From Learned Society to Professional Organization

The American Historical Association, 1884-1900

Bibliographic Data

ID23215660
AuthorsDavid D Van Tassel (corresponding author)
Year1984
Volume89
Issue4
Pages929
Publication date1984-10-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe American Historical Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0002-8762 • E-ISSN: 1937-5239
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/1866399
OpenAlexW2320908959
LanguageEN
Citations received9

WE HAVE COME, GENTLEMEN, to organize a new With this charge from Justin Winsor, the Harvard librarian, a group of historians meeting in a parlor of the United States Hotel in Saratoga Springs, New York, launched the American Historical Association on September 9, 1884. The time was ripe, recalled J. Franklin Jameson. Defective as our organization might [have been], we stood without knowing it at the beginning of a new and most fruitful era in the development of American historiography.' That a national organization of historians should have been founded in the 1880s is not surprising. Many other similar national organizations were established during this same period, which saw the development of American nationalism, the emergence of the national state, and a general movement toward professionalization in most callings.2 Less well known are the details of the process by which the defective new association changed from a small society of scholars-a learned society-to a professional organization during its first sixteen years.3 Today the association, despite its transformation in size, functions, and services, still clings to its original role as a learned society. As we celebrate our hundredth birthday, the time has come to re-examine our origins in order better to understand ourselves.

Aesthetics · Art · Association (psychology) · Historiography · Library science · Management · Media studies · Nationalism · Period (music) · Political science · Politics · Professional association · Professionalization · Sociology · State (computer science) · Voluntary association · American History and Culture · History · Law · Oral History, Memory, Narrative Analysis · Psychology · Race, History, and American Society

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