Claude Halstead Van Tyne

Background

Claude Halstead was the son of Lawrence M. and Helen (Rosacrans) Van Tyne. He was born on October 16, 1869, at Tecumseh, Michigan.

Education

Van Tyne entered the University of Michigan, whence he was graduated in 1896. During vacations, he had made adventurous bicycle tours, across the Rocky Mountains and in Europe, and later he made a rowing trip down the Danube with his wife. He pursued graduate studies at Heidelberg, Leipzig, and Paris (1897 - 98), and in 1900 took his Ph. D. degree at the University of Pennsylvania, where he remained as a senior fellow in history until January 1903.

Then, after six months' work of investigation in Washington in connection with the Carnegie Institution, he came in the autumn of 1903 to the University of Michigan as an assistant professor. Three years later, when Prof. A. C. McLaughlin went to the University of Chicago, Van Tyne was promoted to the rank of professor and was made a head of the department of American history.

Career

Starting as a youth in the banking business, Van Tyne rose, while in his early twenties, to the position of cashier in the Iosco County Savings Bank, in northern Michigan. Well launched on a promising career, he nevertheless aspired to pursue the profession of a scholar. In 1911, he became head of the department of history, with which the American group was reunited.

Thanks to his consideration for young men, his high standards, and his eye for breeding and culture as well as technical proficiency he succeeded in developing a loyal and scholarly staff. In spite of his devotion to his research, Van Tyne had a strong sense of his academic duties and served on many important committees. A dominating figure in the University, he was also active outside it. During the period 1916-21, he was a member of the board of editors of the American Historical Review. Meantime, in 1913-14, he was a lecturer in French provincial universities on the Foundation Harvard pour les Relations avec les Universities Francaises.

Some years later, he went to India, on the invitation of Sir Frederick Whyte, the first president of the legislative assembly, to estimate the experiments that were being carried on there under the Act of 1919. The resulting observations he embodied in two articles in the Atlantic Monthly and in a book, India in Ferment (1923), which subjected him to some criticism from those who disapproved of British rule. In 1927, he occupied the Sir George Watson chair of American history, literature, and institutions in the British universities, an annual lectureship. The lectures, which were marked by both maturity and charm, were printed under the title, England and America, Rivals in the American Revolution (1927). Van Tyne's scholarly publications were reasonably numerous and of increasingly high quality.

At length, after years of research, he published The Causes of the War of Independence (1922), the first volume of A History of the Founding of the American Republic, which he designed as the main work of his life but only half of which he finished. The first volume was valued by his co-workers chiefly as a synthesis of the specialized studies of many investigators, to whom Van Tyne made conscientious acknowledgment. The succeeding volume, The War of Independence, American Phase (1929), was widely hailed as a fresh, illuminating, and distinctly readable treatment. The acquisition by William L. Clements of the Shelburne, the Clinton, the Greene, and the Germain papers brought within his reach rich treasures, of which he availed himself.

Unhappily his work was cut short by a serious illness in the spring of 1929 and he died March 21, 1930.

Achievements

• In 1930, Van Tyne received the Henry Russel Award for the most scholarly work produced that year by a member of the University of Michigan faculty, and for his last book he was posthumously awarded a Pulitzer Prize.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Guide to the Archives of the Government of the United States in Washington, Issue 92

    (This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)

  • The Causes of the War of Independence: Being the First Volume of a History of the Founding of the American Republic

    (This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)

  • The Loyalists In The American Revolution (1902)

    (This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)

  • The Causes of the War of Independence: Being the First Volume of a History of the Founding of the American Republic 1922

    (Originally published in 1922. This volume from the Cornel...)

  • The American revolution, 1776-1783
  • Influences Which Determined the French Government to Make the Treaty With America 1778
  • The American revolution, 1776-1783 (Volume 2)
  • The American revolution, 1776-1783

Personality

Van Tyne was a stimulating though exacting teacher. He was distinguished in appearance, gifted with a whimsical humor, and possessed of a power of apt allusion drawn from rich stores of extensive reading.

Very individual in speech and writing, he was vehement in pressing his own opinions and rather inclined to be intolerant of those whose standards differed from his.

Connections

On June 19, 1896, Van Tyne married Belle Joslyn of Chesaning, Michigan. They had a daughter, and three sons.

Father:

Lawrence M. Van Tyne

Mother:

Helen (Rosacrans) Van Tyne

Wife:

Belle Joslyn