Publications of the Mississippi Historical Society, Volume 01 (of 14), 1898Mississippi Historical Society
History
Publications of the Mississippi Historical Society, Volume 01 (of 14), 1898
Mississippi Historical Society
Mississippi -- History
Goldwin Smith, in his Lecture on History, says there can be no
philosophy of history until we realize the unity of the human race and
that history must be studied as a whole. Twenty years ago, at the Johns
Hopkins University, I began to teach Local History, as representative
of Universal History. I began with New England Village Communities,
with Plymouth Plantations, Salem and the Massachusetts Bay Towns,
those little republics which seemed to me the very protoplasm of State
life. The survival, continuity or revival of old Germanic forms of
village settlement, with common fields and town commons, impressed
my imagination and interested my students. They carried this kind of
study into this State of Maryland and original papers by Maryland boys
were published upon such subjects as Parishes, Manors, and other local
institutions. These lines of inquiry were extended down the Atlantic
seaboard to Virginia and the Carolinas. Gradually the field of interest
has been widened from towns, plantations, parishes, and counties until
now the constitutional, economic and educational history of entire
States is in review or contemplation.
While I still believe in Local History and in limited subjects of
student research, I now recognize more fully than I used to do, the
importance of General History, especially for college students and
college graduates in the early part of their course. After all, the
great fact in History, as well as in Geography, is that the world is
round. You must recognize all human experience on this globe as parts
of one great whole, just as you recognize that the continents and
outlying islands are but related parts of one vast geographical system.
In every properly arranged course of school and college instruction in
the domain of History, this doctrine of unity ought to be taken for
granted. It is like the doctrine of divine unity in theology or in
nature, like the sun in our heavens. It gives light and rationality to
any and every course of study.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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