Cornell University Department of History
Notable people -- Faculty
Table:
Name

Title(s)

Field of study

Year joined

Year left/retired

Reference

Felix Adler

Professor of Hebrew and Oriental Literature and History

Hebrew and Chinese literature

1874

1876

[27]

Charles Kendall Adams

Professor of History, University President

Europe

1885

1889

[1]

Daniel A. Baugh

Associate Professor of History

Modern England, Maritime history

1969

?

[28]

Carl L. Becker

John Wendell Anderson Professor of History

The Enlightenment

1917

1941

[29]

Knight Biggerstaff

Professor of History, Department Chairman (1956–1963)

China

1938, 1946

1944, 1972

[30]

George Lincoln Burr '1881

John Stambaugh Professor of History

Middle Ages

1888

1923

[31]

Sherman Cochran

Hu Shih Professor of Chinese history

China

1974

2012

[32]

David Brion Davis

Ernest I. White Professor of History

Slavery

1955

1969

[33]

Frank Fetter '1892

Instructor, Professor in Political Economy (and Finance)

Political economy, finance

1895

1911

[27][34][35]

Paul Wallace Gates

John Stambaugh Professor of History, Department Chairman (1946–56)

United States public land policy

1936

1971

[36]

Anthony Grafton

Instructor in History

Renaissance

1974

1975

[37]

George Washington Greene

Non-resident Professor

United States

1871

1875

[1]

Henry Guerlac

Goldwin Smith Professor of the History of Science

Science

1946

1977

[38]

D. G. E. Hall

Visiting Professor of Southeast Asian History

Southeast Asia

1967

1972

[39]

Jeremiah Jenks

Professor of Political Economy and Politics

Political economy

1891

1912

[34][35]

Chen Jian

Hu Shih Professor of History and China-US Relations

Modern China, Chinese-American relations, Cold War history

2005

2017

[40]

Donald Kagan

Professor of History

Classics

1960

1969

[41]

Michael Kammen

Newton C. Farr Professor of American History and Culture

American culture

1965

?

[42][43]

Steven Kaplan

Goldwin Smith Professor of History

France, bread

1969

?

[44][45]

Helmut Koenigsberger

Professor

Early modern Europe

1966

1973

By analysing the accompanying table plus the context snippets provided.

Answer the following question: Which empire 's destruction started the era studied by George Lincoln Burr ? Provide just your answer in a JSON object {"answer": "YOUR ANSWER"}. Base your answer solely on the given information.

Felix Adler ( August 13 , 1851 - April 24 , 1933 ) was a German American professor of political and social ethics , rationalist , influential lecturer on euthanasia , religious leader and social reformer who founded the Ethical Culture movement .
Hebrew literature consists of ancient , medieval , and modern writings in the Hebrew language . It is one of the primary forms of Jewish literature , though there have been cases of literature written in Hebrew by non-Jews . Hebrew literature was produced in many different parts of the world throughout the medieval and modern eras , while contemporary Hebrew literature is largely Israeli literature . In 1966 , Agnon won the Nobel Prize for Literature for novels and short stories that employ a unique blend of biblical , Talmudic and modern Hebrew , making him the first Hebrew writer to receive this award .
The history of Chinese literature extends thousands of years , from the earliest recorded dynastic court archives to the mature vernacular fiction novels that arose during the Ming dynasty to entertain the masses of literate Chinese . The introduction of widespread woodblock printing during the Tang dynasty ( 618-907 ) and the invention of movable type printing by Bi Sheng ( 990-1051 ) during the Song dynasty ( 960-1279 ) rapidly spread written knowledge throughout China . In more modern times , the author Lu Xun ( 1881-1936 ) is considered the founder of baihua literature in China .
Charles Kendall Adams ( January 24 , 1835 - July 26 , 1902 ) was an American educator and historian . He served as the second president of Cornell University from 1885 until 1892 , and as president of the University of Wisconsin from 1892 until 1901 . At Cornell he established a new law school , built a library , and appointed eminent research professors for the Ivy League school . At Wisconsin , he negotiated ever-increasing appropriations from the state legislature , especially for new buildings such as the library . He was the editor-in-chief of Johnson 's Universal Cyclopaedia ( 1892-1895 ) , and of the successor Universal Cyclopaedia ( 1900 ) , sometimes referred to as Appleton 's Universal Cyclopaedia .
The history of Europe covers the people inhabiting Europe from prehistory to the present . During the Neolithic era and the time of the Indo-European migrations Europe saw human inflows from east and southeast and subsequent important cultural and material exchange . The period known as classical antiquity began with the emergence of the city-states of ancient Greece . Later , the Roman Empire came to dominate the entire Mediterranean basin . The fall of the Roman Empire in AD 476 traditionally marks the start of the Middle Ages . Beginning in the 14th century a Renaissance of knowledge challenged traditional doctrines in science and theology . Simultaneously , the Protestant Reformation set up Protestant churches primarily in Germany , Scandinavia and England . After 1800 , the Industrial Revolution brought prosperity to Britain and Western Europe . The main powers set up colonies in most of the Americas and Africa , and parts of Asia . In the 20th century , World War I and World War II resulted in massive numbers of deaths . The Cold War dominated European geo-politics from 1947 to 1989 .
Daniel Albert Baugh ( born 10 July 1931 in Philadelphia ) is seen as the definitive historian of [ British ] naval administration . Baugh has defined his own contribution in explaining My research field is mainly England , 1660-1840 . By studying administration chiefly in terms of administrative problems , I hope to improve our understanding of both the nature of society and the development of government . After 1982 he focused his attention on maritime , naval and geopolitical history .
The British Isles became inhabited more than 800,000 years ago , as the discovery of stone tools and footprints at Happisburgh in Norfolk has revealed . The earliest evidence for early modern humans in North West Europe , a jawbone discovered in Devon at Kents Cavern in 1927 , was re-dated in 2011 to between 41,000 and 44,000 years old . Continuous human habitation in England dates to around 13,000 years ago ( see Creswellian ) , at the end of the last glacial period . The region has numerous remains from the Mesolithic , Neolithic and Bronze Age , such as Stonehenge and Avebury . In the Iron Age , all of Britain south of the Firth of Forth , was inhabited by the Celtic people known as the Britons , including some Belgic tribes ( e.g . the Atrebates , the Catuvellauni , the Trinovantes , etc . ) in the south east . In AD 43 the Roman conquest of Britain began ; the Romans maintained control of their province of Britannia until the early 5th century . The end of Roman rule in Britain facilitated the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain , which historians often regard as the origin of England and of the English people . The Anglo-Saxons , a collection of various Germanic peoples , established several kingdoms that became the primary powers in present-day England and parts of southern Scotland . They introduced the Old English language , which largely displaced the previous British language . The Anglo-Saxons warred with British successor states in western Britain and the Hen Ogledd ( Old North ; the Brythonic-speaking parts of northern Britain ) , as well as with each other .
Maritime history is the study of human interaction with and activity at sea . It covers a broad thematic element of history that often uses a global approach , although national and regional histories remain predominant . As an academic subject , it often crosses the boundaries of standard disciplines , focusing on understanding humankind 's various relationships to the oceans , seas , and major waterways of the globe . Nautical history records and interprets past events involving ships , shipping , navigation , and seafarers . Maritime history is the broad overarching subject that includes fishing , whaling , international maritime law , naval history , the history of ships , ship design , shipbuilding , the history of navigation , the history of the various maritime-related sciences ( oceanography , cartography , hydrography , etc . ) , sea exploration , maritime economics and trade , shipping , yachting , seaside resorts , the history of lighthouses and aids to navigation , maritime themes in literature , maritime themes in art , the social history of sailors and passengers and sea-related communities . There are a number of approaches to the field , sometimes divided into two broad categories : Traditionalists , who seek to engage a small audience of other academics , and Utilitarians , who seek to influence policy makers and a wider audience .
Carl Lotus Becker ( September 7 , 1873 - April 10 , 1945 ) was an American historian .
The Age of Enlightenment ( also known as the Age of Reason or simply the Enlightenment ) [ note 1 ] was an intellectual and philosophical movement that dominated the world of ideas in Europe during the 17th to 19th century . The Enlightenment emerged out of a European intellectual and scholarly movement known as Renaissance humanism . Some consider the publication of Isaac Newton 's Principia Mathematica ( 1687 ) as the first major enlightenment work . French historians traditionally date the Enlightenment from 1715 to 1789 , from the death of Louis XIV of France until the outbreak of the French Revolution that ended the Ancien Regime . Most end it with the beginning of the 19th century . Philosophers and scientists of the period widely circulated their ideas through meetings at scientific academies , Masonic lodges , literary salons , coffeehouses and in printed books , journals , and pamphlets . The ideas of the Enlightenment undermined the authority of the monarchy and the Church and paved the way for the political revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries . A variety of 19th-century movements , including liberalism and neoclassicism , trace their intellectual heritage to the Enlightenment . The Enlightenment included a range of ideas centered on the sovereignty of reason and the evidence of the senses as the primary sources of knowledge and advanced ideals such as liberty , progress , toleration , fraternity , constitutional government and separation of church and state . In France , the central doctrines of the Enlightenment philosophers were individual liberty and religious tolerance , in opposition to an absolute monarchy and the fixed dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church . The Enlightenment was marked by an emphasis on the scientific method and reductionism , along with increased questioning of religious orthodoxy - an attitude captured by Immanuel Kant 's essay Answering the Question : What is Enlightenment , where the phrase Sapere aude ( Dare to know ) can be found .
Knight Biggerstaff ( simplified Chinese : 毕乃德 , 1906-2001 ) was an American historian of China .
The earliest known written records of the history of China date from as early as 1250 BC , from the Shang dynasty ( c. 1600-1046 BC ) , during the king Wu Ding 's reign , who was mentioned as the twenty-first Shang king by the same . Ancient historical texts such as the Records of the Grand Historian ( c. 100 BC ) and the Bamboo Annals ( 296 BC ) describe a Xia dynasty ( c. 2070-1600 BC ) before the Shang , but no writing is known from the period , and Shang writings do not indicate the existence of the Xia . The Shang ruled in the Yellow River valley , which is commonly held to be the cradle of Chinese civilization . However , Neolithic civilizations originated at various cultural centers along both the Yellow River and Yangtze River . These Yellow River and Yangtze civilizations arose millennia before the Shang . With thousands of years of continuous history , China is one of the world 's oldest civilizations , and is regarded as one of the cradles of civilization . The Zhou dynasty ( 1046-256 BC ) supplanted the Shang , and introduced the concept of the Mandate of Heaven to justify their rule . The central Zhou government began to weaken due to external and internal pressures in the 8th century BC , and the country eventually splintered into smaller states during the Spring and Autumn period . These states became independent and warred with one another in the following Warring States period . Much of traditional Chinese culture , literature and philosophy first developed during those troubled times . In 221 BC , Qin Shi Huang conquered the various warring states and created for himself the title of Huangdi or emperor of the Qin , marking the beginning of imperial China . However , the oppressive government fell soon after his death , and was supplanted by the longer-lived Han dynasty ( 206 BC - 220 AD ) .
George Lincoln Burr ( January 30 , 1857 - June 27 , 1938 ) was a U.S. historian , diplomat , author , and educator , best known as a Professor of History and Librarian at Cornell University , and as the closest collaborator of Andrew Dickson White , the first President of Cornell . Burr was born in Albany , New York and entered the Cortland Academy in 1869 , where he first met Andrew Dickson White , who was guest speaker for its 50th anniversary . The financial Panic of 1873 wreaked havoc on his family 's finances , and he was forced to leave school and seek employment at age 16 . After a brief stint as a schoolmaster , he apprenticed as a printer of The Standard at Cortland . After 4 years , he had saved $ 200 , sufficient for him to matriculate at Cornell in 1877 . As a sophomore , Burr audited a course for seniors taught by White on the historical development of criminal law , and received permission to sit for the exam . Prof. White was so impressed by Burr 's exam answers that he secretly appointed Burr as his examiner ( i.e. , grader ) in history . White writes in his Autobiography , Of course this was kept entirely secret ; for had the Seniors known that I had entrusted their papers to the tender mercies of a Sophomore , they would probably have mobbed me . After his graduation in 1881 , Burr accepted White 's offer to serve as an instructor and examiner in modern history , and also as White 's private secretary . This was the beginning of a literary partnership that lasted until White 's death in 1918 . Under White 's tutelage , Burr developed into a scholar of medieval history . After traveling and studying in Switzerland , France , and Germany , Burr was appointed to the Cornell faculty in 1888 .
In the history of Europe , the Middle Ages ( or medieval period ) lasted from the 5th to the 15th century . It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and merged into the Renaissance and the Age of Discovery . The Middle Ages is the middle period of the three traditional divisions of Western history : classical antiquity , the medieval period , and the modern period . The medieval period is itself subdivided into the Early , High , and Late Middle Ages . Population decline , counterurbanisation , collapse of centralized authority , invasions , and mass migrations of tribes , which had begun in Late Antiquity , continued in the Early Middle Ages . The large-scale movements of the Migration Period , including various Germanic peoples , formed new kingdoms in what remained of the Western Roman Empire . In the 7th century , North Africa and the Middle East - once part of the Byzantine Empire - came under the rule of the Umayyad Caliphate , an Islamic empire , after conquest by Muhammad 's successors . Although there were substantial changes in society and political structures , the break with classical antiquity was not complete . The still-sizeable Byzantine Empire , Rome 's direct continuation , survived in the Eastern Mediterranean and remained a major power . The empire 's law code , the Corpus Juris Civilis or Code of Justinian , was rediscovered in Northern Italy in 1070 and became widely admired later in the Middle Ages . In the West , most kingdoms incorporated the few extant Roman institutions . Monasteries were founded as campaigns to Christianise pagan Europe continued .
Sherman Cochran ( simplified Chinese : 高家龙 ; traditional Chinese : 高家龍 ; pinyin : Gāo Jiālóng ; born 1940 ) is Hu Shih Professor Emeritus of Chinese history at Cornell University .
Hu Shih ( Chinese : 胡適 ; pinyin : Hú Shì ; Wade-Giles : Hu2 Shih4 ; 17 December 1891 - 24 February 1962 ) , also known as Hu Suh in early references , was a Chinese philosopher , essayist and diplomat . Hu is widely recognized today as a key contributor to Chinese liberalism and language reform in his advocacy for the use of written vernacular Chinese . He was influential in the May Fourth Movement , one of the leaders of China 's New Culture Movement , was a president of Peking University , and in 1939 was nominated for a Nobel Prize in literature . He had a wide range of interests such as literature , philosophy , history , textual criticism , and pedagogy . He was also an influential redology scholar and held the famous Jiaxu manuscript ( 甲戌本 ; Jiǎxū běn ) for many years until his death .
David Brion Davis ( February 16 , 1927 - April 14 , 2019 ) was an American intellectual and cultural historian , and a leading authority on slavery and abolition in the Western world . He was a Sterling Professor of History at Yale University , and founder and director of Yale 's Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery , Resistance , and Abolition . Davis authored or edited 17 books . His books emphasize religious and ideological links among material conditions , political interests , and new political values . Ideology , in his view , is not a deliberate distortion of reality or a façade for material interests ; rather , it is the conceptual lens through which groups of people perceive the world around them . He was also a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books . Davis received the 1967 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction , and the National Humanities Medal , presented by President Barack Obama in 2014 for reshaping our understanding of history . He also received the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award for General Nonfiction , the 2015 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for lifetime achievement in contributions to public understanding of racism and appreciation of cultural diversity , and the 2015 Biennial Coif Book Award , a top honor from the Association of American Law Schools for the leading law-related book published in 2013 and 2014 . After serving on the Cornell University faculty for 14 years , Davis taught at Yale from 1970 to 2001 . He held one-year appointments as the Harold Vyvyan Harmsworth Visiting Professor of American History at Oxford University ( 1969-1970 ) , at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University , and as the first French-American Foundation Chair in American Civilization at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris .
The history of slavery spans many cultures , nationalities , and religions from ancient times to the present day . However the social , economic , and legal positions of slaves have differed vastly in different systems of slavery in different times and places . Slavery occurs relatively rarely among hunter-gatherer populations because it develops under conditions of social stratification . Slavery operated in the very first civilizations ( such as Sumer in Mesopotamia , which dates back as far as 3500 BCE ) . Slavery features in the Mesopotamian Code of Hammurabi ( c. 1860 BCE ) , which refers to it as an established institution . Slavery became common within much of Europe during the Early Middle Ages and it continued into the following centuries . The Byzantine-Ottoman wars ( 1265-1479 ) and the Ottoman wars in Europe ( 14th to 20th centuries ) resulted in the capture of large numbers of Christian slaves . The Dutch , French , Spanish , Portuguese , British , Arabs and a number of West African kingdoms played a prominent role in the Atlantic slave trade , especially after 1600 . The Republic of Ragusa became the first European country to ban the slave trade in 1416 . In modern times Denmark-Norway abolished the trade in 1802 . Although slavery is no longer legal anywhere in the world ( with the exception of penal labour ) , human trafficking remains an international problem and an estimated 25-40 million people were enslaved as of 2013 [ update ] , the majority in Asia . During the 1983-2005 Second Sudanese Civil War people were taken into slavery .
Frank Albert Fetter ( /ˈfɛtər/ ; March 8 , 1863 - March 21 , 1949 ) was an American economist of the Austrian School . Fetter 's treatise , The Principles of Economics , contributed to an increased American interest in the Austrian School , including the theories of Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk , Friedrich von Wieser , Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek . Fetter notably debated Alfred Marshall , presenting a theoretical reassessment of land as capital . Fetter 's arguments have been credited with prompting mainstream economists to abandon the Georgist idea that land is a unique factor of production and hence that there is any special need for a special theory of ground rent . A proponent of the subjective theory of value , Fetter emphasized the importance of time preference and rebuffed Irving Fisher for abandoning the pure time preference theory of interest that Fisher had earlier espoused in his 1907 book , The Rate of Interest .
Political economy is the study of production and trade and their relations with law , custom and government ; and with the distribution of national income and wealth . As a discipline , political economy originated in moral philosophy , in the 18th century , to explore the administration of states ' wealth , with political signifying the Greek word polity and economy signifying the Greek word okonomie ( household management ) . The earliest works of political economy are usually attributed to the British scholars Adam Smith , Thomas Malthus , and David Ricardo , although they were preceded by the work of the French physiocrats , such as François Quesnay ( 1694-1774 ) and Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot ( 1727-1781 ) . In the late 19th century , the term economics gradually began to replace the term political economy with the rise of mathematical modelling coinciding with the publication of an influential textbook by Alfred Marshall in 1890 . Earlier , William Stanley Jevons , a proponent of mathematical methods applied to the subject , advocated economics for brevity and with the hope of the term becoming the recognised name of a science . Citation measurement metrics from Google Ngram Viewer indicate that use of the term economics began to overshadow political economy around roughly 1910 , becoming the preferred term for the discipline by 1920 . Today , the term economics usually refers to the narrow study of the economy absent other political and social considerations while the term political economy represents a distinct and competing approach . Political economy , where it is not used as a synonym for economics , may refer to very different things . From an academic standpoint , the term may reference Marxian economics , applied public choice approaches emanating from the Chicago school and the Virginia school . In common parlance , political economy may simply refer to the advice given by economists to the government or public on general economic policy or on specific economic proposals developed by political scientists . A rapidly growing mainstream literature from the 1970s has expanded beyond the model of economic policy in which planners maximize utility of a representative individual toward examining how political forces affect the choice of economic policies , especially as to distributional conflicts and political institutions . It is available as a stand-alone area of study in certain colleges and universities .
Finance is the study of money and how it is used . Specifically , it deals with the questions of how an individual , company or government acquires the money needed - called capital in the company context - and how they then spend or invest that money . Finance is , correspondingly , often split into three areas : personal finance , corporate finance and public finance . At the same time , finance is about the overall system - i.e . the financial markets that allow the flow of money , via investments and other financial instruments , between and within these areas ; this flow is facilitated by the financial services sector . A major focus within finance is thus investment management - called money management for individuals , and asset management for institutions - and finance then includes the associated activities of securities trading , investment banking , financial engineering , and risk management . More abstractly , finance is concerned with the investment and deployment of assets and liabilities over space and time : i.e . it is about performing valuation and asset allocation today , based on risk and uncertainty of future outcomes , incorporating the time value of money ( determining the present value of these future values , discounting , requires a risk-appropriate discount rate ) . As an academic field , finance theory is studied and developed within the disciplines of management , ( financial ) economics , accountancy and applied mathematics . Correspondingly , given its wide application , there are several related professional qualifications , that can lead to the field . As the debate to whether finance is an art or a science is still open , there have been recent efforts to organize a list of unsolved problems in finance .
Paul Wallace Gates ( December 14 , 1901 - January 5 , 1999 ) was a professor of history and general historian who is widely considered to be the foremost authority on the history of federal land policy in the United States . Gates wrote 10 books and 75 academic articles , and his magnum opus was History of Public Land Law Development .
In all modern states , a portion of land is held by central or local governments . This is called public land , state land , or Crown land ( Australia , New Zealand and Canada ) . The system of tenure of public land , and the terminology used , varies between countries . The following examples illustrate some of the range .
Anthony Thomas Grafton ( born 1950 ) is an American historian of early modern Europe and the current Henry Putnam University Professor at Princeton University . He is also a corresponding fellow of the British Academy and a recipient of the Balzan Prize . From January 2011 to January 2012 , he served as the President of the American Historical Association .
The Renaissance ( UK : /rɪˈneɪsəns/ rin-AY-sənss , US : /ˈrɛnəsɑːns/ ( listen ) REN-ə-sahnss ) [ a ] was a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to Modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries . In addition to the standard periodization , proponents of a long Renaissance put its beginning in the 14th century and its end in the 17th century . The traditional view focuses more on the early modern aspects of the Renaissance and argues that it was a break from the past , but many historians today focus more on its medieval aspects and argue that it was an extension of the Middle Ages . The intellectual basis of the Renaissance was its version of humanism , derived from the concept of Roman Humanitas and the rediscovery of classical Greek philosophy , such as that of Protagoras , who said that Man is the measure of all things . This new thinking became manifest in art , architecture , politics , science and literature . Early examples were the development of perspective in oil painting and the recycled knowledge of how to make concrete . Although the invention of metal movable type sped the dissemination of ideas from the later 15th century , the changes of the Renaissance were not uniformly experienced across Europe : the very first traces appear in Italy as early as the late 13th century , in particular with the writings of Dante and the paintings of Giotto . As a cultural movement , the Renaissance encompassed innovative flowering of Latin and vernacular literatures , beginning with the 14th-century resurgence of learning based on classical sources , which contemporaries credited to Petrarch ; the development of linear perspective and other techniques of rendering a more natural reality in painting ; and gradual but widespread educational reform . In politics , the Renaissance contributed to the development of the customs and conventions of diplomacy , and in science to an increased reliance on observation and inductive reasoning . Although the Renaissance saw revolutions in many intellectual pursuits , as well as social and political upheaval , it is perhaps best known for its artistic developments and the contributions of such polymaths as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo , who inspired the term Renaissance man . The Renaissance began in the 14th century in Florence , Italy . Various theories have been proposed to account for its origins and characteristics , focusing on a variety of factors including the social and civic peculiarities of Florence at the time : its political structure , the patronage of its dominant family , the Medici , and the migration of Greek scholars and their texts to Italy following the Fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks .
George Washington Greene ( April 8 , 1811 - February 2 , 1883 ) was an American historian . He was also the grandson of Major-General Nathanael Greene , a hero of the American Revolutionary War .
The history of the United States , a country in North America , started with the arrival of Native Americans in the United States from before 15,000 B.C . Numerous indigenous cultures formed , and many disappeared before 1500 . The arrival of Christopher Columbus in the year 1492 started the European colonization of the Americas . Most colonies were formed after 1600 , and the early records and writings of John Winthrop make the United States the first nation whose most distant origins are fully recorded . By the 1760s , the thirteen British colonies contained 2.5 million people along the Atlantic Coast east of the Appalachian Mountains . After defeating France , the British government imposed a series of taxes , including the Stamp Act of 1765 , rejecting the colonists ' constitutional argument that new taxes needed their approval . Resistance to these taxes , especially the Boston Tea Party in 1773 , led to Parliament issuing punitive laws designed to end self-government in Massachusetts . Armed conflict began in 1775 . In 1776 in Philadelphia , the Second Continental Congress declared the independence of the colonies as the United States . Led by General George Washington , it won the Revolutionary War with large support from France . The peace treaty of 1783 gave the land east of the Mississippi River ( except Canada and Florida ) to the new nation . The Articles of Confederation established a central government , but it was ineffectual at providing stability as it could not collect taxes and had no executive officer .
Henry Edward Guerlac ( June 14 , 1910 - May 29 , 1985 ) was an American historian of science . He taught at Cornell University where he was the Goldwin Smith Professor of History and a member of the Department of History .
The history of science is the study of the development of science and scientific knowledge , including both the natural and social sciences ( the history of the arts and humanities is termed history of scholarship ) . Science is a body of empirical , theoretical , and practical knowledge about the natural world , produced by scientists who emphasize the observation , explanation , and prediction of real-world phenomena . Historiography of science , in contrast , studies the methods employed by historians of science . The English word scientist is relatively recent , first coined by William Whewell in the 19th century . Before that , investigators of nature called themselves natural philosophers . While observations of the natural world have been described since classical antiquity ( for example , by Thales and Aristotle ) , and the scientific method has been employed since the Middle Ages ( for example , by Ibn al-Haytham and Roger Bacon ) , modern science began to develop in the early modern period , and in particular in the scientific revolution of 16th- and 17th-century Europe . Traditionally , historians of science have defined science sufficiently broadly to include those earlier inquiries . From the 18th through the late 20th century , the history of science , especially of the physical and biological sciences , was often presented as a progressive accumulation of knowledge , in which true theories replaced false beliefs . More recent historical interpretations , such as those of Thomas Kuhn , tend to portray the history of science in terms of competing paradigms or conceptual systems within a wider matrix of intellectual , cultural , economic and political trends . These interpretations , however , have met with opposition for they also portray the history of science as an incoherent system of incommensurable paradigms , not leading to any actual scientific progress but only to the illusion that it has occurred .
Daniel George Edward Hall ( 1891-1979 ) was a British historian , author , and academic . He wrote extensively on the history of Burma . His most notable work is A History of Southeast Asia , said to .remain the most important single history of the region , providing encyclopedic coverage of material published up to the time of its 1981 revision . He held professorships in Southeast Asian history at both Cornell University and the University of London - where he eventually became professor emeritus .
Southeast Asia can be studied as two distinct sub-regions : Mainland Southeast Asia ( or Indochina ) , which comprises the modern states of Vietnam , Laos , Cambodia , Thailand , Myanmar ( Burma ) and West Malaysia , and Maritime Southeast Asia ( or Insular Southeast Asia ) , which comprises the modern states of Indonesia , East Malaysia , Singapore , Philippines , East Timor , Brunei , Cocos ( Keeling ) Islands , and Christmas Island . The earliest Homo sapiens presence in Mainland Southeast Asia can be traced back to 50,000 years ago and to at least 40,000 years ago in Maritime Southeast Asia . As early as 10,000 years ago , Hoabinhian settlers had developed a tradition and culture of distinct artefact and tool production . During the Neolithic , Austroasiatic peoples populated Indochina via land routes and sea-borne Austronesian immigrants preferably settled in insular Southeast Asia . The earliest agricultural societies that cultivated millet and wet-rice emerged around 1700 BCE in the lowlands and river floodplains of Indochina . The Phung Nguyen culture ( modern northern Vietnam ) and the Ban Chiang site ( modern Thailand ) account for the earliest use of copper by around 2,000 BCE , followed by the Dong Son culture , who by around 500 BCE had developed a highly sophisticated industry of bronze production and processing . Around the same time the first Agrarian Kingdoms emerged where territory was abundant and favourable , such as Funan at the lower Mekong and Van Lang in the Red River delta . Smaller and insular principalities increasingly engaged in and contributed to the rapidly expanding sea trade . The history of Southeast Asia has been greatly influenced by its wide topographical diversity . Maritime Southeast Asia is apart from exceptions like Borneo and Sumatra a patchwork of recurring land-sea patterns on widely dispersed islands and archipelagos . A discontinuity , that admitted moderately sized thalassocratic states indifferent to territorial ambitions where growth and prosperity was associated with sea trade . Mainland Southeast Asia with a continuous , but rugged and difficult terrain provided the basis for the early Khmer and Mon civilisations .
Jeremiah Whipple Jenks ( 1856-1929 ) was an American economist , educator , and Professor at Cornell University , who held various posts in the US government throughout his career . He served as a member of the Dillingham Immigration Commission from 1907 - 1914 , where he led research projects on the current state of immigration into the United States . He authored several influential books , including The Immigration Problem : A Study of Immigration Conditions and Need and The Dictionary of Races . He was among the first social science academics within government , and one of the first to propose that the federal government has the power to restrict immigration .
Chen Jian is Hu Shih Professor of History and China-US Relations emeritus at Cornell University . His specialties include modern Chinese history , history of Chinese-American relations , and Cold War international history . He is also Zijiang Distinguished Visiting Professor at East China Normal University and Distinguished Global Network Professor of History at New York University Shanghai . Chen Jian has held the Philippe Roman Chair in History and International Affairs at LSE IDEAS ( 2008-2009 ) , where he remains a Senior Fellow , and was a research scholar from 2009-2013 at the University of Hong Kong . He was also ( 2013-2014 ) a Global Fellow of the Woodrow Wilson Center , where he has been a Senior Scholar since 2005 . He has also been the Zijiang Distinguished Visiting Professor at East China Normal University since 2000 . Professor Chen received an M.A . from Fudan University and East China Normal University in 1982 and his Ph.D. from Southern Illinois University in 1990 .
The Cold War was a period of geopolitical tension between the Soviet Union and the United States and their respective allies , the Eastern Bloc and the Western Bloc , after World War II . The period is generally considered to span the 1947 Truman Doctrine to the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union . The term cold is used because there was no large-scale fighting directly between the two superpowers , but they each supported major regional conflicts known as proxy wars . The conflict was based around the ideological and geopolitical struggle for global influence by the two powers , following their temporary alliance and victory against Nazi Germany in 1945 . Whilst the Western Bloc and Eastern Bloc generally espoused the economic theories of capitalism and socialism , respectively , the conflict was mostly geopolitical in nature . Each power had a nuclear strategy that discouraged a pre-emptive attack by the other side , on the basis that such an attack would lead to the total destruction of the attacker - the doctrine of mutually assured destruction ( MAD ) . Aside from the nuclear arsenal development and conventional military deployment , the struggle for dominance was expressed via psychological warfare , massive propaganda campaigns and espionage , far-reaching embargoes , rivalry at sports events and technological competitions such as the Space Race . The West was led by the United States , a federal republic with a two-party presidential system , as well as the other First World nations of the Western Bloc that were generally liberal democratic but economically and politically entwined with a network of authoritarian states , most of which were the Western Bloc 's former colonies . [ A ] The Soviet Union was a self-declared Marxist-Leninist state that had a totalitarian government ultimately led by a committee known as the Politburo . The Communist Party of the Soviet Union ( CPSU ) had influence across the Second World . The US government supported right-wing governments and uprisings across the world , while the Soviet government funded communist parties and revolutions around the world . As nearly all the colonial states achieved independence in the period 1945-1960 , they became Third World battlefields in the Cold War .
Donald Kagan ( /ˈkeɪɡən/ ; born May 1 , 1932 ) is an American historian and classicist at Yale University specializing in ancient Greece , notable for his four-volume history of the Peloponnesian War . He formerly taught in the Department of History at Cornell University . At present , Kagan is considered among the foremost American scholars of Greek history .
Classics or classical studies is the study of classical antiquity . It encompasses the study of the Greco-Roman world , particularly of its languages and literature ( Ancient Greek and Classical Latin ) but also of Greco-Roman philosophy , history , and archaeology . Traditionally in the West , the study of the Greek and Roman classics is considered one of the cornerstones of the humanities and a fundamental element of a rounded education . The study of classics has therefore traditionally been a cornerstone of a typical elite education . Study encompasses specifically a time-period of history from the mid-2nd millennium BC to the 6th century AD .
Michael Gedaliah Kammen ( October 25 , 1936 - November 29 , 2013 ) was an American professor of American cultural history in the Department of History at Cornell University . At the time of his death , he held the title Newton C. Farr professor emeritus of American history and culture . Kammen was born in 1936 in Rochester , New York , grew up in the Washington , DC area , and was educated at the George Washington University and Harvard University , where he received his Ph.D. in 1964 after studying under Bernard Bailyn . He began teaching at Cornell upon completion his graduate studies at Harvard and taught until retiring to emeritus status in 2008 . Beginning as a scholar of the colonial period of American history , his interests eventually broadened to include American legal , cultural , and social issues of the 19th and 20th centuries . One of his first major books , People of Paradox : An Inquiry Concerning the Origins of American Civilization , won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1973 . A later work , A Machine That Would Go of Itself : The Constitution in American Culture ( 1986 ) , won the Francis Parkman Prize and the Henry Adams Prize . In this work , Kammen describes the American people 's evolving conceptions of the U.S. Constitution and of constitutional governance , stressing both mechanical and organic conceptions of constitutional development over time . Kammen was active in organizations advancing the study of history , and served as president of the Organization of American Historians for the 1995-96 year . He was the father of UC Berkeley professor Daniel Kammen .
The culture of the United States of America is primarily of Western origin , but is influenced by a multicultural ethos that includes African , Native American , Asian , Pacific Island , and Latin American people and their cultures . It also has its own distinct social and cultural characteristics , such as dialect , music , arts , social habits , cuisine , and folklore . The United States is ethnically and racially diverse as a result of large-scale migration throughout its history . Because of its size and influence , many American cultural elements , especially from popular culture , have spread across the globe through modern mass media .
Steven Laurence Kaplan served as Goldwin Smith Professor of European History in the Department of History at Cornell University , where he is now professor emeritus . His primary fields of expertise are French history , the history of markets , economic regulation , and political economy , and the history of food , specifically the history of bread , the grain trade and provisioning .
Goldwin Smith ( 13 August 1823 - 7 June 1910 ) was a British historian and journalist , active in the United Kingdom and Canada .
The first written records for the history of France appeared in the Iron Age . What is now France made up the bulk of the region known to the Romans as Gaul . Roman writers noted the presence of three main ethno-linguistic groups in the area : the Gauls , the Aquitani , and the Belgae . The Gauls , the largest and best attested group , were Celtic people speaking what is known as the Gaulish language . Over the course of the 1st millennium BC the Greeks , Romans and Carthaginians established colonies on the Mediterranean coast and the offshore islands . The Roman Republic annexed southern Gaul as the province of Gallia Narbonensis in the late 2nd century BC , and Roman forces under Julius Caesar conquered the rest of Gaul in the Gallic Wars of 58-51 BC . Afterwards a Gallo-Roman culture emerged and Gaul was increasingly integrated into the Roman Empire . In the later stages of the Roman Empire , Gaul was subject to barbarian raids and migration , most importantly by the Germanic Franks . The Frankish king Clovis I united most of Gaul under his rule in the late 5th century , setting the stage for Frankish dominance in the region for hundreds of years . Frankish power reached its fullest extent under Charlemagne . The medieval Kingdom of France emerged from the western part of Charlemagne 's Carolingian Empire , known as West Francia , and achieved increasing prominence under the rule of the House of Capet , founded by Hugh Capet in 987 . A succession crisis following the death of the last direct Capetian monarch in 1328 led to the series of conflicts known as the Hundred Years ' War between the House of Valois and the House of Plantagenet .
Bread is a staple food prepared from a dough of flour and water , usually by baking . Throughout recorded history it has been a prominent food in large parts of the world and is one of the oldest man-made foods , having been of significant importance since the dawn of agriculture . Bread may be leavened by processes such as reliance on naturally occurring sourdough microbes , chemicals , industrially produced yeast , or high-pressure aeration . Commercial bread commonly contains additives to improve flavor , texture , color , shelf life , nutrition , and ease of manufacturing . Bread plays essential roles in religious rituals and secular culture .
Helmut Georg Koenigsberger FBA ( 24 October 1918 - 8 March 2014 ) was a German-born British historian and academic . He was Professor of History at King 's College London from 1973 to 1984 and head of its history department .