The Chichele Professorships are statutory professorships at the University of Oxford named in honour of Henry Chichele (also spelt Chicheley or Checheley, although the spelling of the academic position is consistently "Chichele"), an Archbishop of Canterbury and founder of All Souls College, Oxford. Fellowship of that college has accompanied the award of a Chichele chair since 1870.
Following the work of the 1850 Commission to examine the organization of the university, All Souls College suppressed ten of its fellowships to create the funds to establish the first two Chichele professorships: The Chichele Professor of International Law and Diplomacy, established in 1859 and first held by Mountague Bernard, and the Chichele Professor of Modern History, first held by Montagu Burrows.[ citation needed ]
The military history chair was originally established in 1909 as the Chichele Professorship of Military History. In 1923, the History Faculty Board first recommended that the name of the chair be changed to the history of war, but this recommendation was not implemented until 1946. [1]
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There are currently Chichele Professorships in five different subjects:
The Chair was vacant from 1939 to 1943 and suspended between 1943 and 1946, when it was renamed from of Military History
All Souls College is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. Unique to All Souls, all of its members automatically become fellows. It has no student members, but each year, recent graduates at Oxford are eligible to apply for a small number of examination fellowships through a competitive examination and, for those shortlisted after the examinations, an interview.
The Slade Professorship of Fine Art is the oldest professorship of art and art history at the universities of Cambridge, Oxford and University College, London.
Sir Charles William Chadwick Oman, was a British military historian. His reconstructions of medieval battles from the fragmentary and distorted accounts left by chroniclers were pioneering. Occasionally his interpretations have been challenged, especially his widely copied thesis that British troops defeated their Napoleonic opponents by firepower alone. Paddy Griffith, among modern historians, argues that the British infantry's discipline and willingness to attack were equally important.
Sir Michael Eliot Howard was an English military historian, formerly Chichele Professor of the History of War, Honorary Fellow of All Souls College, Regius Professor of Modern History at the University of Oxford, Robert A. Lovett Professor of Military and Naval History at Yale University, and founder of the Department of War Studies, King's College London. In 1958, he co-founded the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
Ernest Fraser Jacob was a British medievalist and scholar who was President of the Chetham Society, Lancashire Parish Register Society and Ecclesiastical History Society.
John Michael Wallace-Hadrill, was a British academic and one of the foremost historians of the early Merovingian period.
The University of Oxford has three statutory professorships named after William of Wykeham, who founded New College.
Geoffrey Barraclough was an English historian, known as a medievalist and historian of Germany.
Henry Spenser Wilkinson was the first Chichele Professor of Military History at Oxford University. While he was an English writer known primarily for his work on military subjects, he had wide interests. Earlier in his career he was the drama critic for London's Morning Post.
Montagu Burrows was a British historian. Following a career as an officer in the Royal Navy, he was the first Chichele Professor of Modern History at Oxford University, holding the Chair from 1862 until his death. He was probably the first academic to lecture on naval history at Oxford or at any university in Britain.
Piers Gerald Mackesy was a British military historian who taught at the University of Oxford.
In May 1948, the President of the Naval War College Admiral Raymond Spruance recommended a plan to establish a civilian professorship of maritime history at the Naval War College. Approved by Secretary of the Navy John L. Sullivan (Navy) on 29 December 1948, the post was not filled “for lack of funds” until 1951, when Thomas C. Mendenhall of Yale University was appointed to the position. In 1953, Secretary of the Navy Robert Bernard Anderson named the chair in honor of Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King, recognizing King’s great personal interest in maritime history. The Ernest J. King chair was named and first filled during the tenure of Professor Clarence H. Haring. At that point, there was only one other named academic chair in the United States for the field of maritime history, that held by the Gardiner Professor of Oceanic History and Affairs established at Harvard University in 1948. The Naval War College’s first permanent long-term civilian faculty member came in 1966 and its larger civilian faculty began in 1972. Between 1951 and 1973, the King Chair was regularly held as a one-year visiting appointment. It became a permanent faculty appointment in 1974. The position reverted to a visiting professorship in October 2016.
Norman Henry Gibbs was Chichele Professor of the History of War at Oxford University for 24 years from 1953 to 1977, the longest tenure of all who have held the chair since its establishment in 1909.
Sir Keith Grahame Feiling was a British historian, biographer and academic. He was Chichele Professor of Modern History at the University of Oxford, 1946–1950. He was noted for his conservative interpretation of the past, showing an empire-oriented ideology in defence of hierarchical authority, paternalism, deference, the monarchy, Church, family, nation, status, and place.
Lieutenant General Montagu Brocas Burrows, was a British Army officer who served in both world wars and became Commander-in-Chief of West Africa Command from 1945 to 1946.
Sir Foster Hugh Egerton Cunliffe, 6th Baronet was an English historian and first-class cricketer who played for Oxford University from 1895 to 1898, for Middlesex from 1897 to 1903 and for Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) from 1899 to 1903. He was killed serving in World War I.
The Harold Vyvyan Harmsworth Professorship is an endowed chair in American history at the University of Oxford, tenable for one year. The Harmsworth Professorship was established by Harold Sidney Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Rothermere (1868–1940) in memory of his son Harold Vyvyan Alfred St George, who was killed in the First World War, and whose favourite subject was history. Lord Rothermere also established a Harmsworth Professorship in imperial and naval history at Cambridge University in honour of his son Vere, who was killed in the same war. The King Edward VII Professor of English Literature at Cambridge University was endowed by Sir Harold Harmsworth in memory of King Edward VII, who died in 1910.
Karl Joseph Leyser was a German-born British historian who was Fellow and Tutor in History, Magdalen College, Oxford, from 1948 to 1984, and Chichele Professor of Medieval History at Oxford University, from 1984 to 1988.
The Chichele Lectures are a series of lectures sponsored by All Souls College, Oxford and are an example of the college's use of its income for the general benefit of the University of Oxford. Henry Chichele was the founder of All Souls.
Christopher Thomas Atkinson was the preeminent tutor for British military history at the University of Oxford in the first half of the twentieth century.