John Mustard Merriman (June 15, 1946 – May 22, 2022) was an American historian specializing in modern French history.

[4] Merriman formed many of his political views during the volatile Vietnam years; he described himself as "virulently anti-establishment" and his favorite musicians The Rolling Stones, iconic of the counterculture of the 1960s, influenced his writing habits, "[I've] never written a thing without a record on.

[6] 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.

[4] In 2017, the American Historical Association gave Merriman the Lifetime Achievement Award for Scholarly Distinction.

[3] Author Ta-Nehisi Coates, who watched his lectures online, described his style as like a "freestyle rapper" who riffed off his material and "had this weird ability to inhabit the history.

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