The Mississippi Valley in British Politics.

"The search for the American frontier"

First edition of this important study, which received the Loubat Prize for 1918 and was reviewed favourably on publication by O. G. Libby, who considered Alvord "completely successful in maintaining his thesis that the Mississippi valley at a critical period in our history was again and again a determining factor in British politics. The part played by William Pitt, George III, Lord North, Shelburne, Hillsborough, Dartmouth, and a host of lesser lights is carefully dissected Here, too, we meet among the large group of Americans the familiar figures of Washington, Sir William Johnson, Franklin, Jeffersen, and Patrick Henry The separate topics dealt with have more than once been presented in detail by various writers but nowhere have they been in combined in a single treatment so as to bring out their relative importance in the whole scheme of colonial policy" (The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, Vol. 4, No. 1, June 1917, p. 131). "Alvord was one of the most erudite and creative of that school of American historians whose work was inspired and guided by the frontier theory of Frederick Jackson Turner. He continued the search for the spirit of the American frontier This search took the mid-western scholar to England for research in the papers of Lord Shelburne, a close contemporary and colleague of Benjamin Franklin and a major directing force in the success and expansion of the American empire of private property. Alvord's ringing endorsements of the ideas and visions that animated the land speculators vividly illustrates how important their conceptions have been in shaping the ethos of the continuing American Revolution" (Hall and Hall, The American Empire and the Fourth World, p. 361).