Fonds P0009 - George Rudé fonds

George Rudé was born in Oslo in 1910. He died in 1993. In 1919, his family moved to England. He completed a degree in modern languages in 1931. Following a trip to the Soviet Union, from 1935 to 1959 he was a member of the British Communist Party. During the 1930s, he held teaching posts at Stowe School and St. Paul's School in London. During World War II Rudé worked with the London fire service and pursued a part-time degree in history at London University. In 1956, he was awarded the Royal Historical Society's Alexander Prize for his article The Gordon Riots: A Study of the Rioters and Their Victims. (The anti-Catholic Gordon Riots occurred in London in 1780 when Lord George Gordon incited a mob to rebel.) George Rudé took up research on urban insurrections in the French Revolution, which led to a Ph.D. (London) in 1960. Frozen out of British universities by the climate of the Cold War, he departed for Australia in 1960 to teach at the University of Adelaide and then at Flinders University. In 1970, he moved to Canada and taught history at Sir George Williams University and, following its 1974 merger with Loyola College to form Concordia University, at Concordia until his retirement in 1987. In Montreal, he was instrumental in the foundation the Inter-university Centre for European Studies. He was named professor emeritus in 1988.

He held visiting professorships in Tokyo, New York, and Virginia. In honour of his many contributions, his former Australian students established the George Rudé Seminar which meets every two years. He was the author of some 15 books and editor of several others.