Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/891

Gonnaicd : La Colonisation Hollandaise a Java 88 1 ages of ]Iartin Pring, his successor in command of the East Indian fleet, or learn of the work of William Baffin in the tropics. Here he can in- vestigate the pioneer missionary work of the Rev. Patrick Copland, who was also to collect money in the East for a free school in Virginia, or get indication of the origin of the quarrel between Sir Thomas Smyth and Lord Robert Rich, which was later to lead to the election of Sir Edwin Sandys as Treasurer of the 'irginia Company. Thus are made clear both the varied interests and the unity of British expansion in the early seventeenth century. Alfred L. P. Dennis. La Colonisation Hollandaise a Java: scs Antecedents, scs Caractcres Distinetifs. Par Pierre Gonnaud. (Paris: Augustin Challa- mel. 1905. Pp. 606.) Appe.ring in the series of Paris doctoral theses in which the early work of many of the best French scholars has been published, to which we owe important books by Seignobos, Langlois, Funck-Brentano, Mas- son and many others, this large volume rouses keen anticipation in the mind of anyone interested in the special field it covers. The author promises in his preface to fill a gap which he conceives to exist in the sources of our information on Java, by writing not as a naturalist nor as a historian, but as a student of colonial science, and by describing the essential features of the evolution of Java as a European colony. He devotes the first hundred pages to a physical description of the island, covering its geology, topography, climate and natural resources. The description runs into minute and tedious detail. It is not inter- esting, and it adds little to what can be gained from Junghuhn and the third volume of 'eth. With all its faults, however, it is the best part of the book. The author may be a good geographer ; he may possibly be an adept in the mysteries of the " colonial science "' of the day. He certainly is not a historian ; and the bulk of his book, which is historical in form, would never have been written, or would have been written very differently, if he had been trained in the French historical school. In the hundred pages devoted to the history of Java before the ar- rival of the Dutch the reader begins to lose faith. He doubts the wis- dom of devoting so much space to an obscure period, far removed from the goal which the author has in view. He demands that at least this period should be treated with the object of the book in mind. He finds a mass of conjectures on unessential details, and almost entire neglect of the great problems of native society: origin of the village group and government, early forms of land tenure, possible tribal influences. Village origins are dismissed in less space than is given to4he ruins of Boeroe Boedoer. Doubts as to the author's capacity become certainties when the nar- rative enters the period of Dutch rule. Most of the facts for the period from 1600 to 1800 are taken from half a dozen collections of voyages,