suggestion, and advice also, I am indebted to friends and fellow-
workers, and here gladly make acknowledgment for such assistance.

EDWARD POTTS CHEYNEY.




EUROPEAN BACKGROUND OF AMERICAN HISTORY

CHAPTER I THE EAST AND THE WEST

(1200-1500)

To set forth the conditions in Europe which favored the work of
discovering America and of exploring, colonizing, and establishing
human institutions there, is the subject and task of this book. Its
period extends from the beginning of those marked commercial,
political, and intellectual changes of the fifteenth century which
initiated a great series of geographical discoveries, to the close, in
the later years of the seventeenth century, of the religious wars and
persecutions which did so much to make that century an age of
emigration from Europe. During those three hundred years few events in
European history failed to exercise some influence upon the fortunes of
America. The relations of the Old World to the New were then
constructive and fundamental to a degree not true of earlier or of
later times. Before the fifteenth century events were only distantly
preparing the way; after the seventeenth the centre of gravity of
American history was transferred to America itself.