DEPARTMENT OF HISTORICAL RESEARCH. 181 



seriously affected by the war, namely, in the British and French West 

 Indies. Guides to materials for United States History in the archives of 

 Canada, Mexico, and Cuba have already been published. The archives 

 of the British West Indian Islands, while in some respects duplicating 

 the Colonial Office papers in the Public Record Office of Great Britain, 

 contain, nevertheless, a very large amount of material, capable of 

 illustrating the history of the United States in two ways. In the first 

 place, it has been too much a habit of writers upon the colonial period 

 of United States history to confine their attention to the thirteen 

 colonies which subsequently formed the United States of America. 

 This is to read into the history of the seventeenth and eighteenth cen- 

 turies distinctions which did not then exist. An important corrective 

 to colonial constitutional history and to the history of British adminis- 

 tration of the mainland colonies, is to be obtained by close study of the 

 history of the island colonies, and of the British colonial administration 

 in an extent embracing the whole of the early British colonial empire, 

 continental and insular portions alike. In the second place, commerce 

 between the West Indies and the Americans of the mainland, in the 

 colonial period and in at least the first thirty years after the Revolu- 

 tion, had so large a place in the economic life of the United States that 

 its illustration by materials from the island archives is highly desirable. 

 The archives of the French West Indies, and specifically of Martinique 

 and Guadeloupe, may have importance for American commercial history 

 on similar grounds — an importance better measured by the debates of 

 1760-1761 as to whether Great Britain should retain Canada or 

 Guadeloupe than by any estimates based on conditions now. Of the 

 archives of Bermuda and the Bahamas, much the same things may be 

 said as of those of the British West Indies. Taken together, these 

 islands present an opportunity for a useful volume, having its appro- 

 priate place in our series. The main portion of the work could be 

 undertaken in either 1916 or 1917 by Professor Herbert C. Bell, of 

 Bowdoin College, a specialist in the history of the British West Indies. 

 It is to be expected that work on the Atlas of the Historical Geography 

 of the United States, under Dr. Paullin's general direction, will during 

 the year be advanced in many particulars. Precisely which sections 

 will be finished during the year it is impossible to predict, since much 

 depends upon the opportuniftes secured from time to time to obtain 

 the aid of persons having special historical or geographical acquire- 

 ments relating to this or that portion of the work, but who have regular 

 occupations not leaving them continuously free for assistance to the 

 work of the Department. 



TEXTS. 



The annotation of the ''Letters of Delegates to the Continental 

 Congress" becomes a somewhat easier matter after 1776. Dr. Bur- 

 nett, expending as large a part of his time as is possible upon this 



