Joseph Strayer

Joseph Strayer influential 20th century American medieval historian. Student of Charles H. Haskins.

Joseph taught at Princeton University starting in the 1930s for many decades. He taught a large number of the existing American medieval historian professionals.

When not teaching medieval history at Princeton, Strayer was involved with the CIA traveling around the world on secret missions to install Democratic governments.

Strayers most famous work is On the Medieval Origins of the Modern State (1970) in which he shows the relevance of medieval historical institutions to modern governmental institutions.