On Leaving the Editorship

Abstract

THE Pacific Historical Review, according to the prima facie evidence, originated in a typographical error. In 1930 the Pacific Coast Branch, after less than gratifying experience with volumes of Proceedings echoing its annual meetings, voted to launch a Pacific Coast Historical Review. Instead, what emerged in 1932 was the Pacific Historical Review. For the explanation we have to look back of the documentary record to the smoke-filled committee room. Henry Raup Wagner, for one, was adamant that the Pacific Coast or the Far West was exactly what the new journal should cover. But the committeemen in charge were westerners accustomed to thinking big. The Pacific slope was a field that Hubert Howe Bancroft had discovered and cultivated. A journal narrowed to it might be mistaken for a revival of the Academy of Pacific Coast History publications. These committeemen purposefuly shifted to the more ambitious project of encompassing the history of the entire Pacific area, the Pacific half of the world.