The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 42, July 1938 - April, 1939 Page: 427

Book Reviews

on the science of government are confined to the years 1819 to
1826. Then he seemed to undergo not only a physical but also
a mental decline. In his last years he contradicted in word and
in deed those remarkable precepts of government which he voiced
and attempted to practice in his more virile years.
Although the political ideals of the Liberator were strong deter-
mining factors in giving direction to the Spanish-American wars
for independence, one searches in vain for a continuing influence
such as that which has been exerted on the United States by Wash-
ington, for example. The tidal wave of near-anarchy swept over
the state which Bolivar had so laboriously created; nothing re-
mained but independence. We search in vain today for political
institutions or policies directly attributed to the Liberator. Senior
Belaunde would perhaps not agree that Bolivar's influence died
sometime before the death of the man.
However, the ideology of Bolivar does not monopolize the pages
of this important book. The author undertakes to describe political
and constitutional developments throughout the far reaches of
revolutionary Spanish America-from Mexico to La Plata and
Chile. These areas were quite beyond the ideological influence
of the Great Liberator, and for that reason the connecting thread
often appears very tenuous indeed. Moreover, the very sketchy
treatment of the constitutional movements in those outlying areas
strengthens an impression that they don't belong to the main
thread of the argument. It is interesting information, but ex-
traneous, and in no sense a contribution.
J. LLOYD MEcIIAM.
The University of Texas.
The Growth of European Civilization. By A. E. R. Boak, Albert
Hyma and Preston Slosson. Volume I, From Ancient
Times to the Reformation; Volume II, From the Reforma-
tion to the Present. (New York: F. S. Crofts & Co., 1938.
Pp. xxx, 1101. Illustrations and maps. Price $4.50.
Available in separate volumes at $3.00 each.)
This comprehensive textbook on the history of Western civiliza-
tion is the outgrowth of a series of lectures which have been given
for a number of years in an introductory course in general Euro-
pean civilization at the University of Michigan by Professors

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