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Guide to the Gordon Alexander Craig Papers
SC0467
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Table of contents
Call Number: SC0467
Creator:
Craig, Gordon Alexander, 1913-2005
Creator:
Craig, Gordon Alexander,, 1913-2005.
Title: Gordon Alexander Craig papers
Dates: 1934-1996
Physical Description:
20 Linear feet
Language(s): The materials are in English.
Repository:
Department of Special Collections and University Archives
Stanford University Libraries
557 Escondido Mall
Stanford, CA 94305-6064
Email: speccollref@stanford.edu
Phone: (650) 725-1022
URL: http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/spc/spc.html
Custodial History
Gift of Gordon A. Craig, 1993-1996
The materials are open for research use.
Property rights reside with the repository. Literary rights reside with the creators of the documents or their heirs. To obtain
permission to publish or reproduce, please contact the Public Services Librarian of the Dept. of Special Collections and University
Archives.
[Identification of item], Gordon Alexander Craig Papers (SC0467). Department of Special Collections and University Archives,
Stanford University Libraries, Stanford, Calif.
Born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1913, Gordon Craig immigrated to the United States from Canada with his parents at the age of
12. He was educated at Princeton University where, as Valedictorian, he received his A.B. in 1936, followed by an M.A. in
1939 and a Ph.D. in 1941. As a Rhodes Scholar in 1938, he received a B.Litt. from Oxford University. He began his teaching
career at Yale in 1939, but returned to the Department of History at Princeton in 1941.
During World War II, Dr. Craig worked in Washington as a research associate for the Office of Strategic Services and as a
divisional assistant for the Special Division of the Department of State. He earned a commission in the U.S. Marine Corps
and after a tour of duty in the Central Pacific, Dr. Craig resumed his teaching at Princeton University in 1946. In 1950,
Dr. Craig received full professorship at Princeton at the age of 37. He was a frequent lecturer at the National War College
and served as Chairman of the Editorial Board of the Princeton University Marine Corps History Project, which in 1951 published
The U.S. Marines and Amphibious War, a scientific study of the Marines' working principles of warfare.
Gordon Craig moved to Stanford University in 1961, and became the first recipient of the J. E. Wallace Sterling Endowed Professorship
in the Humanities in 1969. The Sterling Professorship was created in 1968 by the Stanford Board of Trustees in honor of Dr.
Sterling, who resigned after 19 years as Stanford's president to become lifetime chancellor of the University.
Dr. Craig was appointed an honorary professor by the Berlin Senate in 1962 and served as member of the faculty of the Free
University of Berlin during the remainder of his career at Stanford. In 1970, Dr. Craig received an honorary Litt.D. from
Princeton University and in 1972 received an honorary degree from Wake Forest University.
As Chairman of the Department of History at Stanford from 1972 to 1975 and again in 1979, and Chairman of the Faculty Senate
for the 1974-75 academic year, Dr. Craig worked to strengthen the Department of History as well as the University's undergraduate
and graduate teaching programs. In addition he helped to redesign Stanford University's overseas programs as head of the Committee
on Foreign Study Programs in 1974. He was the recipient of the Lloyd W. Dinkelspiel Award for Outstanding Service to Undergraduate
Education in 1973.
Among his many activities and honors, Craig serving as a visiting professor at Columbia University, a fellow in the Center
of Advanced Study of Behavioral Sciences in Stanford, California, a member of the Civilian Faculty Selection Advisory Committee
of the National War College, a member of the Social Science Advisory Board of the United States Arms Control and Disarmament
Agency, President of the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association, and Second and First Vice President
of the Comite International des Sciences Historiques. He was a frequent Phi Beta Kappa lecturer and served on the Senate of
the United Chapters of Phi Beta Kappa from 1979 through 1985. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
as well as the American Philosophical Association in 1962, and served as President of the American Historical Association
in 1982.
An international authority on European diplomatic and military history and modern European and German history, Craig is the
author of numerous scholarly publications on these and other subjects. His publications include:
The Diplomats, 1919-1939;
Makers of Modern Strategy;
Europe Since 1815, a widely-used textbook;
From Bismarck to Adenauer: Aspects of German Statecraft;
The Politics of the Prussian Army, 1640-1945, for which he received the H. B. Adams Prize of the American Historical Association in 1955;
The Battle of Koniggraetz: Prussia's victory over Austria, 1866;
On the Diplomatic Revolution of Our Time;
War Politics and Diplomacy: Selected Essays; Germany, 1866-1945, for which he received the Historian's Peace Prize of the City of Munster, Germany in 1981;
Uber die Deutschen, for which he received an award for the best book about Germany from abroad from the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung of Bonn in 1988;
The Triumph of Liberalism, for which he received Switzerland's major literary honor, "The Gift of Honor," in 1988; and
Knowledge and Power: Historical Essays and Essays About History. Professor Craig served on the editorial board of several journals and was a frequent contributor to the
New York Review of Books, and the
New York Times Review of Books. Consistently voted one of the best lecturers at both Princeton and Stanford, Professor Craig wrote many articles on teaching
as well. Dr. Craig became an emeritus professor in 1979.
These papers largely reflect Gordon A. Craig's career as a historian and professor at Stanford University from 1961 through
1979. In addition, there are some materials pertaining to his student days at Princeton University and Oxford, to his early
teaching career at Yale and Princeton, and to his teaching and administrative duties as a professor at the Free University
of Berlin. The collection, donated by Gordon A. Craig in six accessions, includes more than 45 boxes of correspondence, lectures,
speeches, articles, publications, class materials, student papers, research notes, notebooks, and newspaper clippings. The
collection also includes microfilmed copies of his personal diaries, 1935-1992, and occasional verse, 1934-1986.
Stanford University. Dept. of History. -- General subdivision--Faculty.;
Diaries.
Europe--History.
Germany--History.
Lectures.