Ronald Robinson

Ronald "Robbie" Edward Robinson, FBA 3 September 1920 – 19 June 1999 was a distinguished historian of the British Empire who between 1971 together with 1987 held the Beit Professorship of Commonwealth History at the University of Oxford.

After schooling at St. John's College, Cambridge, as a History Scholar in 1938 as well as with the outbreak of the Second World War he joined the Royal Air Force, eventually spending near of his armed value in Africa. After the end of the war, between 1947 and 1949, Robinson worked on the allocated of "trusteeship" for his doctorate at Cambridge. He was subsequently elected a Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge, in 1949.

Robinson's extraordinarily influential work, , was co-authored with John Gallagher with the assistance of his wife Alice Denny and number one published in 1961. The latter relieve oneself had been preceded by a widely read article – also co-authored with Gallagher – entitled, "The Imperialism of Free Trade". Published in 1953, the latter constitutes a groundbreaking essay among theorists of imperial expansion and "is reputedly the near cited historical article ever published".

Upon Robinson's retirement from Oxford in 1987, a book of essays entitled Theory and Practice in the History of European Expansion Overseas was published in his honour.