Interpreting Spanish Colonialism: Empires, Nations, and Legends (review)

This anthology has two parts. "Modernity among the Ruins" contains an introduction by the editors and four chapters on the Philippines, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the historiography of the conquest and colonization of the Americas. Part two, "Colonial Pasts and National Presents," consists of a second introduction by the editors, and five chapters including "Hispanophilia and the Whitening of New Mexico," "Herbert Eugene Bolton's Quest for a Transnational American History," and "Echoes of Colonialism: Peninsulares, Wholesome Hispanics, Steamy Latins." As might be deduced from the chapter titles, this is not a book for the casual reader. The geographic focus of this journal prompts me to address only those chapters that bear on Texas and the Southwest and the historiography of the region. I extend apologies to the authors of other essays and the hope that their scholarship receives appropriate review in journals of broader scope.

The essay on New Mexico examines a literary movement that began in the 1880s and ended around 1940. Literati of that era sought to romanticize Spain's colonial past by glorifying conquistadors as agents of pacification and civilization, as well as extolling the "selfless missionary who had defied all hardship to spread Christianity among los indios bárbaros" (p. 187). Writers in this tradition displayed Hispanophilia and developed a White Legend to counter some three centuries of Black Legend. Helen Hunt Jackson, Hubert Howe Bancroft, and especially Charles Fletcher Lummis challenged the prevailing view of New Englanders steeped in their smug assertions of Spaniards' unique cruelty, religious fanaticism, and lust for gold. This strident refutation of the Black Legend laid a foundation in the United States "for a wider appreciation of all things Spanish" (p. 188).

It also served as a springboard for Herbert Eugene Bolton, who began his teaching career at the University of Texas before moving on to an extended career at the University of California at Berkeley. Bolton's academic progeny at Berkeley numbered more than one hundred Ph.D.s and several hundred more at the master's level. Bolton himself made lasting contributions to the historiography of the colonial era of the future Lone Star State. It is also significant that Bolton became the first scholar of Spain in America to be chosen president of the American Historical Association. His 1932 presidential address, "Epic of Greater America," stressed the importance "of the larger aspects of Western Hemisphere History" (p. 227). In looking for historiographical influences on the modern world, Samuel Truett's essay points to the creation of NAFTA.

In fall 1919, while serving as department chair, Bolton replaced his U.S. history survey with a lecture class that he called the "History of the Americas." The class drew an astonishing 800 students, followed by 1,248 in the following spring! As a graduate student at the University of New Mexico (1958–1962), I was a quiz section leader and grader for UNM's version of Bolton's mega course. The problems encountered by UNM's professors with the History of the Americas were exactly those that doomed Bolton's creation at California Berkeley: the first half of his course was at least teachable in that it primarily focused on English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese colonization of the Americas. Trying to teach the post-independent period of U.S. history and the twenty republics of Latin America, not to mention Canadian history, was analogous to trying to herd cats.

Even the editors of this carefully crafted book on colonial influences in the modern world end on a pessimistic note. They "hazard to say that popular memories of Spain's colonial past—among Latinos and Americans, generally—will continue to fade, as the progeny of conquest become authors of their own history and identity" (p. 255).