Early European History

Early European History [with
accents]

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Title: EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY
Author: HUTTON WEBSTER
Release Date: April, 2005 [EBook #7960] [This file was first posted on
June 5, 2003]

Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO Latin-1
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, EARLY
EUROPEAN HISTORY ***

Anne Soulard, Charles Franks, Robert Fite, and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team.

EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY
BY
HUTTON WEBSTER, PH.D.

"There is no part of history so generally useful as that which relates to
the progress of the human mind, the gradual improvement of reason,
the successive advances of science, the vicissitudes of learning and
ignorance, which are the light and darkness of thinking beings, the
extinction and resuscitation of arts, and the revolutions of the
intellectual world." --SAMUEL JOHNSON, Rasselas.

PREFACE
This book aims to furnish a concise and connected account of human
progress during ancient, medieval, and early modern times. It should
meet the requirements of those high schools and preparatory schools
where ancient history, as a separate discipline, is being supplanted by a
more extended course introductory to the study of recent times and
contemporary problems. Such a course was first outlined by the
Regents of the University of the State of New York in their _Syllabus
for Secondary Schools_, issued in 1910.
Since the appearance of the Regents' Syllabus the Committee of Five of
the American Historical Association has made its Report (1911),
suggesting a rearrangement of the curriculum which would permit a
year's work in English and Continental history. Still more recently the

Committee on Social Studies of the Commission on the Reorganization
of Secondary Education, in its Report (1916) to the National Education
Association has definitely recommended the division of European
history into two parts, of which the first should include ancient and
Oriental civilization, English and Continental history to approximately
the end of the seventeenth century, and the period of American
exploration.
The first twelve chapters of the present work are based upon the
author's _Ancient History_, published four years ago. In spite of many
omissions, it has been possible to follow without essential modification
the plan of the earlier volume. A number of new maps and illustrations
have been added to these chapters.
The selection of collateral reading, always a difficult problem in the
secondary school, is doubly difficult when so much ground must be
covered in a single course. The author ventures, therefore, to call
attention to his Readings in Ancient History. Its purpose, in the words
of the preface, is "to provide immature pupils with a variety of
extended, unified, and interesting extracts on matters which a textbook
treats with necessary, though none the less deplorable, condensation."
A companion volume, entitled _Readings in Medieval and Modern
History_, will be published shortly. References to both books are
inserted in footnotes.
At the end of what has been a long and engrossing task, it becomes a
pleasant duty to acknowledge the help which has been received from
teachers in school and college. Various chapters, either in manuscript
or in the proofs, have been read by Professor James M. Leake of Bryn
Mawr College; Professor J. C. Hildt of Smith College; Very Rev.
Patrick J. Healy, Professor of Church History in the Catholic University
of America; Professor E. F. Humphrey of Trinity College; Dr. James
Sullivan, Director of the Division of Archives and History, State Dept.
of Education of New York; Constantine E. McGuire, Assistant
Secretary General, International High Commission, Washington; Miss
Margaret E. McGill, of the Newton (Mass.) High School; and Miss
Mabel Chesley, of the Erasmus Hall High School, Brooklyn. The
author would also express appreciation of the labors of the
cartographers, artists, and printers, to whose accuracy and skill every
page of the book bears witness.

HUTTON WEBSTER
LINCOLN, NEBRASKA, February, 1917

[Illustration: ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL GEMS. 1 Steatite from
Crete, two lions with forefeet on a