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Craig (Gordon Alexander) Papers
SC0467
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Table of contents
Language of Material:
Undetermined
Contributing Institution:
Department of Special Collections and University Archives
Title: Gordon Alexander Craig papers
creator:
Craig, Gordon Alexander
Identifier/Call Number: SC0467
Physical Description:
20.25 Linear Feet
Date (inclusive): 1934-2006
Physical Location: Special Collections and University
Archives materials are stored offsite and must be paged 36-48 hours in advance. For more
information on paging collections, see the department's website:
http://library.stanford.edu/spc .
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.
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.
[Identification of item], Gordon Alexander Craig Papers (SC0467). Department of Special
Collections and University Archives, Stanford University Libraries, Stanford, Calif.
Gift of Gordon A. Craig, 1993-1996
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.
The materials are open for research use.
Subjects and Indexing Terms
Germany -- History.
Diaries.
Europe -- History.
lectures
Craig, Gordon Alexander
Stanford University. Department of History -- General
subdivision--Faculty.;