the American Colonies seeks to remind today's generation of
Americans of its earliest heritage as a contribution to an
understanding of its contemporary purpose. The link between
past and present is as certain as it is at times indiscernible, for as
Michael Kammen has so aptly observed, "the historian is the
memory of civilization. A civilization without memory ceases to
be civilized. A civilization without history ceases to have identity.
Without identity there is no purpose; without purpose civiliza-
tion will wither." ^*

Colonial Pennsylvania has attracted many able scholars and
has been the subject of shelf upon shelf of books. Yet Professor
Illick is the first historian of recent times to provide a general
survey of the richly textured history of a province that prefigured
in significant ways the diverse characteristics of the new nation of
which Pennsylvania would be a prominent member.

That historians previously have shied away from such an
undertaking is understandable. To compress the complexities
and contradictions of colonial Pennsylvania into a single short
volume is a challenging assignment. Although William Penn
conceived of Pennsylvania as a "holy experiment," the colony
soon displayed a conspicuously secular society. Although its
founder envisaged a haven for Quakers, the province was an
early version of the famous American "melting pot." Although
the property of a "true and absolute" proprietor, Pennsylvania
successfully pitted provincial autonomy against proprietary priv-
ilege. It became, too, the cultural center of British North
America. Colonial Pennsylvania was, in fine, a pluralistic society,
characterized by religious and ethnic variety, economic diversity,
comparative political maturity, and cultural accomplishment.

The transformation of a proprietary colony into a New World
commonwealth is engagingly recounted by Professor Illick with
succinctness, clarity, and interpretative originality. Eschewing
the topical approach by which colonial historians characteristi-
cally attempt to render their complex subjects manageable, Illick
casts his narrative in a chronological mold. More novel yet, he

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