GRANDE-BRETAGNE ET DOMINIONS
415
the time ; but they were comprehensive summaries rather than detailed history, concerned only with political and not with economic or social developments, based almost entirely on printed materials, and not equipped with modern documentary and bibliographical apparatus. Very different in character is the Cambridge History of the British Empire, of which the first volume, dealing with the Old Empire down to 1783, appeared in 1929, the second on Canada appeared in 1930, and the third on Australia is expected. This massive work, to be completed in eight volumes, two of which are devoted to India, is a notable example of the cooperative method of writing history, ranking beside and in some respects above the famous Cambridge Modern History. It is edited by J. Holland Rose, A. P. Newton and E. A. Benians, assisted by local editors in each of the Dominions ; the history of imperial policy and of the Empire as a whole as well as of each of its overseas sections is treated comprehensively and in detail, with full regard for other than political aspects ; it embodies the researches undertaken in recent years by a large company of scholars ; it is fully documented and equipped with elaborate bibliographies. Though further research may modify some of its conclusions, it will remain for many years the indispensable companion of every student of British Colonial History, and it will always be looked back on as marking the moment when that subject at last ' came into its own '. Little further mention will be made of this work in this review ; but it should be borne in mind that much original and important work in the field covered by the volumes so far published is to be found in those volumes and not elsewhere.
II.
BRITISH COLONIAL HISTORY TO
1783
Nowhere is the new development more manifest than in the output of work on the history and character of the First British Empire. The first builders of it, the early explorers