Background

Carlton Joseph Hayes was born on May 16, 1882 at Jericho Farm in Afton, New York, United States. He was the son of Philetus Arthur Hayes and Permilia Mary Huntley. "In Afton, " he wrote later, "five generations of both paternal and maternal ancestors lived and are buried. Here is my true home, along the gently flowing Susquehanna and the smiling wooded hills. "

Education

Hayes enrolled as a student at Columbia University in 1900, beginning a career at Columbia that lasted for fifty years. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1904, a Master of Arts degree in 1905, and a Ph. D. in 1909 with a dissertation on "Sources Relating to the Germanic Invasions. "

Career

Hayes was assistant professor (1910-1915), associate professor (1915-1919), professor (1919-1935), and Seth Low Professor of History (1935-1950). He was also visiting professor at California (1917, 1923), Johns Hopkins (1930), and Stanford (1941). Hayes served as a captain in the Army Military Intelligence Division of the General Staff (1918-1919) and was a major in the Officers' Reserve Corps (1918-1933).

Among the steady flow of dissertations supervised by Hayes were those by Robert R. Ergang (Germany), Beatrice Hyslop (France), John H. Wuorinen (Finland), and Oscar I. Janowsky (national minorities).

Nationalism was Hayes's central interest throughout his career, and he pursued the subject with unflagging zeal. He wrote British Social Politics (1913), an outline of the growing trend toward state action for the solution of social problems. His highly successful textbook, Political and Social History of Modern Europe (1916), was reprinted many times, and, together with Modern and Contemporary European History (1919) by his close friend Jacob Salwyn Schapiro, virtually monopolized the college history textbook market for years.

Throughout his career Hayes was the subject of controversy. He enjoyed some of it: he was fond of showing a half-page caricature of himself in a Hearst newspaper as an "iconoclast. " But in October 1927 he was deeply troubled when the National Americanization Committee of the Veterans of Foreign Wars charged that Modern History (1923), a high-school textbook he had written with Parker T. Moon, was pro-British. Three years later the New York City Board of Education removed the book from its permitted list of textbooks after a Staten Island minister and a local school board called it pro-Catholic and un-American. Hayes and Moon were defended by educational and civic groups, but their book was not restored to the approved list.

In April 1942 President Franklin D. Roosevelt, concerned about the possibility of Spain's intervention in World War II on the side of the Axis, appointed Hayes ambassador to Spain. The appointment was criticized by liberals who accused Hayes of hypocrisy in attacking Hitler and Mussolini but supporting Franco's "equally reprehensible dictatorship. "

As ambassador, Hayes found Franco entangled in a knotty political situation. The Axis was making every possible effort to push Spain into the war, but the Spanish dictator had to face the possibility of an Allied victory that would leave Spain isolated. In addition, the Spanish people had little appetite for further conflict. Hayes regarded it as his prime duty to strengthen Spain's resolve to keep out of the war. Hayes remained in Spain as ambassador until January 1945.

In 1945 Hayes published Wartime Mission in Spain, a personal record of his service as envoy. He argued that he had influenced Franco against overt entrance into the war and that the Falange, the only political party allowed in Spain, had exercised less influence on Franco than many people believed. Critics accused Hayes of being influenced by his religion to paint a more favorable picture of Catholic Spain than the facts warranted, "an inexcusable lapse for the objective historian. "

In 1950 Hayes retired to his Jericho Farm in Afton. He continued to write and kept himself busy as a self-described "dirt farmer. " He died of a heart ailment at Sidney Hospital, Sidney, New York, on September 2, 1964, and laid to rest at Glenwood Cemetery in Afton, New York.

Achievements

• Carlton Joseph Huntley Hayes was a leading and pioneering specialist on the study of nationalism along with Hans Kohn and Boyd C. Shafer. His works are regarded as classics, notably Essays on Nationalism (1926), France, A Nation of Patriots (1930), The Historical Evolution of Modern Nationalism (1931), and Nationalism: A Religion (1960). At Columbia University Hayes rose to fame as teacher and textbook writer. His lectures were among the most popular on campus. Hayes's advanced seminar on modern nationalism, offered in the Graduate School, won international fame as the finest and most productive study group of its kind, and doctoral candidates regarded acceptance to it as a special honor. As an ambassador to Spain he worked effectively to discourage the sale of Spanish minerals and chemicals to the Axis. At the same time he urged that extensive American aid be given to Spain. Hayes was awarded the Laetare Medal from Notre Dame in 1946, the Gibbons Medal from the Catholic University of America in 1949, and the Alexander Hamilton medal from Columbia University in 1952. He was a guest lecturer and teacher at various academic institutions throughout his career and into his retirement, and was given numerous honorary degrees.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Rise of Modern Europe : A Generation of Materialism 1871-1900

    (PLEASE SEE OUR PHOTOS! This 390-page hardcover is volume ...)

  • An Introduction to the Sources Relating to the Germanic Invasions
  • Modern History
  • A Political and Social History of Modern Europe: 1500 - 1915 - Two Volume Set
  • British Social Politics
  • A brief history of the great war
  • The historical evolution of modern nationalism
  • A Political and Cultural History of Modern Europe. 2 Volumes, Complete
  • France : A Nation of Patriots
  • Essays on nationalism,

Religion

Hayes was a devout Catholic. In 1924 he was received into the Catholic Church, which he saw as a spiritual and antinationalistic force. Thereafter he became a leading Catholic layman.

Politics

According to Hayes, nationalism moved from an originally positive to negative form, from "blessing to curse, " going through several stages in its development: humanitarian, Jacobin, traditional, liberal, and integral - from a liberal tone during Metternich's time to a dynastic conservatism in the Bismarck era to a tragic descent into aggression and expansion in the twentieth century.

Despite his abhorrence of dictatorship, Hayes spoke out in favor of Generalissimo Francisco Franco, chief of the Spanish state.

Views

In A Generation of Materialism, 1871-1900 (1941) Hayes concluded that materialism "has brought us to the status of clogs in an economic machine, to fascism and communism, essentially the same tyrannies, and finally to the threat of the atomic bomb and threat of total destruction. "

Quotations: "I spent seven years listening to other people and forty-three years with other people listening to me. "

Membership

Hayes was elected as president of the American Historical Association over the opposition of liberals and the more explicit Anti-Catholic bias that defined the academic community of his era.

Personality

Tall, baldish, and sharp-featured, Hayes presented his material with the skill of a great actor. Looking out into space over the heads of his audience, he would boom out several impeccably chiseled sentences, pause, and then resume in either mildly whispered phrases or a shouting tone. He made shrewd use of sarcasm and irony. Although aware of socioeconomic trends, he took special pleasure in a biographical approach. In describing the courtly manners of Louis XIV, for example, he would pause and dramatically draw a handkerchief from the sleeve of his coat jacket. On occasion he would wrap his double-breasted coat around himself and become Metternich, Talleyrand, Disraeli, or Bismarck. This kind of dynamism made him a campus legend. His style was described by the critic Lewis Gannett as reflecting "an easy learning and grace granted few historians. "

Quotes from others about the person

• One student commented that "Hayes brought history from textbook abstractions to an experience lived and a problem to be faced. "
  
  The New York Times, reacted favorably in an editorial of April 4, 1942: "As an uncompromising historian (Hayes) has the perspective to relate the present to the past in a country with deep roots in history. As an uncompromising enemy of the totalitarian system, he will be able to make the mind of democracy felt in the wavering margins of the Axis-dominated countries. As a Catholic who has done yeoman's work to break down intolerance in the inter-faith committee of Protestants, Catholics, and Jews, he will bring a special comprehension to the religious problems that are fundamental to the understanding not only of Spain but of all Latin America. "

Interests

• Politicians

  Francisco Franco

Connections

On September 18, 1920, Hayes married Mary Evelyn Carroll; they had two children.

Father:

Philetus Arthur Hayes

Mother:

Permilia Mary (Huntley) Hayes

Spouse:

Mary Evelyn (Carroll) Hayes

Daughter:

Mary Elizabeth (Hayes) Tucker

Son:

Carroll J J. Hayes

References

• Richard Hofstadter: An Intellectual Biography