THE Pioneer Histories are intended to provide
broad surveys of the great migrations of European
peoples--for purposes of trade, conquest and settle-
ment--into the non-European continents. They aim
at describing a racial expansion which has created the
complex world of to-day, so nationalistic in its instincts,
so internationalized in its relationships.

International affairs now claim the attention of every
intelligent citizen, and problems of world-wide extent
affect the security and livelihood of us all. He who
would grasp their meaning and form sound judgements
must look into the past for the foundations of the
present, and, abandoning a local for a universal per-
spective, must take for his study the history of a world
invaded by European ideas. It was less so in the days
before the Great War. Then the emphasis was upon
Europe itself: upon such questions as that of France's
eastern frontier inherited from Richelieu and Louis
XIV, the militarism of Germany derived from
Frederick the Great, and the Balkan entanglement
which originated with the medieval migrations of
Slavonic peoples and with the Turkish conquests of
the fourteenth century. Now the prospect is wider, for
these ancient domestic difficulties in modern form
cannot properly be estimated except by correlation
with the problems of a Europeanised outer world.

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