John Lothrop Motley

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John Lothrop Motley
(around 1860)

John Lothrop Motley (born April 15, 1814 in Dorchester , Massachusetts , now part of Boston , †  May 29, 1877 in Frampton Court , Dorset , England) was an American diplomat and historian.

life and work

He attended Round Hill School in Northampton , where George Bancroft was one of his teachers. He studied law at Harvard until 1831 and 1832–33 at the Georg-August University in Göttingen , where he was friends with Otto von Bismarck , and at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin , where Alexander Graf Keyserling was another close student friend. In 1837 he married Mary Benjamin. He wrote two historical novels about the English adventurer Thomas Morton , which he published anonymously. The novel Morton's Hope contains autobiographical elements and describes Bismarck in the figure of Otto von Rabenmark as an outwardly rowdy, but inwardly sensitive personality. But soon he concentrated mainly on studying the history of the Netherlands . From 1851 to 1855 he carried out research in Dresden, Brussels and The Hague in order to collect material.

The monumental works that emerged from this source work are characterized by undisguised anti-Catholicism and the resulting enthusiasm for the liberation struggle of the Protestant Netherlands against Spain. The four volumes of The Rise of the Dutch Republic were also translated into German and were long considered a standard work. Even if it has lost its relevance for the science of history, Motley's work is still known today for its stylistic virtuosity and narrative power. It is therefore often included in works on the history of literature in the USA

Motley's diplomatic career began in 1841 when he was part of the American delegation in St. Petersburg for a few months. In 1861 he published the essay "Causes of the Civil War in America" in the London Times , in which he justified the declaration of war by the American northern states. So he was able to enjoy the benevolence of Abraham Lincoln , and later also Ulysses S. Grants . In 1857 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . From 1861 to 1867 he served as the US ambassador to Austria , from 1869 to 1870 to Great Britain . From the latter post, however, he was recalled because of a conflict between President Grant and Motley's friend and mentor Charles Sumner . William Cullen Bryant dedicated the praise poem In Memory of John Lothrop Motley to him on the occasion of his death .

The Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences , he belonged since 1862, coming from a foreign member. In 1875 he became an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh .

Works

Novels

  • Morton's Hope, or the Memoirs of a Provincial. 1839.
  • Merry Mount, a Romance of the Massachusetts Colony. 1849.

Historical works

Letters

  • The Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley. Edited by George William Curtis. Harper, New York 1889.
  • John Lothrop Motley and His Family. Further letters and records. Edited by his daughter (Susan St. John Mildmay) and Herbert St. John Mildmay. John Lane, London 1910.

literature

  • Oliver Wendell Holmes : John Lothrop Motley. A memoir. Trübner, London 1878.
  • David Levin: History as Romantic Art: Bancroft, Prescott, Motley, and Parkman. Stanford University Press, Stanford CA 1959 ( archive.org ).
  • GH Joost Baarssen: America's True Mother Country? Images of the Dutch in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century. Lit, Münster 2014, ISBN 978-3-643-90492-8 .

Web links

Commons : John Lothrop Motley  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikisource: John Lothrop Motley  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See Otto von Bismarck as a student
  2. ↑ Lothar Gall : Bismarck - The white revolutionary . 2nd Edition. Ullstein, 2002, ISBN 3-548-26515-4 , pp. 36 (first edition: 1980).
  3. ↑ bartleby.com
  4. ^ Past Members: JL Motley (1814-1877). Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences, accessed March 22, 2020 .
  5. ^ Fellows Directory. Biographical Index: Former RSE Fellows 1783–2002. (PDF file) Royal Society of Edinburgh, accessed March 22, 2020 .
predecessor Office successor
Anson Burlingame US envoy in Vienna
November 14, 1861-14. June 1867 		Edgar Cowan
Reverdy Johnson US envoy in London
June 18, 1869–6. December 1870 		Robert Cumming Schenck
personal data
SURNAME Motley, John Lothrop
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American diplomat and historian
DATE OF BIRTH April 15, 1814
PLACE OF BIRTH Dorchester , Massachusetts
DATE OF DEATH May 29, 1877
Place of death Frampton Court , Dorset , England