Scope and Content Note
The papers of Bernadotte Everly Schmitt (1886-1969) cover the period 1868-1970, with the bulk of the material spanning the years 1905-1969. A Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, Schmitt was a noted writer of modern European diplomatic history and a respected figure in the American academic community. His papers constitute a source of study for twentieth-century intellectual history in America and for research in historical methodology. The collection consists of correspondence, research notes, scrapbooks, manuscripts and printed copies of lectures and writings, bibliography card files, and printed matter. A selective index is provided for Schmitt’s correspondence, with prominent correspondents listed on the front of each folder in the Correspondence series. The papers are organized into five series: Family Correspondence, Correspondence, Speeches and Writings File, Scrapbooks, and Miscellany.
Schmitt maintained a wide-ranging network of correspondents among academicians, statesmen, and politicians. Correspondents represented in this collection include Dean Acheson, Newton Diehl Baker, Archibald Cary Coolidge, William Edward Dodd, Sidney Bradshaw Fay, Guy Stanton Ford, Louis Reichenthal Gottschalk, Carlton J. H. Hayes, Stanley Kuhl Hornbeck, J. Franklin Jameson, William L. Langer, Ivo Lupis-Vukić, Allan Nevins, Pierre Renouvin, J. Fred Rippy, Boyd C. Shafer, James T. Shotwell, Adlai E. Stevenson (1900-1965), and E. L. Woodward.
In 1905, Schmitt entered Oxford University’s Merton College as the youngest Rhodes Scholar chosen that year. His letters to his parents in the Family Correspondence series provide the fullest documentation for his years at Oxford, where he was awarded a bachelor’s degree in 1908 with a first class in modern history. The influences of Oxford was an important factor in the development of Schmitt’s career, and he later regarded his attainment of a first class as “the greatest distinction that has ever come to me.”[1] A lifelong allegiance to Oxonian principles was a feature of his scholarly methods, and correspondence with historians and statesmen in the Correspondence series reveals the debt he owed to this influence. Mementos of Schmitt’s Oxford years are in the Scrapbooks and Miscellany series, and a few writings and addresses of this period are in the Speeches and Writings File.
Schmitt is best known for his book The Coming of the War,1914, that won the Pulitzer Prize in 1931. At odds with Sidney Fay and other revisionists who advanced the theory of shared responsibility for the outbreak of the First World War, Schmitt directed the major part of his academic career toward the study of European diplomacy directly prior to World War I. The main theme of the Correspondence involves the defense of his thesis of German culpability for the war. A particularly heated debate over war guilt was struck between Schmitt and Harry Elmer Barnes in the mid 1920s. The Correspondence series contains information on this controversy as does a file in the Miscellany series.
Other subjects of interest in the Correspondence include the discussion of standards for historical research, the political and intellectual activities of the scholarly community from the 1920s to the 1940s, and administrative policy decisions of the American Historical Association and the University of Chicago. Correspondence relative to Schmitt’s tenure as editor of the Journal of Modern Historyis also included in this series. Schmitt retired from the Department of State in 1952 after which he indulged further an already active interest in contemporary politics. Correspondence with Adlai E. Stevenson and Dean Acheson reflect this involvement.
The Speeches and Writings File contains a variety of material including several unpublished manuscripts. Of special interest is the typescript of a short work printed privately for the Chicago Literary Club in 1930 entitled “Interviewing the Authors of the War.” It recounts interviews Schmitt conducted with leading European statesmen on the subject of the origins of the First World War.
Reviews of Schmitt’s books are in the Scrapbooks series, which in addition to newspaper clippings includes some correspondence as well as memorabilia, invitations, and printed matter.
[1] Autographical sketches, Speeches and Writings File, Container 9.