Joseph Vincent Fuller

Background

He was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, the son of Joseph V and Emma Katherine (Kehler) Fuller.

Education

A scholar by endowment and temperament, he entered Harvard College in 1910 after preparation in the public high school of St. Paul, Minnesota, and St. Paul Academy, and graduated in 1914, summa cum laude in history.

He made his way into Germany, where he studied for a time, but as an American he was unpopular there.

After the war he was instructor at the University of California (1919 - 20), at Harvard (1920 - 21), from which latter institution he received the degree of Ph. D. in history in 1921, and at the University of Wisconsin (1922 - 25).

Career

Following his graduation he traveled in Europe on a Sheldon Fellowship and was in Grenoble when the war started.

In 1917 he enlisted in the United States army and served in the intelligence section of the 76th Division.

He was attached to the historical section at General Headquarters, at Chaumont, France, and for six months after the armistice of November 11, 1918, he served in a subordinate advisory capacity with the Russian and Rumanian divisions of the American Commission to Negotiate Peace.

Bismarck's Diplomacy at Its Zenith (Harvard Historical Studies, 1922), an outgrowth of his doctoral dissertation, was a cogent analysis of the complicated position of the European powers during the period when Bismarck's masterly touch imposed the peace.

It was the best account of the subject until new materials, made available by archival revelations following the First World War, including Bismarck's belated posthumous volume of memoirs, called for emendations; it still remained one of the most penetrating analyses of Bismarck's diplomacy.

In 1925 Fuller entered the Department of State at Washington as chief of the research section. By this time he had found his niche, not in the academic world, as he had originally planned, and for which he always longed during the remainder of his short life, but as an editor of historical materials.

While engaged in this work, Fuller contributed three sketches to the general series, The American Secretaries of State and Their Diplomacy (edited by S. F. Bemis). One was on Hamilton Fish, a lucid and valuable account, but not definitive because the papers of Fish, including a monumental manuscript diary, were denied him.

The second, anonymously published, was of William Jennings Bryan, anonymous because Fuller's position in the State Department made it undesirable at the moment to reveal his authorship, which was sanctioned, however, by his superiors in the Department. The third was a very brief sketch of Elihu Washburne.

For the study of Bryan's diplomacy Fuller had at his elbow the confidential files of the Department of State, which he was then editing. The publication of this contribution, together with two articles in historical journals, laid the groundwork for the disillusionist school of historiography which from 1929 had so great an effect on American foreign policy and ultimately led to the revision of neutrality laws in the years 1935-37.

His premature death cut off a career which seemed certain to rise high in the Department of State and the world of American historical scholarship.

Achievements

• He created a lasting monument by editing the diplomatic correspondence of the United States relating to the World War. It was published in special supplements for the years 1914, 1915, 1916, 1917, and 1918 to the series Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States and comprised an exceedingly adept arrangement of vitally important material, yielding a logical narrative and structural excellence which met the highest standards of documentary editing, by a man who was a master of diplomatics. His mature mind and linguistic accomplishments had directed his interests into modern European diplomatic history.

Works

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• book

  • Bismarck's Diplomacy at Its Zenith, Volume 28

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

  • Bismarck's diplomacy at its zenith FACSIMILE

    (FACSIMILE REPRODUCTION: 1922Bismarck's diplomacy at its z...)

  • Bismarck's Diplomacy at Its Zenith

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

  • Bismarck's Diplomacy at Its Zenith

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

  • Bismarck's Diplomacy at Its Zenith

    (This book, "Bismarck's Diplomacy at Its Zenith", by Fulle...)

  • Rendiconti, Volume 6 (Italian Edition)

    (This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)

  • Bismarck's Diplomacy at Its Zenith, Vol. 26 (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from Bismarck's Diplomacy at Its Zenith, Vol. 26 ...)

Religion

Fuller died, a communicant of the Roman Catholic Church, of a sudden septicemia, leaving a widow.

Personality

He was a man of quiet habits, mild demeanor, and great philosophic firmness, gentle and lovable to his friends.

Connections

He was married on June 18, 1918 to Lois Compton Fuller, with whom he had a daughter, Joan, born in 1923.

Father:

Joseph V Fuller

mother Emma Katherine (Kehler) Fuller

Wife:

Lois Compton Fuller

daughter Joan Fuller