The application of the more critical methods to the field of American history has resulted in works worthy to rank with the best European products and has quite reconstructed the earlier notions of American national develop ment. The period of colonization has been ex amined by Professor Osgood a student of Pro fessor Burgess and Ranke, and his monumental seven volume work on the American Colonies constitutes the highest point to which exact American scholarship has attained, and is worthy to rank with the writings of Gardiner and Aulard. The relation of the colonies to British foreign has been recast by Pro fessor Osgood's disciple, George Louis Beer. Professor Alvord, in a scholarly and original work, has for the first time shown the full significance of the problems of British im perial administration west of the Alleghenies for the preliminaries of the American Revolu tion, and has finally rescued the study of the beginnings of that conflict from the octopus of Boston Harbor. Fisher, Flick, Siebert, Ty ler and Van Tyne have at last dealt fairly with the Loyalists. The study'of the period of the formation and adoption of the American con stitution has finally been secularized through the detailed and critical research of Prof. Max Farrand and the brilliant essay of Pro fessor Beard. Professor McMaster has sur veyed the first 70 years of national develop ment with not only scholarship, hut a broader and more synthetic approach than has been attained in any other comprehensive American historical work. Much more super ficial and narrow in its scope, but equally scholarly is Henry Adams' detailed account of American foreign policy in the administra tions of Jefferson and Madison. Professor Turner and his students have applied some thing of the scholarship of Osgood and the originality and the breadth of interest of Mc Master to a study of the colonization of the West, and their work has in many ways super seded the vigorous and interesting survey by Roosevelt. Professor Turner's °school* is the best illustration in America of the combination of exact scholarship with the synthetic tendency in modern historiography. The period of the Civil War and Reconstruction has been dealt with in a calm and temperate fashion by Mr. James Ford Rhodes in a detailed work which for objectivity and scholarship fur nishes the only rival to that of Professor Os good. The same period and the subsequent generation has been covered in an exhaustive manner by Professor Dunning and his students. Dr. E. P. Oberholtzer, a disciple of Professor McMaster, has made a promising beginning in the attempt to present a detailed analysis of the history of the people of the United States since the Civil War, interpreted in the original and comprehensive spirit of his master. The whole period of national history has been sketched in a careful and dispassionate manner by James Schouler, and Professor Channing is engaged on an ambitious attempt to trace the history of the United States from the period of colonization to the present in a work designed to synthesize the results of the critical studies of the present generation of historical scholars, and which, if completed, bids fair to become the great national history in the better sense of that term. The character of the best American historical scholarship in the first generation of those who had imbibed the newer critical methods is to be discovered in the co-operative 'Narrative and Critical History of America,' edited by Justin Winsor. A much more com prehensive and representative repertoire of American scholarship of a slightly more recent type is to be found in the 'American Nation,' edited by Professor Albert Bushnell Hart. In addition to investigation of the history of their own country, American historians have made important contributions to many other periods and phases of history. Professor Breasted has earned a place among the leaders of modern Egyptology and Rogers, Hilprecht, Jastrow, Olmstead and Goodspeed have done creditable work on the history of Babylonia and Assyria. Professor Ferguson is the world's foremost authority on Hellenistic Athens, Westermann has dealt in an original fashion with the prov inces of the Roman imperial system, and Bots ford ranged over the whole period of classical antiquity with both insight and the most exact ing scholarship. In the field of medieval his
tory Professor Burr has mastered the Carol ingian period and is easily the leading author ity in Europe or America on the history of toleration; Larson has investigated the early medieval history of England and Thompson has dealt with the growth of the French mon archy under Louis VI; Munro had devoted himself particularly to a study of the Crusades; the part played by the Normans in the history of medieval Europe has been investigated by Haskins with a thoroughness not equaled by any other American or European scholar; few if any English scholars can rival G. B. Adams' of, the constitutional history of mediaeval Henderson has summarized the results of modern scholarship dealing with medieval Germany; Emerton has contributed scholarly and detailed manuals covering the entire medieval period; Lynn Thorndike has recently presented an original synthesis of the best modern scholarship dealing with the Middle Ages, and H. O. Taylor has furnished the best survey of the intellectual history of ri this period. The original and now generally accepted thesis that the °commercial revolu tion* rather than the °Renaissance* or the *Reformation* marked the dawn of the mod ern world has furnished the centre of orienta tion for the stimulating works of Abbott, Shep herd, E. G. Bourne, Merriman and Cheyney. The French Revolution and the Napoleonic pe riod have profited by the works of H. M. Stephens, Fling, Sloane, H. E. Bourne and Johnston. Thayer has written in an interest ing fashion on the history of Italy from the end of the Napoleonic regime to the comple tion of unification; Henderson, Schevill, Ford and Fay have treated the history of modern Germany; Lybyer has been the only American historian to devote special attention to the mod ern history of southeastern Europe; and C. M. Andrews and Hazen have contributed standard political narratives on the history of modern Europe. In Prof. John Bassett Moore the United States has the most productive and authoritative student of the history of interna tional law and diplomacy, and D. J. Hill, J. W. Foster, A. C. Coolidge, C. R. Fish and E. S. Corwin have been some of the other American writers who have contributed to this field. Church history has attracted a large number of American students. H. C. Lea's monographs have entitled him to rank with European scholars like Harnack and Duchesne. G. P. Fisher and Philip Schaff sketched the whole history of the Christian Church. Mc Giffert won an international reputation by his edition of Eusebius and has since made im portant contributions to the history of the early Church. The rise of the mediaeval Church has received the attention of Ayer and Flick. The period of the "Reformation* has been covered by the monographs of Preserved Smith, Emer ton, Faulkner, Jackson and Jacobs. W. Walker has provided a survey of Church history in both Europe and America. David Schaff, S. M. Jackson and W. W. Rockwell have contributed to this field by valuable editorial labors, and Professor Rockwell has been especially active in keeping Americans in touch with the latest developments in European scholarship in this field. The primary attention of European his torians to ancient and mediaeval history—a lingering effect of humanism and romanticism —has left its impress upon American scholar ship and has led to a neglect of modern his tory. The younger generation of American historians, however, by devoting their energies primarily to modern history, have tended to make a salutary break with tradition and are promising to equal in volume and quality the contributions that their former teachers made to the study of the °Middle Historical biography in the United States has tended to take the form of a great number of brief biographies, such as the «American Statesmen Series» and the «Riverside Biograph ical Series,» rather than being limited to a few notable products. Some fine biographies have appeared, however, such as the voluminous documentary biography of Lincoln by Nicolay and Hay, the excellent biographies of Buchanan and Webster by G. T. Curtis, and the more recent ones of Douglas by Allen Johnson, of Andrew Jackson by J. S. Bassett, and of Stephen Girard by J. B. McMaster.