Volume 6, Number 5 · March 31, 1966
Dutch Treat
By Charles Wilson
The Dutch Seaborne Empire 1600-1800
by C.R. Boxer, in the series The History of Human Society edited by J.H. Plumb
Knopf, 326 pp., $6.95
History, we are told, has never been more popular with the reading public. But if Dr. Plumb is right, the art of writing history is in a poorish way. In his lively Introduction to this new series, he observes that as professional history becomes more accurate, public history becomes more shallow. It is the classic problem of the age; a specialization that leaves the pundits drowning in the heady promise of the Arkansas and Missouri Rail Strike of 1921 or the seductions of Enterprise in the Oxfordshire Horsehair Industry, 1775-1776. If this were merely how historians began life it would matter little. Too often it is how they end it. This new series is designed to encourage historians and readers to take a more comprehensive vision of the past.
Review, 1342 words
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