G. E. M. de Ste. Croix

He left school at the age of 15 and became an articled clerk in Worthing, West Sussex, England. This allowed him to train for a legal career without a degree in law, and he was admitted as a solicitor in 1932. He practised in Worthing and then in London, until he was called up for war service in 1940.[2][3]

During this time Ste. Croix became interested in politics. Though he had had, according to himself, received a "thoroughly right-wing upbringing",[2] he was drawn to the left. He visited Russia in 1935 or 1936, but moved away from Stalinism in 1938. He would later join the Labour Party.[3]

In 1940, Ste. Croix was called up for military service in the Second World War.[3] On 18 July 1941, he was commissioned in the Royal Air Force (RAF) as an acting pilot officer (on probation) with seniority from 12 June 1941.[6] He was regraded as a pilot officer (on probation) on 18 September 1941.[7] His commission was confirmed on 18 July 1942, and he was promoted to flying officer on 18 September 1942 with seniority in that rank from 12 August 1942.[8] His job in the RAF was to interpret enemy radar signals to ascertain the location and destination of their aircraft.[2] He served most of the War in the Middle East, stationed at Ismailia, Alexandria, and Cyrenaica:[2] in Egypt he had the opportunity to expand his knowledge of ancient languages.[1] An atheist, he fought for, and was eventually allowed, exemption from the required Sunday services.[2]

In 1946, having been demobbed from the RAF, Ste. Croix matriculated into University College, London (UCL) to study ancient history: he preferred London over Oxbridge, because it offered a history course covering c. 3000BC to the death of Heraclius in AD641, not classics (with its focus on language and philosophy).[2] His main tutor was A. H. M. Jones, the college's new chair of the Ancient History, who remained an influencing figure on Ste. Croix's work beyond his graduation.[2][3] He graduated from University College, London with a first-class Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree in 1949.[9] He was awarded a Doctor of Letters (DLitt) degree by the University of Oxford in 1978.[9]

In 1950, Ste. Croix was appointed assistant lecturer in ancient economic history at the London School of Economics.[3] He also taught at Birkbeck College and UCL.[2] He struggled to attract students to his courses and was embarrassed to be a lecturer in "a subject which no one was required or wished to study".[2] In 1953, he was elected fellow and tutor in ancient history at New College, Oxford:[9] he lived at Oxford for the rest of his life. Due to a long-standing agreement with his opposite number, C. E. Stevens, he led tutorials in Greek history for classicists from New College and Magdalen College, Oxford: Stevens, in return, taught Roman history.[2] In 1964, he attempted to convince his college to become the first of Oxford's all-male colleges to accept women: he failed, but helped change attitudes through the university.[3] Turning his hand to college administration, he served as Senior Tutor for a number of years.[3] He also held a university lectureship, and gave lecture series in Greek History and topics such as slavery, finance, and food supply.[2][1] He gave the J. H. Gray lectures at the University of Cambridge for the 1972/73 academic year:[9] these lectures developed into The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World (1981).[2] He retired from full-time academia in 1977 and was appointed Emeritus Fellow: the college elected him an Honorary Fellow in 1985.[9]

In 1972, Ste. Croix was elected a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA), the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and social sciences.[2] He was awarded the Deutscher Memorial Prize for 1982.[10]

Ste. Croix's influential article The Character of the Athenian Empire, which first appeared in Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte (1954, 3, pp. 1–41), provoked a fresh debate about the nature of the Delian League and the Athenian Empire which continues to this day. The article was based on a paper The Alleged Unpopularity of the Athenian Empire delivered to the London Classical Association on 14 June 1950.[11]

The Origins of the Peloponnesian War made several major contributions to scholarship on the subject of the Peloponnesian War between Sparta and Athens, the major one being a reinterpretation of the Megarian Decree, passed by the Athenian Ekklesia in 432 BC. Most scholarship hitherto had considered the decree to involve economic sanctions by excluding the Megarian state and Megarian traders from access to ports throughout the Athenian Empire. Ste. Croix instead interpreted it as a religious sanction (drawing an analogy with the Spartan demand, in response to the Megarian Decree and other Athenian policies, for Athens to expel some religiously-tainted citizens). Ste. Croix maintained that the sanction was exercised not to hurt the Megarians, which it could not do because of the nature of trade and economics in the ancient world, but on religious grounds, which were felt to be genuine by the Athenians. His argument has not achieved general acceptance among historians.[12]

Ernst Badian severely judged Ste. Croix's book for his "obsessive hatred of Sparta". In his opinion, the book was "written to prove that Sparta bears almost sole responsibility for the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War".[13]

The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World was an attempt to establish the validity of a historical materialist analysis of the ancient Greek and Roman world. It covers the period roughly from Greek pre-classical times to the Arab conquest. Part one addresses fundamental topics. After an expository plan chapter II (Class, Exploitation, and Class Struggle) begins with an apologia of Ste. Croix's understanding of basic classical Marxist theory (§ I The nature of class society) and some specific terms (§ II "Class', 'exploitation', and 'the class struggle' defined). The remainder of Part One is a detailed analysis of these concepts applied to the Ancient Greek World (Chs. III Property and the Propertied and IV Forms of Exploitation in the Ancient Greek World, and the Small Independent Producer).

Part II contains the historical analysis per se and begins (Ch. V The Class Struggle in Greek History on the Political Plane) with an exposition of how the economic processes addressed in part I lead to a gradual but complete eradication of Greek democracy by the middle of the Roman principate. The remaining chapters (VI Rome the Suzerain, VII The Class Struggle on the Ideological Plane, and VIII "The Decline and Fall" of the Roman Empire: an Explanation) focus primarily on Rome and put forth the thesis that it was the increasing dependence on slave labor and diminishment of what would be considered in a modern context the middle classes that was the actual cause of the collapse. There is also a lengthy discussion of the significance of the mode by which surplus value is generated. Ste. Croix makes the point that the mode of surplus extraction is not necessarily the same as the mode of production engaged in by a majority of the population. Specifically, that while a relatively small portion of the work force were slaves, Rome under the principate nonetheless became essentially a slave society.