Discover the Best Books Written by Alan Macfarlane

Alan Donald James Macfarlane FBA FRHistS (born 20 December 1941 in Shillong, Meghalaya, India) is an anthropologist and historian and a Professor Emeritus of King's College, Cambridge. He is the author or editor of 20 books and numerous articles on the anthropology and history of England, Nepal, Japan, and China. He has focused on a comparative study of the origins and nature of the modern world. 

In recent years he has become increasingly interested in the use of visual material in teaching and research. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and the Royal Historical Society. Macfarlane was born into a British family of tea planters in Assam in northeast India. He was born in Ganesh Das Hospital in the hill station of Shillong, at the time the capital of undivided Assam state and now the capital of Meghalaya. 

His father, "Mac" Macfarlane, was also a reserve officer of the Assam Rifles, besides being a tea planter, and his mother was the author Iris Macfarlane. The family lived in various tea estates in both Upper Assam and Lower Assam, in the Brahmaputra valley. Macfarlane was educated at the Dragon School, Oxford, and Sedbergh School. He then read modern history at Worcester College, University of Oxford, from 1960 to 1963, completing a Bachelor of Arts, and went on to his Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy on Witchcraft prosecutions in Essex, 1560–1680: A Sociological Analysis, in 1967. 

He also completed a Master of Philosophy in anthropology on "The regulation of marital and sexual relationships in 17th century England" at the London School of Economics in 1968 and a second doctorate in anthropology on "Population and resources in central Nepal" in 1972 at the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London.

He went on to be a research fellow in history at King's College, University of Cambridge. In 1975, he was appointed lecturer in social anthropology at the University of Cambridge, becoming a reader in historical anthropology in 1981 and then a full professor of anthropological science and personal chair in 1991. He became an emeritus professor of anthropological science at the University of Cambridge and a life fellow of King's College, Cambridge, in 2009. Macfarlane received the Huxley Memorial Medal, the highest honor of the Royal Anthropological Institute, in 2012.