"To Set a Standard of Workmanship and Compel Men to Conform to It": John Franklin Jameson as Editor of the American Historical Review

Abstract

THE QUOTATION FROM JOHN FRANKLIN JAMESON that provided the title for this essay also defines the problem it attempts to resolve. Living when the study of history has been fragmented almost beyond comprehension, we might wonder how any historian at any time could attempt to establish a single by which to measure his own work and that of his colleagues. What was that standard? How did Jameson come to pronounce it? How successful was he, as the first and premier editor of the American Historical Review, in establishing a standard of workmanship in historical writing? The answer to this last question, which invites an exploration of the preceding ones, is that he was not very successful in meeting the goals he set. Partly because of the lingering influence of genteel culture, which vitiated efforts to impose scholarly rigor on historical work, and partly because of social and political developments that exerted countervailing pressure on attempts to create a unitary science of history, Jameson was no more able to rein in the historical profession than he could make the sun stand still. To say this is not to conclude that he was a as a managing editor, for under his stewardship the Review established itself as the leading historical journal in this country and as one of the most acclaimed of its kind in the world. Nor does Jameson's failure diminish his historical significance, for he was one of the most visible proponents, certainly one of the most enduring, of a variant of scientific history that at one point guided the most influential graduate seminars in America. His decline paralleled the demise of a school of history, and, thus, in examining his career, we gain a sense of the dynamics of historical writing, of the way in which the ideal of academic professionalism embodies political beliefs that change as the political and social climate surrounding universities changes.