The founding of the College of St. Francis at Celaya, near Querétaro in Mexico, later to achieve the status of a Royal and Pontifical University, offers an excellent example of the Franciscan Order’s internal conflict between the strict observance of poverty and its willingness to administer higher educational institutions on a permanent basis.

On the 8th of March, 1500, a fleet of thirteen ships and caravels departed from Lisbon under the command of Pedro Alvares Cabral. Two of the caravels were destined for East Africa and the others for Calicut, on the Malabar coast of India, where they were sent to obtain cargoes of spices and other Eastern commodities, to establish friendly relations with its ruler, and to leave a factory for future trade. Vasco da Gama with his fleet had preceded; Cabral followed to reap the reward. The route was carefully selected to secure the safest and best passage to the Cape of Good Hope. The ships of the fleet were clumsy so that the course must be taken with the most favorable winds. They sailed somewhat to the west of south from the Cape Verde Islands and the coast of Brazil was reached, probably for the first time. After remaining here for about a week taking on supplies of water and wood, the main fleet continued to India. Before doing so, possession of this discovery was taken for the Crown, though it was not then known whether it was mainland or an island. A small supply ship was sent back to Lisbon carrying letters for the King, among them one by Pedro Vaz de Caminha telling of the sojourn and describing the natives, and another by the king’s astrologer, Master John. Both of these letters still exist. The date of the arrival of the supply ship in Portugal is not known but it was probably early in July, 1500. The news of the discovery was of great interest to the King and to the Portuguese people, but their chief concern was with the success of the India fleet, and Caminha’s letter reported that little of value was found in the new land during Cabral’s stay. The discovery made by Cabral was considered of sufficient importance, however, to warrant sending a second fleet for further investigation. The King and the cosmographers wished to know whether it was mainland, as they undoubtedly suspected, and if so its extent. If such were the case, they desired to claim the land for Portugal under the Bull of May 4, 1493 and the Treaty of Tordesillas, signed June 4, 1494. If it were an island, the Spice Islands farther to the west might be reached as Columbus had claimed. The merchants were interested in its commercial value particularly for obtaining pearls and dye wood and in its possibilities for the cultivation of sugar cane. In the latter of these Bartolomeo Marchioni, a wealthy Florentine, who had long resided in Lisbon and operated sugar plantations in Madeira and elsewhere, could anticipate profits, if the land were fertile and native labor adequate. The New Christians or converted Jews evidently also saw in this new land the possibility of escape from persecution in Portugal and a chance for wealth from the products which might be found there.

The wars of the French Revolution and Napoleon obliterated century-old boundaries. In the tedious reformation of European borders, nations quarreled so violently at times—such as over Poland and Saxony—that it seemed as if new wars would immediately engulf Europe. This study explores a major Iberian storm center, which existed on the eastern Portuguese border at Olivenza. Repercussions of this conflict between Spain and Portugal extended from Moscow to Montevideo—and resulted in the formation of a new nation, Uruguay.

In order to have avoided the criticism of most writers priding themselves on their progressive and modern spirit, the Catholic Church in the nineteenth-century Hispanic world would have had to accept religious toleration, would have had to surrender much of its material goods, and would have had to reconcile itself to secularism by relinquishing influence in the temporal order. Various circumstances, many of them arising as much from social conditions as from theological viewpoints, caused the Church first in nineteenth-century Spain and somewhat later in Spanish America to set itself resolutely and militantly against these three desiderata of its liberal critics.

Following independence from Spain in 1898, Cubans hoped to create a new independent, more egalitarian nation built on the dreams of numerous well-known revolutionaries like José Martí and Antonio Maceo as well as lesser known radicals like the anarchists Enrique Creci, Enrique Messonier, and Adrián del Valle. Like so many of their fellow residents on the island, though, the anarchists quickly grew disillusioned with independence. Their disillusionment rested on repeated U.S. military occupations, a business and commercial class that put individual profits over the well-being of all, a government that seemed to repress labor and the popular classes in order to curry favor with international and national investors, and educational systems that anarchists charged taught obedience and subservience instead of freedom.

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.