Charles Soutter Campbell, Jr., 1911-2006

Charles Campbell, Professor of US Diplomatic History at the Claremont Graduate University [formerly the Claremont Graduate School] from 1958 to 1985, died on August 17, 2006 at Friends House in Santa Rosa, California.

Campbell was born in Essex Fells, New Jersey and completed his B.A. at Yale University in 1933. Following a two-year stint in the Yale-in-China program in Changsha, Hunan – where he was a teacher of English and History – he returned to New Haven for graduate studies under his mentor Samuel Flagg Bemis. He completed his Ph.D. in 1938 and his well-received dissertation – American Business Interests and the Open Door in China – appeared in the November 1941 edition of Far Eastern Quarterly.

From 1938 to 1940 Campbell was an Adjunct Professor of Economics at the American University in Beirut, Lebanon. For the years 1940-1945 he served the U.S. Department of State as a Foreign Service Officer in the American Embassy in London where he worked for US Ambassador John G. Winant. It was here that he met Anne Margaret Howson, who was at the time a decipher clerk on the Enigma project at Bletchley Park. Ms. Howson’s father was English and her mother Australian. The two were married at Henley on Thames in June 1944 and in 1945 they moved back to Beirut, where Campbell taught one more year at the American University. In 1946 he took a position in the History Department at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, where he stayed until 1958, with only a brief interruption in 1956, when he accepted a one-year appointment at the University of Melbourne, Australia.

He came to Claremont in 1958 to join a small but exceptional faculty of American historians that included Douglass Adair and John Niven. In 1961, while William Appleman Williams was on leave, Campbell agreed to teach for him at the University of Wisconsin, and in 1977-1978 he was Visiting Professor at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, England. He then returned to Claremont and was at the Graduate University until 1985. He continued to offer classes at adjoining Claremont McKenna College after his official retirement.

Professor Campbell’s remarkable career, in addition to the teaching and government positions indicated above, included his dedicated guiding of graduate students to their Ph.D.s and the publication of numerous books and articles that represented an acknowledged impact on the history profession.

Yale University Press published a refined and expanded rendition of his dissertation in 1951, entitled Special Business Interests and the Open Door Policy. By carefully documenting the influence domestic interests exerted on U.S. diplomacy, the study became a seminal inspiration for a post-war generation of Diplomatic Historians. Campbell was also a prominent student of American-British relations. His Anglo-American Understanding, 1898-1903 (Johns Hopkins Press, 1957, reprinted by Greenwood Press in 1980) remains a standard study of the topic, and his later work, From Revolution to Rapprochement: The United States and Great Britain, 1783-1900 was published by Wiley in 1974 for its series “America in the World.”

Campbell’s most ambitious project was his study of post-Civil War diplomacy, The Transformation of American Foreign Relations, 1865-1900 (Harper and Row, 1976). A result of several years of thorough research, the book reflects a commitment to primary source scholarship and addresses with matchless clarity and persuasiveness the more contentious issues raised by historians about this revolutionary period.

While Campbell’s scholarly work will continue to be important to the profession, of equal significance was his teaching. The overused adjective unique legitimately applies to his seminars. Students encountered the first day a syllabus unlike any other they had seen. There were no books indicated, no lengthy instructions; rather a list of questions that were to be answered during each week’s three-hour meeting. The questions were presented in a general chronological order. There was no correct answer to any of them, as can be judged from a typical favorite of his: “When did the Spanish-American War become inevitable?” And Campbell brought no lecture notes or books into the seminar room with him; only a box of note cards.

All students were to submit a typed answer to the question – not to exceed one page – for each seminar meeting; the answer had to be substantiated with accurate data and sound analysis. One student in each class session was responsible for presenting a report addressing the question and, of course, was immediately challenged by all the others once general discussion began. It became obvious during class meetings that answering these questions was not easy! And woe to the unprepared student, or the student who sought the easy route of sweeping through a textbook rendition of the issue. For the week between each session students roamed the documents section of the library, met with one another, reviewed as much literature as possible, and, too often, let other assignments lapse. The result was always a spirited, often memorable, class. And Professor Campbell (whose measured answer to the question we all awaited with nervous anticipation) inserted the most pointed queries during our deliberations and shepherded the discussion with subtle expertise.

Beyond his seminar teaching, Campbell was an accessible mentor, particularly for his thesis students. However, approaching him could lead to some demoralization. One of his students remembers submitting what he thought was the final version of his doctoral dissertation. Two weeks’ later, the student asked Professor Campbell what he thought of the presumably finished work. The answer was, “I have some comments, but then I always do.” It took another six months of labor to produce the version which Campbell approved. Still, the ordeal paid off: the dissertation was accepted for publication as written. No higher compliment can be paid to the great teacher’s exacting standards and benevolent attention to launching his students on their professional careers. Although always at work on his own research and writing, he remained constantly alert to his students’ needs (and occasional tardiness). Moreover, he retained contact with his former students long after they had left his tutelage, and he savored their successes.

Professor Charles S. Campbell Jr. lived a long and productive life. He will be sorely missed by his friends, colleagues, and former students. He is survived by his son Patrick and daughter-in-law Faith Campbell of Glen Ellen, California, and by three grandchildren.