title: European Colonial Experience: A Plea for Comparative Studies
abstract: The opportunity to contribute from the United States an essay in honor of a great Italian scholar tempts us to appeal to both American and European historians to turn to the universal history of European colonization, from the tenth to the nineteenth century. The thirteenth century saw the loss of some holdings, especially in Palestine, but those were more than offset by the new colonies opened up in Crete, the Aegean and Ionian islands, on the Balkan peninsula, and in the Crimea. The mechanical