John M. Merriman

John Mustard Merriman (June 15, 1946 – May 22, 2022) was an American historian specializing in modern French history. He was a Charles Seymour Professor of History at Yale University.

Early life and education Merriman was born on June 15, 1946, in Battle Creek, Michigan. His mother, Sally Mustard, was a portrait and landscape painter. He did not know his father, Robert Merriman, who was divorced from his mother when John was 2. He attended the University of Michigan, where he obtained his B.A. in History in 1968 and Ph.D. in 1972, under Charles Tilly, and gained a life-long passion for French culture and history.

In 2009, he received the Medal of Meritorious Service to Polish Education for his work advancing a multi-university inquiry called Recovering Forgotten History in Poland.

He was popular with students and received two undergraduate teaching awards from Yale, the Harwood F. Byrnes-Richard B. Sewall Prize for Teaching Excellence in 2000, and the Phi Beta Kappa Devane Medal for excellence in teaching and scholarship in 2019.

In 1987, he and his wife bought a historic medieval house in Balazuc in southern France. He lived part of each year with his family in the village and wrote the only English language history of it, The Stones of Balazuc: A French Village in Time (2002). Merriman's love for Balazuc was well known. His former mentee historian David A. Bell said, “The minute the Yale semester was over, he headed [to Balazuc], sat around in cafes and talked to people into the small hours.”

Merriman died from complications of bladder cancer and multiple myeloma in New Haven, Connecticut on May 22, 2022, at the age of 75.

Published works Books

available in French as

Edited books

and

Lectures (Video) HIST 276: France Since 1871 (Fall 2007), by John Merriman at Open Yale Courses. (Video) HIST 202: European Civilization, 1648–1945 (Fall 2008), by John Merriman at Open Yale Courses.