Shared Beginnings: A Reflection on Forty Years

Abstract

My article on Anson Burlingame in Diplomatic History, vol. 1, no. 3, Summer 1977, was my first publication. I was a relatively new PhD teaching in good but temporary appointments and striving to get myself in print. I was a brand-new scholar, and DH was a brand-new journal. Although DH was in its first year, it was already evident that the journal was where a young scholar wanted his work to appear. I choose to use the pronoun “his” to make the point that the number of women among our ranks was shamefully small. To SHAFR’s credit, however, Diane Shaver Clemens and Judith Hughes were members of the founding editorial board of DH. The founders of SHAFR were by and large the creators of our subdiscipline, and they made DH the marketplace of our work in the history of U.S. foreign relations. The well-established historical journals were, of course, important to us professionally, but DH was special from its start. Not only did the journal welcome the topics and questions of interest to us, but it was already becoming a defining part of the mentorship that is now a hallmark of SHAFR. In this regard, the willingness of Armin Rappaport to be the first editor of DH was an immense stroke of good fortune. Armin’s distinguished reputation immediately provided the journal with credibility in the scholarly community. Moreover, he was a generous and genuinely nice person who treated aspiring scholars like myself with respect as colleagues and who helped guide our progress toward publication as if we were his own students.