232 REPORTS ON INVESTIGATIONS AND PROJECTS. 



HISTORICAL RESEARCH* 



By A. C. McLaughlin, Director of the Department. 



I. The work of the Bureau of Historical Research during the past 

 year has been developed along the lines marked out in the report 

 for 1904. A number of the tasks then under way have not as yet 

 been completed, and they are so far-reaching in extent and character 

 that they can not soon be finished. The early part of 1904 Prof. 

 Charles M. Andrews, of Bryn Mawr, began an examination of the 

 sources of American history in English depositories. He worked at 

 this task for several months without finishing the general survey 

 which he was preparing. The work he was enabled to finish was, 

 however, of great value, and he prepared a preliminary report which 

 was in part read before the American Historical Association at the 

 Chicago meeting, December, 1904, and was later printed in the Amer- 

 ican Historical Review. f For the completion of the undertaking 

 Professor Andrews went again to England this past summer. The 

 nature and importance of this enterprise is in some manner brought 

 out by the opening paragraphs of this preliminary report : 



Notwithstanding the fact that for a hundred and fifty years our colonies were 

 a part of the British Empire, no systematic attempt has ever been made by British 

 or American historians to discover the extent and value of the material contained 

 in British archives relating to American history. Persistent and long search has 

 frequently been made for documents bearing on a given subject or connected 

 with the history of a given colony, but such investigation has usually been con- 

 fined to well-known and fairly well arranged collections, examination of which 

 was comparatively easy and a successful result highly probable. Outlying 

 sources, records relating to other than colonial subjects, and groups containing 

 only occasional and isolated documents have remained largely unexplored; while 

 even such compact and clearly defined collections as the Colonial Office papers 

 have never been thoroughly and critically examined. 



The time was therefore opportune for a more thoroughly organized attack upon 

 the British records, and for the discovery, as far as human imperfection would 

 allow, of all documents that directly or indirectly bear upon our history. Tedious 

 though the work promised to be, it seemed to be justified by the possibility of 

 obtaining even an approximate description of each isolated document, important 

 or unimportant, and of each collection, great or small, that might some time be 

 needed for future writers of our history. 



II. While this report on the materials in England has been in 

 course of preparation, an effort has been made to examine such tran- 

 scripts from the English archives relating to American history as are 



* Grant No. 224. $14,000. (For first report see Year Book No. 3. pp. 65-79.) 

 t " Materials in British Archives for American Colonial History," Am. Hist. 

 Rev., Vol. X, No. 2. 



