Charles Oscar Paullin

Charles Oscar Paullin (20 July 1869 – 1 September 1944) was an important naval historian, who made a significant early contribution to the administrative history of the United States Navy.

Early life and education

Raised in Greene County, Ohio, Paullin attended Antioch College from 1890 to 1893, but before his graduation transferred for his final year at Union Christian College, Merom, where he took his Bachelor of Science degree in 1893. He then taught mathematics at Kee Mar College in Hagerstown, Maryland, in 1893–94, before beginning his graduate studies at the Johns Hopkins University in 1894–1895. While employed from 1896 to 1900 at the U.S. Naval Hydrographic Office, he also earned a degree in social sciences at the Catholic University of America in 1897. From 1900 to 1904, Paullin studied at the University of Chicago, where he earned his Ph.D. in 1904 with his pioneer study on the administration of the colonial navy during the Revolution, later published as The Navy of the American Revolution: Its Administration, Its Policy, and its Achievements. While at Chicago he studied the Revolutionary period under the direction of J. Franklin Jameson.

Professional career

Following completion of his doctorate, he published a series of articles in the U.S. Naval Institute's Proceedings between 1905 and 1914 that constituted the first administrative history of the U.S. Navy. They were published posthumously as a book in 1968, twenty-four years after his death. Similarly, a series of articles on American Voyages to the Orient was published in 1971.