Herbert E. Bolton and the Historiography of the Americas (review)

Herbert E. Bolton and the Historiography of the Americas. By Russell M. Magnaghi. Studies in Historiography, no. 5. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1998. Photographs. Illustration. Map. Table. Figures. Appendix. Notes. Index. Bibliography. xvi, 211 pp. Cloth, $59.95.

The book under review is an account of the rise, fall, and resurgence of an historical idea that the history of the western hemisphere should be studied as a unit. Russell Magnaghi's book provides a sweeping overview of the development of this concept from the sixteenth century to present days and gives special attention to Herbert E. Bolton's part in adding "The History of the Americas" to the curriculum in the University of California and other institutions.

While Magnaghi points out numerous contributors to the Americas concept, Bolton is the central protagonist in his story, and rightly so. Bolton developed the course at Berkeley, and scores of his doctoral students carried it far and wide. Bolton believed that his Americas course was the proper introduction for undergraduates before they enrolled in national courses, including U.S. history. Bolton believed that many U.S. history courses were chauvinistic, and he faulted professors for derogating (or ignoring) Spanish contributions to United States history. He tirelessly defended his course at Berkeley because he was convinced that students could better understand British colonial and United States developments in a hemispheric context.

The History of the Americas flourished under Bolton's patronage. His course drew as many as one thousand students who crowded into Wheeler Hall, and other professors taught similar courses throughout the country, although it was most popular in California where Berkeley graduates dominated college faculties. When Bolton retired in 1940, he left the course in the hands of his own students who had secured tenured positions on the Berkeley faculty, but Bolton's course did not survive as the standard undergraduate American history course at Berkeley or elsewhere. As his students retired and died, the course gradually disappeared from college catalogs.

Why did such a successful course fail to remain a standard part of the college curriculum? Professor Magnaghi offers several reasons and argues that Bolton himself should shoulder part of the responsibility. He failed to write a textbook for the course. Several other historians produced serviceable texts, but Bolton's imprimatur would have helped to secure a place for the course among non-Berkeley-trained faculty. Nor did Bolton provide a theoretical basis for the course. Indeed, one of his students said that the Berkeley history faculty "distrusted the philosophy of history so profoundly that they discouraged attempts at broad generalization" (p. 122). Considering the criticism that followed Bolton's sweeping American Historical Association presidential address, "The Epic of Greater America," it is not surprising that Bolton and his students shied away from further attempts at generalization. While Berkeley was the intellectual center of hemispheric history, Bolton did not establish a formal training program for the history of the Americas. His students simply emulated their mentor's performances in Wheeler Hall. The course also ran afoul of Berkeley politics. After Bolton retired, U.S. historians dominated the faculty and they were determined to replace the Americas course with a standard U.S. history survey course. Magnaghi might have added that in the 1950s and 1960s growing college enrollments made it possible to jettison the popular course without serious fiscal consequences.

Professor Magnaghi concludes his book on a positive note. In recent years many scholars have shown renewed interest in the comparative history of the Americas. The current emphasis on multiculturalism and diversity have made the hemispheric perspective a useful frame of reference for undergraduate history courses. This book will be especially useful to historians who teach such a course or who are planning to offer it. It includes an excellent bibliography and an interesting appendix that is a chronological list of works in the field published from 1533 to 1998. This...