Andrews, Charles Mclean

Related Category: Historians, U.S.: Biographies

1863–1943, American historian, b. Wethersfield, Conn. He was associate professor at Bryn Mawr (1889–1907) and professor at Johns Hopkins Univ. (1907–10) and Yale (1910–31). Andrews, a leader in the reinterpretation of British colonial policy in America, studied the colonies in the light of the larger imperial problem, and his seminar in colonial institutions at Yale stimulated much able research in this field. His long, distinguished career reached a climax with The Colonial Period of American History (4 vol., 1934–38; Vol. I–III, The Settlements; Vol. IV, England's Commercial and Colonial Policy). This excellently received work won him the 1935 Pulitzer Prize for history and, in 1937, the gold medal for history and biography awarded only every 10th year by the National Institute of Arts and Letters. His other books include Colonial Self-Government, 1652–1689 (1904, repr. 1968; in the “American Nation” series), The Fathers of New England (1919) and Colonial Folkways (1919; both in the “Chronicles of America” series), and The Colonial Background of the American Revolution (1924, repr. 1961). He also compiled manuscript and bibliographical guides and wrote works on various historical subjects.

See biography by A. S. Eisenstadt (1956).