Antonio De Alcedo: His Collaborators and His Letters to William Robertson

Abstract

This article is divided into two parts. The first deals with Alcedo and his collaborators; the second treats his correspondence with the Scottish historian, William Robertson.When Antonio de Alcedo y Bexerano published his valuable five-volume Diccionario geográfico-histórico de … América … (Madrid: 1786-1789), he was painfully aware that, given its magnitude, it inevitably contained errors and omissions. To remedy these deficiencies in a revised edition that he planned to bring out later but never did, he requested in his prologue that readers inform him about mistakes and shortcomings they might detect. Exactly how many heeded his call, we do not know; but prominent among those who offered assistance and whose correspondence has been found were three: two expatriated Spanish American Jesuits, the Mexican, Agustín Pablo de Castro, and the Argentinian, Francisco Javier Iturri, and the former Spanish governor and commander-general of Guayana, Colonel Manuel Centurión. Only the letters of Castro and Centurión to Alcedo are published here. Those of Iturri, one of which has already appeared, will be published later.