1 Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma (1944, rpt. New York, 1962), 7.

2 The exponents of the germ theory were especially interested in continuities of land tenure such as socage, and political institutions such as the tun and folk-moot. Many early dissertations at Johns Hopkins attempted to establish these linkages, with limited success. No historian in the late 19th century had a sufficient command of archives on both sides of the Atlantic to settle the question. The germ theory lay beyond the empirical reach of American historical scholarship for three generations. For a survey of this literature see J. M. Vincent et al., Herbert B. Adams (Baltimore, 1902), with a bibliography of his students’ works from 1876 to 1902.