Thomas Andrew Bailey (December 14, 1902 – July 26, 1983) was a professor of history at his alma mater, Stanford University, and wrote many historical monographs on diplomatic history, including the widely used American history textbook, ''

The American Pageant ''The American Pageant'', initially published by Thomas A. Bailey in 1956, is an American high school history textbook often used for AP United States History, AICE American History as well as IB History of the Americas courses. Since Bailey's ...

''. He was known for his witty style and clever terms he coined, such as "international gangsterism." He popularized diplomatic history with his entertaining textbooks and lectures, the presentation style of which followed

Ephraim Douglass Adams Ephraim Douglass Adams (December 18, 1865 in Decorah, Iowa – September 1, 1930 in Stanford, California) was an American educator and historian, regarded as an expert on the American Civil War and British-American relations. He was known as a gr ...

. Bailey contended foreign policy was significantly affected by public opinion, and that current policymakers could learn from history.

Career

Bailey received his B.A. (1924), M.A. (1925), and Ph.D (1927) from Stanford University, where he was also elected to

Phi Beta Kappa The Phi Beta Kappa Society () is the oldest academic honor society in the United States, and the most prestigious, due in part to its long history and academic selectivity. Phi Beta Kappa aims to promote and advocate excellence in the liberal ...

. His doctoral work was in U.S. political history. He switched his emphasis towards diplomatic history while teaching at the University of Hawaii. After three years at Hawaii, he taught American history for nearly 40 years at Stanford and also served as a visiting professor at Harvard,

Cornell Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach a ...

, the

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seattl ...

, and the National War College in Washington, D.C. He retired in 1968. Bailey authored a number of articles in the 1930s that indicated the historical techniques he would use throughout his career. While not groundbreaking, they remain noteworthy for the care with which Bailey systematically overturned received myths about U.S. diplomatic history by a careful reexamination of the underlying sources. His first book was a study of the diplomatic crisis over racial issues between the United States and Japan during the Theodore Roosevelt administration. He delivered the Albert Shaw Lectures on Diplomatic History at Johns Hopkins on the Wilson administration's policy towards neutrals in 1917-1918, later published in 1942. While the impact of public opinion on the making of foreign policy was a theme that ran through most of his works, he laid it out most clearly in ''The Man in the Street'', published in 1948. Perhaps the harshest attack on Wilson's diplomacy came from Bailey in two books that remain widely cited by scholars, ''Woodrow Wilson and the Lost Peace'' (1944) and ''Woodrow Wilson and the Great Betrayal'' (1945), Bailey: :contended that Wilson's wartime isolationism, as well as his peace proposals at war's end, were seriously flawed. Highlighting the fact that American delegates encountered staunch opposition to Wilson's proposed League of Nations, Bailey concluded that the president and his diplomatic staff essentially sold out, compromising important American ideals to secure mere fragments of Wilson's progressive vision. Hence, while Bailey primarily targeted President Wilson in these critiques, others, including House, did not emerge unscathed. He trained more than 20 doctoral students in his career. One of Bailey's students from the 1940s, Betty Miller Unterberger, was elected president of the SHAFR in 1986, the first woman in the position at a time when the organization was 99 percent male. It was Bailey who introduced Unterberger to the subject of one of her prime interests, the

Russian Civil War {{Infobox military conflict , conflict = Russian Civil War , partof = the Russian Revolution and the aftermath of World War I , image = , caption = Clockwise from top left: {{flatlist, *Soldiers ...

between 1918 and 1920. He was married to Sylvia Dean, daughter of a former University of Hawaii president.

Honors and awards

In 1960 he served as president of the Pacific Coast Branch of the

American Historical Association The American Historical Association (AHA) is the oldest professional association of historians in the United States and the largest such organization in the world. Founded in 1884, the AHA works to protect academic freedom, develop professional s ...

. In 1968, he was elected to the presidencies of both the Organization of American Historians and the

Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations The Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR) was founded in order to “promote excellence in research and teaching of American foreign relations history and to facilitate professional collaboration among scholars and students ...

. The Commonwealth Club awarded him gold medals in 1940 for his ''Diplomatic History of the American People'' and 1944 for his ''Woodrow Wilson and the Lost Peace''.

Bibliography

* ''Theodore Roosevelt and the Japanese-American Crisis: An Account of the International Complications Arising from the Race Problems on the Pacific Coast'' (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1934). * ''

'' (1956) (16 editions by 2015) * "The Sinking of the Lusitania." ''The American Historical Review,'' Vol. 41, No. 1 (Oct., 1935), pp. 54–7
in JSTOR
* ''A Diplomatic History of the American People'' (1940, and reprinted through 10th edition in 1980) * ''The Policy of the United States Toward the Neutrals, 1917–1918'' (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1942) * ''The Man in the Street: The Impact of American Public Opinion on Foreign Policy'' (New York, 1948) * ''Woodrow Wilson and the Lost Peace'' (New York, 1944) *
Woodrow Wilson and the Great Betrayal
' (New York, 1945) * ''Wilson and the Peacemakers'' (New York, 1947) his single volume combined the two earlier Wilson volumes into one* ''America Faces Russia: Russian-American Relations from Early Times to Our Day'' (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1950) * ''The Lusitania Disaster'' (1975) co-authored with Captain Paul B. Ryan * ''The American Pageant Revisited'' (1982) the autobiography of Thomas A. Bailey * ''Presidential Greatness'' (1966) * ''The Pugnacious Presidents'' (1980) * " PRESIDENTIAL SAINTS AND SINNERS" (1981)THE FREE PRESS, New York

References

External links

Thomas Andrew Bailey: An Oral History
Stanford Historical Society Oral History Program, 1978. {{DEFAULTSORT:Bailey, Thomas A. American textbook writers Cold War historians Stanford University School of Humanities and Sciences alumni Historians of the United States Writers from San Jose, California Stanford University Department of History faculty Harvard University staff 1902 births 1983 deaths People from Menlo Park, California Historians of American foreign relations 20th-century American historians American male non-fiction writers 20th-century American male writers

Career

Honors and awards

Bibliography

References

Further reading

External links