Dawson, Philip 1928–

(John Philip Dawson)

PERSONAL:

Born November 28, 1928, in Ann Arbor, MI; son of John Philip (a professor of law) and Emma Van Nostrand Dawson; married Ellen Greene, February 6, 1954 (divorced, October, 1980); married Evelyn Raskin, January 23, 1981 (died, September, 1995); married Kathryn Callaghan, January 18, 1997; children: (first marriage) John Philip Dawson, IV, Liza. Education: University of Michigan, A.B., 1950, A.M., 1951; Harvard University, Ph.D., 1961.

ADDRESSES:

Home and office—New York, NY. E-mail—phdawson@nyc.rr.com.

CAREER:

Washington Post, Washington, DC, reporter, 1952-55; Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, instructor in history, 1961-64; Stanford University, Stanford, CA, assistant professor, 1964-70, associate professor of history, 1970-73; Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, Brooklyn, NY, professor of history, 1973-98.

MEMBER:

Society for French Historical Studies, Société des Études Robespierristes, Société de l'Histoire de Paris et de l'Ile-de-France.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Fellow, National Endowment for the Humanities, 1987-88.

WRITINGS:

(Editor and translator) The French Revolution, Prentice-Hall (Englewood Cliffs, NJ), 1967.

Provincial Magistrates and Revolutionary Politics in France, 1789-1795, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 1972.

(Editor, with Renée Waldinger and Isser Woloch) The French Revolution and the Meaning of Citizenship, Greenwood Press (Westport, CT), 1994.

Contributor to books, including The Dimensions of Quantitative Research in History, edited by W.O. Aydelotte, A.G. Boque, and R.W. Fogel, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 1972, and Revolutionary Demands: A Content Analysis of the Cahiers de doleances of 1789, by Gilbert Shapiro and John Markoff, Stanford University Press (Stanford, CA), 1998. Contributor to French Historical Studies, Annales Historiques de la Révolution Française, and other historical journals.

SIDELIGHTS:

Philip Dawson told CA: "I specialize in writing on the French Revolution. The book The French Revolution is a collection of documentary sources and eyewitness accounts by contemporaries. It includes an English traveler's observations, grievance lists of 1789, accounts of the fall of the Bastille in 1789, and the capture of the Tuileries palace in 1792, a major speech by Robespierre, police reports about public opinion in Paris, and other source materials. A Choice reviewer recommended the volume as ‘a must for the student of the French Revolution.’

"Provincial Magistrates and Revolutionary Politics in France, 1789-1795 is a study of the judges and king's attorneys in the 373 mid-level royal courts. The book is part of a body of historical writing on the relations between social identity and political comportment in the French revolution. I studied a clearly defined occupation group whose status was at the boundary between the nobility and the Third Estate. Some magistrates were nobles, but most were local notables, part of the traditional bourgeoisie. A few became political leaders during the revolution. More typically their role was to accept and thereby help to legitimize revolutionary changes initiated by others."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Historical Review, February, 1974, review of Provincial Magistrates and Revolutionary Politics in France, 1789-1795, p. 165.

Choice, September, 1968, review of The French Revolution, p. 854; June, 1973, review of Provincial Magistrates and Revolutionary Politics in France, 1789-1795, p. 672.

English Historical Review, July, 1974, review of Provincial Magistrates and Revolutionary Politics in France, 1789-1795, p. 673.

Journal of Modern History, March, 1974, review of Provincial Magistrates and Revolutionary Politics in France, 1789-1795, p. 128.

Social Studies, February, 1969, review of The French Revolution, p. 90.