John Desmond Hargreaves (b 1924) graduated from Manchester University (MA, 1948) and was awarded an honorary D Litt by the University of Sierra Leone in 1984. He came to Aberdeen University in 1954 as lecturer in the department of history, and was subsequently appointed Professor of history, 1962 - 1984 and honorary professor of history, 1985 - 1999. An internationally respected authority on imperialism, his principal work has been in the field of African and imperial history, with a second edition of his well known Decolonisation in Africa published by Longman in 1996. Hargreaves was also a major contributor to the University of Aberdeen's Quincentenary celebrations in 1995, editing the second volume in the University's Quincentenial Studies in the History of the University series, Aberdeen University, 1945 - 1981: Regional Roles and National Needs (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1989) and writing the ninth, Academe and Empire: Some Overseas Connections of Aberdeen University 1860-1970 (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1994).
For further details of his life and work see Roy Bridges, John D. Hargreaves: an Academic Memoir and Bibliography (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Dept of History, 1997)
From the guide to the Papers of John Desmond Hargreaves, 1959 - 1995, (University of Aberdeen)
