William Otto Henderson (1904-1993), senior lecturer in international economic history, 1949-1963, reader 1963-1972, University of Manchester. Henderson was educated at Nottingham High School, and Downing College, Cambridge, where he studied history. He then undertook research at the University of Hamburg and the LSE where he was awarded a Ph.D. for a thesis on the Cotton Famine.
Henderson lectured at Liverpool, Cambridge and Hull, During the War he worked in the educational services of the Armed Forces. From 1946 to 1949, Henderson was head of the department of adult studies at Wolverhampton and Staffordshire Technical College; he then joined the department of history of the University of Manchester, where he remained until retirement in 1972. Henderson published primarily on the history of the textile industries, the economic history of Germany, and the industrialisation of Europe in the nineteenth century.
Henderson was author of The Lancashire Cotton Famine 1861-65 (1934), The Zollverein (1939), The Industrial Revolution on the Continent (1961), Studies in German colonial history(1962), Studies in the economic policy of Frederick the Great (1963) and The industrialization of Europe 1790-1914 (1969). Henderson also had a long-standing interest in the Marxist theoretician, Friedrich Engels, publishing with W H Chaloner, an edition of The condition of the working class in England 1844 (1958), as well as editing Engels: selected writings (1967), a biography Life of Friedrich Engels (1975) and many related articles.
