic Battle (Princeton University Press, 2014) (click for pdf)

The Narcissism of Minor Differences: How America and Europe Are Alike (Oxford University Press, 2009)

Disease and Democracy: The Industrialized World Faces AIDS (University of California Press, Berkeley, and the Milbank Memorial Fund, New York, 2005)

Contagion and the State in Europe, 1830-1930 (Cambridge University Press, 1999)

The Politics of Social Solidarity: Class Bases of the European Welfare State, 1875-1975 (Cambridge University Press, 1990)

Reworking the Past: Hitler, the Holocaust and the Historians' Debate, edited with an introduction (Beacon Press, 1990)