Читать книгу The Colonization of North America: 1492-1783 - Herbert Eugene Bolton - Страница 3

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This book represents an attempt to bring into one account the story of European expansion in North America down to 1783. Text-books written in this country as a rule treat the colonization of the New World as the history, almost solely, of the thirteen English colonies which formed the nucleus of the United States. The authors have essayed to write a book from a different point of view. It has been prepared in response to a clear demand for a text written from the standpoint of North America as a whole, and giving a more adequate treatment of the colonies of nations other than England and of the English colonies other than the thirteen which revolted. This demand is the inevitable result of the growing importance of our American neighbors and of our rapidly growing interest in the affairs of the whole continent, past as well as present.

The book is divided into three main parts: I. The Founding of the Colonies; II. Expansion and International Conflict; III. The Revolt of the English Colonies. The keynote is expansion. The spread of civilization in America has been presented against a broad European background. Not only colonial beginnings but colonial growth has been traced. This method accounts for the development of all geographical sections, and shows the relation of each section to the history of the continent as a whole. When thus presented the early history of Massachusetts, of Georgia, of Arkansas, of Illinois, or of California is no longer merely local history, but is an integral part of the general story. The colonies of the different nations are treated, in so far as practicable, in the chronological order of their development, the desire being to give a correct view of the time sequence in the development of the different regions.

A principal aim of the authors has been to make the book comprehensive. The activities of the Dutch and Swedes on the Atlantic mainland are given a large setting in both Europe and the New World. The account of French expansion in North America has been extended beyond the conventional presentation to embrace the West Indies, the founding of Louisiana, and the advance of the French pioneers across the Mississippi and up its tributaries, and up the Saskatchewan to the Rocky Mountains. The story of English expansion embraces not only the thirteen colonies which revolted, but also the Bermudas, the West Indies, Hudson Bay, Canada, and the Floridas. The treatment of the new British possessions between 1763 and 1783 aims to present in one view the story of the expansion of the whole English frontier, from Florida to Hudson Bay.

The Spanish colonies of North America, in particular, have been accorded a more adequate treatment than is usual in textbooks. To writers of United States history the Spaniards have appeared to be mere explorers. Students of American history in a larger sense, however, know that Spain transplanted Spanish civilization and founded vast and populous colonies, represented to-day by some twenty republics and many millions of people. The notion, so widely current in this country, that Spain "failed" as a colonizer, arises from a faulty method. In treating Spain's part in the New World it has been customary, after recounting the discovery of America, to proceed at once to territory now within the United States—Florida, New Mexico, Texas—forgetting that these regions were to Spain only northern outposts, and omitting the wonderful story of Spanish achievement farther south. This book being a history of the colonization of North America, Spain's great colonies in South America, now powerful nations, fall beyond our geographical limits.

When approached from a new viewpoint many familiar things appear in a new light. Hitherto, for example, the inter-colonial wars in North America have been regarded mainly as a struggle between France and England, and as confined chiefly to the Canadian border. By following the larger story of European expansion, however, it becomes plain that there was an Anglo-Spanish and a Franco-Spanish, as well as a Franco-English struggle for the continent, not to mention the ambitions and efforts of Dutch, Swedes, Russians, and Danes. In nearly all the general inter-colonial wars the Caribbean area and the Carolina-Florida frontier were scenes of frequent conflicts quite as important as those waged on the Canadian border. Between France and Spain a border contest endured for more than a century and extended all the way from the Lesser Antilles to the Platte River. The Anglo-French contest ended in 1763; but the Anglo-Spanish conflict, which began in the sixteenth century, endured to the end of the eighteenth and, in the hands of the American offspring of Spain and England, to the middle of the nineteenth century.

Some teachers may for special reasons wish to treat the development of the colonies of a single nation as a continuous movement, or in longer periods, less frequently broken by happenings in the colonies of other nations. This can be done conveniently by grouping the chapters in the desired order. A continuous account of Spanish expansion is given in Chapters II, III, XIII, XVI, and XXI. A connected story of French America is told in Chapters IV, XIV, XV, XX. By omitting these and Chapter IX a continuous narrative of English expansion is obtained.

August, 1920.