Crane Brinton

About the Crane Brinton

Clarence Crane Brintonwas an American historian of France, as well as a historian of ideas. His most famous work, The Anatomy of Revolutionlikened the dynamics of revolutionary movements to the progress of fever.

Born in Winsted, Connecticut, his family soon moved to Springfield, Massachusetts, where he grew up and attended the public schools there before entering Harvard University in 1915. His excellent academic performance enabled him to win a Rhodes Scholarship to attend Oxford University, receiving a Doctor of Philosophydegree in 1923. Brinton then began teaching at Harvard University that same year, becoming full professor in 1942 and remaining at Harvard until his death. He was McLean Professor of Ancient and Modern History from 1946 to 1968.

For many years he taught a popular course at Harvard known informally to his students as “Brunch with Brinton”. Brinton was known for his witty, convivial, and urbane writing and commentary, and was fluent in French. During World War II he was for a time Chief of Research and Analysis in London in the Office of Strategic Services. He was also Fire Marshal for St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, which withstood the Blitz with minor damages. After the war, he was commended by the United States Army for “Conspicuous Contribution to the Liberation of France” and was chairman of the Harvard Society of Fellows in the late 1940s. Membership during that period included McGeorge Bundy and Ray Cline, who would go on to become quite influential in national security and intelligence.

In the early 1960s Brinton was the dissertation supervisor at Harvard of the young historian Will Johnston. He also served as an advisor for historian Elizabeth Eisenstein, author of The Printing Press as an Agent of Change.

Brinton was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1939 and the American Philosophical Society in 1953. In 1963 Brinton was elected president of the American Historical Association. He was also president of the Society for French Historical Studies.

On February 19, 1968, Brinton testified at the Fulbright Hearings on the Vietnam War as to the nature of the Vietnamese opposition, saying that Americans are sympathetic to a revolution but not a Communist one, and that if Ho Chi Minh had not been a Communist, “The whole story would have been different.”

Brinton wrote a review of Carroll Quigley’s book Tragedy and Hope.

Among those his scholarship inspired were Samuel P. Huntington, who cited Brinton many times in his book Political Order in Changing Societies, and Robert Struble, Jr., in his Treatise on Twelve Lights.