Educated in the classics, trained in the law, and experienced in diplomacy, John Romeyn Brodhead belonged to that distinguished class of scholarly gentlemen who contributed so much to American historical writing in the nineteenth century. Although not a national figure like his friend George Bancroft, Brodhead played a major role in collecting the sources and writing the history of colonial New York. In the early 1840s, Brodhead embarked upon one of the most remarkable episodes in the annals of American historiography. Acting as the agent for the state of New York, he spent three years researching the archives of Europe for documents relating to New Netherland and colonial New York. He also became the first historian to draw extensively upon this unparalleled collection of early American manuscripts. His History of the State of New York (2 volumes, 1853, 1871) was acclaimed by most contemporaries as the definitive scholarly account of both...