Background

Peter Chardon Brooks Adams was born on June 24, 1848, in Quincy, Massachusetts. He was the son of Charles Francis Adams and Abigail (Brooks) Adams, grandson of John Quincy Adams, and brother of Henry Adams and Charles Francis Adams, Jr.

Education

Brooks Adams graduated from Harvard University in 1870 and studied at Harvard Law School in 1870 and 1871.

Career

In 1871, Adams began his service as his father's secretary abroad and later followed in the footsteps of his forbearers by going into the law. He practiced law in Boston until 1881. That year, after receiving a substantial inheritance from his mother's family, he was able to travel extensively abroad. During his travels, he formed an active correspondence with his brother Henry Adams, and they each proved to be an inspiration for the other.

By the late 1880s, Adams had issued articles and reviews for various publications, and in 1887 he produced his first book, The Emancipation of Massachusetts, in which he remorselessly prosecutes Massachusetts’ founders as blood-thirsty hypocrites. Adams followed The Emancipation of Massachusetts with The Gold Standard: An Historical Study, which he produced in 1894 and revised in each of the following two years. He then published The Law of Civilization and Decay: An Essay on History in which he related his theory of history. He also authored America’s Economic Supremacy (1900) and The Theory of Social Revolutions (1913), a study of defects in the American form of government.

Aside from his writing and research, in 1903 Adams became a lecturer at the Boston University Law School, remaining there until 1909. In 1912 he worked for Roosevelt's nomination by the Republican party. He was also elected a member of the Massachusetts constitutional convention in 1917.

Achievements

• Brooks Adams is best known for his study of the American economy and his warnings concerning the rapid growth of cities. Adams's work The New Empire predicted the rise of the United States as an economic power that would soon "outweigh any single empire, if not all empires combined." His America’s Economic Supremacy accurately foresaw that within 50 years there would be in the world only two powers, Russia and the United States, the latter possessing economic supremacy. Adams’s third book The Law of Civilization and Decay continued to receive praise even when it appeared in reprinted editions.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Law of Civilization and Decay

    (The Law of Civilization and Decay is a classic book which...)

    1895
  • The Emancipation of Massachusettes 1887
  • The Gold Standard: An Historical Study 1894
  • America's Economic Supremacy 1900
  • The New Empire 1902
  • The Theory of Social Revolutions 1913
  • Railways As Public Agents: A Study In Sovereignty 1910

Religion

In his personal life, Adams struggled with his personal beliefs spending much of his life as an agnostic. Later, however, he returned to the faith as a regular member of the family church at Quincy, Massachusetts.

Views

Adams's theory of history tells that human societies differed among themselves in proportion as they were endowed by nature with energy, and that civilization follows exchanges, or commercial growth and decay. With these exchanges the center of civilization, particularly the economic aspects, moved ever westward. He later predicted in "America's Economic Supremacy" (1900) that that center of civilization would move to America with New York being the economic capital, and that within 50 years America and Russia would be the only two world powers. In "The New Empire" (1902) he discussed America as an economic power, and in "Theory of Social Revolutions" (1912) he attacked Capitalism and the ability of capitalists to govern.

Personality

Brooks Adams was described as the only American philosopher who had dealt with the history and destiny of man in a profound, searching, and skeptical fashion.

Connections

In 1889, Adams married Evelyn Davis. They had no children.

Father:

Charles Adams Sr.

Charles Francis Adams Sr. was an American historical editor, writer, politician, and diplomat.

Mother:

Abigail Adams

25 April 1808 - 6 June 1889

Spouse:

Evelyn Davis

4 January 1853 - 14 December 1926

Grandfather:

John Adams

July 11, 1767 – February 23, 1848

John Quincy Adams was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, and diarist who served as the sixth president of the United States from 1825 to 1829.

Great-grandfather:

John Adams Jr.

October 30, 1735[a] – July 4, 1826

John Adams Jr. was an American statesman, attorney, diplomat, writer, and Founding Father who served as the second president of the United States from 1797 to 1801.

Brother:

Henry Adams

Henry Brooks Adams was an American historian and member of the Adams political family, descended from two U.S. Presidents.

Brother:

Charles Adams Jr.

father-in-law:

Charles Henry Davis

January 16, 1807 – February 18, 1877

Charles Henry Davis was a rear admiral in the United States Navy.

Brother:

John Adams II

References

• Brooks Adams: Constructive Conservative The intellectual growth of historian, political scientist, capitalist critic, and conservative Brooks Adams and the evolution of his ideas are appraised for our time in this first book-length treatment of Adams' theories and philosophy.
  1951
• DLB 47: American Historians, 1866-1912 While the United States recovered from the Civil War, scholars undertook the task of chronicling its events, and its impact. This sparked an era of professionalization for historians in America, as young Americans first established themselves as full-time historians associated with institutions of higher education and research.
  1986
• Doubters and Dissenters "A lively discussion of Henry Adams, Mary Lease, Ignatius Donnelly, Jack London and other prophets of imminent disaster who...could not adjust to...an industrialized and urban nation."
  1964
• Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism, Vol. 80 This highly useful series presents substantial excerpts from the best criticism on the major literary figures and nonfiction writers, including novelists, poets, playwrights and literary theorists, of 1900 to 1999 - the era most frequently studied in high schools.
  1999