CANADA

The Canadian Historical Review for June presents a brief statement regarding the annual meeting of the Canadian Historical Association, held at Ottawa on May 17 and 18, a valuable article by Mr. William Smith, of the Public Archives of Canada, on Canada and Constitutional Development in New South Wales, and a paper by Professor W. R. Livingston, of the University of Iowa, on the First Responsible Party Government in British North America (Nova Scotia). A long letter of Louis Riel and Ambroise Lépine to Lieutenant Governor Morris of Manitoba (1873) is presented in translation with elaborate notes by A. H. de Trémaudan.

Canadian Public Opinion on the American Civil War, by Helen G. Macdonald, is no. 273 of the Columbia University Studies in History, Economics, and Public Law.

An important study of The Unreformed Senate of Canada, by Robert A. Murray (pp. xvi, 284), prepared under the advice of Professor E. S. Corwin at Princeton, is published in Toronto by the Oxford University Press.

Vol. II. of the Papers and Records of the Welland County Historical Society contains an authoritative study of the Fenian Raid of 1866 by Brig.-Gen. E. A. Cruikshank, followed by seven or eight papers containing personal reminiscences of the raid.

AMERICA, SOUTH OF THE UNITED STATES

The Papers of the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology, vol. XI., no. 2, embodies the official reports on the towns of Tequizistlan, Tepechpan, Acolman, and San Juan Teotihuacan sent by Francisco de Castañeda to Philip II. and the Council of the Indies in 1580. The reports are translated and edited by Mrs. Zelia Nuttall (Cambridge, the Museum).

The Boletín del Archivo Nacional, XXIV. 1-6, lately issued, will be valued for the "Diccionario Geográfico de la Isla de Cuba" finished in manuscript in 1875 by José de J. Marquez, which constitutes the greater part of this volume, and contains many data not to be found in Pezuela.

Noteworthy articles in periodicals: Dr. G. Friederici, Die Heimat der Kokospalme und die Vorkolumbische Entdeckung Amerikas durch die Malaio-Polynesier (Erdball, I. 2); Caroline F. Ware, The Effect of the American Embargo, 1807-1809, on the New England Cotton Industry (Quarterly Journal of Economics, August); William Notz, Frederick List in America (American Economic Review, June); André Maurois, Joseph Smith, Fondateur du Mormonisme (Revue de Paris, August 1);

James D. Hill, The Burning of Columbia Reconsidered (South Atlantic Quarterly, July); James O. Knauss, The Farmers' Alliance in Florida (ibid.); Georg Karo, Walter Hines Page (Die Kriegsschuldfrage, August); A. L. Leymarie, Le Canada pendant la Jeunesse de Louis XIII. [journal of Héroard] (Nova Francia, February 24); C. S. S. Higham, The General Assembly of the Leeward Islands, II. (English Historical Review, July); M. Cadwalader Hole, Early Latin-American Press and Development of the Press of the Argentine Republic (Bulletin of the Pan American Union, April).

CONTRIBUTORS TO THIS NUMBER

Dr. Albert T. Olmstead is a professor of history and curator of the Oriental Museum in the University of Illinois.

Dr. Carl Stephenson is a professor of history in the University of Wisconsin.

Dr. Wallace Notestein is Goldwin Smith professor of English history in Cornell University.

Dr. Merle E. Curti is an assistant professor of history in Smith College.

Mr. Waldo G. Leland is a member of the staff of the Department of Historical Research of the Carnegie Institution of Washington.

Mr. Roger P. McCutcheon is a member of the department of English in Tulane University.

Mr. Carroll B. Malone is a professor of history in Tsing Hua College, Peking.

Hon. Lewis Einstein is United States envoy to Czechoslovakia.

The

American Historical Review

ON

WAR AND HISTORY 1

NE hundred and twenty years ago the National Institute of France set as a subject for a prize essay: "To examine the influence of the Crusades upon the civil liberty of the peoples of Europe, upon their civilization and upon the progress of knowledge, commerce and industry."

This marked a change in the conception of the Crusades. In the preceding century the prevailing point of view had been expressed by Voltaire: "Thus the only fruit of the Christians in their barbarous crusades was the extermination of other Christians."

2

The action of the Institute led to the writing of several essays; in particular two, which shared the prize and are well worth reading at the present day. Both of these treated briefly of the influence of the Crusades on history, a subject which has been almost entirely neglected in the more recent discussions of the results of the Crusades.

What influence upon history and historiography was exerted by this great series of wars? It was threefold. First, the Crusades broadened the subject-matter. In the centuries preceding the First Crusade historical writing had been confined to annals, chronicles, and biographies; statements of facts, accounts of prodigies or miracles, eulogies of saints or rulers. The writers were usually so concerned with strictly local interests that it is often possible to detect the name, or at least the habitat, of an anonymous author by the events which he recorded, or left unrecorded, because his outlook was so closely limited to his own monastery or its immediate neighborhood.

1 Presidential address delivered before the American Historical Association at Rochester, December 28, 1926.

2 A. H. L. Heeren, Versuch einer Entwickelung der Folgen der Kreuzzüge für Europa (Göttingen, 1808); Choiseul-Daillecourt, De l'Influence des Croisades sur l'Etat des Peuples de l'Europe (Paris, 1809).

AM. HIST. REV., VOL. XXXII.-16. (219)

Just before the First Crusade there was some broadening of outlook and interests due to the struggle over lay-investiture and of the wars of conquest by restless Normans. The latter had only a slight effect, introducing new geographical names and some interest in the new lands, the scenes of conquest. The struggle over lay-investiture led to an eager, but not very fruitful, study of history for precedents by which either papal or imperial partizans might bolster up their claims to hegemony of papacy or empire. The very barrenness of their efforts shows how little they could know of history.

The Crusades brought a great change, especially in France. As Molinier says: "It is perhaps in historiography that the results of this great movement were the most marked; up to that time, for more than a century, each section of the former kingdom of Charles the Bald had lived in isolation, thrown back upon itself as it were, confined by a narrow horizon. Now the barriers fall and Europe begins to be self-conscious; it has common interests and common enemies, and above the petty quarrels of its princes soars a higher ideal, that of the Christian community in strife with Islam." "By the contact with the Orient, the historical horizon of the Western writers was marvellously extended, the impulse was given and the time was ripe in France for the composition of universal chronicles." New countries and new peoples came within the ken of history. The abbot Guibert, in his history of the First Crusade, felt it necessary to give an account of the prophet Mohammed and the religion of Islam. Other writers describe the glory and greatness of Constantinople, the fortifications of Antioch, the characteristics and antecedents of the Greeks, or Turks, or Arabs.

The second influence of the Crusades was the popularization of history. Men were impressed with the importance of the events in which they or their neighbors were participating. Robert the Monk wrote, in the preface to his history of the First Crusade: "If we except the salutary mystery of the crucifixion, what has happened since the creation of the world that is more marvellous than this which has been done in modern times, on this expedition of our men to Jerusalem? The more studiously anyone directs his attention to this subject, the greater will be his stupefaction."

There were few parts of Western Europe which were not in some way brought into contact with one or more of the first three Crusades. The number of those who went on the First Crusade has been grossly 3 A. Molinier, Les Sources de l'Histoire de France (Paris, 1904), vol. V., pp. xciii, xcvi.