The Year 1949 is the two hundredth anniversary of the leave-taking from their native land for American missionary endeavors, of the Mallorquin Franciscans, Junípero Serra, Francisco Palóu, and Juan Crespí. They were, however, but a threesome among the thirty-three who comprised the entire group or “mission” that sailed from Cádiz in the latter part of 1749. The coming anniversary, therefore, suggests the proper occasion to study from the original sources, the methods, chronology, and personalities involved in that great missionary enterprize that meant so much for the Americas. The greater part of the material of this article is based on the expediente, No. 5546, of Contratación, located in the Archivo de Indias, Sevilla, Spain. It is entitled: “Mission de Sn. Franco, para el Collegio de Sn. Fernando de Mexico. Año de 1749.” The writer found it at Sevilla in the fall of 1946.

In the era of the Mexican Revolution, research opportunities on the sub-national level are numerous and varied, although not completely untested. In recent monographs and dissertations, historians have examined the revolution in a few states, leading regional figures, the workings of national reform commissions in selected localities and hinted at the conflict of provincial interests that provoked violence in the name of opposition to national programs. Each of these themes needs further, more systematic evaluation. Still wanting are studies of local demographic changes and concomitant political and economic adjustments accompanying the revolution, of the appropriation of state and local administration, and of the local issues that confused reform programs such as land reapportionment and educational missions. Professor James W. Wilkie has made important national studies of efforts to implement revolutionary programs and to evaluate statistically the church-state question. Both of these themes should be assayed through case studies of states or somewhat larger regions. But rather than cataloging research possibilities, this paper concentrates on one sub-national topic: the state governors.

One of the major obstacles preventing Argentine national unificacation in the 1870s was the hostility of the poor interior provinces, victims of the ravages of civil wars and economic stagnation, toward the richer and more powerful coastal area dominated by export-oriented merchants and cattlemen. From 1874 until the first decade of the twentieth century, a major attempt was made to resolve longstanding grievances. A definitive political compromise and program of economic integration emerged in 1880 when a group of politicians, representing both the interior and the littoral, joined together and made their slogan a reality: Peace and administration. This group, known as the Generation of Eighty, brought a national capital and a modicum of peace to Argentina in 1880. Eventually they helped create a new Argentina linked by networks of transportation, communication, banking facilities and other trappings of modernity. They courted regional industries with protective tariffs and political favors in hopes of providing an economic stimulus to the interior which would complement rapid growth in the littoral. But even though Buenos Aires and surrounding areas flourished, by the turn of the century most interior provinces remained as destitute as they had been thirty years earlier.

Bibliographies for the study of Brazilian history are either too brief, such as those in the appendices of general textbooks, or too long, such as the Manual Bibliográfico de Estudos Brasileiros. The present one aims to strike a happy medium and, by doing so, to provide a practical guide for the increasing number of students and of the general public in the United States who have an interest in learning more about the Brazilian past.

The selection of books for this bibliography has not been entirely arbitrary. Because it is intended primarily for North Americans, I chose liberally of the material available in English. Conversely, I was more exclusive in selecting works in other languages. Of the voluminous literature available in Portuguese, I sought to point out only the outstanding works—whether for quality of style, depth of research, originality, or at times, because they were the only examples of their kind in neglected aspects of Brazilian history. A few books of exceptional merit or interest in French and Spanish also were added. Doubtless I have included here some works which others may consider unworthy, to the exclusion of some they may consider indispensable. Still, I believe this bibliography will fulfill its primary purpose of indicating the basic material available to the student of Brazilian history.

Students of the life and writings of José Martí y Pérez (1853–1895), the National Hero of Cuba, will be forever indebted to the lifelong efforts of Marti’s close friend, fellow revolutionist, and “literary heir,” Gonzalo de Quesada y Aróstegui, and to those of his son, Gonzalo de Quesada y Miranda. Through painstaking research and editing they have preserved, over a period of nearly seventy years, the record of Martí’s prodigious writings as a revolutionist, journalist, novelist, dramatist, and poet. It is no exaggeration to say that most of the writing on this remarkable Cuban is derived from their carefully edited collections of his works. Gonzalo de Quesada y Aróstegui, as one of the architects of Cuban independence, Cuba’s first Minister to the United States, and major participant in the early International Conferences of American States, is deserving of special attention by scholars in the Americas. Now that a third official edition of Marti’s writings is nearing completion by Gonzalo de Quesada y Miranda in Cuba, a biographical and bibliographical sketch of the Quesadas, father and son, is in order.

The Mexican nation has been incessantly plagued with revolutionary plans since the “grito of demoralization” by Guerrero in 1829. The word “plagued” is used advisedly, for very few of the revolutionary plans were more than expressions of personalismo, the bane of Latin-American politics. The immense majority of these so-called “programs” have had very little in the way of social and economic reforms embodied in them, either by word or implication; for the most part they have been political rather than socio-economic in character.

Early in the twentieth century, however, a small group developed one of the few socio-economic programs to be found in Mexican history. On July 1, 1906, while the Diaz government was still firmly entrenched, Ricardo Flores Magón and his little group of followers, almost unnoticed by the majority of the Mexicans, published a program of reform which at the time was one of the most sweeping ever outlined in Mexico. Announced as the philosophy of the Mexican Liberal Party, in it were all the elements of a vast socio-economic plan for the Mexican nation, with only a small part of the program dealing with political change. The Liberals well realized that curing only the political sore would not heal the sick nation.

On September 27, 1821, Mexico achieved its de facto independence from Spain when Agustín de Iturbide led his 16,000-man “Trigarante” Army into Ciudad México, thus culminating the revolution inaugurated by Father Miguel Hidalgo y Castillo in 1810. In December 1822, the United States gave official diplomatic recognition to Mexico, followed shortly thereafter by Great Britain in 1823. Despite such action on the part of the United States government, however, no official minister was dispatched to Mexico until May 1825. Based upon the circumstances of this delay and upon conditions in Mexico, when a United States minister did arrive in Ciudad México to meet with Mexican officials, the stage was set for a significant confrontation which would determine the tenor of Mexican-United States relations until the twentieth century. This was the confrontation between Joel R. Poinsett and Lucas Alamán.

In 1565, when Spain was still on the ascending arc of its colonial ventures, the first permanent settlement in the Philippines was made. The subsequent decades witnessed, not only a military conquest by Spanish conquistadores, but a spiritual conquest as well. The efforts of Salcedo, Legazpi and the others were, so to speak, the first stage, ushering in the missionaries, “… the real conquerors, who without any other arms than their virtues, gained over the good will of the islanders … and gave the king two millions more of submissive and Christian subjects.”

Students of the famous first contingent of Yankee Hispanists and of North American literature in general, during the national and revolutionary periods, are prone to overlook the pronounced influence of British, American, and French travel books about Spain and Spanish America. The popularity which travel accounts enjoyed in the nineteenth century is attested by a well-known publisher’s observation to the distinguished pioneer explorer of Central America, John L. Stephens, author of the recently reprinted Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas & Yucatan (1841, 1949). On the latter’s query as to what forms of literature Harper Brothers favored, Harper is said to have replied: “Travels sell about the best of anything we get hold of. They don’t always go with a rush, like a novel by a celebrated author, but they sell longer, and in the end, pay better.”