Presidential Addresses By Year
1880s | 1890s | 1900s | 1910s | 1920s | 1930s | 1940s | 1950s | 1960s | 1970s | 1980s | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s
1880s
1884 Andrew Dickson White, On Studies in General History and the History of Civilization
1885 Andrew Dickson White, The Influence of American Ideas upon the French Revolution
1886 George Bancroft, On Self Government
1887 Justin Winsor, Manuscript Sources of American History: The Conspicuous Collections Extant
1888 William F. Poole, The Early Northwest
1889 Charles K. Adams, Recent Historical Work in the Colleges and Universities of Europe and America
1890s
1890 John Jay, The Demand for Education in American History
1891 William Wirt Henry, The Causes which Produced the Virginia of the Revolutionary Period
1893 James Burrill Angell, The Inadequate Recognition of Diplomatists by Historians
1894 Henry Adams, The Tendency of History
1895 George Frisbie Hoar, Popular Discontent with Representative Government
1896 Richard Salter Storrs, Contributions Made to our National Development by Plain Men
1897 James Schouler, A New Federal Convention
1898 George Park Fisher, The Function of the Historian as Judge of Historic Persons
1899 James Ford Rhodes, History
1900s
1900 Edward Eggleston, The New History
1901 Charles F. Adams, An Undeveloped Function
1902 Alfred Thayer Mahan, Subordinaton in Historical Treatment
1903 Henry Charles Lea, Ethical Values in History
1904 Goldwin Smith, The Treatment of History
1905 John Bach McMaster, Old Standards of Public Morals
1906 Simeon E. Baldwin, Religion Still the Key to History
1907 J. Franklin Jameson, The American Acta Sanctorum
1908 George Burton Adams, History and the Philosophy of History
1909 Albert Bushnell Hart, Imagination in History
1910s
1910 Frederick J. Turner, Social Forces in American History
1911 William M. Sloane, The Substance and Vision of History
1912 Theodore Roosevelt, History as Literature
1913 William A. Dunning, Truth in History
1914 Andrew C. McLaughlin, American History and American Democracy
1915 H. Morse Stephens, Nationality and History
1916 George Lincoln Burr, The Freedom of History
1917 Worthington C. Ford, The Editorial Function in United States History
1918–19 William R. Thayer, Vagaries of Historians
1920s
1920 Edward Channing, An Historical Retrospect
1921 Jean Jules Jusserand, The School for Ambassadors
1922 Charles H. Haskins, European History and American Scholarship
1923 Edward P. Cheyney, Law in History
1924 Woodrow Wilson (passed away before the completion of his term)
1924 Charles M. Andrews, These Forty Years
1925 Charles M. Andrews, The American Revolution: An Interpretation
1926 Dana C. Munro, War and History
1927 Henry Osborn Taylor, A Layman’s View of History
1928 James H. Breasted, The New Crusade
1929 James Harvey Robinson, The Newer Ways of Historians
1930s
1930 Evarts Boutell Greene, Persistent Problems of Church and State
1931 Carl Lotus Becker, Everyman His Own Historian
1932 Herbert Eugene Bolton, The Epic of Greater America
1933 Charles A. Beard, Written History as an Act of Faith
1934 William E. Dodd, The Emergence of the First Social Order in the United States
1935 Michael I. Rostovtzeff, The Hellenistic World and its Economic Development
1936 Charles McIlwain, The Historian’s Part in a Changing World
1937 Guy Stanton Ford, Some Suggestions to American Historians
1938 Laurence M. Larson (passed away before the completion of his term)
1938 Frederic L. Paxson, The Great Demobilization
1939 William Scott Ferguson, Polis and Idia in Periclean Athens
1940s
1940 Max Farrand, The Quality of Distinction
1941 James Westfall Thompson, The Age of Mabillon and Montfaucon
1942 Arthur M. Schlesinger, “What Then Is the American, This New Man?”
1943 Nellie Neilson, The Early Pattern of the Common Law
1944 William L. Westermann, Between Slavery and Freedom
1945 Carlton J. H. Hayes, The American Frontier—Frontier of What?
1946 Sidney B. Fay, The Idea of Progress
1947 Thomas J. Wertenbaker, The Molding of the Middle West
1948 Kenneth Scott Latourette, The Christian Understanding of History
1949 Conyers Read, The Social Responsibilities of the Historian
1950s
1950 Samuel E. Morison, Faith of a Historian
1951 Robert L. Schuyler, The Historical Spirit Incarnate: Frederic William Maitland
1952 James G. Randall, Historianship
1953 Louis Gottschalk, A Professor of History in a Quandary
1954 Merle Curti, Intellectuals and Other People
1955 Lynn Thorndike, Whatever Was, Was Right
1956 Dexter Perkins, We Shall Gladly Teach
1957 William Langer, The Next Assignment
1958 Walter Prescott Webb, History as High Adventure
1959 Allan Nevins, Not Capulets, Not Montagus
1960s
1960 Bernadotte E. Schmitt, “With How Little Wisdom...”
1961 Samuel Flagg Bemis, American Foreign Policy and the Blessings of Liberty
1962 Carl Bridenbaugh, The Great Mutation
1963 Crane Brinton, Many Mansions
1964 Julian P. Boyd, A Modest Proposal to Meet an Urgent Need
1965 Frederic C. Lane, At the Roots of Republicanism
1966 Roy F. Nichols, History in a Self-Governing Culture
1967 Hajo Holborn, The History of Ideas
1968 John K. Fairbank, Assignment for the ’70s
1969 C. Vann Woodward, The Future of the Past
1970s
1970 R. R. Palmer, The American Historical Association in 1970
1971 David M. Potter (passed away before the completion of his term)
1971 Joseph R. Strayer, The Fourth and the Fourteenth Centuries
1972 Thomas C. Cochran, History and Cultural Crisis
1973 Lynn White Jr., Technology Assessment from the Stance of a Medieval Historian
1974 Lewis Hanke, American Historians and the World Today: Responsibilities and Opportunities
1975 Gordon Wright, History as a Moral Science
1976 Richard B. Morris, “We the People of the United States”: The Bicentennial of a People’s Revolution
1977 Charles Gibson, Conquest, Capitulation, and Indian Treaties
1978 William J. Bouwsma, The Renaissance and the Drama of Western History
1979 John Hope Franklin, Mirror for Americans: A Century of Reconstruction History
1980s
1980 David H. Pinkney, American Historians on the European Past
1981 Bernard Bailyn, The Challenge of Modern Historiography
1982 Gordon A. Craig, The Historian and the Study of International Relations
1983 Philip D. Curtin, Depth, Span, and Relevance
1984 Arthur S. Link, The American Historical Association, 1884–1984: Retrospect and Prospect
1985 William H. McNeill, Mythistory, or Truth, Myth, History, and Historians
1986 Carl N. Degler, In Pursuit of an American History
1987 Natalie Z. Davis, History’s Two Bodies
1988 Akira Iriye, The Internationalization of History
1989 Louis R. Harlan, The Future of the American Historical Association
1990s
1990 David Herlihy, Family
1991 William E. Leuchtenburg, The Historian and the Public Realm
1992 Frederic E. Wakeman Jr., Voyages
1993 Louise A. Tilly, Connections
1994 Thomas C. Holt, Marking: Race, Race-making, and the Writing of History
1995 John H. Coatsworth, Welfare
1996 Caroline Walker Bynum, Wonder
1997 Joyce Appleby, The Power of History
1998 Joseph C. Miller, History and Africa/Africa and History
1999 Robert Darnton, An Early Information Society: News and the Media in Nineteenth-Century Paris
2000s
2000 Eric Foner, American Freedom in Global Age
2001 William Roger Louis, The Dissolution of the British Empire in the Era of Vietnam
2002 Lynn Hunt, The World We Have Gained: The Future of the French Revolution
2003 James M. McPherson, No Peace without Victory, 1861–1865
2004 Jonathan Spence, Cliffhanger Days: A Chinese Family in the Seventeenth Century
2005 James J. Sheehan, The Problem of Sovereignty in European History
2006 Linda K. Kerber, The Stateless as the Citizen’s Other
2007 Barbara Weinstein, Developing Inequality
2008 Gabrielle M. Spiegel, The Task of the Historian
2009 Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, An American Album, 1857
2010s
2010 Barbara D. Metcalf, Islam and Power in Colonial India: The Making and Unmaking of a Muslim Princess
2011 Anthony Grafton, The Republic of Letters in the American Colonies: Francis Daniel Pastorius Makes a Notebook
2012 William Cronon, Storytelling
2013 Kenneth Pomeranz, Histories for a Less National Age
2014 Jan Goldstein, Toward an Empirical History of Moral Thinking: The Case of Racial Theory in Mid-Nineteenth-Century France
2015 Vicki L. Ruiz, Class Acts: Latina Feminist Traditions, 1900–30
2016 Patrick Manning, Inequality: Historical and Disciplinary Approaches
2017 Tyler Stovall, White Freedom and the Lady of Liberty
2018 Mary Beth Norton, History on the Diagonal
2019 John R. McNeill, Peak Document and the Future of Historical Research
2020s
2020 Mary Lindemann, Slow History
2021 Jacqueline Jones, Historians and Their Publics, Then and Now
2022 James H. Sweet, Slave Trading as a Corporate Criminal Conspiracy, from the Calabar Massacre to BLM, 1767–2022
2023 Edward W. Muir, Conversations with the Dead