AT the accession of Isabella in 1474 the Church in Castile lay prostrate for the most part before the will of the papacy. Greater and lesser benefices were controlled from Rome, foreigners were commonly appointed to the highest dignities, and tribunals of justice were rendered impotent by interminable appeals to Rome. No less were the Castilian nobles accustomed to usurping royal authority in the civil and political branches of government. Castile was a patchwork of private jurisdictions and privileges of which Isabella was no more than a titular sovereign.

THE esteemed and controversial figure of that famous citizen of Seville, Fray Bartolomé de las Casas, has been, and continues to be, studied by many authors. Some are those who are attracted by the eminence of Christopher Columbus, the discoverer of “the new heaven and earth,” and devote years of work to formulating opinions on the Columbian historical sources. They include J. B. Muñoz, Fernández de Navarrette, Washington Irving, Thacher, Lollis, Harrisse, González de la Rosa, Vignaud, and many others. The three last-named scholars, however, in their studies have casf suspicion on one of the principal sources of Las Casas, and one of the notable historical works on Columbus: the Historia de la Vida y Hechos del Almirante Don Cristóbal Colón, written by his son Fernando. They say it was not written by Fernando Colón but is a forgery. Some even insinuate that several of the less credible sections of that Historia were introduced by Fr. Las Casas. It seems to me that such a hypothesis is not justified by creditable reason.

Twentieth-Century historians accept the fact that history can no longer be viewed merely as past politics; it must now embrace all aspects of national life and thought—total history. In the study of a colonial empire, the social scientist must seek his sources not only in the colony but also in the mother country. The enumeration and analysis of American themes in the literature of imagination of eighteenth-century Spain can open new panoramas to the student of history since these themes reflect the ideas of the peninsular Spaniard and might help explain the reactions which they caused in the colonies.

Prior to 1914 the most notable agricultural organization in Mexico was the Mexican Agricultural Society (Sociedad Agricola Mexicana), founded at a large convention of farmers and stockmen in Mexico City, on September 26, 1879. During the greater part of this period, Mexico was enjoying sufficient political stability, with Porfirio Díaz as President, to make possible the maintenance of such an association. Destined to become a powerful institution, it aimed “to promote the improvement and aggrandizement of agriculture in the country, and to defend its legitimate interests.” It was intended to benefit both stockmen and farmers who tilled the soil.

Anyone interested in early New World historians recognizes the difficulties encountered in reconstructing the lives of those scholars who, in the midst of wars or in the peace of convents, or even enjoying the fruits of an office in Spain, wrote books about the events in the New World. Many of these scholars were conscious that they were writing about tremendous happenings in the history of mankind and, weighed down by such responsibility, took little care in leaving any traces about their own lives. They were writing works of history, not autobiography. Investigators into this early New World history have been obliged to rely on conjectures concerning the personal life of these authors when the archives produced no documentation or when their patience has been exhausted before the enormous task of classifying millions of pages written by the indifferent hand of the salaried copyist or by the pen of authors or partakers in the colonizing activities in America.