- Herbert Eugene Bolton
Herbert Eugene Bolton (
July 20 ,1870 –January 30 ,1953 ) was an Americanhistorian and one of the most prominent authorities inSpanish-American history . He originated what became theBolton theory of thehistory of the Americas and wrote or co-authored 94 works. A student ofFrederick Jackson Turner , Bolton disagreed with his mentor and argued that the history of the Americans is best understood by taking a holistic view. The height of his career was spent at theUniversity of California, Berkeley where he served as chair of thehistory department for 22 years and is credited with making the renownedBancroft Library the dominant research center it is today.Early life and education
Bolton was born in
Wilton, Wisconsin in 1870 to Edwin Latham and Rosaline (Cady) Bolton. He attended theUniversity of Wisconsin-Madison , where he was a brother ofTheta Delta Chi , and graduated with abachelor's degree in 1895. That same year he married Gertrude James, with whom he eventually had seven children.Bolton studied under Frederick Jackson Turner from 1896 and 1897. Starting in 1897, Bolton was a
Harrison Fellow at theUniversity of Pennsylvania and studiedAmerican history underJohn Bach McMaster . In 1899, received hisPh.D. from University of Pennsylvania and then taught atMilwaukee State Normal School until 1900.Career
From 1901 to 1909, Bolton was a history professor at the University of Texas, where he taught medieval and
European history . He became interested in theSpanish colonization of the Americas and in summer 1902 began traveling toMexico in search of historical documents.The
Carnegie Institution asked Bolton to write a report of information found aboutUnited States history in Mexican archives, and the report was published in 1913. Soon afterward, Bolton became an associate editor of the "Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association" (now the "Southwestern Historical Quarterly").In 1904, Bolton and
Eugene C. Barker published "With the Makers of Texas: A Source Reader in Texas History", a Texas historytextbook . In 1906, Bolton began studying Native American history inTexas for the U.S. Bureau of Ethnology, writing more than 100 articles for the "Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico".In 1911, Bolton became a professor at the
University of California, Berkeley . There he served as the chair of the history department for 22 years and became the first director of the renownedBancroft Library . He taught the "History of the Americas" course, which attracted up to a thousand students a week. At Berkeley he supervised more than 300 master's theses and 104doctoral dissertation s. In 1914, Bolton published "Athanase de Mézières and the Louisiana-Texas Frontier, 1768-1780". A year later, Bolton published "Texas in the Middle Eighteenth Century: Studies in Spanish Colonial History and Administration" and declined the presidency of the University of Texas.Over the next 29 years, Bolton published many works, including "Texas in the Middle Eighteenth Century" (1921), "The Spanish Borderlands" (1921), "Outpost of Empire" (1931), "Rim of Christendom" (1936) and "Coronado" (1949), for which he received a
Bancroft Prize fromColumbia University .In 1932, Bolton served as president of the
American Historical Association , and in 1944 retired as a professor. He taught briefly at San Francisco State College (now University) in retirement. He died of astroke in Berkeley in 1953.Legacy
Bolton is best known for his exploration of Spanish colonial trials and translation of the important journals of Spanish soldiers and priests, which vastly expanded the written record of that period. His 94 written works are still influential today, especially through the concepts of the
Spanish Borderlands and theBolton theory . Currently, the Bolton Prize honors works in Latin American literature to commemorate his controbutions to this field.Bolton's biggest mistake was his February 1937
authentication ofDrake's Plate of Brass , which was aforgery of a mythicalbrass plaque purportely placed bySir Francis Drake upon his arrival inNorthern California in 1579. The plate is currently on display at the Bancroft Library where he served.External links
* [http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Gazetteer/Places/America/United_States/_Topics/history/_Texts/BOLSPB/home.html "The Spanish Borderlands"] (1921)
Sources
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