Prosopography

This chapter discusses prosopography, which is defined as the investigation of the common background characteristics of a group of actors in history by means of a collective study of their lives. The etymology of the word suggests that prosopography is about describing or recording a person’s appearance or life, but prosopography differs from biography in that it analyses structured biographical data of groups of individuals that have something in common. Prosopography emerged primarily as a method for historical research. Outside of historical research, it is more commonly known as ‘group biography’ or ‘career-path analysis’. Prosopography has also been a key element of ‘field-based’ research on social groups and the sociology of professions, and is more of an approach than a method sui generis: it implies the systematic organization of data in such a way that connections and patterns that influence historical processes are revealed. The chapter then details the five stages of prosopography.

Breaking Protocol

Breaking Protocol tells the story of the first female ambassadors in US history (1933–1964): Ruth Bryan Owen, Florence Jaffray Harriman, Perle S. Mesta, Eugenie M. Anderson, Clare Boothe Luce, and Frances E. Willis. This is the first group biography of the Big Six, one that places these women in a wider historical context based on deep and broad research in archival sources. It restores these women to their rightful place in history, and it assists the larger project of rendering women in international history visible. It begins by establishing the historical context, the male-dominated world of American diplomacy in the first half of the twentieth century. It then devotes one chapter each to the six female ambassadors, describing their backgrounds and appointments, analyzing the issues they faced and experiences they had on the job, and assessing their performances. It also traces the ambassadors’ reception by host countries; their sometimes fraught relations with the male-dominated State Department; the press coverage they received; the complications of protocol and the spouse issue; and how they practiced “people’s diplomacy”—getting to know, and representing America to, the host country’s whole society, not just its ruling elite. It ends by outlining the progress made and obstacles faced by women since the mid-1960s, and it concludes that, through their successful performances, the Big Six significantly contributed to gender progress in US foreign relations.

Epilogue

The Epilogue opens by discussing the composition of Viriginia Woolf’s unfinished fragment of autobiography, “Sketch of the Past” (1939–40). It analyzes some of Woolf’s theories in this text: above all, on how the time of the writing always affects the nature of autobiography, and on how all autobiography inevitably includes other people, thereby becoming a form of group biography. The Epilogue returns to and summarizes the central themes in Portraits from Life: especially the difficulty of distinguishing between the two genres of the novel and the autobiography, and the way in which autobiography is always implicatory. It argues that there is a crucial difference, finally, in the risks involved in “formal” autobiography, and ends with an assertion of the distinct features of autobiography as opposed to the novel.

Writing the Legal Record

This is a group biography of Kentucky’s earliest law reporters, the individuals who collected and published the early opinions of Kentucky’s highest court from 1803 to 1878. Kentucky’s law reports were used and cited throughout the nation; they ranked among the best available and helped in the development of a uniquely American common law. The early law reporters were leading members of Kentucky’s bench and bar and an active part of its political class. They included former and future high court judges, legal scholars, US senators and representatives, and a secretary of the treasury. Collectively, their life’s work touched on many of the important, formational struggles of the time: slavery and civil war, economic crisis, and establishment of the Democratic and Whig Parties. Despite their prominence, only a few of these men have received serious biographical treatment. Embodied in the stories of these early reporters, and in this work, is the essence of Kentucky’s rich history, its legal beginnings, and the establishment of a legal print culture in America.

Duncan Grant and Charleston’s Queer Arcadia

Charleston curator Darren Clarke provides a queer group biography in this discussion of the centrality of Charleston Farmhouse to the lives and working practice of the Bloomsbury artists Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant. First inhabited by them in 1916, at the height of the First World War, as a home for passivism and conscientious objection, Charleston was initially home for a ménage à trois consisting of Grant, Bell, and David Garnett. For over fifty years, Charleston remained a space that could accommodate queer desires alongside alternative formations of domesticity. Frequent guests and part-time residents included Lytton Strachey, E.M. Forster, John Maynard Keynes, Raymond Mortimer, Angus Davidson, Peter Morris, George Bergen, and Paul Roche. After Bell’s death in 1961, Charleston became a place of pilgrimage for young gay men energized by the political, social, and sexual freedoms of the Bloomsbury Group and encouraged by Grant’s hospitality until his death in 1978.

Internationalist Oilmen, the Middle East, and the Remaking of American Liberalism, 1945–1953

The ways in which business–government relations influenced postwar liberalism in the American encounter with the Middle East are examined through the use of group biography. The linked careers of five internationalist oilmen who helped to formulate Harry S. Truman's domestic and foreign policies are tracked during and after World War II. Partly through the efforts of these influential men, the Middle East's vast oil resources became an important component of controversies about the direction of the New Deal. One conclusion to emerge from the study is that instead of simply studying liberal ideals in order to understand the American impulse to reform the world, historians also need to consider how global factors intruded into domestic reform debates.

EARLY BLACK DOCTORS IN SOUTH AFRICA

The article adopts the approach of a group biography in discussing the careers and ambitions of early black South African doctors selecting both those trained abroad, and the first cohorts trained within South Africa who graduated at the Universities of Cape Town and the Witwatersrand from 1945–6. It focuses on the ambiguities involved, by looking at tensions between professional altruism and entrepreneurialism in pursuing a medical career, as well as that between self-interest and selflessness in attempting to balance the requirements of a medical practice against those involved in political leadership. The paper highlights the significance of the political leadership given by black doctors in the mid-twentieth century and indicates the price paid for this in loss of medical resources under the apartheid regime. Two annexes provide original data on the medical and political contributions of individuals.