Martin Daunton is one of Britain's most distinguished economic historians, Emeritus Professor of Economic History at the University of Cambridge, where he served as Master of Trinity Hall from 2004 to 2014 and twice as Head of the School of the Humanities and Social Sciences. Born in Cardiff in 1949, he studied economic history at the University of Nottingham, completed his PhD at the University of Kent, and was appointed lecturer at Durham in 1973 before moving in 1979 to University College London, where he was promoted to the Astor Professorship of British History. He held the Chair of Economic History at Cambridge from 1997 to 2015 and is currently a Visiting Professor at Gresham College in London.
Daunton's scholarly work covers the economic and social history of Britain since 1700, the shifting boundaries between the market and the state, the politics of taxation and public finance, the relations between national and international economic policies, and debates over intergenerational equity. His many books include House and Home in the Victorian City (1983), Royal Mail: The Post Office since 1840 (1985), Progress and Poverty: An Economic and Social History of Britain, 1700-1850 (Oxford University Press, 1995), and a major two-volume history of British taxation, Trusting Leviathan: The Politics of Taxation in Britain, 1799-1914 (Cambridge University Press, 2001) and Just Taxes: The Politics of Taxation in Britain, 1914-1979 (Cambridge University Press, 2002), followed by Wealth and Welfare: An Economic and Social History of Britain, 1851-1951 (Oxford University Press, 2007) and State and Market in Victorian Britain: War, Welfare and Capitalism (Boydell Press).
His most recent book, The Economic Government of the World, 1933-2023 (Allen Lane / Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023), is a sweeping history of the institutions and individuals who have built and managed the global economy over the last ninety years. It traces how one economic order breaks down and another is built, from the trade and currency warfare of the Great Depression, through the liberal Bretton Woods order that emerged after the Second World War, to the rise of neoliberalism, financialization and hyper-globalization in the late twentieth century, and ends with a call for a more just and sustainable economic government in the face of inflation, food insecurity, climate change and renewed geopolitical conflict. The book was named one of Foreign Affairs' Best Books of the Year.
Beyond Cambridge, Daunton has served as President of the Royal Historical Society, Commissioner of Historic England, trustee of the National Maritime Museum, and Chair of the Leverhulme Trust Research Awards Advisory Committee, and has held visiting professorships in Japan and Australia.
Jiří Zatloukal, financial journalist at Seznam Zprávy and contributor of PFI Talks, talked with Martin Daunton.