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{{Short description|British historian}}
'''Sir Reginald Coupland''' {{postnominals|country=GBR|KCMG|FBA}} (2 August 1884 – 6 November 1952) was a prominent English historian of the [[British Empire]]. Between 1920 and 1948, he held the [[Beit Professorship of Colonial History]] at the [[University of Oxford]].<ref name="ODNB">{{cite ODNB|id=32585|first=Alex|last=May|title=Coupland, Sir Reginald}}</ref>▼
{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}}
▲'''Sir Reginald Coupland''' {{postnominals|country=GBR|size=100%|KCMG|CIE|FBA}} (2 August 1884 – 6 November 1952) was
Coupland is known for his scholarship on [[History of Africa|African history]], as a member of the 1923–1924 Royal Commission on the Superior Civil Services in India, and as
==Life==
He was the son of [[Sidney Coupland]], a physician at [[Middlesex Hospital]], and his wife Bessie Potter, daughter of Thomas Potter of [[Great Bedwin]], born in London. He was educated at [[Winchester College]], and went on [[New College, Oxford]], where he was taught by [[Alfred Zimmern]], among others. He graduated in 1907, with a first class in [[Greats]]. That year he was elected a Fellow at [[Trinity College, Oxford|Trinity College]] where he lectured in [[ancient history]].<ref name="ODNB"/>
Under the influence of [[Lionel Curtis]], Beit lecturer in colonial history 1912–1913, Coupland joined the [[Round Table movement]], and succeeded Curtis as Beit lecturer. He became Beit Professor in 1920, succeeding [[Hugh Edward Egerton]], despite a lack of finished work in print.<ref name="ODNB"/> The choice is accounted for by the electors' wish to have a "first-class mind" rather than a scholarly specialist.<ref name="OHBE">{{cite book
With Curtis, Coupland tried to set up an African institution in [[Rhodes House]] in the early 1930s; but they were unsuccessful in
Coupland took part in the [[Cripps Mission]] of 1942 to Indian leaders. His diary of 1941–1942 is a significant source for the activities and thinking of [[Sir Stafford Cripps]]. It also discusses the Indian political groups.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Jafri |first1=Saiyid Zaheer Husain |title=Recording the Progress of Indian History: Symposia Papers of the Indian History Congress,
In 1944 Coupland became a [[Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George]]. He retired from the Beit Chair in 1948, which went to [[Vincent Harlow]]. He became a Fellow of [[All Souls' College, Oxford]] in 1952, dying later that year in [[Southampton]], bound for South Africa. He did not marry.<ref name="ODNB"/>
==Reputation and legacy==
According to historian [[Caroline Elkins]], Coupland's work on British imperial history had a [[Whig history|Whig narrative]] of progress.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Elkins|first=Caroline|author-link=Caroline Elkins|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3icqEAAAQBAJ|title=Legacy of Violence: A History of the British Empire|date=2022|publisher=Knopf Doubleday|isbn=978-0-593-32008-2|page=310}}</ref> Coupland defended [[British Raj|British Empire in India]], arguing that there had been "no indubitably black years in the long record of the British connection with India".{{sfn|Elkins|2022|page=311}}
Coupland wrote about [[abolitionism]] in his books ''Wilberforce'' and ''The British Anti-slavery Movement''. Trinidadian historian and politician [[Eric Williams]] objected to Coupland's account of the [[Slavery Abolition Act 1833]], which Williams perceived as being covertly supportive of continued British colonial rule in the West Indies.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Solow |first1=Barbara Lewis|last2=Engerman|first2=Stanley L.|author2-link=Stanley Engerman|title=British Capitalism and Caribbean Slavery: The Legacy of Eric Williams |date=2004 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-0-521-53320-1 |page=26 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=38XY-cvqh30C&pg=PA26}}</ref> Coupland was one of the examiners of the 1938 Oxford D.Phil. dissertation by Williams written under Victor Harlow, on a topic suggested by [[C. L. R. James]]. It was "deferential" in comparison with the 1944 published version, the book ''[[Capitalism and Slavery]]'', which relied on economic reasoning going back to [[Lowell Joseph Ragatz]], to whom it was dedicated.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Pierre |first1=Maurice St |title=Eric Williams and the Anticolonial Tradition: The Making of a Diasporan Intellectual |date=2015 |publisher=University of Virginia Press |isbn=978-0-8139-3685-7 |page=47 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-PiqBAAAQBAJ&pg=PT47}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Høgsbjerg |first1=Christian |title=C. L. R. James in Imperial Britain |date=2014 |publisher=Duke University Press |isbn=978-0-8223-7696-5 |page=278 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LbdiAwAAQBAJ&pg=PT278}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Davis|first=David Brion|author-link=David Brion Davis|title=Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World|date=2008|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-533944-4|page=391|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=oGpnDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA391}}</ref> Williams made a number of points directly criticising Coupland in ''Capitalism and Slavery'', including:
* From the "Conclusion": "But historians, writing a hundred years after, have no excuse for continuing to wrap the real interests in confusion." Footnoted as: "Of this deplorable tendency Professor Coupland of Oxford University is a notable example."<ref>{{cite book|last=Williams|first=Eric|author-link=Eric Williams|title=Capitalism and Slavery|date=2014|publisher=[[University of North Carolina Press]]|isbn=978-1-4696-1949-1|page=211|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ltEVAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA211}}</ref>
* "Professor Coupland contends that behind the legal judgement lay the moral judgement, and that the [[Somersett case]] was the beginning of the end of slavery throughout the British Empire. This is merely poetic sentimentality translated into modern history."{{sfn|Williams|2014|page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=ltEVAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA45 45]}}
The ''Oxford History of the British Empire'' considers that Coupland had a "distinguished career", but that the attack by Williams "clouded" its later part.<ref name="OHBE"/>
==Works==
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*''Kirk on the Zambesi'' (1928)
*''The American Revolution and the British Empire'' (1930)
*''The British Anti-slavery Movement'' (1933)<ref>{{cite book |last1=Coupland |first1=Sir Reginald |title=The British Anti-slavery Movement |date=1933 |publisher=T. Butterworth, limited |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PG7aAAAAMAAJ}}</ref>
*''East Africa and its Invaders'' (1938)
*''The Exploitation of East Africa'' (1939)
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==See also==
*[[John Andrew Gallagher]]
*[[Ronald Robinson]]
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{{reflist}}
{{Portal bar|Biography|University of Oxford}}
{{Authority control|state=collapsed}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Coupland, Reginald}}
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[[Category:People educated at Winchester College]]
[[Category:Alumni of New College, Oxford]]
[[Category:Fellows of Nuffield College, Oxford]]
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