Fortunate good judgment led the founders of the Journal of Inter-American Studies to place major emphasis in their new enterprise of six years ago on the most neglected aspect of studies related to the western hemisphere: the Inter-American aspect.

North Americans at that time had long been devoting scholarly attention to their neighbors to the South. But generally their study — sympathetic and understanding though it was — was of one people looking at other peoples through eyes that saw backgrounds, outlooks, and problems essentially different from their own. Thinking on the part of the North Americans was in terms of Latin American studies, Hispanic American studies, or even South American studies.