IN ATTEMPTING to answer the question put to me by the

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1 REFLECTIONS BY LAWRENCE HENRY GIPSON IN ATTEMPTING to answer the question put to me by the editor of PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY, "How did you become involved in the writing of your history, The British Empire before the American Revolution?" I shall have to rely largely on memory. It would seem that early in life most people begin to show a preference for certain things as against other things. For my own part, I was never mechanically inclined. Toys requiring manual dexterity that thrilled other children and young people never interested me. But I enjoyed reading. At the age of nine I got as a Christmas present my first history book. It was A Child's History of the United States, with a number of full-page colored illustrations. I can still see the picture of General Cornwallis of the hated British army surrendering his sword at Yorktown to General Washington. How I thrilled! I also still remember going at the age of eleven with an elder sister to purchase the required textbooks for the courses we were to take in the public school. When my sister got the larger book on American history and I the smaller, I actually cried with disappointment. I seem therefore rather early to have had a strong bent for history. Likewise, I recollect that as a youngster in order to avoid the family chores assigned to me I would seek some secluded spot on the place where we lived and there become absorbed in such a work of historical fiction as Scottish Chiefs or Ivanhoe. As a student at the University of Idaho the course that most excited me was one given on the Italian Renaissance by Professor Edward Maslin Hulme, who later went to Stanford University. Upon receiving a Rhodes Scholarship at Oxford I decided to read in the Honour School of Modern History. My history tutor at Lincoln College where I was matriculated was Sir Owen Edwards, an authority in mediaeval history; and under his guidance I deepened my growing interest in this period. I also found the lectures given by Sir Ernest Barker at Wadham College on Early English Institutions completely absorbing. In fact, I might 10

2 REFLECTION S 11 have become a teacher and writer in the field of mediaeval history had it not been for an incident that occurred in the latter part of my first year at the University. As it has a very definite connection with my chief lifework, I trust that I will be pardoned for dwelling upon it. There existed then, and it doubtless still is functioning, a student organization, the Lincoln College Sunday Evening Debating Society. Its meetings were held in the Junior Common Room, as a rule, with all the parliamentary formalities strictly observed. I early joined the Society but was not active-rather an interested observer of the spirited debates. One day, however, I was approached by two upperclassmen, officers of the Society, who desired me to open the debate on the approaching Sunday by proposing the resolution: "Resolved, That it would be to the best interests of Great Britain were the other members of the British Empire to become independent States." It was an embarrassing moment. In vain I pleaded that I was only a first year man and, what was more to the point, an American. Against my better judgment I finally consented to offer the resolution. The debate was well advertised. As it was a warm spring evening, the decision was reached to have the meeting out-of-doors in the Grove Quadrangle. Needless to say, advancing such a resolution for discussion in England, the very heart of the Empire, in 1905 was a very sticky thing, especially for an American citizen. The period, called "the Edwardian Period," saw the Empire then at the height of its glory and strength. Indeed, there seemed to be every indication that this splendor would continue for an indefinite period of time, perhaps for centuries, especially in view of the intense pride shown by people even in the distant portions of the Empire. I therefore realized that I must handle the resolution with delicacy for I knew there would be in my audience not only Englishmen, but Welshmen, Scots, Canadians, New Zealanders and Australians -all only too ready to come stoutly to the defense of the Empire and put an American in his place. Manifestly, considering the nature of the subject, it seemed best to speak a good deal of the time very noticeably with tongue in cheek. I sought, however, to make in the course of my jerrybuilt line of argument some telling points. One that I clearly re-

3 12 PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY member was the then situation of British Guiana in South America, ini which the British were paying for its upkeep but over ninety percent of its trade was with the United States, not Great Britain. Why therefore keep such a liability as a possession, I queried. When I had completed my support of the resolution I was somewhat surprised that there was not even polite applause but only deadly silence. Still more surprised was I when after a pause it seemed that every man in the audience jumped to his feet to answer me. Never before or since have I ever experienced such verbal chastisement and laceration. Not a single speaker came to my defense. In fact I was too vulnerable, too ignorant of salient facts, and doubtless unwittingly reacted to the prejudices formed in my childhood and reinforced by those of my very patriotic family. Nor was this the end. In about a week after my disastrous speech there came the first of the great Rhodes Scholar banquets. If my memory does not fail me, Rudyard Kipling, who in his writings glorified the British Empire, was the chief guest of honor. The toastmaster was one of the foremost British barristers and one of the Trustees of the Cecil Rhodes bequest. In the course of his felicitous and witty remarks he mentioned the rumor that a Rhodes Scholar had recently advocated the breaking up of the British Empire. I though that there was just a bit of cold steel in his voice as he proceeded to emphasize that the Trust was certainly not bringing young men from the various parts of the English-speaking world to Oxford so that they could advocate the wrecking of the British Empire. Little could anyone who heard the Lincoln College debate or was present at the banquet have dreamed that at the time I am now writing (in 1968) the British Empire would be no more! Two World Wars with their inevitable aftermath put an ena of the vast Empire as it was in Instead there is the fragile British Commonwealth of Nations. One thing at least resulted from the debate. I began to study with a degree of intensity that I had never shown for any other aspect of the past, the history of the British Empire, especially its early history. Later as a graduate student at Yale I chose as my doctoral dissertation under the guidance of Professor Charles

4 REFLECTION S 13 M. Andrews, the life of a leading American Loyalist. This was published by the Yale University Press under title, Jared Ingersoll. A Study of American Loyalism in Relation to British Colonial Government. Having completed this, I resolved to attempt to describe the whole Empire in some detail during the critical years before the outbreak of the War for American Independence, the years covered by the Ingersoll biography. I soon realized that the many duties of the position I occupied at the time in a midwestern college would make the accomplishment of such an undertaking impossible. It was my good fortune at this critical juncture of my career to be offered a position at Lehigh University with the assurance that I would be given every encouragement to fulfill my dream of writing such a history. Indeed, the very generous financial and other assistance that I have received from the University as well as from other sources over the years and with it the highly competent cooperation that I have thus enjoyed from those who have aided me in my research and writing, I have sought to acknowledge in the prefaces of the successive volumes of the series. With my transfer to Bethlehem I began to systematize my thinking on the prospective project. In this connection I drew up a rather elaborate outline which I submitted for criticism to all those scholars in America who had published works of importance in my chosen field. Some of the replies were emphatically designed to discourage me from an undertaking promising only failure. But others, and especially the reply from Professor Andrews, urged me to embark without delay upon the task of extensive research called for in my outline. I thereupon set to work. My original outline called for a history of the British Empire from 1763 to After I had spent a year gathering materials and seeking to clarify my ideas about this period, I found myself confronted by a roadblock. In attempting to describe the Empire as it was in 1763 many questions arose the answers to which I could not find. It therefore seemed necessary to investigate with some care the history of the Empire for a decade or two preceding that year. I was persuaded that I could conveniently embody the answers that I got to these questions in a fairly extensive introductory essay in Volume I.

5 14 PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY What I sought to discover was the nature of the Empire created by the British before becoming involved in the nine years of war with the French Empire which ended with the Peace of 1763 and which as an aftermath led to the shattering of the British Empire itself. That contemplated introductory essay when completed has proved to be the longest one that to my knowledge has ever been written for an historical series. In fact it embraces the first eight volumes! In order to utilize various important manuscript collections my research has taken me not only to many depositories within the United States from the Atlantic to the Pacific, but also to Great Britain, Ireland, France, Canada (including Newfoundland), Bermuda and Jamaica. I might add that the research and writing of The British Empire before the American Revolution series has likewise required over forty years of rather constant application. However, I was diverted for brief periods from the larger project to write The Moravian Indian Mission on White River [Indiana], issued by the Indiana Historical Bureau in 1938, Lewis Evans... To Which is Added Evans' "A Brief Account of Pennsylvania..." that was published for the Historical Society of Pennsylvania in 1939, and The Coming of the Revolution, 1763-I775, a volume in The New American Nation Series that Harper Brothers (now Harper and Row) in the United States and Hamish Hamilton in Great Britain brought out in The years since 1924 have therefore been very exciting ones in my quest for more light on the past. The British Empire series is divided into four books and the books into volumes. For the first ten years I concentrated on the writing of the first book in three volumes that appeared in It now carries the book title The British Isles and the American Colonies, a title changed from the original book title, Provincial Characteristics and Sectional Tendencies in the British Empire, 1748-I754. With this done my problem was to find a publisher. As my efforts in New York proved unavailing, I turned to my brother, James H. Gipson, president of the Caxton Printers, Inc., of Caldwell, Idaho, for advice. To my surprise, he offered to sponsor the British Empire series, and arrangements were completed in a businesslike way although between brothers. An enterprising

6 REFLECTIONS is publisher, chiefly interested in bringing out Western Americana, James issued the three volumes in an attractive format and proceeded to the task of marketing them. He might have remained my publisher but for the interest of Mr. Alfred A. Knopf, whom I had not contacted when seeking a New York publisher. He wrote to me in 1938 suggesting that were he to become my publisher for the remaining volumes of the series he would be able, he felt, with headquarters in New York, to command a wider market than a publisher in Idaho. As he desired exclusive publishing rights, these were turned over to him by the Caxtons. Happily, this transfer was made in the most harmonious manner. My brother, while very willing to continue with the enterprise, felt that it would mean more to the future of the series were such a New York publisher as Mr. Knopf, for whom he had the highest regard, to take it over. Therefore, when Volume IV appeared in 1939 it carried the Knopf imprint as have all other volumes of the series including the thoroughly revised first three volumes reissued in Mr. Knopf has been a great publisher; under his direction the volumes came out in a format that was as beautiful as it was convenient for the reader. For this I owe to him a debt of gratitude I can never repay. This issue of PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY coincides with the appearance of A Bibliographical Guide to the Hlistory of the British Empire before the Averican Revolution, 1748-I776, which is Volume XIV of the series-to be completed with the appearance later of "A Guide to Manuscripts Relating to the History of the British Empire, ," as Volume XV. Before concluding these comments I should like to stress one point that I believe has contributed to the success of the series with the public. In writing I have consciously sought to restrain the prejudices that I cultivated when quite young and in a spirit of detachment to do justice to the French as our enemies before 1763 and later to the British as our enemies. Yet, to me, the future of what was to become the United States demanded for its fulfillment independence of the British connection. At the same time candor compels me to affirm that it was the good fortune of my ancestors, who came to the New World in the seventeenth century to find homes and a future for their descendants, to settle within the bounds of the Old British Empire with its great traditions of freedom.