Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T05:19:31.609Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Progress and Backwardness in Book Accumulation: Bancroft, Basadre, and Their Libraries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 October 2014

Ricardo D. Salvatore
Ricardo D. Salvatore*
Affiliation:
Universidad Torcuato Di Tella and Florida International University
*
[email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The essay examines the conditions of book accumulation in two places in the world economy, California and Peru, through the narratives left by book collector Hubert Bancroft and librarian and historian Jorge Basadre. A reading of these reveals the complex interrelations between socioeconomic development and cultural accumulation. In California, Bancroft turned his fortune accumulated through business into a unique book collection and this, in turn, was placed at the service of a “factory of history” that produced a multivolume “History of the Pacific States of North America.” In the Peruvian case, after a fire destroyed most of the collections of the National Library of Lima, historian Basadre directed an effort of reconstruction that led him to reflect upon the state's neglect of cultural patrimony, popular disdain for high culture, and Peru's long tradition of exporting books and documents to foreign collectors and libraries. Basadre's reflections speak of the position of a peripheral intellectual within a context of underdevelopment. I examine the centripetal logic of book accumulation and call for further engagement with this neglected side of cultural history.

Type
Research Article
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 56 , Issue 4 , October 2014 , pp. 995 - 1026
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Andrade, José María. 1869. Catalogue de la riche biblioteque de D. José M. Andrade: Livres manuscrits et imprimes. Literature francaise et espagnole. Histoire de l'Afrique, de l'Asia et de l'Amerique. 7000 pieces et volumes ayant rapport au Mexique ou imprimés dans ce pays. Leipzig and Paris: List and Franke, Librairie Tross.Google Scholar
Asheim, Lester. 1965. University Libraries in Developing Countries. American Library Association Bulletin 59, 9: 795–802.Google Scholar
Bancroft, Hubert Howe. 1890. Literary Industries. Vol. 39 of The Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft. San Francisco: The History Co. Publishers.Google Scholar
Bancroft, Hubert Howe. 1917. In These Latter Days. Chicago: The Blakely-Oswald.Google Scholar
Basadre, Jorge. 1931. Perú: Problema y posibilidad. Lima: Librería Francesa Científica y Casa Editorial E. Rosay.Google Scholar
Basadre, Jorge. 1945. La Biblioteca Nacional de Lima, 1943–1945. Lima: Ediciones de la Biblioteca Nacional.Google Scholar
Basadre, Jorge. 1947. Meditaciones sobre el destino histórico del Perú. Lima: Ediciones Huascaran.Google Scholar
Basadre, Jorge. 1958. Infancia en Tacna. Lima: Villanueva Editor.Google Scholar
Basadre, Jorge. 1975a. Recuerdos de un bibliotecario peruano. Lima: Editorial Historia.Google Scholar
Basadre, Jorge. 1975b. La vida y la historia: Ensayos sobre personas, lugares y problemas. Lima: Fondo del Libro del Banco Industrial del Perú.Google Scholar
Bennett, Tony and Silva, Elizabeth. 2011. Introduction: Cultural Capital—Histories, Limits, Prospects. Poetics 39, 6: 427–43.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. Nice, Richard, trans. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Brodie, Neil. 2003. Stolen History: Looting and Illicit Trade. Museum International 55, 3 and 4: 10–22.Google Scholar
Buchanan, Ann L. and Hérubel, Jean-Pierre. 2011. Subject and Historiographic Characteristics of Library History. Journal of Scholarly Publishing 42, 4: 514–33.Google Scholar
Casas Guerrero, Rosalba. 2004. Conocimiento, tecnología y desarrollo en América Latina. Revista Mexicana de Sociología 66: 255–77.Google Scholar
Casey, Marion. 1981. Efficiency, Taylorism, and Libraries in Progressive America. Journal of Library History 16, 2: 265–79.Google Scholar
Castells, Manuel and Laserna, Roberto. 1989. The New Dependency: Technological Change and Socioeconomic Restructuring in Latin America. Sociological Forum 4, 4: 535–60.Google Scholar
Caughey, John Walton. 1946. Hubert Howe Bancroft, Historian of the West. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Clark, Harry. 1973. A Venture in History: The Production, Publication, and Sale of the Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Cole, John Y. 2005. The Library of Congress Becomes a World Library, 1815–2005. Libraries & Culture 40, 3: 385–98.Google Scholar
Connell, Philip. 2000. Book Collecting, Cultural Politics, and the Rise of Literary Heritage in Romantic Britain. Representations 71: 24–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Craster, Edmund 1952. History of the Bodleian Library, 1845–1945. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Darin, Karin. 2012. Cultural Capital and Performance in Medical Education. Journal of Social Sciences 8, 3: 397–406.Google Scholar
Drayton, Richard. 2000. Nature's Government: Science, Imperial Britain, and the Improvement of the World. Hew Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Dubois, Vincent. 2011. Cultural Capital Theory vs. Cultural Policy Beliefs: How Pierre Bourdieu Could have Become a Cultural Policy Advisor and Why He Did Not. Poetics 39, 6: 491–506.Google Scholar
Fernández de Córdoba, Joaquín. 1956. Nuestros tesoros bibliográficos en los Estados Unidos II. Historia Mexicana 6, 1: 129–60.Google Scholar
Findlen, Paula. 1998. Possessing the Past: The Material World of the Italian Renaissance. American Historical Review 103, 1: 83–114.Google Scholar
Fitzpatrick, Elizabeth B. 2008. The Public Library as Instrument of Colonialism: The Case of the Netherlands East Indies. Libraries and the Cultural Record 43, 3: 270–85.Google Scholar
Gaddis, S. Michael. 2013. The Influence of Habitus in the Relationship between Cultural Capital and Academic Achievement. Social Science Research 42, 1: 1–13.Google Scholar
Golinski, Jan. 2011. Science in the Enlightenment, Revisited. History of Science 49, 2: 217–31.Google Scholar
Grafton, Anthony, ed. 1993. Rome Reborn: The Vatican Library and Renaissance Culture. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Green, Arnold. 1988. The History of Libraries in the Arab World: A Diffusionist Model. Libraries and Culture 23, 4: 454–73.Google Scholar
Hilton, Ronald. 1956 [1942]. Hispanic Source Materials and Research Organizations in the United States. 2d ed.Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Hock, Klaus and Mackenthun, Gesa, eds. 2012. Entangled Knowledge: Scientific Discourses and Cultural Difference. Munich: Waxman Verlag.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hosmer, Brian. 2007. The Research Library and Native American Collections. Western Historical Quarterly 38, 3: 363–70.Google Scholar
Jarvis, Helen. 1995. The National Library of Cambodia: Surviving for Seventy Years. Libraries and Culture 30, 4: 391–408.Google Scholar
Jave, Noé, ed. 1981. Jorge Basadre: La politica y la historia. Lima: Lluvia Editores.Google Scholar
Joseph, Gilbert, Rubenstein, Anne, and Zolov, Eric, eds. 2001. Fragments of a Golden Age: The Politics of Culture in Mexico since 1940. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Library of Congress. 1932. The Harkness Collection in the Library of Congress: Calendar of Spanish Manuscripts Concerning Peru, 1531–1651. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
Library of Congress, Hispanic Division. 1936. The Harkness Collection in the Library of Congress. Documents from Early Peru: The Pizarros and the Almagros, 1531–1578. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
Luyt, Brendan. 2009. Colonialism, Ethnicity, and the Geopolitics of Development of the Singapore National Library. Libraries and the Cultural Record 44, 4: 418–33.Google Scholar
Maymi-Sagrañes, Héctor. 2002. The American Library Association in Latin America. Libraries and Culture 37, 4: 307–38.Google Scholar
McClellan III, James E. 1992. Colonialism and Science: Saint Domingue in The Old Regime. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Morris, William A. 1903. The Origins and Authorship of the Bancroft Pacific State Publications: A History of a History. Quarterly of the Oregon Historical Society 4, 4: 287–364.Google Scholar
Odi, Amusi. 1991. The Colonial Origins of Library Development in Africa. Libraries and Culture 26, 4: 594–604.Google Scholar
Oteiza, Enrique. 1971. Emigración de profesionales, técnicos y obreros calificados argentinos a los Estados Unidos. Desarrollo Económico 10, 39 and 40: 429–54.Google Scholar
Portes, Alejandro. 1976. Determinants of the Brain Drain. International Migration Review 10, 4: 489–508.Google Scholar
Priebe, Paul M. 1982. From Bibliothèque du Roi to Bibliothèque Nationale: The Creation of a State Library, 1789–1793. Journal of Library History 17, 4: 389–408.Google Scholar
Rayward, W. Boyd and Jenkins, Christine. 2007. Libraries in Times of War, Revolution, and Social Change. Library Trends 55, 3: 361–69.Google Scholar
Roe, George. 2010. Challenging the Control of Knowledge in Colonial India: Political Ideas in the Work of R.S. Ranganathan. Library & Information History 26, 1: 18–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rose, Jonathan. 2003. Alternative Futures for Library History. Libraries and Culture 38, 1: 50–60.Google Scholar
Rosemberg, Jane A. 1993. The Nation's Great Library: Herbert Putnam and the Library of Congress, 1899–1939. Champaign Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Safier, Neil. 2008. Measuring the New World: Enlightenment Science and South America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Salvatore, Ricardo D. 2003. Local versus Imperial Knowledge: Reflections upon Hiram Bingham and the Yale Peruvian Expedition. Nepantla: Views from South 4, 1: 67–80.Google Scholar
Salvatore, Ricardo D. 2004. Expert Economic Advice and the Subalternity of Knowledge: Reflections on the Recent Argentine Crisis. SSRC papers on Contemporary Conflicts. At: http://www.mafhoum.com/press6/164C35.htm (accessed 18 Mar. 2014).Google Scholar
Salvatore, Ricardo D. 2005. Library Accumulation and the Emergence of Latin American Studies. Comparative American Studies 3, 4: 415–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Salvatore, Ricardo D., ed. 2007. Los lugares del saber: Contextos locales y redes transnacionales en la formación del conocimiento moderno. Rosario: Beatriz Viterbo.Google Scholar
Stewart, Watt. 1949. Jorge Basadre and Peruvian Historiography. Hispanic American Historical Review 29, 2: 222–27.Google Scholar
Thurner, Mark. 2008. Jorge Basadre's ‘Peruvian History of Peru’ and the Poetic Aporia of Historicism. Hispanic American Historical Review 88, 2: 247–83.Google Scholar
Thurner, Mark. 2012. El nombre del abismo: Meditaciones sobre la historia de la historia. Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos.Google Scholar
Vakkari, Pertti. 1991. Reading, Knowledge of Books, and Libraries as a Basis for the Conception of Scholarship in Eighteenth-Century Germany. Libraries and Culture 21, 1: 66–86.Google Scholar
Wang, Horng Luen. 2004. National Culture and Its Discontents: The Politics of Heritage and Language in Taiwan, 1949–2003. Comparative Studies in Society and History 46, 4: 786–815.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Waples, Douglas. 1940. Belgian Scholars and Their Libraries. Library Quarterly 10, 2: 231–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wiegand, Wayne A. 1986. The Politics of an Emerging Profession: The American Library Association, 1876–1917. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood.Google Scholar
Willison, Ian R. 1989. The National Library in Historical Perspective. Libraries and Culture 24, 1: 75–95.Google Scholar
Yepes del Castillo, Ernesto. 2003. Memoria y destino del Perú. Jorge Basadre: Textos esenciales. Lima: Fondo Editorial del Congreso del Peru.Google Scholar