Anglo-
American
Isthmian
Diplomacy,
1815-1915
[Prize Essays
of the American Historical Association, 1914.] By Mary
Wilhelmine Williams, Ph. D., Assistant Professor of His-
tory in Goucher College. (Washington: American Histor-
ical Association. 1916. Pp. xii, 356. $1.00.)
1
A committee of the American Historical Association awarded to
this book the Justin Winsor prize in American history for 1914.
This assures for it a high degree of accuracy and a respectable
literary style, for committees in the past have more than once
withheld the prize for want of a worthy candidate. English-Amer-
ican isthmian relations have been summarized in many books, and
portions of the subject have furnished topics for monographic in-
vestigation. Miss Williams's book claims attention for its dis-
tinguished patronage and because it is a consecutive study of the
whole subject. It is based on a minute and painstaking study of
all available English and American manuscript and printed sources,
and the writer lists in her bibliography a wide range of secondary
authorities from whom she has drawn more or less assistance. One
expects the book to be, and it ought to be, a most useful con-
tribution, but it is disappointing. It is a conscientious seminar
report with the defects of such an exercise, exhibiting immense
industry but small sense of proportion. Details piled on details
note every shade of shifting, transitory, ministerial opinion in
England, the United States, and Central America, as revealed in
the diplomatic correspondence; and the really important aspects
of the subject are lost in a desert of unessentials. The same fault
is carried out in the documentation. It hardly seems necessary
in a printed book to make six or eight references in a single brief
paragraph to a short document which is the sole source of the
paragraph. As a rule, over documentation is a good fault, and
this criticism would be captious but for the fact that it emphasizes
the principal defect of the book, its exaggeration of detail.
The book will necessarily find a place on the shelves of all well
furnished libraries and in the hands of professors of history, but
students and readers who desire a clear-cut presentation of the
essentials of Anglo-American Isthmian relations must continue
to use some of the excellent manuals listed in Miss Williams's
bibliography.
FOOTNOTES:
Eugene C. Barker.
How to cite:
"Anglo-American Isthmian Diplomacy, 1815-1915", Volume 20, Number 2, Southwestern Historical Quarterly Online, http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/publications/journals/shq/online/v020/n2/review_DIVL3213.html
[Accessed Tue Nov 24 2:24:59 CST 2009]
