George Catlin (political scientist)
Encyclopedia
Sir George Edward Gordon Catlin (29 July 1896, Liverpool
– 8 February 1979) was an English
political scientist
and philosopher
. A strong proponent of Anglo-America
cooperation, he worked for many years as a professor
at Cornell University
and other universities and colleges in the United States
and Canada
. He preached the use of a natural science
model for political science. McMaster University
Libraries hold his correspondence archive and the body of some of his works.
, and New College, Oxford
. It was here that he converted to Roman Catholicism after his wartime hiatus.
He volunteered in the early months of World War I
but was rejected and spent most of the war working for the liquor traffic department of the Central Control Board. He was involved as a soldier in the last months of World War I
, fighting on the Western Front
in Belgium
.
After the war he received his M.A. at Oxford and won three major prizes, including the Gladstone Prize and the Matthew Arnold prize in 1921 for his essay on the political thought of Thomas Hobbes
entitled Thomas Hobbes as Philosopher, Publicist and Man of Letters. He took up the relatively new field of political science
. This was better established in the USA and at the invitation of the historian Wallace Notestein
he began lecturing at Cornell University
where he had the close association of Carl Becker
. There he completed his doctoral thesis, published in 1926 entitled The Science and Method of Politics. This was followed in 1929 by A Study of the Principles of Politics. He was an Assistant Professor of Politics at Cornell by the age of 28 and subsequently twice Acting Chairman. In 1926 he was appointed to be the director of the National Commission (Social Research Council) to study the impact of prohibition in the United States
. His conclusions were subsequently published as a book.
Catlin married the English novelist Vera Brittain
in 1925 after a courtship that began as a correspondence. She was pursuing her own career as a writer in Britain and the marriage endured many Atlantic-wide separations. They went on to have two children, John Brittain-Catlin (1927-1987), whose memoirs, Family Quartet, appeared in 1987; and British politician Shirley Williams
(born 1930).
Catlin was a strong proponent of Anglo-American
cooperation even to the extent of advocating an organic union between the two countries. He published Anglo-Saxony and Its Tradition in 1939. He also had ambitions to be directly involved in British politics through the Labour Party
.
Between 1928 and 1931 Catlin was attached to the personal staff of Sir Oswald Mosley
. This was a period before Mosley had made his final break with the Labour Party to become openly fascist. In 1929 he assisted H.G. Wells, Arnold Bennett
and others in establishing The Realist
magazine.
Catlin was an unsuccessful Labour Party
candidate in two general elections: 1931 in Brentford and Chiswick
, and 1935 in Sunderland
. From 1935 to 1937 he served on the executive committee of the Fabian Society
.
During the 1930s Catlin traveled extensively. He visited Germany where he witnessed the 1933 Dimitrov trial
on the Reichstag fire
, a forewarning of what Nazism
was to become. He went to Russia
for a prolonged examination of the newly established Communist regime there and to Spain during the height of the Civil War
. During this period Catlin wrote a large number of articles as a journalist, mostly for the Yorkshire Post
. He served on the campaign team of Presidential candidate Wendell Wilkie during 1940 and his subsequent book, One Anglo-American Nation appeared in 1941.
He was an early advocate of Indian
independence after meeting Mahatma Gandhi
in 1931 in London. He visited India in 1946 and 1947 and published his tribute to Gandhi after his assassination with In the Path of Mahatma Gandhi (1948).
He lectured in Peking in 1947. He served as Provost of Mar Ivanios College
in India for 1953-54 and as Chairman and Bronfman Professor in the Department of Economics and Political Science at McGill University
between 1956 and 1960.
He was a founder of the Movement for Atlantic Union, which was established in 1958. He drafted the constitution of the Paris based Atlantic Institute
, founded in 1961. He was also a member of the Pilgrims Club of Great Britain
.
His autobiography, on which he had worked sporadically since the end of the First World War, was finally published in 1972 as For God's Sake, Go.
After Vera Brittain's death, Catlin remarried in 1971. He died in 1979 at the age of 82.
Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
– 8 February 1979) was an English
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
political scientist
Political science
Political Science is a social science discipline concerned with the study of the state, government and politics. Aristotle defined it as the study of the state. It deals extensively with the theory and practice of politics, and the analysis of political systems and political behavior...
and philosopher
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
. A strong proponent of Anglo-America
Anglo-America
Anglo-America is a region in the Americas in which English is a main language, or one which has significant British historical, ethnic, linguistic, and cultural links...
cooperation, he worked for many years as a professor
Professor
A professor is a scholarly teacher; the precise meaning of the term varies by country. Literally, professor derives from Latin as a "person who professes" being usually an expert in arts or sciences; a teacher of high rank...
at Cornell University
Cornell University
Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...
and other universities and colleges in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
. He preached the use of a natural science
Natural science
The natural sciences are branches of science that seek to elucidate the rules that govern the natural world by using empirical and scientific methods...
model for political science. McMaster University
McMaster University
McMaster University is a public research university whose main campus is located in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. The main campus is located on of land in the residential neighbourhood of Westdale, adjacent to Hamilton's Royal Botanical Gardens...
Libraries hold his correspondence archive and the body of some of his works.
Life
Catlin was the son of an Anglican clergyman in Liverpool. He was educated at St Paul's SchoolSt Paul's School
St Paul's School is a boys' independent school, founded in 1509 by John Colet, located on a site in the London suburb of Barnes. It was one of the original nine English public schools as defined by the Public Schools Act 1868, which included Eton College, Harrow School and Charterhouse School...
, and New College, Oxford
New College, Oxford
New College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom.- Overview :The College's official name, College of St Mary, is the same as that of the older Oriel College; hence, it has been referred to as the "New College of St Mary", and is now almost always...
. It was here that he converted to Roman Catholicism after his wartime hiatus.
He volunteered in the early months of World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
but was rejected and spent most of the war working for the liquor traffic department of the Central Control Board. He was involved as a soldier in the last months of World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, fighting on the Western Front
Western Front (World War I)
Following the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the German Army opened the Western Front by first invading Luxembourg and Belgium, then gaining military control of important industrial regions in France. The tide of the advance was dramatically turned with the Battle of the Marne...
in Belgium
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
.
After the war he received his M.A. at Oxford and won three major prizes, including the Gladstone Prize and the Matthew Arnold prize in 1921 for his essay on the political thought of Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury , in some older texts Thomas Hobbs of Malmsbury, was an English philosopher, best known today for his work on political philosophy...
entitled Thomas Hobbes as Philosopher, Publicist and Man of Letters. He took up the relatively new field of political science
Political science
Political Science is a social science discipline concerned with the study of the state, government and politics. Aristotle defined it as the study of the state. It deals extensively with the theory and practice of politics, and the analysis of political systems and political behavior...
. This was better established in the USA and at the invitation of the historian Wallace Notestein
Wallace Notestein
Wallace Notestein was an American historian, Sterling Professor of English History at Yale University from 1928 to 1947.-Works:*A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718...
he began lecturing at Cornell University
Cornell University
Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...
where he had the close association of Carl Becker
Carl L. Becker
Carl Lotus Becker was an American historian.-Life:He was born in Waterloo, Iowa. He studied at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Frederick Jackson Turner was his doctoral advisor there. Becker got his Ph.D. in 1907. He was John Wendell Anderson Professor of History in the Department of History...
. There he completed his doctoral thesis, published in 1926 entitled The Science and Method of Politics. This was followed in 1929 by A Study of the Principles of Politics. He was an Assistant Professor of Politics at Cornell by the age of 28 and subsequently twice Acting Chairman. In 1926 he was appointed to be the director of the National Commission (Social Research Council) to study the impact of prohibition in the United States
Prohibition in the United States
Prohibition in the United States was a national ban on the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcohol, in place from 1920 to 1933. The ban was mandated by the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution, and the Volstead Act set down the rules for enforcing the ban, as well as defining which...
. His conclusions were subsequently published as a book.
Catlin married the English novelist Vera Brittain
Vera Brittain
Vera Mary Brittain was a British writer, feminist and pacifist, best remembered as the author of the best-selling 1933 memoir Testament of Youth, recounting her experiences during World War I and the beginning of her journey towards pacifism.-Life:Born in Newcastle-under-Lyme, Brittain was the...
in 1925 after a courtship that began as a correspondence. She was pursuing her own career as a writer in Britain and the marriage endured many Atlantic-wide separations. They went on to have two children, John Brittain-Catlin (1927-1987), whose memoirs, Family Quartet, appeared in 1987; and British politician Shirley Williams
Shirley Williams, Baroness Williams of Crosby
Shirley Williams, Baroness Williams of Crosby PC is a British politician and academic. Originally a Labour Member of Parliament and Cabinet Minister, she was one of the "Gang of Four" rebels who founded the Social Democratic Party in 1981...
(born 1930).
Catlin was a strong proponent of Anglo-American
Anglo-American relations
British–American relations encompass many complex relations over the span of four centuries, beginning in 1607 with England's first permanent colony in North America called Jamestown, to the present day, between the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the United States of...
cooperation even to the extent of advocating an organic union between the two countries. He published Anglo-Saxony and Its Tradition in 1939. He also had ambitions to be directly involved in British politics through the Labour Party
Labour Party (UK)
The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...
.
Between 1928 and 1931 Catlin was attached to the personal staff of Sir Oswald Mosley
Oswald Mosley
Sir Oswald Ernald Mosley, 6th Baronet, of Ancoats, was an English politician, known principally as the founder of the British Union of Fascists...
. This was a period before Mosley had made his final break with the Labour Party to become openly fascist. In 1929 he assisted H.G. Wells, Arnold Bennett
Arnold Bennett
- Early life :Bennett was born in a modest house in Hanley in the Potteries district of Staffordshire. Hanley is one of a conurbation of six towns which joined together at the beginning of the twentieth century as Stoke-on-Trent. Enoch Bennett, his father, qualified as a solicitor in 1876, and the...
and others in establishing The Realist
The Realist (magazine)
The Realist was a short lived monthly British magazine first published in March 1929 which brought together many intellectuals from that era. It was dedicated to Scientific Humanism and carried a distinctive pale orange cover. It closed in January 1930 a victim of the Great Depression.It was ...
magazine.
Catlin was an unsuccessful Labour Party
Labour Party (UK)
The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...
candidate in two general elections: 1931 in Brentford and Chiswick
Brentford and Chiswick (UK Parliament constituency)
Brentford and Chiswick was a parliamentary constituency centred on the Brentford and Chiswick districts of west London. It returned one Member of Parliament to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom....
, and 1935 in Sunderland
Sunderland (UK Parliament constituency)
Sunderland was a borough constituency of the House of Commons, created by the Reform Act 1832 for the 1832 general election. It elected two Members of Parliament by the bloc vote system of election until it was split into single-member seats of Sunderland North and Sunderland South for the 1950...
. From 1935 to 1937 he served on the executive committee of the Fabian Society
Fabian Society
The Fabian Society is a British socialist movement, whose purpose is to advance the principles of democratic socialism via gradualist and reformist, rather than revolutionary, means. It is best known for its initial ground-breaking work beginning late in the 19th century and continuing up to World...
.
During the 1930s Catlin traveled extensively. He visited Germany where he witnessed the 1933 Dimitrov trial
Georgi Dimitrov
Georgi Dimitrov Mikhaylov , also known as Georgi Mikhaylovich Dimitrov , was a Bulgarian Communist politician...
on the Reichstag fire
Reichstag fire
The Reichstag fire was an arson attack on the Reichstag building in Berlin on 27 February 1933. The event is seen as pivotal in the establishment of Nazi Germany....
, a forewarning of what Nazism
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
was to become. He went to Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
for a prolonged examination of the newly established Communist regime there and to Spain during the height of the Civil War
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
. During this period Catlin wrote a large number of articles as a journalist, mostly for the Yorkshire Post
Yorkshire Post
The Yorkshire Post is a daily broadsheet newspaper, published in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England by Yorkshire Post Newspapers, a company owned by Johnston Press...
. He served on the campaign team of Presidential candidate Wendell Wilkie during 1940 and his subsequent book, One Anglo-American Nation appeared in 1941.
He was an early advocate of Indian
British Raj
British Raj was the British rule in the Indian subcontinent between 1858 and 1947; The term can also refer to the period of dominion...
independence after meeting Mahatma Gandhi
Mahatma Gandhi
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi , pronounced . 2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948) was the pre-eminent political and ideological leader of India during the Indian independence movement...
in 1931 in London. He visited India in 1946 and 1947 and published his tribute to Gandhi after his assassination with In the Path of Mahatma Gandhi (1948).
He lectured in Peking in 1947. He served as Provost of Mar Ivanios College
Mar Ivanios College
Mar Ivanios College is an educational institutuion situated in Trivandrum, the capital city of Kerala, India. The college is located on a small scenic hilltop with a sprawling campus area of hundreds of acres in Bethany Hills, Nalanchira, Thiruvananthapuram....
in India for 1953-54 and as Chairman and Bronfman Professor in the Department of Economics and Political Science at McGill University
McGill University
Mohammed Fathy is a public research university located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The university bears the name of James McGill, a prominent Montreal merchant from Glasgow, Scotland, whose bequest formed the beginning of the university...
between 1956 and 1960.
He was a founder of the Movement for Atlantic Union, which was established in 1958. He drafted the constitution of the Paris based Atlantic Institute
Atlantic Institute
The Atlantic Institute is an independent, non-governmental institute which promotes economic, political, and cultural relations among NATO alliance members and the international community in general...
, founded in 1961. He was also a member of the Pilgrims Club of Great Britain
Pilgrims Society
The Pilgrims Society, founded in 1902, is a British-American society established, in the words of American diplomat Joseph Choate, 'to promote good-will, good-fellowship, and everlasting peace between the United States and Great Britain'...
.
His autobiography, on which he had worked sporadically since the end of the First World War, was finally published in 1972 as For God's Sake, Go.
After Vera Brittain's death, Catlin remarried in 1971. He died in 1979 at the age of 82.
External links
- Biography of George Catlin and description of the George Edward Gordon Catlin fonds, McMaster University LibrariesMcMaster UniversityMcMaster University is a public research university whose main campus is located in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. The main campus is located on of land in the residential neighbourhood of Westdale, adjacent to Hamilton's Royal Botanical Gardens...
- The Function of Political Science Paper published 1956 by George Catlin
- Paul Berry and Mark Bostridge, Vera Brittain: A Life (1995)