The reader's guide to the Encyclopaedia Britannica : A handbook containing…

HISTORY, INTRODUCTORY AND GENERAL When you turn to the new Britannica to study history, you naturally expect to learn a great deal that will be new to you. But you can anticipate something more and better than that. You will find a great deal that is new to _everyone_, even to those who have been reading history for years. For the contributors to the work, in making a completely fresh survey of the whole field of human knowledge, were helping one another to obtain new light upon the history of even the earliest periods. As all the articles were completed before a single volume was printed, there was such an opportunity for comparison and revision as has never before existed. When research upon one subject had disclosed new evidence that was of value in relation to another subject, the contributors and editors could co-operate as fully as if they had all been assembled in a great international congress. And the result of this collaboration is that the publication of the new Britannica does more, at one stroke, to advance historical knowledge, to solve historical doubts, and to correct historical mistakes than is done by isolated historians in the course of a generation. [Sidenote: Authority] With this idea of _combined_ effort clearly before you, consider for a moment the accumulated individual authority of such individual specialists as those who deal with history in the Britannica. There are, to name only a few, the Germans Eduard Meyer and Schiemann of Berlin, Hashagen of Bonn, von Pastor of Innsbruck, Pauli of Göttingen, Keutgen of Hamburg, and Count Lützow; Frenchmen like Mgr. Duchesne, Luchaire, Valois, Anchel, Halphen, Babelon and Bémont; the Italians Villari, Barnabei and Balzani; the Canadians Doughty, Grant, Dionne and Wrong; among Americans, J. H. Robinson, W. A. Dunning, H. L. Osgood, C. H. Hayes, G. W. Botsford, and J. T. Shotwell of Columbia; President Emeritus Charles W. Eliot, and Drs. Edward Channing, F. J. Turner and Charles Gross of Harvard; Drs. A. D. Morse, R. B. Richardson and Preserved Smith of Amherst; Dr. T. F. Collier of Williams; Professors William Graham Sumner, G. Burton Adams and J. C. Schwab of Yale; Prof. Grant Showerman of Wisconsin; Prof. William MacDonald of Brown; Profs. Fleming and Scroggs of Louisiana; Dr. McMaster of Pennsylvania; Prof. I. J. Cox of Cincinnati; the late Alexander Johnston of Princeton; Prof. W. Roy Smith of Bryn Mawr; Henry Cabot Lodge, Carl Schurz and James Ford Rhodes; and—to mention only a few English names—S. R. Gardiner, Edward Freeman, Thomas Hodgkin, James Bryce, James Gairdner, J. D. Bury, C. W. C. Oman, A. F. Pollard, J. H. Round, H. W. C. Davis, Osmund Airy, G. W. Prothero, John Morley, Reginald Lane Poole, J. Holland Rose, F. J. Haverfield, W. Alison Phillips, Sir Donald Mackenzie Wallace, R. Nisbet Bain, W. Warde Fowler, J. L. Myres, J. S. Reid, W. J. Brodribb and H. F. Pelham. So much for the quality of the historical matter in the Britannica. The quantity is equally remarkable. _If the history in the Britannica was printed in the usual volumes on heavy paper, containing 100,000 words to a volume, it would fill about 70 such volumes, or, say, four good-sized shelves in an ordinary “unit” bookcase._ [Sidenote: Method of Treatment] Every country and every event from the earliest syllable of recorded time receives its proper treatment. Under such circumstances it is obvious that in the limits of this Guide it would not be possible to give outlines of courses of historical readings for all nations and periods. Such readings in history alone would more than fill this whole Guide. But the information is all in the Britannica, and what has been said above will give the reader some notion of the authority of the articles written by natives of nearly every civilized country in the world, and some idea of the scope of treatment. The character of the subject matter of history and the method of treatment in the Britannica combine to make minute outlines less necessary for historical study than for the pursuit of a course in almost any other subject. The Britannica, the student will quickly see, contains in each instance a “key” article on the history of each nation—either as a separate article, like ENGLISH HISTORY or ROMAN HISTORY or as a historical section of the article on the country—for instance, in the article GREECE there is a “sub-article,” so to say, on history (Vol. 12, pp. 440–470), and in the article UNITED STATES a sub-article on American history (Vol. 27, pp. 663–735). The student of any country’s history should read _first_ such an article or sub-article, so that he will get a big outline view of the subject, and then use it as a basis or starting point for further reading, looking up in the Index volume the important topics mentioned in the main article. These will be: (1) Articles on the history of parts of the country he is studying—states, provinces, counties, kingdoms, duchies, cities and towns. (2) Biographies of rulers, statesmen, soldiers, reformers, etc. (3) Articles on wars and battles, each under its proper heading. (4) Articles on movements and changes, sometimes of national, sometimes of international importance, the Renaissance, political parties, economic, political and religious revolutions, the Crusades, etc. (5) Articles on churches, sects and denominations of historical importance in the country under consideration. But although it is impossible to give in this Guide complete courses of reading for the history of all countries, it is possible and desirable to give it in cases where it would be most useful to the greatest number of readers. The following chapter is an outline course of study in the _History of the United States_, which is given in some detail, because it has a peculiar interest to Americans. Next is given an outline of a course of reading in Canadian and then in English History, then in French History, and then in the History of the countries of the Far East, India, China and Japan. These will show the reader how fully and authoritatively the history of countries, whether near or distant, is given in the Britannica; and if he wishes to pursue his studies into the record of other countries, it is certain that with these for an example, and with the aid of the Index, he will have no trouble in so doing.