Background.

In colonial America as in Europe, colleges were the primary institutions of higher learning. Their establishment in America was yet another manifestation of the European commitment to preserve Western culture despite the challenges of the wilderness and its "savage" inhabitants. In Spanish America and New France the Catholic Church led the way in establishing colleges, whose first priority was propagating the faith among both Indians and colonists. The religious motive was also dominant in the founding of Protestant colleges in British North America. Throughout the colonial era Latin and Greek classics dominated the curricula of American colleges. However, under the impact of Enlightenment thought, advances in mathematics and the natural sciences began to make their way into the college curriculum in the later eighteenth century.

Spanish, Dutch, and French.

Although learned laymen as well as clergy settled in the Spanish borderlands, no college was...