European Background Of American History | Page 6

As editor of the series I must at least express my debt to the publishers, who have warmly adopted the idea that truth and popular interest are inseparable; to the authors, with whom I have discussed so often the problems of their own volumes and of the series in general; especially to the members of the committees of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Virginia Historical Society, Texas Historical Society, and Wisconsin State Historical Society, whose generous interest and suggestions in the meetings that I have held with them were of such assistance in the laying out of the work; to the public, who how have the opportunity of acting as judges of this performance and whose good-will alone can prove that the series justifies itself.
ALBERT BUSHNELL HART.

EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION This first volume of the series supplies a needed link between the history of Europe and the history of early America; for whether it came through a Spanish, French, English, Dutch, or Swedish medium, or through the later immigrants from Germany, from Italy, and from the Slavic countries, the American conception of society and of government was originally derived from the European. Hence the importance at the outset of knowing what that civilization was at the time of colonization. Professor Cheyney (chapters i. and ii.) fitly begins with an account of mediaeval commerce, especially between Europe and Asia, and the effect of the interposition of the Turks into the Mediterranean, and how, by their disturbance of the established course of Asiatic trade, they turned men's minds towards other routes to Asia by sea. Thence he proceeds to show (chapter iii.) how the Italians in navigation and in map-making exhibited the same pre-eminence as in commerce and the arts, and why Italy furnished so many of the explorers of the western seas in the period of discovery. It is an easy transition in chapter iv. to the dramatic story of the efforts of the Portuguese to reach India round Africa. The next step is to describe in some detail (chapters v. and vi.) the system of government and of commerce which existed in Spain, France, and Holland in the sixteenth century; and the book will surprise the reader in its account of the effective and far-reaching administration of the Spanish kingdom, the mother of so many later colonies. This discussion is very closely connected with the account of Spanish institutions in the New World as described by Bourne in his Spain in America (volume III. of the series), and we find the same terms, such as "audiencia," "corregidor," and "Council of the Indies" reappearing in colonial history. A much-neglected subject in American history is the development of great commercial companies, which, in the hands of the English, planted their first permanent colonies. To this subject Professor Cheyney devotes two illuminating chapters (vii. and viii.), in which he prints a list of more than sixty such companies chartered by various nations, and then selects as typical the English Virginia Company, the Dutch West India Company, and the French Company of New France, which he analyzes and compares with one another. It is significant that not one of these companies was Spanish, for that country retained in its own hands complete control both of its colonies and of their commerce.
Since English colonization was almost wholly Protestant and added a new centre of Protestant influence, Professor Cheyney has, in two chapters (ix. and x.), given some account of the Reformation and of the religious wars of the sixteenth century. He brings out not only the differences in doctrine but in spirit, and shows how, by the Thirty Years' War, Germany was excluded from the possibility of establishing American colonies, a lack which that country has found it impossible to repair in our day.
The mother-country for the American nation was in greater part England; even Scotland and Ireland contributed their numbers and their characteristics only in the third and fourth generations of the colonies. A considerable part of this volume, therefore (chapters xi. to xvi.), is given up to a description of the conditions of England at the time of the departure of the first colonists. Everybody knows, and nobody knows clearly, the religious questions in England from Elizabeth to James II. Here will be found a distinct and vivid account of the struggle between churchmen, Catholics, Puritans, and Independents for influence on the Church of England or for supremacy in the state. Why did the Catholics in general remain loyal? Why were the Puritans punished? Why were the Independents at odds with everybody else? Why did not Presbyterianism take root in England? These are all questions of great moment, and their adjustment by Professor Cheyney prepares the way for the account of the Pilgrims who founded Plymouth colony in Tyler's England in America (volume IV. of the