Charles Webster (historian)

(Redirected from Sir Charles Webster) British historian (1886–1961) For other people named Charles Webster, see Charles Webster (disambiguation).

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Charles Webster
Webster in 1925
Born	(1866-07-25)25 July 1866
Died	1961 (aged 95)
Alma mater	King's College, Cambridge
Awards	Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George Honorary Fellow of King's College, Cambridge

Sir Charles Kingsley Webster KCMG FBA (25 July 1886 – August 1961) was a British diplomat and historian. He was educated at Merchant Taylors' School, Crosby and King's College, Cambridge. After leaving Cambridge University, he went on to become a professor at Harvard, Oxford, and the London School of Economics (LSE). He also served as President of the British Academy from 1950 to 1954.

In addition to his career in academia, Webster worked extensively in the Foreign Office, especially in the United States, and was a leading supporter of the new United Nations, as he had been of the League of Nations.

Life

After studying at Cambridge, Webster became professor of international relations at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth where he wrote his two major books on the foreign policy of Lord Castlereagh, the first (published in 1925) covering the period 1815–1822, the second (published in 1931) that from 1812 to 1815. In 1932 Webster moved to the newly established Stevenson chair of international relations at the LSE.

During World War II, he worked extensively in the Foreign Office, especially in the United States, and was a leading supporter of the new United Nations, as he had been of the League of Nations. He was involved in the drafting of the UN Charter.

He attended the first meetings of both the General Assembly and the Security Council in January 1946 and the final meeting of the League of Nations in April. He was made a Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George in the new year's honours list of 1946.

Career

In 1948, Webster gave the Ford Lectures at Oxford University. In 1951, his biography of Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston was finally published. He was President of the British Academy in 1950. He was awarded honorary degrees from Oxford, Cambridge, Wales, Rome, and Williams College, Massachusetts, and was made an honorary fellow of King's College, Cambridge. He retired from his chair at the LSE in 1953.

Professor of Modern History, Liverpool University, 1914–1922
Subaltern in the Royal Army Service Corps, 1915–1917
General Staff of the War Office, 1917–1918
Secretary, Military Section, British Delegation to the Conference of Paris, 1918–1919
Wilson Professor of International Politics, University of Wales, 1922–1932
Außerordentlicher (=Associate) Professor, University of Vienna, 1926
Nobel Lecturer, Oslo, 1926
Reader, University of Calcutta, India, 1927
Professor of History, Harvard University, USA, 1928–1932
Stevenson Professor of International History, London School of Economics and Political Science, 1932–1953
Foreign Research and Press Service, 1939–1941
Director, British School of Information, New York, 1941–1942
Foreign Office, 1943–1946
Member of British Delegation, Dumbarton Oaks and San Francisco Conferences, 1944–1945
Member, Preparatory Commission and General Assembly, United Nations, 1945–1946
Ford Lecturer, Oxford University, 1948
President, 1950–1954, and Foreign Secretary, 1955–1958, British Academy

Works

The Congress of Vienna, 1814–1815, London: Foreign Office Historical Section, 1919
The Congress of Vienna, Oxford University Press, 1919 (with copyedit instructions, 1934), online at Internet Archive
British diplomacy, 1813–1815 : select documents dealing with the reconstruction of Europe, 1921, 409p, online at Internet Archive
The pacification of Europe, 1813–1815, 1922
The Congress of Vienna, 1814–15, and the Conference of Paris, 1919, London, 1923
The Foreign Policy of Castlereagh (1815–1822) Britain and the European Alliance, London: G. Bell and Sons, 1925, online at Internet Archive
The European alliance, 1815–1825, University of Calcutta, 1929
What the world owes to President Wilson, London: League of Nations Union, 1930
The League of Nations in theory and practice, London: Allen and Unwin, 1933
Palmerston, Metternich and the European system, 1830–1841, London: Humphrey Milford, London, 1934
Editor of British diplomatic representatives, 1789–1852, London, 1934
Editor of Britain and the independence of Latin America, 1812–1830, London: Ibero-American Institute of Great Britain, 1938
Some problems of international organisation, University of Leeds, 1943
Editor of Some letters of the Duke of Wellington to his brother, William Wellesley-Pole, London, 1948
The Foreign Policy of Palmerston, 1830–1841: Britain, the Liberal Movement, and the Eastern Question, 1951, online edition of vol 2 Archived 5 January 2005 at the Wayback Machine
The art and practice of diplomacy, London School of Economics, 1952, online Archived 3 May 2012 at the Wayback Machine
British Foreign Policy since the Second World War
The founder of the national home, Weizmann Science Press of Israel, 1955
Sanctions: the use of force in an international organisation, London, 1956
The strategic air offensive against Germany, 1939–1945, London, Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1961, coauthor, 3 volumes, official history

References

Mazower, Mark (2013). No Enchanted Palace: The End of Empire and the Ideological Origins of the United Nations. Princeton University Press. p. 7. ISBN 978-0-691-15795-5.

Sources

Fagg, John Edwin. "Sir Charles Webster 1886– " in S. William Helperin, ed., Some 20th century historians (1961) pp 171–200.
Hall, Ian. "The art and practice of a diplomatic historian: Sir Charles Webster, 1886–1961." International Politics 42.4 (2005): 470–490.
Reynolds, P. A. and E. J. Hughes, The historian as diplomat: Charles Kingsley Webster and the United Nations, 1939–1946, (1976).

External links

Works by or about Charles Webster at Wikisource
Catalogue of the Webster papers at the Archives Division of the London School of Economics.

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