The interpretation of Spanish colonial history has ever ranged to extremes. A political observer once remarked that on the subject of James G. Blaine men went crazy in pairs. And on the subject of Spain Spaniards have shown the same flair from Charles V to Franco. How else can we reconcile “the proud Spaniard” so fixed in popular psychology and the revealing verse of Batrina?

If banditry and mysticism represents one classic formula summarizing the historical reality of the Brazilian Northeast, its companion image is one of devastating droughts and concomitant migrations out from the parched backlands to regional capitals like Recife and Salvador and on to the great national metropolises of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. Reports of drought in the Northeast appear from the times of early settlement; succeeding centuries witnessed repeated dry periods. While some of these proved relatively moderate in intensity, others, sparing only the lush coastal strip, assailed the entire region and reigned for several seasons. Of this latter type, none provoked greater suffering than the so-called Grande Séca which embraced the winters from 1877-1879, devastating the cotton and cattle complexes, the mainstays of the backlands' economy, and setting in motion an enormous migratory stream which ranged from the Amazon rubber lands to those of the booming coffee culture in the Southeast. Moreover, with the outbreak of epidemic diseases, it generated a mortality estimated as exceeding two hundred thousand persons. By this measure, then, the Grande Séca stands as “the most costly natural disaster in the history of the Western Hemisphere.”

Sigmund Freud was more than the father of psychoanalysis; he was also one of the great classical philosophers of history. In Freud's historical thought, we have the framework for an analysis of the past which parallels the formation of neuroses in the life history of the individual. Like psychological man, historical man is the victim of events (trauma) from the past. Etched on the brain of historical man, are memories which endure through time, become part of the “archaic heritage,” and are transmitted from one generation to another. Then, like the “return of the repressed” in neurotic individuals, societies feel the afflictions of the past, which return to haunt them. That Freud stressed the killing of the primeval father by his jealous sons, an event of dubious historical veracity, should not obscure the value of his historical framework. In Freudian thought, the psychic stages of the individual unfold in the collective societies of history.

WASHINGTON IRVING put together The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus too hurriedly for it to be as accurate and original as historians would like it to be. He was even inclined on occasion, perhaps to compensate for the impossibility of doing exhaustive research, to “let his imagination go completely,” reconstructing colorful scenes not only from what existing records clearly indicated had happened, but from what a knowledge of the era of discovery led him to believe might have happened. And he heightened diction, tone, and characterization to the point of inviting criticism. Nevertheless nineteenth-century historians did not laugh Columbus off. And Stanley Williams’s verdict that instances where Irving consciously invents facts or distorts what in his time was considered to be the evidence are “relatively rare” seems sound. In spite of its faults, the book proved, apparently, to be usable until more detailed studies of the subject appeared.

GENERAL William Miller had played a leading role in the independence of Peru and Bolivia from Spain, working with the chief leaders of the independence movement, and had held civil posts of distinction as president of Puno and president of Potosí. Bad health, however, caused by the many wounds suffered in the wars, had made it advisable that he return to England for treatment. But, unlike so many other foreign legionnaires, Miller's role in the history of Peru did not end with independence.

During the decade beginning in 1910 the economic involvement of the United States in Mexico increased while diplomatic relations deteriorated. Between 1911 and 1920 United States' imports from Mexico increased from $57,000,000 to $179,000,000 and exports from $61,000,000 to $208,000,000. Much of this economic growth related to petroleum and to land where investments in each of these areas increased phenomenally. The new Mexican Constitution of 1917, however, forecast trouble for foreign investors, especially those who depended upon Mexico's unreplenishable subsoil resources. Concessionaires who mined the subsoil appeared to hold their title only at the will of the state. Additionally, the right of foreigners to hold property in Mexico was often restricted. Land on the shores or borders of Mexico, for example, could not be owned by foreigners. Such provisions were designed to limit the economic subservience of Mexico to the United States. Like other Latin Americans, the Mexicans wanted economic self-sufficiency. They resented the fact that their economy was tied to the fluctuating world demand for staple raw materials and that they were caught in an American vise which squeezed both their imports and their exports.

The evolution of the historical literature on land tenure in northern New Spain has closely paralleled general historiographical trends of New Spain's far northern frontier. For many years, “borderlands” history focused almost exclusively upon the study of those institutions which have been stereotyped as peculiar to the frontier, the mission and the presidio; upon political and administrative history; or upon biographies of notable figures. These studies laid important foundations, but, in general, borderlands historians were slow to adopt the social science methodologies of the new social and economic history which became popular in the 1960s in most fields of historical inquiry. Well after both its Anglo and Hispanic progenitors began to be studied from a perspective which emphasized social and economic structures and relationships, did the geographical area which corresponds to the Provincias Internas (all of today's border states plus Sinaloa, Durango and Baja California) begin to receive similar attention. Thus, our understanding of the social and economic history of the region is still rudimentary, and this is nowhere more evident than in the area of landholding patterns and agrarian development.

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.

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.

This year, 1992, marks the quincentenary or quincentennial of the first voyage of Columbus to the Western Hemisphere. In 1990, as Chair of the Mexican Studies Committee of the Conference on Latin American History, I invited two of the leading scholars on Mexico during the colonial period– Professor Jacques Lafaye (Universite de Paris IV) and Professor James Lockhart (UCLA)–to help set the debate for the upcoming anniversary by delivering a 20 minute summary of the role of Spain in the history of colonial Mexico at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association in San Francisco. The following essays are the result of that discussion held on December 29, 1990 in San Francisco.