Background
Edward was born on May 20, 1894 was born in New York City, New York, United States. He was the son of Stephen King Earle, a musician, and Helen Martha Hart Earle.
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Edward was born on May 20, 1894 was born in New York City, New York, United States. He was the son of Stephen King Earle, a musician, and Helen Martha Hart Earle.
Edward attended Columbia College, from which he received the B. S. in 1917. After graduation he enlisted in the army as a private, attended officer-training school, and at the time of his discharge in 1919 was a first lieutenant in the air service. In 1923 he completed work on the Ph. D.
After the war Earle worked at the National City Bank in New York but in 1920 returned to Columbia as a lecturer and doctoral candidate in history. (He did not, however, make a complete break with banking; from 1921 to 1927 he served as educational director of the New York chapter of the American Institute of Banking. ) Earle's rise in the academic profession was rapid.
In 1923 he was promoted to assistant professor. By 1926, when he was promoted to associate professor, he was already recognized as an authority on international affairs, especially of the Near East. He served on several commissions of the League of Nations, as vice-chairman of the Foreign Policy Association, and as visiting lecturer at various institutions. Forced by illness to take a leave of absence from Columbia, he spent the next few years at Saranac Lake, New York, and at Colorado Springs, Colorado.
In 1934 he left the university to join the faculty of the newly established School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, where he remained for the rest of his life. As the threat of a general war in Europe and the Far East loomed larger, Earle became increasingly interested in the military posture of the United States and the contribution that scholarship might make toward a better understanding of the role of force in international affairs. Before the war broke out in 1939 he had already warned his countrymen of the danger and had urged his scholarly colleagues to undertake the serious study of military affairs.
In the autumn of 1939 he established at the institute a seminar for the study of the military and foreign policies of the United States. This seminar, the first civilian forum of its kind, was composed of American and foreign historians, economists, and political scientists, who examined the broad questions of national security and military strategy. Some, when they returned to their own institutions, turned their attention to the problems discussed at the seminar and encouraged their students to do the same; others organized centers, seminars, and courses of their own in the field. With the United States entry into the war Earle often testified before congressional committees and frequently advised governmental agencies and departments.
In 1941-1942 he served on the board of military analysts of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in Washington, D. C. ; in 1943 he was appointed fellow in military sciences at the Library of Congress; and from 1942 to 1945 he was special consultant to the commander of the army air forces. He spent the last year of the war in Europe on temporary duty with the strategic air forces.
During the period of the cold war Earle's services were in increasing demand. Already a frequent speaker at American universities and war colleges, he was invited in 1946 and in succeeding years to lecture in Britain at the Imperial Defense College, the Royal Naval War College, and the Joint Services Staff College.
In 1945 he gave the Lamont lectures at Yale and in 1950 was named Chichele lecturer and associate member of All Souls College at Oxford. From 1946 to 1949 Earle served on the board of academic consultants of the newly created National War College in Washington and in 1951 as special consultant to the supreme commander of Allied powers in Europe. The following year he was appointed a member of the board of visitors of the Air University. Although Earle had little time for original scholarly research, he collaborated on and edited several important works, including Makers of Modern Strategy: Military Thought From Machiavelli to Hitler (1943) and Modern France: Problems of the Third and Fourth Republics (1951). The latter, although superseded by later works, contains several notable essays and was largely responsible for renewing interest in the study of modern France.
The volume on military strategy foreshadowed the work of the postwar civilian strategists and remains the best survey of military thought in modern times. He died in New York City.
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On February 11, 1919 he married Beatrice Lowndes; they had one daughter.