He joined the venerable discipline of history to the nascent field of sociology to become one of the precursors, in intention if not in method, of modern political science, especially in that branch called comparative government. In many respects he remains an eminent representative of intellectual liberalism in Britain between 1870 and 1920.
Born in Belfast, James Bryce was the son of James and Margaret Bryce. His father was the son of a Scottish Presbyterian minister, and his mother was the daughter of a Belfast merchant. In 1846 the elder James Bryce, a teacher, left Belfast Academy and took a position at the Glasgow High School, where young James eventually attended classes. During the summers he shared his father's amateur researches in botany and geology, fields of growing popular interest and controversy. Bryce's training in the classics and the natural sciences influenced his entire life and informed his various writings on political and educational topics.
At age sixteen Bryce entered Glasgow University, where he studied Latin and Greek under the eminent William Ramsay and Edmund Lushington (Alfred Tennysons brother-in-law) as well as mathematics and logic. The special strengths of his Scottish education and his Presbyterian training played important roles in his introduction to Oxford University.
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