James Franklin Clarke Jr.

James Franklin Clarke, Jr. was an American historian who dedicated his life to the study of the history of the activities of American Protestants and their missionaries on the Balkans, and especially spread of Protestantism in Bulgaria. He founded the Academic Studies on Bulgarian history in the United States.

James Franklin Clarke Jr.
Born
James Franklin Clarke

1906
Bitola, Ottoman Empire
Died1982
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States
Alma materHarvard University
OccupationProfessor, scientist, historian

Biography

He was born on June 5, 1906 in Bitola, now in North Macedonia,[1] where his father William P. Clarke was a missionary. He was the grandson of James Franklin Clarke Sr., who is one of the first American missionaries among the Bulgarians. The William Clarke family lived in Bitola during the Balkan Wars and World War I, and in 1919 moved to Thessaloniki. Later the family moved to Switzerland and then to England, where he received a primary education. From England, the family moved to the United States, and there young James graduated high school in Boston. James Clarke enrolled in 1924 at Amherst College in Massachusetts. In 1928, he earned a scholarship to Harvard University, where he received his master's degree, and one year later began his doctoral thesis on the role of American missionaries in Bulgarian society and their impact on the process of the Bulgarian National Revival. Since 1931, James Clarke has worked for three years in the Bulgarian archives and libraries, visiting numerous settlements related to his research. In 1946 he was Attaché for Press and Culture at the United States Embassy in Sofia. From 1951 to 1954 he was Professor of history at Indiana University, where he became the founder and director of the first Institute for Eastern European Studies in the United States. The remainder of his career until his retirement in 1976 was affiliated with the University of Pittsburgh, one of the centers of Eastern European Studies in the United States. After retirement Clarke served as a consultant to the Duquesne University.

James Clarke, as well as his missionary predecessors who were direct observers of the Balkan historical scene, adhered to the perception of the Bulgarian identity of the Macedonian Slavs. Without denying the right of this population to self-identify, he defined the concept on the "Macedonian language" as a myth, arguing with his American counterpart Horace Lunt.[2] He is the author of a collection of studies on Bulgarian history, called The pen and the sword edited by Dennis P. Hupchick.[3]

On December 5, 1982, James Clarke rested at his home in Pittsburgh.[4]

Notes
  1. Hupchick, Dennis (2011). "Bulgarian "Incunabula" in the James F. Clarke Library Collection". Études balkaniques. XLVII (1): 38–52.
  2. Dr. James F. Clarke's, Macedonia from SS. Cyril and Methodius to Horace Lunt and Blazhe Koneski: Language and Nationality.
  3. James Franklin Clarke, Dennis P. Hupchick, The pen and the sword: studies in Bulgarian history, Volume 252 of East European monographs, 1988, ISBN 0880331496.
  4. Terence Emmons, James Franklin Clarke, 1906–1982, Slavic Review 42(04):743-744, January 1983; pp. 743-744, DOI: 10.1017/S0037677900156608 .
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