Charles A. Beard

Charles Austin Beard (1923)

Charles Austin Beard (born November 27, 1874 in Knightstown , Indiana , † September 1, 1948 in New Haven ) was an American historian and political scientist. He is considered one of the most respected American historians of the first half of the 20th century.

Life

Beard came from a wealthy Quaker family. First he ran the weekly Sun in their hometown of Knightstown with his brother for four years . He then studied until 1898 at DePauw University . On March 8, 1900, he married the historian Mary Ritter. The marriage resulted in two children and several joint publications. After a stay abroad at the University of Oxford , where he was enthusiastic about the ideas of a reformist socialism, he obtained his PhD in 1904 at Columbia University , where he then taught as a lecturer until 1917 , from 1915 as a professor of politics.

He owed his reputation as a provocative "new historian" to his book "An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States", first published in 1913. Beard himself was an ardent advocate of US entry into the war in 1917 - a position that he only revised in the 1920s. Notwithstanding this, he stood up for two colleagues at Columbia University who had been dismissed because of their "unpatriotic" attitude and in October 1917 resigned his professorship in a dispute with the university management over the restriction of freedom of teaching. This already announced that in later years he would become one of the most controversial publicists in the country, regardless of his reputation. The Beards withdrew to the country. In Connecticut, Beard was a successful dairy farmer who produced almost 300,000 liters of milk a year on his pastures.

Beard continued to take on shorter academic commitments, but no longer held a permanent position as a professor: in 1919 he helped found the New School for Social Research in New York. From a trip to Japan in 1923 under the title The Administration and Politics of Tokyo, recommendations for the reconstruction of Tokyo emerged, which was largely destroyed by the Great Kanto earthquake in 1923 . His reputation among political scientists earned him the presidency of the American Political Science Association (APSA) in 1926 , followed by the presidency of the American Historical Association (AHA) in 1933 . In the meantime he worked 1927-28 as an advisor to the government of Yugoslavia in Belgrade. In 1936 he was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society and in 1939 the American Academy of Arts and Letters .

plant

Beard focused in his work on the history of the United States on the effects of economic development on politics and society. His best known work is An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States (1913). It was essential for a "progressive" historiography that, the "progressivism" (in the context of the reform movement progressivism ) unfolded their effect in the United States. In it Beard looked at the economic interests of the authors ("founding fathers") of the United States' constitution and tried to prove his thesis that the constitution was the result of economic motivations of members of the social class of landowners as well as others determined by ´personalty interest´ Property groups.

Beard, elected President of the American Historical Association twice in a row, represented the committed historian. The work of the historian, according to his thesis presented to the AHA, is based on an act of faith, regardless of all the care required in dealing with the sources. " As a pragmatist, he regarded the mind of the historian as an instrument that, in serving the owner's needs, reshapes and necessarily violates the external reality of history. Such a point of view earned him numerous critics, including in German history:" Was Beard did was in reality a nihilistic emptying of history of its actual content, to which historiography naturally remains committed. "

Initially a supporter of the New Deal , he turned against Franklin D. Roosevelt on foreign policy considerations . Because unlike during the First World War, Beard rejected the American engagement in the Second World War as imperialist . In American Foreign Policy in the Making 1932-1940 , he accused Roosevelt of pre-war policy. He later rejected the official account of the attack on Pearl Harbor in President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War, 1941 , arguing that the US had driven Japan into the war. He advocated a more isolationist policy and a restriction to the American continent.

Fonts

• An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States . Macmillan, New York 1913 ( online ).
• Economic Origins of Jeffersonian Democracy . Macmillan, New York 1915 ( online ).
• The Administration and Politics of Tokyo. A Survey and Opinions . Macmillan, New York 1923 ( online ).
• The Rise of American Civilization . 2 volumes, Macmillan, New York 1927 (with his wife Mary Ritter Beard).
• American Foreign Policy in the Making 1932-1940. A Study in Responsibilities . Yale University Press, New Haven 1946.
• President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War, 1941. A Study in Appearances and Realities . Yale University Press, New Haven 1948.

literature

• Herbert Ammon : "Charles A. Beard: American ´progressive´ and protagonist of an economic interpretation of history". In: Iablis 2015 https://www.iablis.de/iablis_t/2014/ammon14.html
• Clyde W. Barrow: More than a Historian. The Political and Economic Thought of Charles A. Beard . New Brunswick et al. 2000.
• Richard Drake: Charles Austin Beard. The Return of the Master Historian of American Imperialism , Ithaca: Cornell University Press 2018 ISBN 978-1-5017-1516-7 .

• Richard Hofstadter : The Progressive Historians: Turner, Beard, Parrington . Knopf, New York 1968.

Web links

Wikisource: Charles A. Beard  - Sources and full texts (English)

• Literature by and about Charles A. Beard in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by Charles A. Beard in Project Gutenberg ( currently usually not available for users from Germany )
• AHA Presidential Bibliography: Charles A. Beard, 1933 . In: historians.org , June 21, 2007.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Herbert Ammon: Charles A. Beard: American ´Progressive´ and protagonist of an economic interpretation of history, in Iablis 2007, http://www.iablis.de/iablis_t/2014/ammon14.html
2. ^ Member History: Charles A. Beard. American Philosophical Society, accessed April 26, 2018 . 
3. ^ Members: Charles Austin Beard. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed February 14, 2019 . 
4. ^ Charles A. Beard: Written History as an Act of Faith , in: American Historical Review 39.2 (1933)
5. ^ John Higham / Leonard Krieger / Felix Gilbert : History , Englewood Cliffs 1965, p. 127f.
6. ^ Fritz Redlich: [Review on] History. By John Higham with Leonard Krieger and Felix Gilbert . In: Historische Zeitschrift 204, 1967, pp. 182–185, here p. 183.