The American historian Charles McLean Andrews (1863-1943) originated the version of colonial history that places the English settlements in America within the larger context of the British Empire.

Charles McLean Andrews was born in Wethersfield, Conn., on Feb. 22, 1863. He graduated from Trinity College in 1884 and began teaching at West Hartford High School. Dissatisfied, Andrews left in 1886 to enter graduate school at Johns Hopkins. There he worked under Herbert B. Adams, a leading figure in the movement to professionalize history and an exponent of the "germ" theory of history, which traced American political institutions from German origins. In keeping with his mentor's interest, Andrews studied towns in Connecticut. However, his dissertation, The River Towns in Connecticut (1899), questioned some of Adams's assumptions.

Andrews took his first teaching position at Bryn Mawr in 1889. His continued research to test the germ theory resulted in The Old English Manor (1892). The following year Andrews's...