ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on William Edward Burghardt DuBois's adoption of empirical social research methods that became the hallmark of his sociological work in the United States. American and European scholars have paid varying degrees of attention to the impact W. E. B. Du Bois's two-year journey to Europe from 1892 to 1894 had upon his intellectual development as a social scientist. In the summer of 1892, several hundred American students set sail from the harbors of New York City en route to various European universities—mainly in Germany and France. Among those headed to Berlin was none other than twenty-four-year-old Fisk and Harvard alumnus, W. E. B. Du Bois—A. B. Hart's star doctoral candidate in history at Harvard. By the end of his undergraduate years at Harvard, Du Bois deliberately shifted away from philosophy under James toward history under Hart. In Germany, Du Bois found himself in "contact with several of the great leaders of the developing social sciences.
