Bradford Perkins (March 6, 1925 – June 29, 2008) was an American

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 st ...

who spent the bulk of his career at the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

. He was the son of the historian Dexter Perkins.

Life

Perkins was born in

Rochester, New York Rochester () is a city in the U.S. state of New York, the seat of Monroe County, and the fourth-most populous in the state after New York City, Buffalo, and Yonkers, with a population of 211,328 at the 2020 United States census. Located in W ...

, in 1925, where his father was a professor at the

University of Rochester The University of Rochester (U of R, UR, or U of Rochester) is a private university, private research university in Rochester, New York. The university grants Undergraduate education, undergraduate and graduate degrees, including Doctorate, do ...

. He served in the

U.S. Army The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cl ...

during World War II in the European theater. He received his A.B. in 1947 from

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

, and completed his doctoral work there in 1952 under the direction of Frederick Merk. Perkins taught at the

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California S ...

. He joined the

history department in 1962 and retired in 1997. He was Professor Emeritus at the

. He was Commonwealth Fund Lecturer at

University College London , mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £143 million (2020) , budget = ...

Honors and awards

* 1962 Guggenheim Fellowship * 1965

Bancroft Prize The Bancroft Prize is awarded each year by the trustees of Columbia University for books about diplomacy or the history of the Americas. It was established in 1948, with a bequest from Frederic Bancroft, in his memory and that of his brother, ...

(for ''Castlereagh and Adams'') * 1974 President of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations * 1979 delivered the Albert Shaw Lectures on Diplomatic History at

Johns Hopkins University Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hemisphere. It consi ...

* 1984-1994 member, Department of State Advisory Committee on Historical Diplomatic Documentation * Elected to the Society of American Historians * Elected Fellow of the Massachusetts Historical Society * Elected to the

American Antiquarian Society The American Antiquarian Society (AAS), located in Worcester, Massachusetts, is both a learned society and a national research library of pre-twentieth-century American history and culture. Founded in 1812, it is the oldest historical society i ...

Works

"Impressions of Wartime," ''The Journal of American History'', September 1990"Interests, Values, and the Prism: The Sources of American Foreign Policy", ''Journal of the Early Republic'', 1994
*''The First Rapprochement: England and the United States, 1795-1805'' (1955) *''Prologue to war, England and the United States, 1805-1812'' (196
full text online
*''Castlereagh and Adams: England and the United States, 1812-1823'' (1964) *''England and the United States'' (1967) *''The Great Rapprochement: England and the United States, 1895-1914'' (1968, reprinted 2003) *''The Creation of a Republican Empire, 1776-1865'' (Volume 1 of the Cambridge History of American Foreign Relations, ed. Warren I. Cohen)(1995)

References

External links

"ORAL HISTORY OF BRADFORD PERKINS", ''University of Michigan'', JASON R. GLASS, March 14,1999
20th-century American historians 20th-century American male writers Harvard University alumni Writers from Rochester, New York University of Michigan faculty United States Army personnel of World War II 1925 births 2008 deaths Historians of American foreign relations Historians from New York (state) Bancroft Prize winners American male non-fiction writers {{US-historian-stub