He was educated at the University of Michigan, where he took his bachelor's degree in 1870, and at Heidelberg, Germany, where he received the degree of Ph. D. in 1873.
After a year as professor of history at Albion College in Michigan, he accepted an appointment to the faculty of the University of California in 1876, continuing in service at that university, either actively or as professor emeritus, until his death in 1930.
Gradually, however, he became drawn more and more to a hitherto neglected phase of history, at least by Anglo-American students, the colonial era of Spanish America.
His best-known books were the following: The Establishment of Spanish Rule in America (1898); South America on the Eve of Emancipation (1908); The Spanish Dependencies in South America (2 vols. , 1914); Spain's Declining Power in South America, 1730-1806 (1919); Spanish Colonial Literature in South America (1922); The Intellectual Background of the Revolution in South America, 1810-1814 (1926); and Spain Overseas (1929).
In consequence his books had a somewhat novel style.
Always his investigations were painstaking and scholarly.
Moses is to be remembered especially for the impulse that he gave to the study of Hispanic-American history in the United States.
He established a course in 1894-95 and at the beginning of the twentieth century he was perhaps the only professor in the United States devoting his full time to Hispanic-American subject matter.
Most noteworthy in this connection was his service as a member of the United States Philippine Commission in the important years from 1900 to 1902, when American policies in the recently acquired Philippine group were in the early stages of formulation.
He was also a member of various Pan-American congresses in the United States and Hispanic America and in 1910 was one of the United States ministers plenipotentiary to Chile on the occasion of the one-hundredth anniversary of the beginning of the Chilean war of independence.
During the last twenty years of his life he was rarely in active service at the University of California.
Much of his time he spent abroad, especially in Paris, pursuing his researches.
When in California he resided at his Walnut Creek ranch, a few miles from the University.
Moses was tall and distinguished in appearance.
His extreme dignity gave him an outward austerity of manner, but he was most genial and kindly to those who were in the inner circle of his acquaintance.
[This article is based largely on records on file at the University of California, on personal acquaintance, and on information from others who were personal friends of Moses.
For printed sources see: Who's Who in America, 1928-29; Zebina Moses, Hist.
Sketches of John Moses, of Plymouth.
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John Moses, of Windsor and Simsbury.
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Also a Geneal.
Record of Some of Their Descendants (2 vols. , 1890 - 1907); San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Examiner, Mar. 6, 1930. ]
They include: Politics (1884), with W. W. Crane; The Federal Government in Switzerland (1889); Democracy and Social Growth in America (1898); The Railway Revolution in Mexico (1895); The Establishment of Municipal Government in San Francisco (1889); and The Government of the United States (1906).
