British Colonial Policy: 1754 1765 (Classic Reprint)
(Excerpt from British Colonial Policy: 1754 1765
The com...)
Excerpt from British Colonial Policy: 1754 1765
The comparatively short period of time embraced within the dates of 1754 and 1765 was filled with events of momen tous importance in the history of the British Empire. These few years witnessed both a vast extension of the Empire, and also the organized beginnings of a movement tendn toward its disruption. In so far as any war can decide so fundamental an event apart from the underlying condi tions predetermining its issue, the success of British arms in America decided that the civilization of North America was to be anglo-saxon, not Latin in character. In India a signal, though not a final, check was given to French ambi tions, and a firm foundation was laid for future British politi cal Supremacy. In West Africa also a policy of territorial acquisition was definitely adopted. It is not the purpose of this essay to describe these well-known events. The prospects of future imperial expansion, disclosed by the victories in India and in Africa, will be disregarded, and attention will be paid solely to the Empire in America.
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The Old Colonial System, 1660-1754, Vol. 1 of 2: Part I: The Establishment of the System, 1660-1688 (Classic Reprint)
(Excerpt from The Old Colonial System, 1660-1754, Vol. 1 o...)
Excerpt from The Old Colonial System, 1660-1754, Vol. 1 of 2: Part I: The Establishment of the System, 1660-1688
IT is the purpose of this work as a whole to describe the establishment, development, and operation of the English colonial system from the days of its formal creation down to the period leading to its disintegration. The era of inchoate beginnings has been treated in the. Writer's Origins of the British Colonial System, I 5 78 and the transitional years preceding the troublous days of the American Revolution have been discussed in some detail in the writer's British Colo nial Policy, I754 - I765. Thus this work is. Not only unhampered by problems of origins, but it is to a great extent liberated from those controversial questions which ultimately were decided, if not solved, by the ordeal of battle.
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The Commercial Policy of England Toward the American Colonies (Classic Reprint)
(Excerpt from The Commercial Policy of England Toward the ...)
Excerpt from The Commercial Policy of England Toward the American Colonies
In the light Of the modern ideas of laissez-faire and free trade this policy is condemned; but to the men of those days it was as true as is the theory of evolution or Of di minishing returns to us. It was a policy of unconscious ignorance, not of conscious malice. History teaches that ignorance disguised in the garments of truth has, quite as Often as malice, caused the adoption of erroneous policies.
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This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
Cromwell's Policy in Its Economic Aspects (Classic Reprint)
(Excerpt from Cromwell's Policy in Its Economic Aspects
A...)
Excerpt from Cromwell's Policy in Its Economic Aspects
At one time, toward the end of Elizabeth's reign, after the destruction of the Armada, it seemed as if England would profit most by the declining power of Spain and of Portugal. The English nation was a vast storehouse of energy and was eager for the contest. But the accession of the Stuarts, with the ensuing conflict between jun-divine Anglicanism and par liamentary Puritanism, changed the aspect of affairs. The nation's energy was consumed in the home conflict, and the supremacy in foreign Commerce, lost by Spain and Portugal, was won for the time by the United Provinces. The north ern provinces of the Netherlands, which had revolted against Spain's religious despotism, became during the course of two generations the economic masters of Europe. The economic history of the United Provinces during the first half of the seventeenth century is merely the record of unchecked progress in the acquisition of wealth and colonies, such as can be found in the history of England during the decades following the Napoleonic Era.
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This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
The Old Colonial System, and the Establishment of the System, Vol. 2 of 2: 1660-1754, 1660-1688 (Classic Reprint)
(Excerpt from The Old Colonial System, and the Establishme...)
Excerpt from The Old Colonial System, and the Establishment of the System, Vol. 2 of 2: 1660-1754, 1660-1688
Of the social unrest Economic development of Virginia Illegal trade Maryland Quarrels with the customs officials Their significance.
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The English-Speaking Peoples; Their Future Relations and Joint International Obligations
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The Origins of the British Colonial System 1578-1660
(From the preface: 'This volume is the first of a series w...)
From the preface: 'This volume is the first of a series whose purpose is to describe and explain the origins, establishment, and development of the British Colonial System up to the outbreak of the disagreements directly culminating in the American Revolution. The term " colonial system " has no precise meaning, and is vaguely used in varying connotations by different writers. As employed in this work, it is synonymous with that complex system of regulations by means of which, though to a different extent, the economic structures of both metropolis and colony were moulded to conform to the prevailing ideal of a self-sufficient empire. In order to understand this system, it will be necessary to analyze the underlying principles of English colonial policy, especially in so far as they found expression in the laws of trade and navigation. Although they were the kernel, these laws, however, did not constitute the entire system. It will be essential in addition to study the English fiscal system, to the extent that it concerned the colonies; and also the colonial legislation in regard to slavery, customs duties, currency, bankruptcy, and similar matters that vitally affected the economic relations of the dependencies to the mother country. The economic life of the colonies, especially their commercial and manufacturing activities, will also have to be investigated, in order to be able to gauge the effects of the system controlling it. Furthermore, as the large body of English legislation regarding the colonies required the appointment of officials for its execution, it will be requisite to describe this administrative machinery, more particularly with the specific object of ascertaining to what extent the laws were enforced. Finally, as the economic and political systems were inseparably connected, in order to elucidate the one, it will be necessary to discuss its relations to the other. From the foregoing, it is plain that the attention will be mainly fixed on the economic features of the old British Empire. But the work is intended to be both something more and also something less than an economic history of this political organization. Some phases of this development will be ignored as not pertinent, and other aspects will be brought into greater relief than would be proper were this purely an account of economic evolution."
George Louis Beer was a well-known American historian of the "Imperial school".
Background
George Beer was born on July 26, 1872, on Staten Island, the second son of Sophia (Walter) and of Julius Beer, a member of the Jewish community of Hamburg who had come to the United States in early life and had established himself in business as an importer of tobacco.
Education
George received his early education, which was of the best, in New York schools. At the age of sixteen he entered Columbia College, where he came in contact with the group of scholars - Burgess, Osgood, Seligman, and others - who were building the reputation of the Columbia Faculty of Political Science. After graduation in 1892, he returned to Columbia for further study. His master's essay, The Commercial Policy of England toward the American Colonies (1893), which was published in the Columbia Studies in History, Economics and Public Law, shows that the youthful author was already possessed of mature judgment and was marked by the same historical-mindedness and freedom from distorting patriotic bias that are evident in his later historical writings.
Career
For ten years after graduation Beer was engaged in the tobacco business, in which he was very successful, but historical scholarship never lost its attraction for him, though as a lecturer at Columbia, 1893-97, he showed no great interest in teaching. In order to devote himself to the more exhaustive study of the subject which he had sketched in his master's essay he retired from business in 1903. Accompanied by his wife he went to London, where he remained for more than a year, spending most of his time in examining unpublished documents in the Public Record Office.
Beer's reputation as an historian rests upon three books that he wrote as instalments of a projected work on the economic aspects of British colonial policy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The first of these to appear was British Colonial Policy, 1754-65 (1907). Based largely upon official documents, it did full justice to the British official point of view during a critical period in the history of the empire and served as a much-needed corrective of interpretations of British policy inspired by American patriotism.
In The Origins of the British Colonial System, 1578-1660 (1908), Beer placed the early English colonial movement in its historical setting and described the beginnings of the imperial economic system. Following further research in England, he brought out in two volumes The Old Colonial System, Part I (1912), the most thorough and authoritative work that has been writen on English colonial policy and practise with respect to imperial trade and defense during the period 1660-88. Beer had accumulated a great mass of material for the volumes that he had planned on the history of the colonial system from 1689 to 1754, but the outbreak of the World War turned him to enterprises of a different nature.
During the war Beer devoted much time and energy to the promotion of sympathetic understanding between the United States and the British Empire. As American correspondent of the Round Table he made regular contributions to that journal from 1915 to 1918, in which he surveyed for its readers in England and the British dominions the development of American public opinion concerning the war; and during the same years articles from his pen on the British Empire, American foreign policy, and other subjects relating to the war appeared in American periodicals. In 1917 he published the most widely read of all his books, The English-Speaking Peoples, in which he urged the formation of an intimate, cooperative alliance between the United States and the British Empire as the best hope for a better world order in the future.
In the autumn of 1917 he became a member of the group of investigators, popularly known as "The Inquiry, " formed by Col. House at President Wilson's request, to study questions that were likely to come before the peace conference. As colonial expert Beer prepared a number of reports, the more important of which were published after his death in African Questions at the Paris Peace Conference (1923). He believed that the guiding principle of colonial administration should be the welfare of the native peoples, and in a report on Mesopotamia, which he completed in January 1918, occurs what is probably the earliest use of the term "mandate" in its present meaning.
He was chief of the colonial division of the American delegation at the Paris Peace Conference and sat on a number of its important commissions. As a member of the Mandates Commission he had much to do with drafting the mandates for the administration of the former German colonies, and there is no doubt that his views counted heavily in the colonial settlement for which the Treaty provided. The extent and accuracy of his knowledge on many subjects that came before the conference and the sanity of his judgment made a deep impression, and his views were often sought on other than colonial questions. When the secretariat of the League of Nations was organized Beer was appointed head of the Mandates Division, but the failure of the United States to join the League prevented him from entering upon the duties of this office. Until almost the end of his life he cherished the hope of returning to his historical labors, but the progress of a fatal disease, probably hastened by the strain of his work at Paris, made this impossible.
(Excerpt from The Old Colonial System, 1660-1754, Vol. 1 o...)
Membership
Goerge Beer was a member of President Wilson's American Commission of Inquiry (1917); the Paris Peace Conference (1918-1919); the Mandates Commission of the League of Nations.
Connections
George Beer was married to Edith C. Hellman of New York, a niece of Prof. Seligman.