(New York: The Macmillan Company, 1904-1907).

FIRST EDITION OF EACH VOLUME. Herbert Levi Osgood was an American historian of colonial American history. As a professor at Columbia University he directed numerous dissertations of scholars who became major historians. Osgood was a leader of the "Imperial historians" who studied, and often praised, the inner workings of the British Empire in the 18th century.
Osgood wrote extensively on colonial American history, and his work is characterized by frequent and detailed analysis of primary sources. His work is descriptive, aimed as a careful analysis of the source material for the consumption of other historians, with little narrative running through it. In this he contrasts with Edward Channing, who wrote more popularly accessible works, but based them more on a synthesis of secondary sources. Osgood was an admirer of Leopold von Ranke, and his style is sometimes compared with the latter's.
With the help of students and some research leaves from Columbia, Osgood visited the archives in the various states and in Britain to examine the original documents. The first series that came from this work was the three-volume The American Colonies in the Seventeenth Century (1904-1907), which received favorable reviews in the academic literature.
Osgood brought a new sophistication to the study of colonial relations posing the question from an institutional perspective, of how the Atlantic was bridged. He was the first American historian to recognize the complexity of imperial structures, the experimental character of the empire, and the contradictions between theory and practice that gave rise, on both sides of the Atlantic, to inconsistencies and misunderstandings.... It was American factors rather than imperial influences that in his view shaped the development of the colonies. Osgood's work still has value for professional historians interested in the nature of the colonies' place in the early British Empire, and their internal political development. (G. Morgan, 1999). Item #34596

3 volumes. First Edition of each volume. Thick 8vo, publisher's original brown cloth, lettered and ruled in gilt on the spine panels. xxxii, 578; xix, [1], 490, [2 ads]; xxii, 551 pp. Very good copies indeed, quite well preserved, the bindings attractive, internally clean and strong copies, the rear pastedowns and free-flies slightly shaken.