Philip D. Curtin (1922-2009)

Contributing to a University Beyond Teaching and Research

I enrolled in the graduate program in History at the University of Wisconsin in January 1957, intending to major in East Asian History. When I met with the Department Chair, he informed me that the professor with that specialty would be on leave for the spring semester. He said that he would assign me to Prof. Phillip Curtin because "he was the only other member of the History Department who had an interest outside of the U.S. or Europe[!]"

Within a decade, the department would have, in addition to the traditional group of U.S. and European historians, a Third World caucus of historians, with professors of Latin American, South Asian, and Southeast Asian history—and three in African History alone. Still not certain of the validity of those histories as sufficient entities in themselves, the department permitted graduate students to earn a degree in Comparative Tropical History, embracing aspects of all the above. That too soon changed to permit degrees in specific areas such as Africa.

The driving force behind this dynamic expansion was Phillip Curtin, and his talents were not limited just to the History Department. Identifying kindred spirits in other areas, he and his colleagues pushed the University to broaden the international dimensions of a host of departments. As a capstone to these efforts, and working with Jan Vansina, Phil Curtin led the University into being recognized as a major center of African studies by developing a department in African Languages and Literature.

There were many reasons for this amazing growth: Sputnik and the Peace Corps, a very generous Ford Foundation, and a UW administrative team with international interests who supported initiatives by leaders such as Philip Curtin. Phil has long been recognized for his teaching and research. He needs also to be remembered for his administrative skills and fund-raising ability, which made him a major faculty catalyst at UW-Madison, helping to bring it into the forefront for Third World Studies within a very short period of time.

Joe Corry

In at Many Births

One summer day in 1973 I wrote Phil Curtin a letter from my office at the Centre of West African Studies at the University of Birmingham (see above). In it I expressed my belief that there was a need for a journal devoted to method in studying the African past. In quick order—for those days—I had a reply expressing interest and saying that he would take up the matter with Jim Duffy, then the Executive Director of the African Studies Association. Both Phil and Jim believed that the Association should get into publishing more seriously, and apparently my inquiry was fortuitous in that regard. In any case, before long (a few weeks) Jim Duffy presented me with an offer to pursue the publication of what was to become History in Africa under the auspices of the ASA. I was at once gratified and astonished that such a venture could be so quickly consummated.

I realized in retrospect that I should not have been so surprised. After all, Phil Curtin's signature trait was getting things done. In fact, he had already been instrumental in arranging for the University of Wisconsin Press to publish my first book. Moreover, in 1974 was I not a recent graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Comparative Tropical History program, conceived and implemented by Philip Curtin? In his modestly titled memoir, On the Fringes of History, Phil provided ample discussion of how CTH came to be, but chose not to discuss its effects on the many students who passed through the program and its successor incarnation, Comparative World History. Students were expected each semester to take a seminar on a particular topic (slavery, indirect rule, long-distance trade, "divine kingship," etc.) and then to choose a world area about which to write one or two papers on the subject as it manifested itself in that area.

I might be wrong here, but I recall that students were not permitted to write solely on the...