Teaching of American History in Great Britain

Abstract

ARRANGEMENTS for instructing British students about the history and institutions of the United States are, unfortunately but quite naturally, far less comprehensive than our facilities for interpreting British history and culture. There are, for example, only three endowed chairs of American history and institutions in United Kingdom universities and one of these has just been established. The oldest and perhaps the best-known chair is the Harmsworth Professorship of American History at Oxford, which is reserved for distinguished historians fromi the United States. Plans are on foot to establish a readership in American history at Oxford in order to give continuity to the study, but financial support for this project has not yet been found. The University of Cambridge endowed a chair of American history and institutions in I943, which will also be reserved for American scholars, but the first occupant has not been designated. However, Professor H. S. Commager and Professor Frank Dobie have both served as visiting lecturers in American history at Cambridge during the war. The University of London administers an endowment from the Commonwealth Fund, most of the income from which is used to meet the salaries of a professor and reader of American history and to provide traveling allowances to enable one or the other to visit the United States each year. These posts are filled by British specialists; but the balance of the income was used before the war to pay the honorarium and traveling expenses of a distinguished American historian who was invited each spring term to deliver a series of six or eight lectures on American history. These lectures will be revived after the war if the income from the endowment remains adequate. St. Andrews University has a lectureship in American history, endowed by Edward Harkness of New York; and Sheffield maintains an unendowed lectureship in American history. Interest in American history is reported to be lively also at Bristol, Aberystwyth, and Glasgow, but no chairs or reader-