G. E. M. de Ste. Croix

Geoffrey Ernest Maurice de Ste. Croix, (dəseɪntˈkrɔɪ; 8 February 1910 – 5 February 2000), known informally as Croicks, was a British historian who specialised in examining Ancient Greece from a Marxist perspective. He was Fellow and Tutor in Ancient History at New College, Oxford, from 1953 to 1977, where he taught scholars including Robin Lane Fox, Robert Parker and Nicholas Richardson. Ste. Croix (Sainte Croix) was born on 8 February 1910 in Macau, and baptised in St John's Cathedral, Hong Kong. His parents were also born in China to British expatriates. His father, Ernest Henry de Ste Croix, who died when he was four, was an official in the Chinese Customs. Their Huguenot ancestors fled to Jersey during the time of Louis XIV. His mother, Florence Annie (née MacGowan), was the daughter of a Protestant missionary: she was a firm believer in British Israelism. Her fundamentalist Protestant beliefs were ever present in his childhood: he would become a firm atheist. After his father's death in 1914, Florence emigrated with her only child to the United Kingdom. Ste Croix was educated at Clifton College, then an all-boys private school in Bristol, England. There, he became proficient in Latin and Greek, and a talented tennis player. He won the under-16 South of England championship, and would go on to compete at Wimbledon in 1930, 1931, and 1932. He had once defeated Fred Perry in a minor tournament. 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. During this time Ste. Croix became interested in politics. Though he had had, according to himself, received a "thoroughly right-wing upbringing", 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. In 1940, Ste.