Herbert Feis (June 7, 1893 – March 2, 1972) was an American Historian and economist. He was the Economic Advisor for International Affairs to the U.S. Department of State in the Hoover and Roosevelt administrations.

Feis wrote at least 13 published books and won the annual Pulitzer Prize for History in 1961 for one of them, Between War and Peace: The Potsdam Conference (Princeton University Press, 1960).[1] It features the Potsdam Conference and the origins of the Cold War.

Youth

Feis was born in New York City and raised on the Lower East Side. His parents, Louis Feis and Louise Waterman Feis, were Jewish immigrants from Alsace, France that came to America in the late 1800s. His uncle invented the Waterman stove. He graduated from Harvard University and went on to marry the granddaughter of James Garfield, the 20th president of the US.[2]

Career

Feis was an instructor at Harvard (1920–1921), associate professor of economics at the University of Kansas (1922–1925), and professor and department head at the University of Cincinnati (1926–1929). From 1922 to 1927 he also was an adviser on the American economy to the International Labor Office (ILO), of the League of Nations, in Geneva, Switzerland. He was on the staff of the Council on Foreign Relations in 1930–1931. Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson recruited Feis to the State Department, where he was an economic advisor 1931 to 1943. [3]

Criticism

According to the Dictionary of American Biography:

Feis was not without his critics. Some charged that as a "court historian" he could not write objectively about the government policies and actions that he himself had helped to formulate. His close involvement with the people and events about which he wrote, they said, "shackled" him to an "establishment line." One English critic described his 1960 prize-winning study of the Potsdam Conference as "a State Department brief, translated into terms of historical scholarship." But the dominant view was that while Feis's participation in events animated his narrative, he wrote objective history characterized by reasonably dispassionate analysis. As an insider with access to government documents closed to other scholars, he had an unusual advantage, a fact of which he was well aware. Perhaps because of this, he devoted much time during the 1960's trying to persuade government officials that they could open government documents to research scholars much sooner than was customary without jeopardizing the national security.[4]

He died in Winter Park, Florida.

Herbert Feis Award

The Herbert Feis Award is awarded annually since 1984 by the American Historical Association, the pre-eminent professional society of historians, to recognize the recent work of public historians or independent scholars.[5]

Bibliography

See also

References

  1. ^ "History". The Pulitzer Prizes. Retrieved 2013-11-25.
  2. ^ "Herbert Feis". American Authors by Answers.com. Answers.com. 2004.
  3. ^ Doenecke, 1999.
  4. ^ "Herbert Feis." Dictionary of American Biography (1994).
  5. ^ "Herbert Feis Award". American Historical Association. Retrieved 29 March 2015.
  6. ^ Feis, Herbert (2008-12-13). The Settlement of Wage Disputes.
  7. ^ Feis, Herbert (1930-01-01). Europe, the world's banker, 1870-1914: an account of European foreign investment and the connection of world finance with diplomacy before the war. Yale University Press.
  8. ^ Feis, Herbert (1940-01-01). The changing pattern of international economic affairs. Harper & Brothers.
  9. ^ Feis, Herbert (1947-01-01). Seen from E. A.: Three International Episodes. Knopf.
  10. ^ Herbert Feis (1948-01-01). The Spanish Story. Alfred A. Knopf.
  11. ^ Van Alstyne, Richard W. (1951-01-01). "Review of The Road to Pearl Harbor. The Coming of the War Between the United States and Japan". The Far Eastern Quarterly. 11 (1): 107–109. doi:10.2307/2048916. JSTOR 2048916.
  12. ^ Feis, Herbert (2015-03-08). China Tangle: The American Effort in China from Pearl Harbor to the Marshall Mission. Princeton University Press. ISBN 9781400868278.
  13. ^ Herbert Feis (1957-01-01). Churchill Roosevelt Stalin. PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS.
  14. ^ Feis, Herbert (1960-01-01). Between War and Peace: The Potsdam Conference. Princeton University Press. ISBN 9780691056036.
  15. ^ Stein, Harold (1962-01-01). Feis, Herbert (ed.). "The Rationale of Japanese Surrender". World Politics. 15 (1): 138–150. doi:10.2307/2009572. JSTOR 2009572.
  16. ^ Feis, Herbert (1966-08-01). The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II (2nd Revised ed.). Princeton University Press. ISBN 9780691056012.
  17. ^ Feis, Herbert (1966-01-01). 1933: Characters in Crisis. Little, Brown.
  18. ^ Feis, Herbert (1970-01-01). From trust to terror: the onset of the cold war, 1945-1950. Norton.

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