دانلود کتاب The History of Pennsylvania in North America

An Introduction to
This Volume and the Author
Robert Proud, Pennsylvania's first historian, brought
forth his two-volume "History of Pennsylvania" in 1797 and
1798, although the book had been completed in 1780. The
two volumes of the HISTORY cover the period 1681 to 1742
with on additional chapter on the period 1760 to 1770.
Proud had available to him historical resources which
he chose to ignore and much of his work is marred by
partisanship and bias. A pacifist of staunchly conservative
outlook, he was born in Yorkshire, England, in 1728, came
to Philadelphia in 1759, and died there in 1813. Living
through two American wars and dying during a third, he
remained throughout his long life a Tory of deepest hue.
Never an egalitarian, ke was dismayed by the sweeping
social and economic changes wrought by American independence
and never reconciled himself to the objectives of
the new republic.
Although well-trained as a scholar, there is much
truth to Proud's own assertion that his HISTORY was imperfect,
deficient, and not what he had hoped for after
some twenty years of gathering material and writing amidst
gnawing privation as a schoolmaster.
For us today the HISTORY is of interest as a keenly
felt and prophetic warning of progressive decay in human
affairs and the dangers of control by "forward, selfish and
less qualified" men. At a time when exuberant chauvinism
and bloated immodesties perfused the writings of the new
republic's protagonists, Proud warned of demagoguery and
the "boasting of mere theory and anticipation." Intransigent
and opinionated, Proud exemplifies the dissenting comf
mentator whose political criticisms and trenchant observations
of the passing scene remain perennially interesting and
valuable to the historian.
Robert Bray Wingate
Rare Books Librarian
Pennsylvania State Library
Harrisburg
March 3, 1967.