The American Nation: A History — Volume 1: European Background of American History, 1300-1600

The limits of Portuguese discovery and dominion were soon reached; and as the fifteenth century advanced, Spain emerged not only as one of the great powers of Europe but as the...

The priority of Portugal and Spain in distant adventure did not secure them from the competition of the other nations of Europe, whose awakening activity, ambition, and enterpri...

The multitude of Englishmen other than Catholics, who, at the opening of the seventeenth century, were dissatisfied with the church of England as by law established, may be grou...

An exactly typical chartered commercial company, which combined all the characteristics of such companies, of course did not exist. The countries with which they expected to tra...

Next below the county as a political subdivision of England came the hundred, or wapentake, as it was called in the northern shires. One of the oldest political units of the cou...

No general bibliography of the whole field of this volume exists, although two comprehensive publications (both described below) have special bibliographic sections: The Cambrid...

To set forth the conditions in Europe which favored the work of discovering America and of exploring, colonizing, and establishing human institutions there, is the subject and t...

America's political and social institutions are unquestionably founded upon those of England, and these will be described in their proper place in this volume. But the instituti...

In the fifteenth century Eastern goods regularly reached the West by one of three general routes through Asia. Each of these had, of course, its ramifications and divergences; t...

The great period of explorations, of which the discovery of America was a part, lay between the years 1485 and 1520, between the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope by Diaz and t...

The revolt of the Netherlands, which created a new and vigorous European state in the sixteenth century, and a great commercial and colonizing world-power in the seventeenth, wa...

The powers of the king were, therefore, very real, even if the philosophic contentions of James and other theorists be disregarded; but they were powers restricted in every dire...

England passed through the crisis of the Reformation without a civil war, yet no country of Europe found greater difficulty in coming to a religious equilibrium after that chang...

The ordinary Englishman in the seventeenth century had much more to do with local than with national government. Only a few score men served the king as ministers, councillors,...

That a new history of the United States is needed, extending from the discovery down to the present time, hardly needs statement. No such comprehensive work by a competent write...

Although in the fifteenth century Italy lost the commercial leadership which she had so long held, she did not cease to be the teacher of the other countries of Europe. In those...

In analyzing the forces which affected the colonization of America, the depth of the impression made upon Europe by the Protestant Reformation can hardly be overestimated. Altho...

However extensive the duties of the officers whose functions are described above, the real men-of-all-work in the counties at this time were the justices of the peace. The law r...

The conception of the sphericity of the earth was really a matter of mental training. In the fifteenth century those who had gained this knowledge were fewer than in modern time...

seventy-eight, ranging from the "preservation of spawn and frie of fish" to those "touching bulls from Rome." The infrequent and short- lived parliaments of James I. added thirt...

out of those matters of local concern in the county, the hundred, and rural parish which were not performed by immediate officials or commissioners of the central government. It...

An earlier chapter of this work has been devoted to the political institutions of Spain, France, and the Netherlands, and each had its share of influence on American history; bu...

The powers and duties of the justices of the peace in quarter-sessions and separately were so considerable and varied as to tax the ability of an Elizabethan or Jacobean text-bo...