Basil Risbridger Davidson MC (9 November 1914 – 9 July 2010) was a British journalist and historian who wrote more than 30 books on African history and politics.

According to two modern writers, "Davidson, a campaigning journalist whose first of many books on African history and politics appeared in 1956, remains perhaps the single-most effective disseminator of the new field to a popular international audience".

[4] From late 1942 to mid-1943, he was chief of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) Yugoslav Section in Cairo, Egypt, where he was James Klugmann's supervisor.

SOE posted him to Hungarian occupied Bačka to try to organize a rebel movement there, but Davidson found that the conditions were unsuitable and crossed back over the Danube into the Fruška Gora.

The Germans encircled the Fruška Gora in June 1944 in a last attempt to liquidate the Partisans there, but Davidson and the others made a narrow escape.

He was employed initially by The Times in Paris but was widely considered to have communist sympathies after his wartime role as the Cold War began.

In 2002 he was decorated by the Portuguese president Jorge Sampaio as Grande Oficial da Ordem do Infante D. Henrique.