A man and a boy scrutinize an open book.
Robert C. Binkley and his son Binks, with RCB's father Christian's Chinese-English dictionary open on the floor (1939).

Robert C. Binkley was an American historian during the “Long Armistice” between the world wars. His ideas were influential in several areas:

  • European history: the Treaty of Versailles, and the rise of nationalism in the 19th century
  • Public history: how history should inform public life, and what this means for the writing of history
  • Preservation of records: the problem of perishable paper, and solutions based on microfilming and other cheap technologies for reproduction
  • Scholarly publishing: new possibilities based on near-print technologies
  • Library and archival practice: integration of these technologies, and the issues they created, such as copyright
  • WPA projects for white-collar workers: the Historical Records Survey and other projectes inventoried local records and indexed newspapers using unemployed clerical workers