slavery in Missouri there was a corresponding contest in the neighboring state which resulted in a victory for free labor in 1824. No state was more vitally interested in the subject of internal improvements and in the banking system. During the early years state politics overshadowed national politics. There was great confusion in party issues and in the use of party names. Throughout the period covered by Dr. Thompson's work personal leadership dominated national politics, and this was preeminently characteristic of Illinois politics. Joseph Duncan was elected. governor in 1834. Men of all shades of political belief voted for him, evidently believing that he represented their views regarding national issues."

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When the work which Dr. Thompson has projected for the Whigs of Illinois shall have been completed for all the parties in all the older states the student will be supplied with the necessary means for gaining a correct, comprehensive view of our national politics.

JESSE MACY.

A Concise History of New Mexico. By L. Bradford Prince, LL.D. (Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the Torch Press, 1912, pp. 272.) The author of this book is well known as ex-governor of New Mexico, president of the Historical Society of New Mexico, and author of several works relating to the history of that state. As he tells us in his preface, the book consists primarily of a condensation and revision of his Historical Sketches of New Mexico, published in 1883, "for the general reader and for use in the schools of New Mexico". Like the older work, which was issued as a tri-centennial memorial, this was issued to mark the close of the history of the territorial period in New Mexico history.

Most of the condensation was done many years ago. As a matter of fact, the condensation feature is not especially striking-272 pages against 327 of about equal size. Some emendation of the older work has been done on the basis of material acquired by the New Mexico Historical Society.

On the whole the book should serve its purposes well, and is welcome, particularly in view of the burning of the plates of the Historical Sketches.

H. E. B.

The Sovereign Council of New France: a Study in Canadian Constitutional History. By Raymond du Bois Cahall, Ph.D., Acting Assistant Professor of European History and Government, Miami University. (New York, Longmans, Green, and Company, 1915, pp. 274.) The French régime in North America has afforded many a theme for the historian of the romantic school. Only recently has it come to be recognized as a fruitful field for the student of institutions. While the aspirants for the doctor's degree have been studying the minutiae of the government of the English colonies the political and administrative

structure upon which Louis XIV. endeavored to build an empire in the New World has been almost ignored.

It is therefore most encouraging to find in the present volume, following as it does, Professor Munro's work on the Seigniorial System in Canada, evidence that the attention of students is being turned to the institutions which for over a century had their important part in the historical development of the valleys of the Saint Lawrence and the Mississippi.

The Sovereign Council was the most important political institution of the French régime in Canada. It corresponded only in the vaguest way to the governor's council or to the assemblies of the English colonies, for its functions were far more diversified. The first three chapters of the present study are devoted to a narrative history of the council from 1647 to 1763. Much attention is devoted to the quarrels between the council and the governor, which have already been detailed to us by Parkman and others. One feels that the study, as a study in institutional history, would have been more effective had this part of it been restricted to the limits of an introductory chapter.

The remaining chapters deal with the membership and organization of the council, its methods of procedure, its functions, and its administrative and judicial achievements. This part of the study, based upon the records of the council, preserved in Quebec, constitutes a valuable contribution not only to Canadian political history, but, because of the great variety of the council's functions, to economic and social history as well.

The principal limitation of the study is that its point of view is too exclusively Canadian. One cannot help feeling that researches in Paris should have supplemented the author's investigations in Ottawa and Quebec, and that more attention should have been given to French institutions in general, and to provincial administration in particular, as the proper background of colonial institutions and administration.

Latin America. By William R. Shepherd, Professor of History in Columbia University. [Home University Library.] (New York, Henry Holt and Company, 1914, pp. 256.) Small books on great subjects have their difficulties, and these are increased when the subject is not only great but complex. The twenty republics lying to the south of the United States-Spanish, Portuguese, French-negro-vary immensely in conditions and characteristics. To treat this vast, complex total-LatinAmerican geography, demography, history, politics, economics, civilization-in fifty-odd thousand words, or, the more immediate matter of this review, to treat all Latin-American history in twenty thousand, is an appalling task, hardly capable of satisfactory accomplishment. Professor Shepherd has acquitted himself of it better than anyone could readily be expected to do. He has a clear and definite plan. He does not waste

time over the many exceptions and qualifications that must be made to every broad general statement respecting Spanish American history. He tries to give its due amount of attention to the "neglected period" between 1580 and 1780, though solid general statements in that field are hard to make. He gives quite its proportional space to the simpler history of Portuguese America. What is said of the histories of Cuba, Hispaniola, and Central America is very slight. The account of Spanish colonial administration is less satisfactory than that of Spanish American civilization in the period before independence. The history of the republics, for the last hundred years, is as well characterized as the space permits.

Por Carlos Navarro
Tomo II. (Buenos
The period covered

Compendio de la Historia General de América. y Lamarca. Prólogo de D. EDUARDO DE HINOJOSA. Aires, Angel Estrada y Compa., 1913, pp. xi, 886.) in this second volume of Dr. Navarro's elaborate manual extends practically from the conquest of Mexico to the attainment of independence by the Spanish and Portuguese colonies. Supplementary chapters or paragraphs carry the story chronologically forward to the freedom of the Dominican Republic and Cuba from foreign rule and to the separation of Panama from Colombia. The work, therefore, is a history of colonization in America, but one hardly so comprehensive in scope and proportion as the title indicates. A treatise written in Spanish presupposes naturally a dominant interest in Latin America which would reduce an account of the areas under English, Dutch, and French control to a minimum, though not perhaps to only about seventy-five pages.

Now the question arises whether the author has traversed ground already examined, or whether he has branched out into fields that are little known. In a work devoted to the history of Spanish and Portuguese dominion in the New World the period stretching from the conquest to the revolution calls for especial consideration. But the lure of an abundance of secondary material concerning what happened or existed before the middle of the sixteenth century, and from 1806 to 1826, is so powerful that new writers fall readily into the temptation of following in the wake of their predecessors. Dr. Navarro's first volume bulked excessively large on the situation prior to 1519;1 his second similarly assigns to the conventionalized periods altogether too much attention. The achievements of two centuries and a half of colonial development he discusses in fewer than 140 pages given over to a descriptive account of the institutions and culture found within the Spanish area alone. It may be true that the occurrences before and after these 250 years lend themselves more easily to a narrative form of treatment, but the circumstance does not justify a failure to make any effort at all in this direction. Moreover, if the Spanish sections are chosen for what 1 American Historical Review, XVIII. 595.

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might be termed a static" consideration of the topics in question, why not the Portuguese, English, French, and Dutch in some measure also? Replete though the manual is with notes, references, maps, and illustrations far surpassing those contained in any other work of its nature known to the reviewer, much will have to be done before it satisfies the conditions under which it may be employed to the best advantage. It is one thing to compile bibliographical data, and quite another to select. just the material that will be accessible to the student in the various countries of Latin America where good libraries are scarce. Of the latter point the author has not taken sufficient heed. Then, too, the copious foot-notes furnished in addition to the elaborate references appended to the chapters appear rather anomalous in what is primarily a text-book. At times (e. g., p. 255) the foot-note is much more comprehensive than the importance of the topic in the text would warrant. Misspelling or misquotation of non-Spanish words, and errors or discrepancies in the maps are numerous. Though usually apt enough, the illustrations are so poorly executed in many cases as to become almost caricatures. From the table of contents an entire chapter is omitted. Yet, despite all these defects, Dr. Navarro has produced a praiseworthy piece of work that raises very appreciably the standard of such manuals in Latin America.

WILLIAM R. SHEPHERD.

HISTORICAL NEWS

It is expected that the General Index to Volumes XI.-XX. of this journal will be published before our next number appears. Up to the date of the publication of this index, orders for it, and orders for its predecessor, the General Index to volumes I.-X., will be received at the price of one dollar for each; after that date, the price of both will be raised to $1.25. Orders should be addressed to the publishers, the Macmillan Company, 66 Fifth Avenue, New York. The prices mentioned are for copies in paper binding. If indexes bound in black half-morocco, uniform with the binding of the Review, are desired, fifty cents should be added.

AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION

The thirty-first annual meeting of the American Historical Association, held at Washington, December 28-31, promises, as we go to press, to be attended by a quite exceptional number of members. The programme stands substantially as reported in our last issue. The main subject for the annual conference of historical societies is the papers of business firms, their collection and use for historical purposes. The general meeting of allied societies in behalf of a National Archive Building is held in the Continental Hall of the Daughters of the American Revolution, and consists largely of illustrated addresses. Among other archive-pictures, the architectural studies prepared for the proposed. building in Washington by Mr. Louis A. Simon, of the office of the Supervising Architect, are to be thrown on the screen. Receptions at the building of the Pan-American Union, at the National Museum, and at the house of Hon. and Mrs. John W. Foster, are announced.

The annual preparatory meeting of the Executive Council was held in New York on November 27. The annual report made on that occasion by the Board of Editors of this journal has, by vote of the Council, been printed and distributed to members of the Association.

In honor of Professor H. Morse Stephens, Professor J. L. Myres of Oxford has published a pamphlet analysis of 28 pages entitled The Provision for Historical Studies at Oxford, surveyed in a Letter to the President of the American Historical Association on Occasion of its Meeting in California, 1915 (Oxford University Press).

In the Original Narratives series, the printing of Professor Herbert E. Bolton's volume, Spanish Explorations in the Southwest, 1542-1706, has not been completed in season to admit of publication in November or December; it will appear in February. The concluding volume of the