Beer, George Louis, 1872–1920, American historian, b. Staten Island, N.Y. He was a tobacco importer for 10 years but also lectured on European history at Columbia from 1893 to 1897. After 1903 he devoted himself to continuing his economic historical studies of British colonial policy. His works revolutionized history-writing about the American colonies. These were, notably, The Commercial Policy of England toward the American Colonies (1893, repr. 1948), British Colonial Policy, 1754–1765 (1907), Origins of the British Colonial System, 1578–1660 (1908, repr. 1959), and The Old Colonial System, Part I (1912). He was one of the corps of U.S. experts at the Paris Peace Conference and was a member of the League of Nations mandates commission.
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