Page:American Historical Review vol. 6.djvu/544

 534 Revieivs of Books apart from any practical application of it, the author breaks down. He adopts Roscher's fourfold classification of colonies, but spoils its mean- ing by making the mode of acquisition, not the prevailing occupation, the distinguishing characteristic. Thus Roscher's Eroberungskolonien appear in his first class as " those created or acquired by military force." Such a class includes several kinds of colonies which need to be kept dis- tinct, and does not distinguish the peculiar and interesting type for which Roscher designed it, the type in which the settlers gain a return not from economic production but from political ascendancy. The author does not, however, make a fruitful use of this or any other classification ; he applies one or another without discrimination when he applies one at all. Mr. Morris accepts anything that has been written on colonization, and finds a place for it somewhere. Statements that meant something in their original context become meaningless or inconsistent when they ap- pear in the setting which he gives them. On page ii we are told, in reference to the relation of mother country and dependency, that an agri- cultural colony "occasions little cash outlay; returns in general large profits. . . . These facts are well established by the evidence of history. ' ' On page 26 we are cautioned to remember our Leroy-Beaulieu, " It must never be forgotten, ' It is exceedingly rare that a colony furnishes a net profit to the mother country ; in infancy it cannot, in maturity it will not.' " When one general statement is not contradicted by another it is generally disproved by facts given in the body of the book. Of the many examples of weak generalization that could be cited I select only one, the statement that throughout history " the colony the most distant from the mother country and the most unlike in climatic and agricultural conditions has always proved the most successful, prosperous and remun- erative " (I. 22). A study of the preliminary chapter will convince any reader who is at all conversant with the subject of colonization that he cannot expect to find the book of value except for the bare facts that it' comprises. His interest then will lie in knowing the sources from which the facts are drawn ; if he is denied original arrangement of the material and con- clusions from it, he will hope that at least the facts are sound, and that the book will guide him to the best sources of information. At first view one is impressed by the wealth of footnotes and by the bibliography, which covers more than thirty pages of fine print. But the longer one studies these the more disappointed does one become. A large part of the bibliography is simple padding. Colonization is a broad subject, but not so broad as universal history, and the bibliography covers pretty nearly that. Even though sections of it are distinguished as containing books not specifically devoted to colonization but "gen- eral works which are useful" there seems no excuse for including in these sections books like Caesar's Commentaries or Froissart's Chronicles. We are gravely warned that Ingulph of Croyland (that distinguished au- thority on colonization ! ) is now regarded as spurious. And the books which really have some bearing on colonization seem to have been sub-