tween Europeans and non-Europeans, how they have encircled the vocabulary of many a civilized folk in Asia and Africa, and how by such contact with native tongues they have undergone profound modifications in their own structure, are interesting subjects of inquiry.

Though tending steadily to a dissolution of the close bond of relationship in which they have long stood, religion and education have continued to be regarded as co-laborers in the task of widening the area of European culture. The usefulness of missionaries, furthermore, not only for the uplift of the native mind and soul, but also for the promotion of political and economic objects, has been fully appreciated by many a European nation in its enterprises oversea, and the knowledge acted upon. Whatever may have been the case in the earlier stages of expansion, certainly in later years the Protestant states of Europe have vied with their Catholic fellows, directly or indirectly, in lending support to the men of piety who have striven to convert the heathen and the infidel to Christianity, and thus to impart a knowledge of the civilization with which it is associated, as well as to inculcate a sense of loyalty to the particular type of it which happened to be predominant in a given European country. How the several plans of action followed by church and government, with or without actual cooperation or antagonism between them and how the activities of private individuals and organizations have operated, and the relative amount of success they have attained, are essential questions to be answered by the study of European achievement in other lands.

Of equal importance is the theme of European education among peoples of alien stock. Here, to be sure, many of the characteristics visible in the case of religious propaganda are quite perceptible; but the field of observation should be broadened so as to comprise intellectual interests of a distinctly secular cast. An account of them should deal, not alone with education in the ordinary sense, but also with the introduction of European learning in general, whatever the especial nature of its manifestation. And in this connection, as with the other phases of the contact between the European and the non

European already mentioned, it must be remembered that contact has resulted in education for both. The form in which it has been imparted by the latter may not seem precisely to fit the technical definition of the word "education," but it has been very real nevertheless. To what extent, for example, the Indian, the negro and the Asiatic have taught the European, who came to reside in their lands as master or neighbor, is a valuable, albeit an unwritten, page of history.

WILLIAM R. SHEPHERD.

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.

THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION RECONSIDERED'

WHE

THEN the representatives of George V recently paid homage to the tomb of the great disloyalist and rebel of a former century, George Washington, the minds of many Americans reverted, with a sense of bewilderment, to the times when the third George was guiding the destinies of the British people. It required the shock of American entrance into the Great War to cause Americans as a people to seek a new orientation for the revolutionary struggle and to view the conflict from a standpoint of scientific detachment. In the first years of the republic the tendency of popular histories and text-books was to dwell almost exclusively upon the spectacular developments of the struggle and to dramatize the heroism of the patriots. In the next period, extending perhaps to the decade of the Civil War, the endeavor of the writers was to exploit the American Revolution for the purpose of sharpening the keen edge of popular antipathy for Great Britain. Popular accounts of the Revolution took on a new color with the great economic transformation following the Civil War and the rise of modern capitalism. Without neglecting the capricious tyrannies that were still represented as marking the conduct of the British government there was a tendency to soften or omit those incidents which would have caused the American Revolution to resemble other popular uprisings against special privilege in government. In 1902 one writer, bored to protest by the current accounts, shrewdly charged the writers of history with trying "to describe a revolution in which all scholarly, refined, and conservative persons might have unhesitatingly taken part; . . . ." But such revolutions, he added, "have never been known to happen." 2

1 A paper prepared for presentation at the meeting of the American Historical Association in Cleveland, December 27, 1918.

2 Fisher, S. G., The True History of the American Revolution (Philadelphia, 1902), p. 9.

But already a reaction was setting in against the exploitation of the American Revolution for nationalistic or propagandist purposes. At the same time that publicists were questioning the foundations and practices of our modern economic system, a band of devoted research students, working independently of each other in large part, were employing the ruthless methods of modern scholarship in an effort to make possible a reappraisement of the great conflict. Such scholars as Andrews, Beer, Becker, Chamberlain, Cross, Alvord, Fisher, Lincoln and Moses Coit Tyler rediscovered the Revolution through the examination of a great mass of source material; and within human limitations they sought to assess the evidence thus disclosed without regard to previously accepted opinions. It is not too much to say that they and their co-laborers have ushered in a new era in our understanding of the origins of the American Revolution.

Most of our text-books and popular treatises, however, have continued to perpetuate the obscurantism of the earlier time,' and the students in our graduate schools seem to have been the only persons to be admitted within the inner portals where is to be found the shrine of Truth. The coming age promises to be an era in which an international comity will be attained that has never before been approached in the history of the world. This imposes upon those writers who interpret history for the masses the grave responsibility of being as scrupulously fair to other nations as to the United States in dealing with the events of American history; and it is a fact not to be denied that no episode requires re-examination more than the American Revolution. Furthermore, we are living in an epoch of popular revolutions; and every day's reading convinces one that, if it was ever proper to regard the American Revolution as a phenomenon operating in accordance with laws of its own and unlike popular uprisings generally, that time has receded into the dim past.

'Altschul, Charles, The American Revolution in Our School Text-Books: An Attempt to Trace the Influence of Early School Education on the Feeling towards England in the United States (New York, 1917), is of interest in this connection.

The term "American Revolution" is itself not without difficulties and its use has led to misconception and confusion. In letter after letter John Adams tried to teach a headstrong generation some degree of exactness in the use of an expression whose meaning they had knowledge of only by report. history of the first war of the United States is a very different thing from a history of the American Revolution," he wrote in 1815. “... The revolution was in the minds of the people, and in the union of the colonies, both of which were accomplished before hostilities commenced. This revolution and union were gradually forming from the year 1760 to 1776.” And to another correspondent he wrote: "But what do we mean by the American Revolution? Do we mean the American war? The Revolution was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people."

This distinction is not only valid in point of fact but it offers a helpful avenue of approach for a consideration of the facts of the nation's birth. If the period from 1760 to 1776 is not viewed merely as the prelude to the American Revolution, the military struggle may frankly be regarded for what it actually was, namely a war for independence, an armed attempt to impose the views of the revolutionists upon the British government and a large section of the colonial population at whatever cost to freedom of opinion or the sanctity of life and property. The major emphasis is thus placed upon the clashing of economic interests and the interplay of mutual prejudices, opposing ideals and personal antagonisms-whether in England or America—which made inevitable in 1776 what was unthinkable in 1760.

Without considering here the remote and latent causes of the revolt, a discussion of the American Revolution may profitably begin with the effort of the British government to reorganize the British empire after the Peace of Paris of 1763. Of this empire the thirteen colonies along the Atlantic seaboard

1 For these and other similar views, see Adams, J., Works (Boston, 1850-1856), vol. v, p. 492; vol. x, pp. 180, 182, 197, 282–283.