The Pitt Professorship of American History and Institutions was established on 5 February 1944 from a sum of £44,000 received from the Syndics of the Cambridge University Press in 1943 and augmented by a further £5,000 in 1946. The title of the chair was changed to the Pitt Professorship of American History and Institutions in 1951.
The professorship is unusual in that tenure is for a period of one year only.