Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/163

 1922 SHORT NOTICES 155 merit come out with a clearness hardly yet reached by general histories even of the standard of the late Dr. Cunningham's or Sir William Ashley's. The part, for example, played by the great commercial companies of the first modern centuries in promoting both the importation of cotton goods and the exportation of undyed cloth would seem to throw much light on the repeated and general movements against company rule, although the remedies themselves in the age of mercantilism at first mostly took the shape of monopolies such as that of James I's friend Alderman Cockayne for the dyeing of cloth. The chapter on ' Processes and Inventions ' is on the whole a good popular account of a vast and intricate subject. With a view to the intended teaching of practical professions more attention might perhaps have been given to the latest progress, not only to the rise of la grande Industrie in the woollen trade. Here the very instructive chapter on the geographical distribution of the industries, as well as the closing remarks of the foregoing chapter on the wool supply, rather need bringing up to the threshold of the present time. C. B. In The Early History of the English Cotton Industry (Manchester : University Press, 1920), Mr. G. W. Daniels has written a model short monograph in economic history, to which are appended a biographical account and some unpublished letters of Samuel Crompton of great personal and local interest. In the body of the book, about 150 pages, light is thrown on the whole story of the industry before the machine age. Old Lancashire economic geography is elucidated with the aid of maps. The relations between the cotton mill and its precursor the silk-throwing mill are made clearer than ever before. The rather dusty controversies as to priority of inventions and the relative deserts of inventors are given a new freshness and interest. The much-maligned industrial revolution is set in a dry light ; and the still prevalent superstition that before it cotton-workers were either ' independent producers ' or cheerful persons who went singing from agriculture to the loom, is dealt with as it deserves. Professor Unwiri supplies a short but pregnant introduction. J. H. C. A book such as Professor H. M. Vinacke has given us in his Modern Constitutional Development in China (Princeton : University Press, 1920) is very welcome. In dealing with present-day politics, having little or no historical background, it is very difficult for an author to avoid partisan- ship. Writing on the subject treated in this work, he will have a natural tendency to incline, either to reprobation of so abrupt a departure from China's past history and ancient civilization, of the policy of the clean slate ; or to an enthusiastic welcome for the earliest of the recent batch of adherents to the ranks of republics. Professor Vinacke is, of course, a pronounced republican ; but he is not blind to the inadaptability of the Chinese nation to representative government. In this he shares the opinions of other American advisers to the Chinese government, such as Dr. Frank Goodnow (pp. 183 ff.) and Professor W. W. Willoughby (p. 260) ; and it is well known that a British adviser, Dr. G. E. Morrison, was sceptical of the sincere republicanism of the Chinese people in general. This