James Bryce

James Bryce, Viscount Bryce (1838–1922), was a British historian, jurist and Liberal statesman. Born in Belfast and educated at Glasgow and Oxford, he made his name with The Holy Roman Empire (1864) and became Regius Professor of Civil Law at Oxford. His study The American Commonwealth (1888) became a standard foreign analysis of the United States. He sat in Parliament for decades, served as Chief Secretary for Ireland, and was British ambassador in Washington from 1907 to 1913. A keen traveler and mountaineer, he climbed Mount Ararat in 1876 and wrote Impressions of South Africa after a journey there.