Historian and diplomat, born in Dorchester (now part of Boston), Massachusetts, USA. The son of a wealthy family, he graduated from Harvard (1831), then spent several years in Germany, Britain, and elsewhere in Europe, where he got to know the intellectual and political elite, including Otto von Bismarck. Back in Boston (1835) he married and decided on a literary career. His first two novels were not successful, so after several months as secretary to the US embassy in St Petersburg, Russia (1841), he decided to devote himself to writing history, specifically, the history of the Netherlands in the 16th-c and 17th-c, and published the work for which he remains best known, The Rise of the Dutch Republic (1856). He served as ambassador to Austria (18617) and Britain (186970) while publishing The History of the United Netherlands, 15841609 (4 vols, 18607), but died before he could bring his history to its climax in 1648. Although composed in an engaging style, his history has been regarded by most scholars as a highly personal interpretation of events.
John Lothrop Motley (April 15, 1814 - May 29, 1877) was an American historian.
The son of Thomas Motley, he was born at Dorchester (now a suburb of Boston, Massachusetts), attended Boston Latin School, and graduated from Harvard in 1831.
In 1837 he married Mary Benjamin (died 1874), a sister of Park Benjamin, and in 1839 he published anonymously a novel entitled Morton's Hope, or the Memoirs of a Provincial. Besides contributing various historical and critical essays to the North American Review, including a remarkable essay on the Polity of the Puritans, he published in 1849, again anonymously, a second novel, entitled Merry Mount, a Romance of the Massachusetts Colony, based again on the odd history of Thomas Morton and Merrymount.
In about 1846 he had begun to plan a history of the Netherlands, in particular the period of the United Provinces, and he had already done a large amount of work on this subject when, finding the materials at his disposal in the United States inadequate, he went to Europe in 1851. The next five years were spent at Dresden, Brussels and the Hague in investigation of the archives, which resulted in 1856 in the publication of The Rise of the Dutch Republic, which became very popular. In 1860 Motley published the first two volumes of its continuation, The United Netherlands. In 1861, just after outbreak of the American Civil War, Motley wrote two letters to The Times defending the Federal position, and these letters, afterwards reprinted as a pamphlet entitled Causes of the Civil War in America, made a favourable impression on President Lincoln.
Partly owing to this essay, Motley was appointed United States minister to Austria in 1861, a position which he filled with great success until his resignation in 1867.
Motley's merits as an historian are undeniably great.
An edition of his historical works was published in nine volumes in London in 1903-1904. and John Lothrop Motley and his Family: Further Letters and Records (1910), edited by his daughter, Mrs Susan St John Mildmay.
This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
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