Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr.

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"Arthur M. Schlesinger" redirects here. For his son, see Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.
Arthur M. Schlesinger
Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
Alma mater
OccupationHistorian
ChildrenArthur Jr.

Arthur Meier Schlesinger (/ˈʃlɛsɪndʒər/ SHLESS-in-jər; February 27, 1888 – October 30, 1965) was an American historian who taught at Harvard University, pioneering social history and urban history. He was a Progressive Era intellectual who stressed material causes (such as economic profit and conflict between businessmen and farmers) and downplayed ideology and values as motivations for historical actors. He was highly influential as a director of PhD dissertations at Harvard for three decades, especially in the fields of social, women's, and immigration history. His son, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. (1917–2007), also taught at Harvard and was a noted historian.

Life and career

Schlesinger's father, Bernhard Schlesinger, was a Prussian Jew, and his mother, Kate (née Feurle), was an Austrian Catholic. The two converted to Protestantism together and emigrated to Xenia, Ohio, in 1872.[1][2]

He was born in Xenia, Ohio, and graduated from

New England Quarterly in 1928. That same year, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.[4] He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1941.[5]

In Boston in 1929, city officials, under the leadership of James Curley, threatened to arrest Margaret Sanger if she spoke on birth control. In response, she stood on stage, silent with a gag over her mouth, while her speech was read by Schlesinger.[6][7]

He enjoyed strong family ties and commitment. His two sisters, Olga and Marion Etna, became schoolteachers and made it possible for their three younger brothers (George, Arthur, and Hugo) to attend college graduating in engineering, history and law. One of his sons was born Arthur Bancroft Schlesinger and replaced his middle name with "Meier," adding Jr., later in life.

Schlesinger died at

Boston, Massachusetts.[8]

Ideas

He pioneered social history and urban history. He was a

economic profit) and downplayed ideology and values as motivations for historical actors. He was highly influential as a director of PhD dissertations at Harvard for three decades, especially in the fields of social, women's, and immigration history.[9] He commented in 1922, "From reading history in textbooks one would think half of our population made only a negligible contribution to history."[10] He promoted social history by co-editing the 13-volume History of American Life (1928–1943) series with Dixon Ryan Fox. These thick volumes, written by leading young scholars, mostly avoid politics, individuals, and constitutional issues. They instead focus on such topics as society, demographics, economic, housing, fashion, sports, education, and cultural life.[11]

In "Tides of American Politics," a provocative essay in the Yale Review in 1939, he presented his

cyclical view of history which identified irregular oscillations between liberal and conservative national moods, but it attracted few historians apart from his son. Schlesinger introduced the idea of polling historians to rank presidential greatness
, which attracted much attention.

In an essay on "The Significance of Jacksonian Democracy" (in New Viewpoints in American History (1922)), Schlesinger drew attention to the fact that "while democracy was working out its destiny in the forests of the

Mississippi Valley
, the men left behind in the eastern cities were engaging in a struggle to establish conditions of equality and social well-being adapted to their special circumstances."

As a historian of the rise of the city in American life, he argued that for a full understanding of the Jacksonian democratic movement: "It is necessary to consider the changed circumstances of life of the common man in the new industrial centers of the East since the opening years of the nineteenth century." That was a challenge to the frontier thesis of his Harvard colleague Frederick Jackson Turner. In Schlesinger's essay, the common man of the Mississippi Valley and the common man of eastern industrialism stood uneasily side by side. Schlesinger characterized prejudice against Catholics as "the deepest bias in the history of the American people".[12]

Schlesinger and his students took a group approach to history, sharply downplaying the role of individuals. Groups were defined by ethnicity (Germans, Irish, Jews, Italians, Hispanics, etc.) or by class (working class, middle class). Their model was that the urban environment, including the interaction with other groups, shaped their history and group outlook in deterministic fashion.[13]

Works

See also

References

  1. ISBN 978-0-8101-2444-8
    – via Google Books.
  2. ^ Chace, James (December 21, 2000). "The Age of Schlesinger". The New York Review of Books.
  3. ^ Makio. Columbus: The Ohio State University. 1910. p. 113.
  4. ^ "Arthur Meier Schlesinger". American Academy of Arts & Sciences. 10 February 2023. Retrieved 2023-04-24.
  5. ^ "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved 2023-04-24.
  6. ^ Schlesinger, Arthur M. (1963). In Retrospect: The History of a Historian. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World. p. 128.
  7. ^ Lader, Lawrence (1973). The Margaret Sanger Story and the Fight for Birth Control. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press. p. 227.
  8. ^ "Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr., Historian, Dies at 77". The New York Times. October 31, 1965.
  9. ISBN 978-0-8147-5208-1
    .
  10. ISBN 978-0-19-502468-5
    .
  11. ISBN 978-0-684-85766-4
    .
  12. ISBN 978-0-262-68062-2
    .
  13. S2CID 144048419
    .

Further reading

Primary sources

External links
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