When in 1808 Napoleon replaced the unfortunate Bourbon King, Charles IV, by his own brother Joseph Bonaparte on the throne of Spain, he undoubtedly was not unmindful of the Spanish possessions in America. Without them Spain would be no more than a second rate power. Mexican silver must have lured the French Emperor, who like all conquerors was in constant need of money. The wealth of the Indies was one of the arguments he used in order to convince Joseph to give up the Crown of Naples for that of Spáin. Furthermore, it had been for many years the dream of French merchants to trade with the distant and wealthy lands which the poorly documented work of the Abbé de Raynal, Histoire Philosophique … had made quite popular in Europe by the end of the eighteenth century.

At the present time there is much interest both in factual history and in the history of the ideas which motivated these facts. This might be the justification, for instance, of so many monographs which are now appearing in many countries about the religious motives which gave impulse to great reforms.

The Spanish enterprise of the Indies has already been the subject of such studies, both from the point of view of Spanish thinkers and writers or from the standpoint—much less frequent—of the “Indianos” or Americans themselves.

In the sense that a European culture bordered and penetrated a region of primitive Indian culture, the first significant frontier on this continent was Mexico's “Gran Chichimeca,” during the second half of the sixteenth century. In the plateau between the Mother Sierras, from Querétaro to Durango and from Guadalajara to Saltillo, a Spanish way of life, closely allied with the sedentary peoples subjugated by Cortés, first faced and solved many of the knotty problems in amalgamating civilization and barbarism. In the process, Spanish pioneers, ordinary colonists as well as frontier magnates, found spacious areńas in which to exhibit civilization's manners and techniques before an interested audience of heathen.

Historians treating the American-Mexican diplomatic crisis during the Hayes administration have tended to regard it as a political and military affair, involving such points of controversy as the American recognition of Porfirio Díaz, the Mexican inability to keep order on the frontier, invasions of Mexico by American troops to punish marauding Indians, and, behind and above all, Mexican fears of American territorial ambitions. No one will deny that these dramatic circumstances deserve attention, but some writers have largely ignored the economic side of the question. Under cover of the rifle fire along the border and the excited buzzing in the government offices American business promoters, long anxious to take part in the development of Mexican resources, finally obtained the terms which would make this development possible. In September, 1880, after three years of controversy and war scares had almost extinguished American hopes, the Mexican government granted generous concessions for the building of the Mexican Central and the Mexican National Railroads and, in so doing, opened the way for an inrush of American capital.

The general history of man has not infrequently been supplemented by materials found in epic poetry (The Iliad, The Aeneid, La Chanson de Roland, Os Lusiadas, etc.). The history of Spanish America has similarly profited, from epic poems such as Castellanos' Elegías de varones ilustres de Indias, Ercilla's La Araucana, Oña's Arauco domado. Most scholars who have commented on Antonio de Saavedra Guzmán's El Peregrino indiano, published in 1599, have emphasized this poem's historical value. Such emphasis perhaps compensates somewhat for their having found scant literary merit in it (A mere “rimed chronicle” is the dictum of Menéndez y Pelayo, dean of Spanish literary historians).

William A. Harris ably served the United States as chargé d'affaires at Buenos Aires from June, 1846, until October, 1851, during one of the most critical periods in Argentine history. When he went to his post of duty, Argentina was suffering both from external and internal strife. France and England had intervened in affairs in the Río de la Plata, and had blockaded the coast. Relations between Argentina and two of her neighbors, Paraguay and Brazil, were strained. The government of Buenos Aires was fomenting civil war in Uruguay. There was mounting tension between Buenos Aires and the back country provinces. Public discontent prevailed within Buenos Aires Province. Foreign nationals residing there became increasingly apprehensive about the future of their business enterprises. The heavy hand of the violent caudillo, Juan Manuel de Rosas, Governor of Buenos Aires Province, was felt throughout the entire area of the Río de la Plata. His position was so strong that in most respects he controlled affairs of the whole Argentine Confederation, comprising fourteen provinces.

The well organized Inca nation of Peru yielded to the Spanish quest for precious metals and mission fields. The new Indian subjects, having developed stable economic and political nationhood before the conquest, were accustomed to work and amenable to organization. Out of this substance, a colonial state could be moulded to make a substantial contribution to the Spanish purposes.

Spaniards readily rationalized that precious metals were material rewards for the missions' spiritual ambitions; conquest itself had precedents both among the Romans and the Incas, but Spain's Christianity gave her even greater justification.

Books of travel and books inspired by travel have probably been more popular in Great Britain than any other literary form, with the exception of novels.

This was especially true in the nineteenth century, when travel, owing to the lack of today's facilities, was reserved for the relative few. During that period, photography had not yet replaced the written word, as is happening in our own generation. The nineteenth-century Englishman wandered through the medium of a travel book and not through newsreels, travelogues, and even full-length movies. Today, the Englishman, like the American, is able to sit in his living room and see the world on his television screen. He is not dependent on literature to the extent that his grandfather or great-grandfather was. For the Englishman of the nineteenth century, therefore, travel literature was very important. Often, these books furnished the only source of information concerning strange lands and strange peoples.

The religious painting of Ecuador started very early. In fact, the first Franciscan friars who accompanied the conquistadores brought the visual arts to this new territory. Fr. Jodoco Ricke de Marselaer, with another priest, Fr. Pedro Goseal, or Gosseal, founded a school of art in 1534.

In 1553 this school was raised by Fr. Francisco de Morales to the category of a college with the title of Colegio de San Andrés. In this school, until its extinction in 1675, a great part of the painters of the región were educated, not only Indians but also Creoles.

The three main influences which molded this Quito school of painting were the following: It was born under the Flemish style at the Franciscan school of San Andrés; then it was influenced by the Spanish painting of the second half of the sixteenth century, and lastly it absorbed the teachings of two Italian masters. The influence of these three currents was felt in various ways: the Flemish appeared through the first Franciscans and through the engravings they constantly used in the composition of paintings; the Spanish appeared more directly in the style of the paintings themselves, and the Italian current, the last and most powerful, was the one which triumphed in all of America at the beginning of the seventeenth century.

During the past fifty years much scattered writing has appeared about the arts of the neophyte Indians resident in the California missions. But these arts: the sculpture and carving in stone and wood, the work in metal, the paintings on the walls and on canvas, most of these are not truly Indian. The California Indians were on the whole at a cultural level far below that of the Indians of New Mexico and Arizona, to say nothing of those of Mexico. They were as primitive and backward as any in the western hemisphere. They had no writing, they had little social organization, they knew nothing of metals. Their housing was either huts of rushes or caves; they wore little or no clothing. Their arts were unusually primitive; pottery was almost unknown. Basketry, or the weaving of baskets, was the only craft that reached a considerable development, and the patterns and designs throughout the state are comparable to those of any Indian culture. Several techniques of weaving were used and the decorations comprised designs often using several colors. Sometimes shell mosaics were applied to the baskets to create more interesting patterns.

The geographical configuration of a territory undoubtedly has great influence on events there. Geography guides migration, decides the economic life of the region, weakens or strengthens its people, and opens or closes the roads to cultural influences and to foreign invasions.

On the other hand the influence of “false geography,” that is the mistaken ideas of the location of a certain territory, carried on by tradition penetrates the minds of people and lures them to attempt enterprises they would not try otherwise. And even though these projects originate in erroneous, objectively false concepts, they still produce important historical events of decisive importance.

Hispanic Florida was characterized by one truth: it was a failure, from whatever angle you look at its history. Spain's efforts in Florida were unsuccessful. She pursued a policy of bankruptcy with regard to that land. In 1763 she readily turned Florida over to the English to get back Havana. Today's Cuban capital was worth the whole of Florida. When she came back in 1783 new ideas could not stem the tide of failure of Spain's first period and a half century later she again gave up Florida, this time to the United States.

As the United States went into the second year of civil strife in 1862, Abraham Lincoln was under strong pressure to find some acceptable solution to the problem of the Negro. Though the Republican Party had made no emancipation pledges, and both President and Congress had denied any intention to interfere with established state institutions, conditions changed swiftly in the months that followed these disclaimers. It became increasingly awkward to allow each regional commander to handle the Negro refugees as he saw fit—returning the men and their families to their erstwhile owners, chasing them out of the camps, or holding them in labor battalions as “contraband of war.” Still more important was the dilemma caused by the Radicals both in and out of Congress who saw only a clear-cut case of right versus wrong, and who felt that victory would surely be forthcoming once the shackles of servitude had been cut off. Neither the unwillingness of Union Democrats to enter upon an abolitionist crusade, nor the administration's need to retain the support of border state slaveholders served to quiet their clamor. Accordingly, Lincoln was forced against his will into piecemeal and sometimes contradictory measures ending with his proclamation of January 1, 1863, when what he actually preferred was a long-range program of compensated emancipation that would include voluntary colonization of a large portion of the Negroes thus set free.

Driven by a spirit of nationalism and romanticism and stimulated by certain literary sources, many of North America's first poets, those of the revolutionary, national, and early romantic periods of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries (until ca. 1830) sought inspiration in the Hispanic world. There they found some seven themes for verses, which today, with the possible exception of Freneau's and Bryant's, may seem of questionable aesthetic value. But because of these poets' interpretation of and surprisingly great concern for things Spanish, their works are of considerable historical interest.

Edward Bliss Emerson, a younger brother of Ralph Waldo Emerson, was born in 1805. Educated at Andover Academy and Harvard, he showed great promise as a scholar. Ill health plagued the young man, however, and he was forced to give up his work as a teacher. A trip to southern Europe failed to cure his tuberculosis. Next he tried to study law in Boston, but this brought on the total ruin of his health and a short spell of mental derangement.

By 1831 it was apparent that a prolongation of Emerson's life required a warmer climate than that of his beloved New England. He went first to the Danish island of St. Croix. A few months later he was in Puerto Rico, and there he remained—with the exception of one brief trip home—until his death in 1834.

Bibliographers record only two items in English out of the thousands of publications that appeared in New Spain from 1539 to 1821: (1) a 1784 English translation of the sixth article of the 1783 peace treaty concluded between Spain and England, and (2) a brief catechism of Catholic doctrine published in 1787 or shortly after. Both appeared in Mexico City. I have found no reference to any other imṕrint in English issuing from the Mexican colonial presses. I consulted the first in the splendid collection of Señor Martín Carrancedo of Mexico City and the second in the library of the Historical Institute of the Society of Jesus in Rome.