Colby's

Outlines of General History

TH

By FRANK MOORE COLBY, M.A., Formerly Professor of Econonics, New York University.

$1.50

HE New York Evening Post said of this book : "It is a compact, well-considered, and wellwritten book. Starting out with a recognition of three main periods-ancient, 'to 476 A.D.; mediaeval, from 476 to 1453; and modern, from 1453 forwardit allots a little less than two-fifths of its space to the first, one-fifth to the second, and a little more than two-fifths to the third. The chapters are short, averaging about eight pages in length. Each paragraph discusses a separate topic, and heavy leaded type is used to advantage by not being used too much. At the end of every chapter the author has placed a succinct list of subjects for review. . . . His style is clear and not dry, he employs dates very judiciously, and his general method is characterized by a good mixture of narrative and explanation. The book is profusely illustrated, and the cuts maintain a fair standard of excellence. There is no superfluous lumber about it whatever."

The History Teacher's Magazine

Managing Editor, ALBERT E. MCKINLEY, PH.D.
ASSOCIATE EDITORS

PROF. ARTHUR C. HOWLAND, University of Pennsylvania.
PROF. FRED MORROW FLING, University of Nebraska.
PROF. NORMAN M. TRENHOLME, University of Missouri.
PROF. HENRY L. CANNON, Leland Stanford, Jr., University.
DEPARTMENTAL EDITORS

History and Civics in Secondary Schools:

ARTHUR M. WOLFSON, Ph.D., DeWitt Clinton High School, New York.

DANIEL C. KNOWLTON, Ph.D., Barringer High School, Newark, N. J.

WILLIAM FAIRLEY, Ph.D., Commercial High School,

Brooklyn, N. Y.

C. B. NEWTON, Lawrenceville School, New Jersey. ALBERT H. SANFORD, State Normal School, La Cross, Wis. Current History:

JOHN HAYNES, Ph.D., Dorchester High School, Boston. Reports from the Historical Field:

WALTER H. CUSHING, Secretary New England History Teachers' Association, South Framingham, Mass. History in the Grades:

ARMAND J. GERSON, Ph.D., Robert Morris Public School, Philadelphia.

SARAH A. DYNES, State Normal School, Trenton, N. J. LIDA LEE TALL, Supervisor of Grammar Grades, Baltimore, Md.

CORRESPONDING EDITORS.
HENRY JOHNSON, Teachers' College, Columbia Univ., N. Y.
MABEL HILL, Normal School, Lowell, Mass.

H. W. EDWARDS, High School, Oakland, Cal.
WALTER L. FLEMING, Louisiana State Univ., Baton Rouge.
MARY SHANNON SMITH, Meredith College, Raleigh, N. C.

MARY LOUISE CHILDS, High School, Evanston, Ill.

E. BRUCE FORREST, London, England.

JAMES F. WILLARD, University of Colorado, Boulder, Col.

Man's character, as well as the actions of man, is determined, to a great extent, by the spirit of the age. All literature has been a product of the Zeitgeist. Historical literature has been no exception to this subtle and somewhat unconscious influence. In the ages of simple faith we have a Herodotus accepting as true whatever he is told, and incorporating it into his history; in a more critical age we have a Thucydides. During the period of the Reconstruction of Germany, when Mommsen wrote his great history of Rome, we find the idea of monarchy apotheosized and all the world is asked to make a golden calf of the great exemplar of monarchy-Julius Cæsar-and bow down and worship. When the movement of the thirties in England toward democracy was at its climax, we have a Freeman proclaiming that in Anglo-Saxon England the king was an elective monarch and coloring all of his work by the democratic elements of the age. The age, even more than the personality of the author, stamps the character of our historical scholarships. This is one thesis in my present paper; another is to show that history is a growth.

Great events and great movements do not spring like Minerva from the brow of Jove at once into being. The American Revolution did not begin with the battle of Lexington, but the seeds had to be planted centuries before the ripened grain could be harvested. This is also true of historical writing. Various phases and feelings regarding history had to be passed through and experienced before there could be produced such works as Burckhardt's "Renaissance" or Lamprecht's "History of Germany."

The old idea that history is a record of man's past is now relegated to the limbo of out-worn ideas. The new idea is that history is life. It is dynamic, not static. It has to do with all of the activities of life. Says Frederic Harrison: "Human nature is unlike inorganic nature in this, that its varieties are greater and that it shows continual change. The earth rolls 'round the sun in the same orbit now as in infinite ages past; but man moves forward in a variable line of progress. Age after age develops into new phases. It is a study of life, of growth, of variety. One generation shows one faculty of human nature in a striking degree; the next exhibits a different power. All, it is true, leave their mark upon all succeeding generations, and civilization flows on like a vast river, gathering up the waters of its tributary streams. Hence it is that civilization, being not a fixed or lifeless thing, cannot be studied as a fixed or lifeless subject."

In our childhood we were taught "the drum and trumpet" method of history. All our text-books were filled with accounts of battles, and we believed that to be all that was worth while in history. Professor Robinson, of Columbia, gives us a recent definition of history. "History," he says, "in the broadest sense of the word, is all that we know about

$1.00 a year 15 cents a copy

everything that man has ever done or thought, or hoped or felt." If this be taken as an exact definition, then history, like "charity, covers a multitude of sins."

Before the industrial revolution in England in the latter part of the eighteenth century, Freeman's postulate that "history is past politics" held good so far as the writing of history was concerned. With this revolution, however, man devoted himself to the study of industrial conditions, and there came into existence the study of economics-the science of the production and distribution of wealth. result of this change in man's thought was the growth of a school of historians who based their study of history upon what they styled the economic interpretation of history. The only motive power to them was that which had to do with the economic life of man. As a result such works as Buckle's "History of Civilization" and Karl Marx's "Das Kapital" were published. Although the conclusions of the authors of these works have not been accepted in their entirety, yet they have influenced profoundly all of our modern ideas regarding the subject.

In the past the economic motives, as has been shown, were disregarded; the political or religious were given the chief place. To-day our view of history embraces all phases of human existence-the political, religious, economic, social and intellectual. Around each of these phases is found to cluster some institution. Around the political there is the government or state; around the religious, the church or whatever form the religious life entered upon; around the economic, the industries with which man gained the livelihood and all forms of industrial life; around the social, the family and the various institutions of society, and around the intellectual, the school or whatever means was taken to advance the cultural life. This view of history has not only changed all of the leading works of history, but has even brought about widely different treatment in our school textbooks. The works which formerly dealt with wars or rumors of war, with dynastic changes and politics, now treat of the various phases which constitute the life of a people. That history concerns itself with man's whole existence is well brought out in the view point which is taken to-day regarding the Reformation. Formerly it was thought that its only cause or chief cause was religious. To-day we know that all the phases were represented as causes. The intellectual is seen in the influence of the Renaissance in widening man's mental horizon, the political in the attitude of the princes of Germany and throughout Europe; the economic in the various peasant revolts which preceded or followed in the wake of the Reformation.

A recent work entitled "Social Reform and the Reformation," shows that a condition of affairs existed in the sixteenth century in Germany similar to the present day in this country. Germany was overrun by monopolies which con

trolled the buying and selling price of all commodities. Let me quote the description of a great merchant prince of that time:

66

'He had the reputation of being a Christian, yet he often oppressed the common man. He would buy up at good bargains all the ash-wood, corn and wine and keep them in storage till a great demand arose for them, and thus create a demand for the article and sell at his own price. No merchant worth less than 100,000 florins could compete with him."

Such a description as the following might cause one to imagine he was reading an attack in a yellow journal of the day upon a modern octopus of business:

66

The great companies have monopolized all things and are not to be borne any longer. All sorts of merchandizesilver, copper, steel, iron, linen, sugar, spices, corn, cattle, wine, meat, tallow and leather have fallen into their hands. Through their money power they have become so strong that no merchant worth less than 10,000 florins is able to compete with them. They raise prices arbitrarily when it is to their advantage, and as a result their incomes are as great as those of princes. They are a harm to our land.” This tendency to show the economic influence upon history is well brought out in two recent works-one, "The American Nation," a compilation of twenty-six volumes by twenty-four different authors, under the editorship of Professor A. B. Hart, of Harvard; and the other, the "Political History of England," in twelve volumes. Both Both of these works suffer from the irregularities and lack of continuity of works of compilation, and yet they more fully meet the needs of modern historical scholarship than any other works upon the history of the two great Anglo-Saxon peoples.

The former-the American Nation-although the various volumes are necessarily unequal in scholarship and literary character, is an example of the modern tendency in historical writing to embody all of the phases of a people's life. The editor says in his preface that the work" is not intended to be simply a political or constitutional history; it must include the social life of the people, their religion, their literature and their schools. It must include their economic life, occupations, labor systems and organizations of capital. It must include their wars, and their diplomacy, the relations of community with community, and of the nation with other nations." To a great extent the editor has carried out the vast aim he has set for himself; he has not permitted the social and economic to be neglected for the heroic or political.

It has been claimed by European historians that Americans in their writing of history, have not given due credit to the influences of Europe in molding the character of our life. This was undoubtedly true of our historians in the past. To-day we deny the allegation. The day has passed when a Bancroft will write a work of history from an entirely partisan point of view. The English attitude toward the American Revolution, for example, is seen in its true light. Our historians, through their vast labors and through the influence of their associations, are examining the immense store-house of European archives and are endeavoring to portray conditions and influences in Europe, as well as at home, which in any way have influenced the events or character of our history. The month of December, 1909, witnessed the twenty-fifth anniversary of the organization of the American Historical Association, and America owes a debt to its vast labors that it can never fully repay. To it we owe the great

effort which has been made to collect all sources-foreign and domestic-bearing upon our history. The foreign archives have been delved into, and the material has been published in such a way that it is readily accessible to the most amateurish historiographer. Everything is being done that the most careful scholar would desire.

Macaulay said that "history begins in novel and ends in essay," and that "history is a compound of poetry and philosophy." The new scientific history demands, on the other hand, a careful study of documents. Says Morse Stephens, the eminent historian of the French Revolution:

"The nineteenth century witnessed a remarkable development of new views in the classification of writers of history, and the beginning of the twentieth century has set a different standard for the work of historians from that previously established. It is now recognized that the aim of the scientific and conscientious historian should be to discover and to state simply and truly what has happened. In his researches he must be indefatigable; in his judgments he must be guided by the laws of evidence; he is expected to examine and distinguish carefully between the different sorts of material open to him; he is pledged to keep in subordination his personal, political and patriotic prejudices and to give to the world the truth as he find it; it is his duty to be objective rather than subjective, and to forswear the temptation of winning a reputation as a brilliant writer in order to have the credit of impressing the actual sequences and meaning of events upon the minds of his reader. This new conception of the historian's aims has entirely changed the attitude of the writer and the teacher and the scholar of history, but it has not yet penetrated into the consciousness of the intelligent majority of the reading public."

This new view of history has been deeply influenced by the spread of the scientific method during the latter part of the nineteenth century. The historian of this school is a scientist, and the library and the archives and apparatus are his laboratory. The documents of the ages he uses as a chemist. does his solutions, critically examining and clarifying the records left him by his predecessors until he arrives at the residue of truth and makes his final analysis and summary. What the modern historian loses in breadth of view, or beauty of style, is gained in scientific accuracy and truth of

statement.

Another school of historians has recently arisen. This may be called the socio-psychic school. In the past, the historian's main attention was devoted to heroes and great men. Carlyle's "Heroes and Hero Worship," or his "French Revolution," is the ideal work of that stamp of historiography. Our new school is not so much interested in the influence of the individual, as in that of the mass. The ideas of this school find their best expression in the brochure of Professor Lamprecht's "What is History?" He says: "History is primarily a socio-psychological science. In the conflict between the old and the new tendencies in historical investigation, the main question has to do with socialpsychic, as contrasted with individual psychic factors; or, to speak somewhat generally, the understanding, on the one hand, of conditions; on the other of heroes, as the motive powers in the course of history."

As a result of this new tendency in the writing of history, we have what is called Kulturgeschichte, or histories of culture, or, as a critic has better described this school of historians, writers of Seelengeschichte. These writers endeavor to make an analysis and interpret the social-psychic conditions of the time under study. Burckhardt, in his “History