Robert M. Ayres, Jr. Distinguished University Professor and Vice-Chancellor Emeritus

Office Location:
duPont Library, 320
Phone :931-598-1711
Email : swilliam@sewanee.edu

Courses taught:
Intelligence and Foreign Policy in the 20th and 21st Centuries; The Origins and Conduct of the First World War; Leadership and History: Studies in Historical Biography

Books and Chapters:
The Politics of Grand Strategy: Britain and France Prepare for War, 1904-1914(1969, rev. 1991); Austria-Hungary and the Origins of the First World (1991); The Origins of U.S. Nuclear Strategy, 1945-1953(with Steve Rearden, 1993); chapter on the origins of war in 1914 in The Oxford Illustrated History of the First World War (1998, rev. 1999); July 1914: Soldiers, Statesmen, and the Coming of the Great War (2003)

Current Research Projects:
"History and Practice: Can the Multi-Ethnic United States Learn Anything from the Experience of the Multi-Ethnic Habsburg Monarchy"; with Gerald Smith, a history of the University of the South in the 20th Century

Courses on the Web:
Partial course: "Intelligence and Foreign Policy in the 20th Century"

Biography
Samuel R. Williamson, Professor of History and Vice-Chancellor Emeritus, is a specialist in European diplomatic and military history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as well as intelligence and foreign policy. He graduated with honors from Tulane University and received further education at the University of Edinburgh as a Fulbright Scholar and Harvard University where he earned his Ph.D. in 1966. Before coming to Sewanee, Mr. Williamson held significant teaching and administrative posts at the U.S. Military Academy, Harvard University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.He has received numerous awards for his historical work, including the George Louis Beer Prize of the American Historical Association for the best book in international history, The Politics of Grand Strategy: Britain and France Prepare for War, 1904-1914(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969). His work, Austria-Hungary and the Origins of the First World War (London and New York: Macmillan), appeared in 1991 and a formerly classified study, The Origins of U.S. Nuclear Strategy, 1945-1953(with Steve Rearden)(New York: St. Martins) appeared in 1993. His new study on civil-military relations in the July 1914 crisis appeared in early 2003.