Merle Curti
Encyclopedia
Merle Curti was a leading American
historian
. He taught a large number of PhD students at the University of Wisconsin, and was a leader in developing the fields of social history
and intellectual history
. As a "Progressive" historian he was deeply committed to democracy, and to the Turnerian
thesis that social and economic forces shape American life, thought and character. He was a pioneer in peace studies, intellectual history and social history—and helped develop Quantitative History
as a tool in historical research.
, on September 15, 1897. His parents were John Eugene, immigrant from Switzerland
, and Alice Hunt, a Yankee
from Vermont. Curti went to high school in Omaha then went on to obtain a bachelor's degree in 1920 from Harvard University
, graduating summa cum laude. He then spent a year studying in France where he met Margaret Wooster, 1898-1963, a PhD from the University of Chicago who was a pioneer in research on child psychology. They married in 1925 and had two daughters. Curti also received his Ph. D. in 1927 from Harvard as one of the last students of Frederick Jackson Turner
.
Curti taught at Beloit College
, Smith College
, and Columbia University
. Then in 1942, he joined the faculty of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where he taught for twenty-six years. He also taught in Japan, Australia, and India and lectured throughout Europe.
(who had replaced Turner at Harvard) rejected his first dissertation proposal which was essentially an early version of The Growth of American Thought.
and world peace (Bryan and World Peace). It was followed by Peace or War: The American Struggle in 1936. With these works, Curti helped found peace and conflict studies
as a field of study. He criticized pacifists for ignoring major social changes--especially the repudiation of old-fashioned competitive capitalism by the New Deal
, and the need to repudiate imperial greed if peace were to be achieved. In 1964 he helped found the Conference on Peace Research in History, now called the Peace History Society. The Roots of American Loyalty (1946) was a history of patriotism.
Curti developed his global vision through travels; he taught in Japan, Australia and India for two years. He left the Episcopal faith of his boyhood for Unitarianism. Although never a Marxist, he voted for Socialist presidential candidates in the name of world peace.
, and helped to establish that field as a distinct academic discipline. His first foray in the field was The Social Ideals of American Educators, published in 1935. In 1944, Curti won the Pulitzer Prize in history for his masterwork, The Growth of American Thought. Its chapters show an encyclopedic knowledge of thinkers great and small from the colonial period to the present, together with his commitment to democracy as a process springing from the ideas of the people. Curti adapted Turner's frontier thesis
to intellectual history, arguing, "Because the American environment, physical and social, differed from that of Europe, Americans, confronted by different needs and problems, adapted the European intellectual heritage in their own way. And because American life came increasingly to differ from European life, American ideas, American agencies of intellectual life, and the use made of knowledge likewise came to differ in America from their European counterparts." (p vi) Unlike some of the other leaders of the American Studies program, he paid little attention to myths and symbols. Unlike Perry Miller
at Harvard, who strongly influenced a new generation of intellectual historians, Curti never delved too deeply into the internal history of ideas, preferring to link them to multiple external social and economic factors. His book was not so much a history of American thought as a social history of American thought, with strong attention to the social and economic forces that shaped that thought from the bottom up.
, Wisconsin using avant-garde quantitative analysis of census records. The book which came out of the project, The Making of an American Community: A Case Study of Democracy in a Frontier County (1959) immediately became a pioneer work in the "new social history."
Curti's wife Margaret Wooster Curti, provided some of the quantitative methodology. Historians, however, did not emulate it, preferring instead to follow Stephan Thernstrom
's model in Poverty and Progress: Social Mobility in a Nineteenth-Century American City (1964), which used a similar methodology of tracking workers through their careers using censuses and city directories. The difference was urban and rural--urban history was exploding and rural history was a backwater; in addition the Thernstrom model was easier to replicate by a graduate student writing a PhD thesis alone (Curti had numerous research assistants and coauthors). The "old" social history comprised descriptions of everyday lifestyles, perhaps with a coverage of grass roots political movements (like the Populists), His "new" social history was a systematic examination of the entire population using statistics and social science methodologies.
The Wisconsin department was notorious for the angry feuds among the senior professors, which Curti, mild mannered and small of stature, completely ignored. Curti supervised 86 finished doctoral dissertations at Columbia and Wisconsin. They include many who became famous scholars: Richard Hofstadter on Social Darwinism
; John Higham
on nativism; Bourke on community studies; Allen Davis on Progressivism and Jane Addams; and Roderick Nash
on the environment, among many others. Curti allowed his students a free hand in content and methodology. He encouraged his students constantly, wrote highly detailed critiques of their chapters, protected them from intradepartmental feuds, helped them get funding, and found them jobs through the "old boys" network of which he was an accomplished maestro (Curti wrote hundreds of letters a month to friends and ex-students across the globe.)
in history in 1944.
He was president of the Mississippi Valley Historical Association (now the Organization of American Historians
) in 1952 and the American Historical Association
in 1954.
He was a co-founder of the American Studies Association. He served as the organization's vice-president in 1954 and 1955, and was asked to serve as president in 1956. But he declined the honor because he was going to be out of the country.
Curti was also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
and the American Philosophical Society
.
In 1977, the Organization of American Historians established the Merle Curti Award
. The prize is given annually for the best book in social, intellectual, and/or cultural history. (In some years, the organization has awarded two prizes, one in social and/or cultural history and one in intellectual and/or cultural history.)
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
historian
Historian
A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all history in time. If the individual is...
. He taught a large number of PhD students at the University of Wisconsin, and was a leader in developing the fields of social history
Social history
Social history, often called the new social history, is a branch of History that includes history of ordinary people and their strategies of coping with life. In its "golden age" it was a major growth field in the 1960s and 1970s among scholars, and still is well represented in history departments...
and intellectual history
Intellectual history
Note: this article concerns the discipline of intellectual history, and not its object, the whole span of human thought since the invention of writing. For clarifications about the latter topic, please consult the writings of the intellectual historians listed here and entries on individual...
. As a "Progressive" historian he was deeply committed to democracy, and to the Turnerian
Frederick Jackson Turner
Frederick Jackson Turner was an American historian in the early 20th century. He is best known for his essay "The Significance of the Frontier in American History", whose ideas are referred to as the Frontier Thesis. He is also known for his theories of geographical sectionalism...
thesis that social and economic forces shape American life, thought and character. He was a pioneer in peace studies, intellectual history and social history—and helped develop Quantitative History
Cliometrics
Cliometrics, sometimes called new economic history, or econometric history, is the systematic application of economic theory, econometric techniques, and other formal or mathematical methods to the study of history . It is a quantitative approach to economic history...
as a tool in historical research.
Life
Merle Eugene Curti was born in Papillion, suburb of OmahaOmaha
Omaha may refer to:*Omaha , a Native American tribe that currently resides in the northeastern part of the U.S. state of Nebraska-Places:United States* Omaha, Nebraska* Omaha, Arkansas* Omaha, Georgia* Omaha, Illinois* Omaha, Texas...
, on September 15, 1897. His parents were John Eugene, immigrant from Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
, and Alice Hunt, a Yankee
Yankee
The term Yankee has several interrelated and often pejorative meanings, usually referring to people originating in the northeastern United States, or still more narrowly New England, where application of the term is largely restricted to descendants of the English settlers of the region.The...
from Vermont. Curti went to high school in Omaha then went on to obtain a bachelor's degree in 1920 from Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
, graduating summa cum laude. He then spent a year studying in France where he met Margaret Wooster, 1898-1963, a PhD from the University of Chicago who was a pioneer in research on child psychology. They married in 1925 and had two daughters. Curti also received his Ph. D. in 1927 from Harvard as one of the last students of Frederick Jackson Turner
Frederick Jackson Turner
Frederick Jackson Turner was an American historian in the early 20th century. He is best known for his essay "The Significance of the Frontier in American History", whose ideas are referred to as the Frontier Thesis. He is also known for his theories of geographical sectionalism...
.
Curti taught at Beloit College
Beloit College
Beloit College is a liberal arts college in Beloit, Wisconsin, USA. It is a member of the Associated Colleges of the Midwest, and has an enrollment of roughly 1,300 undergraduate students. Beloit is the oldest continuously operated college in Wisconsin, and has the oldest building of any college...
, Smith College
Smith College
Smith College is a private, independent women's liberal arts college located in Northampton, Massachusetts. It is the largest member of the Seven Sisters...
, and Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
. Then in 1942, he joined the faculty of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where he taught for twenty-six years. He also taught in Japan, Australia, and India and lectured throughout Europe.
Academic career
While at Smith College, Curti published his first book, The American Peace Crusade, 1815-1860. The book, based on his dissertation, was written after Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr.Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr.
Arthur Meier Schlesinger, Sr. was an American historian. His son, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. was also a noted historian.-Life and career:...
(who had replaced Turner at Harvard) rejected his first dissertation proposal which was essentially an early version of The Growth of American Thought.
Peace studies
Moving to Teachers College at Columbia in 1931, he published a book on William Jennings BryanWilliam Jennings Bryan
William Jennings Bryan was an American politician in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. He was a dominant force in the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, standing three times as its candidate for President of the United States...
and world peace (Bryan and World Peace). It was followed by Peace or War: The American Struggle in 1936. With these works, Curti helped found peace and conflict studies
Peace and conflict studies
Peace and conflict studies is a social science field that identifies and analyses violent and nonviolent behaviours as well as the structural mechanisms attending social conflicts with a view towards understanding those processes which lead to a more desirable human condition...
as a field of study. He criticized pacifists for ignoring major social changes--especially the repudiation of old-fashioned competitive capitalism by the New Deal
New Deal
The New Deal was a series of economic programs implemented in the United States between 1933 and 1936. They were passed by the U.S. Congress during the first term of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The programs were Roosevelt's responses to the Great Depression, and focused on what historians call...
, and the need to repudiate imperial greed if peace were to be achieved. In 1964 he helped found the Conference on Peace Research in History, now called the Peace History Society. The Roots of American Loyalty (1946) was a history of patriotism.
Curti developed his global vision through travels; he taught in Japan, Australia and India for two years. He left the Episcopal faith of his boyhood for Unitarianism. Although never a Marxist, he voted for Socialist presidential candidates in the name of world peace.
Intellectual history
Curti turned his attention to intellectual historyIntellectual history
Note: this article concerns the discipline of intellectual history, and not its object, the whole span of human thought since the invention of writing. For clarifications about the latter topic, please consult the writings of the intellectual historians listed here and entries on individual...
, and helped to establish that field as a distinct academic discipline. His first foray in the field was The Social Ideals of American Educators, published in 1935. In 1944, Curti won the Pulitzer Prize in history for his masterwork, The Growth of American Thought. Its chapters show an encyclopedic knowledge of thinkers great and small from the colonial period to the present, together with his commitment to democracy as a process springing from the ideas of the people. Curti adapted Turner's frontier thesis
Frontier Thesis
The Frontier Thesis, also referred to as the Turner Thesis, is the argument advanced by historian Frederick Jackson Turner in 1893 that the origin of the distinctive egalitarian, democratic, aggressive, and innovative features of the American character has been the American frontier experience...
to intellectual history, arguing, "Because the American environment, physical and social, differed from that of Europe, Americans, confronted by different needs and problems, adapted the European intellectual heritage in their own way. And because American life came increasingly to differ from European life, American ideas, American agencies of intellectual life, and the use made of knowledge likewise came to differ in America from their European counterparts." (p vi) Unlike some of the other leaders of the American Studies program, he paid little attention to myths and symbols. Unlike Perry Miller
Perry Miller
Perry G. Miller was an American intellectual historian and Harvard University professor. He was an authority on American Puritanism, and a founder of the field of American Studies. Alfred Kazin referred to him as "the master of American intellectual history"...
at Harvard, who strongly influenced a new generation of intellectual historians, Curti never delved too deeply into the internal history of ideas, preferring to link them to multiple external social and economic factors. His book was not so much a history of American thought as a social history of American thought, with strong attention to the social and economic forces that shaped that thought from the bottom up.
New social history
In the 1950s Curti undertook a collaborative social history of rural Trempealeau CountyTrempealeau County, Wisconsin
Trempealeau County is a county located in the U.S. state of Wisconsin. As of 2009, the population estimate was 27,754. Its county seat is Whitehall.-History:Patches of woodland are all that remain of the brush and light forest that once covered the county...
, Wisconsin using avant-garde quantitative analysis of census records. The book which came out of the project, The Making of an American Community: A Case Study of Democracy in a Frontier County (1959) immediately became a pioneer work in the "new social history."
Social history
Social history, often called the new social history, is a branch of History that includes history of ordinary people and their strategies of coping with life. In its "golden age" it was a major growth field in the 1960s and 1970s among scholars, and still is well represented in history departments...
Curti's wife Margaret Wooster Curti, provided some of the quantitative methodology. Historians, however, did not emulate it, preferring instead to follow Stephan Thernstrom
Stephan Thernstrom
Stephan Thernstrom is the Winthrop Research Professor of History at Harvard University. and was the editor of the Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups ....
's model in Poverty and Progress: Social Mobility in a Nineteenth-Century American City (1964), which used a similar methodology of tracking workers through their careers using censuses and city directories. The difference was urban and rural--urban history was exploding and rural history was a backwater; in addition the Thernstrom model was easier to replicate by a graduate student writing a PhD thesis alone (Curti had numerous research assistants and coauthors). The "old" social history comprised descriptions of everyday lifestyles, perhaps with a coverage of grass roots political movements (like the Populists), His "new" social history was a systematic examination of the entire population using statistics and social science methodologies.
Teaching
In 1942 Curti was called to the Frederick Jackson Turner professorship of history at the University of Wisconsin, one of the nation's three or four most influential centers of historical scholarship; he retired from the department in 1968. He continued to write after retirement, keeping up-to-date an influential textbook, Rise of the American Nation for the schools coauthored with Lewis Todd.The Wisconsin department was notorious for the angry feuds among the senior professors, which Curti, mild mannered and small of stature, completely ignored. Curti supervised 86 finished doctoral dissertations at Columbia and Wisconsin. They include many who became famous scholars: Richard Hofstadter on Social Darwinism
Social Darwinism
Social Darwinism is a term commonly used for theories of society that emerged in England and the United States in the 1870s, seeking to apply the principles of Darwinian evolution to sociology and politics...
; John Higham
John Higham
John William Higham was an American historian, scholar of American culture and specialist on issues of ethnicity.-Life and career:...
on nativism; Bourke on community studies; Allen Davis on Progressivism and Jane Addams; and Roderick Nash
Roderick Nash
Roderick Nash is a history and environmental studies professor at the University of California Santa Barbara. Nash is the first person to descend the Tuolumne River .- Scholarly biography :...
on the environment, among many others. Curti allowed his students a free hand in content and methodology. He encouraged his students constantly, wrote highly detailed critiques of their chapters, protected them from intradepartmental feuds, helped them get funding, and found them jobs through the "old boys" network of which he was an accomplished maestro (Curti wrote hundreds of letters a month to friends and ex-students across the globe.)
Memberships, awards and honors
Curti won the Pulitzer PrizePulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
in history in 1944.
He was president of the Mississippi Valley Historical Association (now the Organization of American Historians
Organization of American Historians
The Organization of American Historians , formerly known as the Mississippi Valley Historical Association, is the largest professional society dedicated to the teaching and study of American history. OAH's members in the U.S...
) in 1952 and the American Historical Association
American Historical Association
The American Historical Association is the oldest and largest society of historians and professors of history in the United States. Founded in 1884, the association promotes historical studies, the teaching of history, and the preservation of and access to historical materials...
in 1954.
He was a co-founder of the American Studies Association. He served as the organization's vice-president in 1954 and 1955, and was asked to serve as president in 1956. But he declined the honor because he was going to be out of the country.
Curti was also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences is an independent policy research center that conducts multidisciplinary studies of complex and emerging problems. The Academy’s elected members are leaders in the academic disciplines, the arts, business, and public affairs.James Bowdoin, John Adams, and...
and the American Philosophical Society
American Philosophical Society
The American Philosophical Society, founded in 1743, and located in Philadelphia, Pa., is an eminent scholarly organization of international reputation, that promotes useful knowledge in the sciences and humanities through excellence in scholarly research, professional meetings, publications,...
.
In 1977, the Organization of American Historians established the Merle Curti Award
Merle Curti Award
The Merle Curti Award is awarded annually by the Organization of American Historians for the best book in American social and/or American intellectual history. A committee of 5 members of the Organization of American Historians chooses the winners from published monographs submitted by the author...
. The prize is given annually for the best book in social, intellectual, and/or cultural history. (In some years, the organization has awarded two prizes, one in social and/or cultural history and one in intellectual and/or cultural history.)
Publications by Merle Curti
- The American Peace Crusade, 1815-1860 (1929) online edition
- "Non-Resistance in New England," The New England Quarterly Vol. 2, No. 1 (Jan., 1929), pp. 34-57 in JSTOR
- Bryan and World Peace. Northampton, Mass.: Smith College Studies in History, (1931).
- "Robert Rantoul, Jr., The Reformer in Politics," The New England Quarterly Vol. 5, No. 2 (Apr., 1932), pp. 264-280 in JSTOR
- The Social ideas of American Educators (1932, expanded ed. 1959)
- Peace or War: The American Struggle. (1936). excerpt and text search
- "The Great Mr. Locke: America's Philosopher, 1783-1861," The Huntington Library Bulletin No. 11 (Apr., 1937), pp. 107-151 in JSTOR
- "Public Opinion and the Study of History," The Public Opinion Quarterly Vol. 1, No. 2 (Apr., 1937), pp. 84-87 in JSTOR
- "Francis Lieber and Nationalism," The Huntington Library Quarterly Vol. 4, No. 3 (Apr., 1941), pp. 263-292 in JSTOR
- "The American Scholar in Three Wars," Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 3, No. 3 (Jun., 1942), pp. 241-264 in JSTOR
- The Growth of American Thought. (1943, 1951), 912pp. online edition
- The University of Wisconsin A History 1848-1925 (2 vol 1949) with Vernon Carstenson
- The Roots of American Loyalty (1946) online edition
- "The Reputation of America Overseas (1776-1860)," American Quarterly Vol. 1, No. 1 (Spring, 1949), pp. 58-82 in JSTOR
- "America at the World Fairs, 1851-1893," The American Historical Review Vol. 55, No. 4 (Jul., 1950), pp. 833-856 in JSTOR
- "The Immigrant and the American Image in Europe, 1860-1914," with Kendall Birr; The Mississippi Valley Historical Review Vol. 37, No. 2 (Sep., 1950), pp. 203-230 in JSTOR
- "The Democratic Theme in American Historical Literature," The Mississippi Valley Historical Review Vol. 39, No. 1 (Jun., 1952), pp. 3-28, presidential address; in JSTOR
- "'The Flowery Flag Devils': The American Image in China 1840-1900." with John Stalker; Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society Vol. 96, No. 6 (Dec., 1952), pp. 663-690 in JSTOR
- "Human Nature in American Thought," Political Science Quarterly Vol. 68, No. 3 (Sep., 1953), pp. 354-375 in JSTOR
- "Human Nature in American Thought: Retreat from Reason in the Age of Science," Political Science Quarterly Vol. 68, No. 4 (Dec., 1953), pp. 492-510 in JSTOR
- "Intellectuals and Other People," The American Historical Review Vol. 60, No. 2 (Jan., 1955), pp. 259-282, presidential address in JSTOR
- "Woodrow Wilson's Concept of Human Nature," Midwest Journal of Political Science Vol. 1, No. 1 (May, 1957), pp. 1-19 in JSTOR
- "American Philanthropy and the National Character," American Quarterly Vol. 10, No. 4 (Winter, 1958), pp. 420-437 in JSTOR
- The Making of an American Community: A Case Study of Democracy in a Frontier County. (1959).
- "Tradition and Innovation in American Philanthropy," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society Vol. 105, No. 2 (Apr., 1961), pp. 146-156 in JSTOR
- "Jane Addams on Human Nature," Journal of the History of Ideas Vol. 22, No. 2 (Apr., 1961), pp. 240-253 in JSTOR
- "The Changing Concept of "Human Nature" in the Literature of American Advertising," The Business History Review Vol. 41, No. 4 (Winter, 1967), pp. 335-357, illustrated; in JSTOR
- Human Nature in American Thought: A History (1980)
- American Philanthropy Abroad (1988) excerpt and text search
- America's History textbook coauthored with Lewis Paul Todd; many editions
Further reading
- Conkin, Paul K. "Merle Curti." in Clio's Favorites: Leading Historians of the United States, 1945-2000. ed. by Robert Allen Rutland, (2000). ISBN 0826213162 online edition
- Cronon, E. David. "Merle Curti: an Appraisal and Bibliography of His Writings." Wisconsin Magazine of History 1970-1971 54(2): 119-135. Issn: 0043-6534
- Davis, Allen F. "Memorial to Merle E. Curti." American Studies Association Newsletter. June 1996.
- Henretta, James A. "The Making of an American Community: a Thirty-year Retrospective." Reviews in American History 1988 16(3): 506-512. in Jstor
- Lillibridge, G.D. "So Long, Maestro: A Portrait of Merle Curti." American Scholar. Volume: 66. Issue: 2. (Spring 1997). pp 263+. online edition
- Novick, Peter. That Noble Dream: The "Objectivity Question" and the American Historical Profession. (1988). ISBN 0521357454
- Pettegrew, John. "The Present-minded Professor: Merle Curti's Work as an Intellectual Historian." History Teacher 1998 32(1): 67-76. Issn: 0018-2745 Fulltext: in Jstor
- Wittner, Lawrence S. "Merle Curti and the Development of Peace History." Peace & Change 1998 23(1): 74-82. Issn: 0149-0508 Fulltext: Ebsco