The Founding of American Civilization: The Middle Colonies by Thomas JeffersonWertenbakerReview by: Leonard W. LabareeThe American Historical Review, Vol. 44, No. 3 (Apr., 1939), pp. 644-646Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1839953 .

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644 Reviews of Books

penetration of Western science and technology into China, which Professor Hughes has traced. His method has been to take the major channels through which this cultural invasion has flowed and to analyze the cumula- tive effects it has had upon the Chinese. His work pioneers in the fascinating but exceedingly difficult field of cultural change in modern China, and, be- cause of this, we should be much more concerned with its evident virtues than with its defects and unduly large number of careless factual errors. Many chapters have passages of incisive and illuminating characterizations of the men and forces which have been caught in the clash of the two civilizations.

The reviewer differs from the author regarding certain events in China's intellectual development. For instance, it does not seem probable that the Jesuits purposely gave Ricci his excellent scientific training in order that his approach to the mandarinate would be facilitated. Ricci found after many years of bitter experience in the South that the orthodox missionary approach did not work, whereas the exhibition of his learning did. Neither does it seem adequate to attribute the downfall of the Manchus to the notion that the Chinese, in the face of threat of partition by the powers, "4turned with an open mind to anything and everything from the West" and in consequence swept out the Manchus as a sort of house cleaning in preparation for Westernization. It would seem better to have entitled the final chapter "Shanghai To-day" rather than "China To-day", because it certainly is the frivolous and sycophantic Westernized young Chinese middle class of that very un-Chinese city which is described.

Finally, this work, valuable as its pioneer nature makes it, is still not a book for which the historian will find much use. It leaves unsatisfied the need for a chronological and factual account of the intellectual penetra- tion of Western ideas into China. In it we do have, however, our first well- developed picture of the changing temper of the Chinese mind towards the omnipresent and ever-pressing intellectual invasion of the West, which undoubtedly has been a most potent force in producing the phenomena of modern China.

Duke University. THOMAS E. LA FARGUE.

AMERICAN HISTORY

The Founding of American Civilization: The Middle Colonies. By THOMAS

JEFFERSON WERTENBAKER, Edwards Professor of American History, Princeton University. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. I938. Pp. xiii, 367. $3.oo.) WITH this book begins a new and important series on colonial history.

.It is a striking evidence of the originality of the author's thought and of the vitality of American historiography in general that a period already

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Wertenbaker: Founding of American Civilization 645

covered by several excellent multiple volume histories can receive a further extensive treatment so fresh and so illuminating. Professor Wertenbaker does not concern himself with the detailed narrative of colonial setdement, with political or economic institutions as such, or with the British system of colonial control. His purpose is rather to analyze and describe the transit of European culture to the English colonies of North America. In this volume, which covers New Netherland (and the later New York), New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, he writes about the English and Continental sources of the culture brought here, about the influence of the American environment, about "the mingling of racial, religious, and regional groups, the so-called melting-pot", and, to a lesser degree, about the continued intercourse of America and Europe. He deals chiefly with such topics as architecture, religion, language, agricultural economy, and arts and crafts. Later volumes on New England and the South will make this the first extensive work dealing systematically with the cultural beginnings of the American people.

Unlike some social historians, Mr. Wertenbaker has largely avoided the danger of a purely static, cross-sectional treatment. He is interested in the effect of a new environment upon the habits and practices of a people and in the influence of one culture upon another when the two are brought in contact. Consequently the story is one of evolution, and the whole treatment is essentially dynamic. Thus he tells of the long but slowly losing fight of the Dutch to preserve their language after the English conquest of New Netherland. He traces the effect of climate and the influence of English neighbors upon the rural architecture brought by the Germans from the Rhineland to Pennsylvania. And one is always kept aware that something new and essentially American was gradually forming here from the blended streams of European culture.

Three hundred and fifty pages are far too few for the adequate handling of all the subjects that might properly be included in such a treatment of the middle colonies. Rather than touch lightly on everything of importance, the book concentrates upon those few things which seem best to illustrate the major theme. Not everyone, of course, will agree with the author's selec- tions or with his emphasis. He expresses his regret that "chapters on the religious history of the Pennsylvania Germans, the artistic crafts of Phila- delphia, the Swedes on the lower Delaware, on education, superstitions and other phases of colonial life" were crowded out. Strangely, except in an excellent chapter on the conflict between the New England brand of Calvinism in East New Jersey and the Scottish Calvinism of Pennsylvania, he also omits all detailed consideration of the Scotch-Irish. Perhaps this extremely important component of the American people will be treated in a later volume. Nearly a third of the pages and almost all the many illustra- tions are devoted to architecture, an emphasis which seems disproportionate in a book on American civilization in general. Its justification perhaps is,

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646 Reviews of Books

first, that of all topics architecture best illustrates the effect of environment and cultural contacts upon European origins, and, second, that in his dis- cussion of Dutch, Flemish, and German houses and barns the author makes many new and significant contributions to American architectural history.

The middle colonies undoubtedly offer the best opportunity of any area for the sort of colonial history which Mr. Wertenbaker is now writing. When we have been given so much of value it is perhaps ungracious to ask for more. Yet a second volume on the same region dealing with topics here omitted would be most welcome, especially as in the past these colonies have received far less attention from competent social historians than have New England and Virginia. But whether or not such a volume is forthcoming, it is clear from what has already been published that this new series is a contribution to colonial history of first-rate importance.

Yale University. LEONARD W. LABAREE.

The Roots of American Civilization: A History of American Colonial Life. By CURTIS P. NErrELS, University of Wisconsin. [Crofts American History Series, Dixon Ryan Fox, General Editor.] (New York: F. S. Crofts and Company. I938. PP. Xx, 748. $4.oo.) IN this volume Professor Nettels has with ample justification added

another text on colonial history to the existing half-dozen which cover the field. His purposes are to synthesize the results of modern scholarship into a coherent account; to discuss the economic development of the colonies as a phase of the expanding capitalism of England and the rising capitalism of America; and to interpret colonial history as an integral part of the central theme of American history, the struggle between large property owners and lesser folk for the control of political and economic institutions in the interest of class advantage. Hence great stress is laid upon the emergence of social classes, their conflicts over land, currency, debts, taxes, commerce, and the repercussions these conflicts created in the political, social, and religious aspects of colonial life and in imperial affairs.

The origin of these conflicts Professor Nettels finds in one of his revisionist interpretations of colonial history-the importance of surplus capital and its need for markets (colonies), investments (land speculation and loans to planters and colonial merchants), and control of commerce (insuring freights, commissions, insurance, and interest on loans). There- fore colonies were founded, trade and navigation laws were enacted, statutes restricting some and stimulating other types of colonial industrial activity and regulating colonial currency were passed, and the French were driven from North America. But in this paradise of a planned economy discord in the form of chronic colonial indebtedness and rival capitalists in the northern colonies precipitated a conflict between metropolis and dependencies which, when after 1760 the English government decided to reserve to British

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