Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

Religious prejudice, or the fear of touching in public schools anything bearing on religion should not be allowed to make us neglect the Hebrew people. True or false, right or wrong, religion is one of the prime forces with mankind. And here we have another Semitic race developing as a matter of fact, regardless of any theories as to its origin, the most sublime monotheism and the purest code of morals which the world had yet seen. Why this should have been so is as mysterious as was the flowering of Greece in the Periclean age. But there is the fact, and every young student should be made familiar with it.

Suggestions for a Lesson on Egypt.

What follows is simply an illustration of one method sometimes used. The whole class is directed to read the account of Egypt. The work is then subdivided for more minute study. Depending on the size of the class, it is divided into topics, one of which is assigned for special preparation to a student or a group of students. At the recitation period ten minutes are given in which each student or group is to write out what has been learned on the particular topic. It will probably not be possible in a large class for each pupil to read the work thus written. But one or two treatments of each topic may be read, and a different set of pupils called on at some other time. Thus the work will be participated in by all. As each topic is read criticisms and suggestions from the class are called for; and first of all from those who have not had that special topic; then in closing, from some student who has written but not read on that particular field. If note-books are used, the teacher may guide as to what shall be written down as the summary of each topic after it is read. A variation of the foregoing scheme is to send as many pupils as possible to the board to write out their topics. Appoint to each writer one or two critics. Let one criticize the English, the spelling, the punctuation (every lesson in history may be a lesson in English); and another the facts. A sample list of such topics for a lesson on Egypt is offered.

1. The Nile Valley.

2. The people; the one Hamitic race of prominence.

3. Periods of political history; the two capitals.

4. The government.

5. Classes of society.

6. Occupations and products.

7. Arts and sciences; specially architecture and sculpture.

8. Religion; ideas of immortality.

9. Decay of moral ideals.

10. Foreign conflicts.

11. Subjugation by Persia.

With the coming into view of Media and Persia, we get our first glimpse of a conquering Indo-European people. Their struggle to get into Europe is foreshadowed and we are brought to the threshold of the Greek story.

The College Teaching of History

PROFESSOR GEORGE BURTON ADAMS, OF YALE UNIVERSITY.

There are many things which the college teacher of history may set before him to do: He may say, “the things most fundamental are the facts of history,” and devote his work to thorough drill in names and dates. He may have a keen sense of the valuable discipline of mind and faculties to be obtained in historical study and give himself to this. He may perhaps be under the influence of the reaction which has begun and seems certain to continue and believe in reviving the ancient maxim, “history is philosophy teaching by example,” seeking primarily in his teaching to enforce lessons of statecraft and political wisdom. More likely he may be imbued with the spirit of the generation just closing and be disposed to insist that the only proper method of instruction is that by which the scholar and specialist are trained. Or he may believe that the opportunity offered him in history to impart a broad and liberal culture is the one which he should least of all neglect. Any of these purposes, or more than one of them at once, are possible to the college instructor in history. His field of choice is bewilderingly wide. Is there any one of them which is more than another the proper object of college instruction?

Any satisfactory answer to this question must be sought by determining in the first place what is the proper object of the college course itself. Such a preliminary question would be absurd had we not by our educational reforms of the past fifty years gone far to put the college into a place in advanced education which does not belong to it, and in consequence to confuse all our ideas as to its natural functions. I am not finding any fault with these reforms. They were so necessary and have proved so valuable that they can never be called in question. But in bringing them about, some things were done, unnecessary and ill-advised. In consequence for one thing the duty lies upon the next generation, as one of its most important tasks, of restoring the college to its historical and to its logical position in the university. For the present purpose it suffices to say that the function of the college is general training and general preparation. It is the one department of the university which has, and which should have, no special object. Or it is more accurate to say that it can be adapted at the same time to a number of different objects to meet the needs of students whose ultimate purposes are different, and the possibility of doing this wisely and efficiently is one of the happiest results we have gained from the changes of the last generation. The work of the college is fundamental to that of all the other departments of the university, and in the normal university they should all require and build upon it. But it should also not be forgotten that the work of the college is not of necessity fundamental to any special line of advanced study. The number of students in our colleges who are not looking forward to professional or specialist work, but who are expecting to go into various lines of commercial activity, is already large and constantly increasing. They have no desire to follow out a course of study whose purpose is a technical preparation, nor is such a course well adapted for them. The demand which their presence in the college makes is for what we may call a general preparation for life, some knowledge of facts, some training of judgment and taste, sympathy with a variety of intellectual interests, such broadening and liberalizing of mind as is possible. To the instructor who teaches in the eager atmosphere of an active university such a demand may seem illegitimate, because it seems vague and weak. But this opinion is proper only to the narrow specialist who cannot see beyond the limits of his own field. The demand is perfectly legitimate; it is certain to be increasingly heard; and it is the duty of the college to meet it. It is to be remembered also that the best preparation for technical work does not omit all studies which are cultural merely, just as the best general preparation for life should embrace some training in technical lines.

With these considerations in mind let us ask to which of the two ways by which the college discharges its preparatory function, technical preparation or general preparation, the study of history is most naturally adapted, and which of the purposes already stated as those the instructor may have in mind is most likely to secure the desired end. It is not easy to specify a line of professional work to which the study of history stands in a technical relation, except that of the history teacher, whose numbers are at present so small, in proportion to the college as a whole, as to be almost negligible, and who perhaps needs above all others that point of view in regard to history which a general rather than a special training will give. Law and theology come the nearest perhaps to having a technical need of historical study, and yet it is also true of them that what they need of history is not technical but general preparation. The clergyman or lawyer may need a more permanent hold upon the facts of history than does the business man. They are to him more an end in themselves rather than chiefly a means for producing a result, as in the case of the other. But preacher and business man alike need to study the same facts in the same way each for his own purpose. It is in truth the later studies of the professional man which serve to keep alive the facts which he and his classmate in business once learned in the same class room.

The proper purpose then of the study of history in the college course is general preparation--preparation for life in general rather than for some special line of later study which builds upon it. To accomplish this purpose, and indeed every other, a certain amount of drill in names and dates is indispensable. Without it every result is insecure and all the instructor’s lessons hang in the air with no foundation to rest upon. But the teacher who makes drill in the facts his main object overlooks the almost universal experience that no matter how well a body of details may once have been learned they inevitably fade out of mind in later years unless the necessities of one’s daily occupation keep them fresh. What remains a constant possession is the general effect, the general impression once made by means of the details. The teacher who makes the general his main object, drawn from and enforced by a knowledge of the special which is for the moment clear and sound, deals with the most abiding of educational results.

The effectiveness of history as a means of mental discipline is so great that the teacher is constantly tempted to make this his main object. With one who does I have no great quarrel. I have only to say that at best it is the choice of an inferior good and that it is devoting oneself to what is already abundantly provided for in the curriculum of studies. There is so much in any college course with which discipline of the mental faculties is necessarily connected, mathematics, elementary language studies, many of the sciences, that it seems a flagrant waste of opportunities to use history for the same purpose.

Of the maxim, “history is philosophy teaching by example,” two different things are to be said. For the scholar and investigator it is a maxim full of danger, adding gratuitous perils to those which must beset his way, and it should be summarily discarded. For the teacher of history the danger is not so great, but he would be a very unusual man who could interpret the facts of history into political lessons for others without a very decided personal bias, or even succeed in disguising the influence of his private convictions upon his doctrines. It is doubtless more effective in most cases to let the facts speak for themselves, after a presentation of them which honestly endeavors to make them clear and to state them exactly as they are.

The belief that graduate and undergraduate students should be taught alike, that the best method for all is the method by which the scholar should be formed, that there should be no distinction in the study of history between general and special preparation, is in my opinion one of the most pestilent heresies accompanying the changes of recent years. It is a belief no more likely to be true because the particular change which produced it is that by which the true university has been created. There are certain studies in which I am ready to admit its truth. They are, however, those studies only in which training in the method of advance peculiar to the given subject is so necessary to an understanding of its nature that no real knowledge is possible without it, and their number is, I believe, decidedly less than is commonly asserted. Assuredly history is not one of them. To acquire a knowledge of the human past, especially if that knowledge is enriched, as it should be, with an imaginative conception of the process of the ages, is a large and worthy intellectual task for teacher and taught, indeed for the lifetime of a man. To confuse it for the great mass of college students with the effort to impart to them the method of the scholar, which is the proper technical training of the graduate school, is, I firmly hold, morally little short of a breach of trust.

This is only affirming in other terms my belief in the transcendent importance of that one of the special purposes which the teacher may set before himself which remains, the effort to make the study of history one that is directed to the broadening and liberalizing of the mind. The claim which I make for history is that of all college studies it most naturally and simply produces these results. Did instructors in physics and chemistry realize more clearly than they seem to me to do what they might accomplish of this sort, I should be disposed to admit their right to dispute this claim, but for the average of college students, as they come to us in masses, I am not now ready to allow any other exception. If history be taught with that degree of imagination without which no man should enter the teaching profession, it is not difficult to open the mind of the student to two impressions. One is of what may be called in simplest phrase the continuity of history, meaning thereby no mechanical continuity, but an organic and living unity--the continuous and cumulative progress of civilization which makes us to-day not in a poetic sense, but as a bald and literal fact, the heirs of all the ages. This needs especially to be imaginatively presented to induce an imaginative conception of it. The other is of the fact that somewhere in the past humanity has worked through crises which are essentially the same as those which now confront it. It is the especial privilege of the teacher of history to bring the mind of the student successively into contact with almost every species of political effort, of intellectual interest, and of moral struggle of which the race is capable. To the great majority of minds the optimistic inference is more natural than the pessimistic, and the conclusion almost draws itself that endeavor is not in vain, that the good result is in the end secure. If the student can be given in some degree these two things, a conception not merely intellectual, but imaginative, it may be more or less emotional, of the sweep of humanity onward, and a calm assurance of the ultimate good, I certainly believe he will confess that no step of his mental advancement has opened to him so wide a horizon or brought him to so steadying a confidence in the worth of individual effort and the final outcome of things.

I am perfectly well aware that in this I am stating the ideal. I am not foolish enough to believe that these results can be imparted to whole classes, or immediately in full perhaps to anyone, nor would I claim for every instructor the power to produce them. But though the ideal is unattainable, I do wish to say clearly three things. One is that to some students very much of these results, more probably than would at first be thought possible, can be given, and to nearly all something. Another is that history of all college studies leads to them most directly and naturally. The third is that the teacher who labors for them wisely and with proper balance of interest is laboring not merely for what is likely to be most permanent, but for the highest and best possible to him.

American History in the Secondary School

ARTHUR M. WOLFSON, PH.D., Editor.

Dignity of the Course.

American history in the secondary schools is, we feel safe in assuming, the crown of a course extending over at least three or more years. Students approach it after having devoted time and thought to an elementary course in American history--possibly even a course in English and European history--to a secondary course in some one or more phases of European history and to a course in English history. The teacher who undertakes to lead a class in American history in the secondary school should, therefore, approach this subject with higher ideals and broader purposes than he would set in any other history course in the curriculum. Here, if ever, the teacher may hope to train his students in the use of judgment and reasoning in the examination of facts.

From the beginning, the teacher should assume that his students have a fair knowledge of the elementary facts of American and of European history. The teacher will waste time if he attempts to teach the mere facts of American history without attempting to relate them one to another. American history in the secondary school should be a study of the relations of American history to the history of the rest of the world, and of the steady development of American political, social, and economic institutions. What we mean by this we trust will become clear as we go on in this work.

Text-Books.

As to the methods by which these ends should be accomplished, it is our firm conviction that each teacher can best work these out for himself. Certain broad generalizations may, however, be of value. First, no text-book is so perfect that it can be accepted as a complete, an infallible guide. Of necessity, every text-book will approach the subject from the point of view of a single individual. The teacher, at least, should therefore be acquainted with the point of view of several other writers on the same subject. Again, because it is designed to meet the needs of many different minds, it will inevitably contain many facts that the teacher will want to omit; it will omit some things that the teacher may want to include. Finally, it will often present facts in an order or in a way that the teacher may desire to change. For these reasons, while we believe that a single text-book should be in the hands of every pupil, the teacher should insist from the beginning that the book is to be used merely as a guide, not as a Scripture, every page and line of which is to be accepted as infallible.

Second, both the teacher and the student, especially the teacher, should be familiar with the most important sources of American history and with the best secondary authorities on the period under discussion. It will be our aim as we go along to indicate from month to month what are generally considered as the best books in each period.

Periods of American History.

With these few generalizations in mind, we may now approach the particular subject of this article. The early history of North America divides itself into three more or less well-defined epochs. First, there is the period of discovery, exploration, and settlement extending over the two centuries from the time of Columbus to the end of the seventeenth century. Second, there is the century from 1664 to 1763 during which the various nations which had planted colonies in North America were struggling for dominion and supremacy on the continent. Third, there is the period of twenty years during which the English colonies were moving steadily, step by step, toward their complete independence.

Needless to say, none of these epochs is clear and distinct. Discovery, exploration, and settlement go on far into the eighteenth century, even into the nineteenth; colonial wars have their roots in national differences which have their beginnings in Europe and America long before the year 1700; and the causes for the American Revolution must be sought in colonial institutions which were in process of development from the day that the first Englishman landed on the continent. Nevertheless, for purposes of class room discussion, the teacher may safely insist upon this threefold division of colonial history.

The European Background.

In the study of the first epoch, certain subdivisions again become clear. First, it is necessary, if the student is to understand the meaning of early American history, that he be made to comprehend the conditions in Europe which led the Spaniard, the Frenchman and the Englishman forth on their voyages of discovery and colonization. Far too many teachers neglect almost entirely what Cheyney calls “The European Background of American History.”

Every one who has studied the history of the first voyage of Columbus knows that this voyage was but the culmination of more than four centuries of European commercial history. Ever since the time of the crusades, and even before, there had gone on in Europe an extensive trade in Asiatic wares; spices and gums, drugs, medicaments and perfumes, diamonds, pearls, rubies and ivories, silk, cotton and woolen fabrics had been imported in ever-increasing quantities by the Italian towns and distributed through them from Seville to Novgorod. Then in the fifteenth century came a time when the eastern trade routes were closed by the conquering Turks and the nations of Western Europe were forced in consequence to seek these luxuries by new and unaccustomed routes. The discovery of America was not an accident, nor was Columbus the only hero of his age--this the student should be made thoroughly to comprehend.

Second, a slight knowledge of the aborigines must be insisted upon. Here, however, the teacher will need to exercise care and judgment lest he waste time on unessential details.

Third in order comes the geography of the new continent. The study of the physiography of the North American continent, if properly handled, will prove to the students a fascinating, an almost inexhaustible subject. If properly led, boys and girls will study their maps with even greater interest than they do their text-books. One lesson at least the teacher should devote to the shore line, the water courses, the gaps and mountain passes, the portages and the wood roads, else the story of the exploration of the continent must ever remain to the students a blind story of purposeless wanderings in a trackless wilderness. (See Farrand “Basis of American History,” Chaps. I to IV.)

When the student has grasped these fundamentals it will be time, and then only, to begin to thread with him the labyrinth of voyages and explorations which mark the first century of American history. Here the teacher will need to exercise great ingenuity and considerable caution. Rather a few facts well co-ordinated, than a multitude of details without any unifying principle is the one infallible rule. The Norsemen, for instance, one is tempted to say, may with profit be entirely neglected. “Nothing is clearer,” say Fiske (“Discovery of America,” I, pp. 235-254), “from a survey of the whole subject, than that these pre-Columbus voyages were quite barren of results of historic importance.... [That they constituted] in any legitimate sense of the phrase, a discovery of America is simply absurd.” Columbus, De Soto, Cortez, Coronado are really the only Spaniards whose names the student need remember. Equally, the voyages of Verrazano, Ribault, Cartier, Champlain, La Salle, Marquette and Joliet tell the whole tale of French activities over a hundred and fifty years.

Throughout this period, the teacher should keep these guiding posts constantly before the eyes of his students: First, that the Spaniards, when once they realized that they had discovered a new continent and had not reached the longed for shores of Cathay, were lured farther and farther into the heart of the continent in search of gold; second, that, owing to the direction of their approach, they occupied the southern and southwestern part of the continent only; third, that their forward movement ended in the end of the sixteenth century because of (a) their loss of naval supremacy (the Armada), (b) their narrow internal national policy (the expulsion of the Moriscos and the Inquisition), (c) their struggle to subdue the revolted Netherlands.

French Explorations.

Of the French, it should be noted: First, that they approached the continent from the north, entering it through the Gulf of St. Lawrence; second, that they rapidly turned their entire attention to the search for furs and to the conversion of the heathen Indian, “the quaint alliance of missionary and merchant, the black-robed Jesuit and the dealer in peltries,” as Fiske calls it (“Discovery,” II, p. 529); third, that the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes led them farther and farther into the continent, and consequently that the French settlements lacked the unity and compactness which is characteristic of the later English settlements with which they were soon to come into hostile contact.

Finally, of the history of this period of Spanish and French settlements, it may be said that it is better to follow the history of both nations down to the end of the seventeenth century before entering upon the English and Dutch settlements.

English and Dutch Settlements.

In studying the history of the English and Dutch settlements the way will again be a way through a trackless wilderness unless the teacher is bold enough to make a judicious selection among the many details which must appear in every text-book, neglecting all the others and insisting that his students obtain a clear comprehension of the two or three leading motives which are ever present in the colonizing efforts of both these nations. First, the student should be compelled to grasp clearly the significance of the trading and colonizing companies which were formed in such profusion in both England and Holland in the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century. Cheyney (“European Background,” pp. 137-139), mentions seventy of them. If teacher and student will follow carefully the activities of these companies in America they will find a key to the history of the founding of most of the Atlantic coast colonies.

Second, before attempting to follow the history of the English colonies in America, the history of the Protestant revolution in Europe must be reviewed and the attitude of James I toward all dissenters, Protestant and Catholic alike, must be made clear.

These two finger posts, the trading companies and the religious agitation in England will serve to guide many a student who might otherwise lose his way. To attempt at this time to introduce into the history of the colonies anything about the boundary disputes, the attempts at colonial union, the growth of colonial institutions or even the economic conditions which surrounded the life of the colonists is, it seems to us, a mistake.

Literature of the Period.

A word or two in closing about the literature of this period. Of sources, here, as throughout American history, there are four collections which are extremely valuable for use in the secondary schools: (a) Hart’s American History Told by Contemporaries, (b) Macdonald’s Documents of American History, (c) The American History Leaflets, (d) The Old South Leaflets.

Of the works of secondary authorities, those especially fitted for use in secondary schools are (a) Thwaites, “Colonies,” (b) Fisher’s “Colonial Era,” (c) Fiske’s “Discovery of America” and his other works on the settlement and history of the Atlantic coast colonies, (d) Parkman’s “Pioneers of France in America” and his other works on the explorations of the French, (e) the earlier volumes of Harper’s “The American Nation,” and (f) the earlier chapters of Doyle’s and Lodge’s histories of the English colonies in America.

European History in the Secondary School

D. C. KNOWLTON, PH.D., Editor.

Medieval History a Problem.

It may be superfluous to remind the reader at the beginning of the difficulties inherent in the presentation of medieval history. The appreciation of this fact, however, may serve somewhat to compensate the conscientious teacher who looks back upon his successive efforts to present the subject with anything but a feeling of satisfaction. When the German schoolmaster admits, as does Dr. Jaeger, after the reading of thousands of pages in preparation for his work that “the medieval world is essentially alien to our comprehension, and that vivid and realistic description--the most fruitful part of our instruction--is only possible here to a very moderate extent,[2]” the teacher on this side of the Atlantic has no reason to feel chagrined over his own failures. On the contrary he can approach his task with the satisfaction which comes from the feeling that he is assisting others in the solution of a most difficult problem. It must also be remembered that the German teacher has this advantage--of which he makes full use--that he is presenting the middle ages as the American teacher presents the colonial period, to furnish a background for the proper understanding of his own history.

Medieval Culture.

The middle ages do not require the elaborate, detailed treatment of later periods; and yet it must be admitted that much time will often be consumed in securing anything like an intelligent comprehension of the rudiments or elements of the subject. The period may be approached from many points of view. Possibly the most fruitful are the culture side and the idealistic side. It is indeed possible to combine these two ideas. So much of our literature pictures medieval society, especially as it has to do with the castle and the monastery, that the first phase cannot fail to prove attractive. Dr. Jaeger further points out that the men of this period, intellectually so narrow minded, so uncultured and so limited, would go to any extreme, sacrificing their personal comfort, aye, even their lives in their devotion to an idea. At one extreme stands the warrior, at the other the monk, and yet how much they resemble each other. The monk penetrates the forests of Germany and braves unknown dangers in his devotion to mother church; the crusader, no less of a devotee, lays down his life under a foreign sky, far removed from home and friends. There is then much that is attractive in the period if we follow it with this second thought in mind. Although these men were living embodiments of ideas which may be “alien to our comprehension,” their very ardor and enthusiasm become contagious, once the teacher catches a little of the spirit which animated them. Around some of these great personalities, too, can be woven much of the life of the times. A Charlemagne not only becomes the embodiment of the imperial idea, but behind him looms the shadowy outlines of the imperial system; a Richard I suggests the castle, the tournament, the flower of chivalry, the knight-errant; finally a Gregory VII becomes the incarnation of a great ecclesiastical hierarchy, more terrible with its anathemas maranathas than the bloodiest battlefields. The culture phase is admirably presented in the recent text-books, _e. g._, in Robinson, Munro, West, Harding, and Myers. When once the teacher becomes saturated with the life and habits of thought of these times, it will not prove such a difficult task to point out and emphasize the ideals of the men of the period, many of which should enter into the warp and woof of American character. In this connection the teacher will find Professor Emerton’s address before the New England History Teachers’ Association on the Teaching of Mediæval History in the Schools most helpful and inspiring.[3]

The Old Empire and the New.

The discussion for the first few weeks of the course must of necessity center largely about the new field upon which history is in the process of making, the empire of Charlemagne, its disruption as the result of its own inherent weaknesses and the renewed attacks of the barbarians and the growth of feudalism as a partial result of these and other forces which have been at work in the Europe of the early middle ages.

Three points will call for special emphasis: the field, the essential forces at work in this field, and the people who are responsible for their development. The student can best realize conditions in 800 A.D. by contrasting this new empire with the old Roman empire with which he is already familiar. Two maps might be made, one of the Roman empire at its greatest extent, the other of Charlemagne’s possessions, showing its Slavic neighbors on the east and its Saracenic on the south. The student should then grasp the fact that for the next five hundred years, with the exception of tiny England, the history of European progress is circumscribed by the narrow limits of this new empire, which although including portions of the old, has transferred the center of interest to the plains of central Europe. To the east and southeast are the Slavs and the remains of the eastern half of the Roman empire, which having played its part in history, remains merely as the storehouse of the intellectual, literary and artistic treasures of the remote past; to the south are the Saracens who one hundred years before had threatened to place the crescent above the cross, but were beaten back upon the sunny plains of France.

Out of this empire are to emerge the France, Germany and Italy of the distant future. Spain is not to be rescued from her infidel conquerors until a new and far distant era dawns, that of Columbus, Cortez and Pizarro. Christendom, as it is known will have no interests beyond these confines except as it is obliged to beat off the daring Northmen or to admit them as unwelcome guests; or as it forces its way eastward throwing out its outposts to check the Slavic tide moving westward; or as its enthusiasm is kindled by mother church to undertake the rescue of Palestine from heathen hands; or as the zeal of its traders, who even at this early date begin to long for new fields to conquer, stimulates them to open communication with the strange and distant East.

The two great forces at work are the two ideas of a universal church and a universal empire. The rise of the Christian church, its relations with Rome and the German invaders might profitably be reviewed here, especially its connection with the founding of this new empire, which differs from the old in its dependence on and union with the papal power. These are the ideals which men set before them; this will o’ the wisp of universal dominion was destined to lead many a man to his own ruin and that of the power upon which he relied to attain his end.

Charlemagne.

The personality of Charlemagne, so naïvely portrayed by Einhard, his desire not only to conquer but to serve the higher ideal of establishing a Christian state, cannot fail to attract the student, especially if the teacher emphasizes the fact that he was the hero par excellence of the middle ages. Ample material for a study of his arrangements can be found in the source books, and his system can easily be compared with the organization of the older empire.

Although the people who were working out these new problems were largely of German blood, it must not be forgotten that Rome’s influence had not been for naught, but was still to be seen in the survival of the Latin language and literature and the material aspects of its civilization--its roads, bridges, aqueducts and walled towns,--and above all in this very tradition of universal dominion. This last idea had been inherited on the one hand by the pope at Rome and on the other by the king of the Germans.

There is no one book which emphasizes the treatment which has been suggested for this first period. The teacher can easily follow this line of development with any of the better text-books. Freeman, “Historical Geography of Europe,” has a good chapter on the geographical development (Chapter VI), also Emerton, “Mediæval Europe,” Chapter I; Seignobos, “History of Mediæval and Modern Civilization,”