The Mainland Colonies in the Eighteenth Century
T HE first impetus to the modern study of the history of the mainland colonies in the eighteenth century came from the influence of J. W. Burgess at Columbia University. It led to the investigations of H. L. Osgood and G. L. Beer. The only contemporary work comparable with theirs was E. B. Greene's study of The Provincial Governor in the English Colonies of North America, published in the Harvard Historical Series in 1898; for the Johns Hopkins men, under the leadership of H. B. Adams, were engaged upon an earlier period. The work of the Columbia school, like that of Johns Hopkins, had the characteristics of that of the first generation of scientific American historians. It had all the merits of German scholarship and was firmly based upon the records; it was concerned primarily with the history of political institutions; and it was European in outlook. By the researches of its founders and by those of their pupils and followers the main lines of the history of imperial policy in North America and of the constitutional development of the mainland colonies down to the Revolution were firmly drawn. The work took a generation, or rather more, to do. Osgood was appointed at Columbia in 1890; he died in 1918; his four volumes on The American Colonies in the Eighteenth Century, which followed the three earlier volumes on the seventeenth century, were posthumously published in 1924. By the time his work was finished it had been buttressed by a whole series of monographic studies that were the work of others; and a good deal has since been added, though it has
-41-
