Michael A. Butler
Michael A. Butler (M.A., 1975) received a PhD in history from the University of Virginia and served in the U.S. Foreign Service for some 30 years. He is the author of Cautious Visionary: Cordell Hull and Trade Reform, 1933-1937 (Kent State University Press, 1998), and currently a Lecturer of History at the College of William & Mary.
What professors do you recall from the ODU Department of History M.A. program in the 1970s?
I remember some really outstanding teachers from that period. I recall taking courses with Professor Doug Greene (Tudor/Stuart history), Joseph Terrell (medieval history) and Peter Stewart (early American history). Two professors made a particularly important impact on me. One was Ralph de Bedts, a modern American historian who focused on the New Deal era. He came late to academia, after a full career in business. He was a very good historian, a superb teacher and an all-around interesting guy, a great fit for a graduate program taught in the evenings and filled with students (I was a journalist, many others were teachers or military) who were studying part time after finishing our day jobs. The second professor was, ironically, one from whom I never took a course. A long conversation with Professor Jim Sweeney, at a Saturday night History Department dinner, convinced me that I really was most interested in pursuing a career in academic history, and inspired me to move on to the doctoral program at UVa.
How did interests you developed at ODU contribute to your subsequent work in the PhD program at the University of Virginia?
My undergraduate degree was in English literature and History, and my focus (even part of the way into ODU's graduate program) was on European history. I broadened that interest into 20th Century American history while at ODU, largely through Professor de Bedts's seminar, and made that my principal focus (with Modern Europe as my secondary field) at UVa. I also developed an interest in international affairs, and thus decided to make Diplomatic History my primary field on the doctoral level. Norman Graebner, who was the dean of American diplomatic historians at that time, was teaching at UVa, and graciously agreed to direct my dissertation.
How has the study of history informed your career and interests at the U.S. Department of State?
I can't begin to count the ways! My dissertation topic was on American relations with European neutrals during the 1930s, and I ended up serving in senior-level positions in Norway and Finland, two of the countries I examined. On a broader level, the research, analytical and communications skills required of any History major were vital to my work over thirty years of diplomacy. My knowledge of history was a vital component of my analysis of the politics of the nations where I was posted. What were the most important events in their recent past, and how did these events shape domestic politics, or relations with the United States and/or neighboring nations? Did these nations understand their history in the same way that we did? Or did their interpretations of their past - correct or not, perhaps even invented - weigh heavily on their politics and relations with their neighbors? I learned that the way a nation teaches its people history reveals a lot about it. I always told younger diplomats to make a point of understanding the background behind the capital city's street names; that suggested what national leaders considered most important about their history.
What foreign languages have you studied?
At one time or another, I worked in French, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian and Norwegian. I wasn't a brilliant linguist, but I discovered I had an affinity for understanding grammar and picking up vocabulary. Here, too, my study of History helped. I learned that the fastest way to get up to speed in a new language was to read history about a subject I knew something about - say, a French or Spanish text on modern American history -- in that language. They were usually written in direct, declarative prose, and taught me vocabulary that was useful in diplomacy.
What were some of your toughest challenges abroad as a Foreign Service officer? What were some of your favorite experiences and projects?
A number of our toughest challenges became our most memorable experiences. We lived and worked in a communist regime in Romania just before the fall of the Berlin Wall, at a time when Romanian-American relations were in decline. At our very next posting, Buenos Aires, we dealt both with hyperinflation and a military uprising that we could watch from the roof of our embassy. (It's really strange hearing a news radio station's morning traffic report guiding commuters around the fighting.) I also served at senior levels in NATO allies' capitals (Oslo and Madrid) during the Balkan and second Gulf wars. Among my most vivid memories were participating on a Spanish radio roundtable on the day after the 2000 presidential election, trying to explain to a national audience what had happened (and would happen in the days to come); and representing the United States at the opening of a Norwegian emigrant museum that featured a Lutheran church carefully dissembled on the American frontier and moved to an island outside the town of Bergen.
What are you working on right now in terms of historical scholarship?
Early in my Foreign Service career, I served on the personal staff of Secretary of State George P. Shultz. I was struck by a senior colleague's comment that Shultz, as a professional economist, understood the ripple effects of diplomatic decisions in a way that his predecessors had not. That observation inspired me to write a book about Cordell Hull, our longest-serving Secretary of State, who also emphasized international economics in his foreign policy. I teach Hull's diplomacy as a case study in my William & Mary lecture course. More recently, I've been researching a book on the foreign-policy aspects of the long Hoover-Roosevelt presidential transition of 1932-1933. In my lecture courses and capstone majors' seminars at W&M, I try to integrate this research by encouraging students to recognize History as a means of revealing often-overlooked factors and the key interpersonal relationships that influence high-policy decisions. I teach both History and International Relations majors, and I strive to convince them that understanding history is key to understanding the world around us.
