Reflections on the Hispanic American Historical Review

Abstract

The University of Arizona editorship of the Hispanic American Historical Review terminates with this issue as the journal now passes into new editorial hands. This traditional changing of the guard affords me the opportunity to reflect briefly on the field to which we all belong and to indulge in a fleeting retrospective view of that exotic academic microcosm in which I have found myself during the last five years. When the Board of Editors accepted the University of Arizona bid and invited me to assume the Managing Editorship in December of 1974, I was somewhat cognizant of the responsibility I was about to assume but, in spite of the many hours of invaluable discussions with my predecessor, Stanley Ross, I did not comprehend fully the magnitude of the task nor the learning process that was about to ensue. At the suggestion of Professor Ross, I began by visiting Duke University to confer with the publishers and spend some time with a former Managing Editor, Professor John Tate Lanning. In a memorable late afternoon conversation in Professor Lanning's library office I learned of some of the problems he had encountered in the journal's more tender years. Without a full contingent of staff, without the security of a fixed budget, without released time, and with a university commitment that must be considered tenuous at best, he was able to keep the journal afloat during the difficult period between 1939 and 1944. His biggest problem was to find a sufficient number of high quality articles to fill the succeeding numbers published under his editorship. He recounted that during one particular dearth in 1940 he placed long distance calls to Arthur P. Whitaker, William Spence Robertson, Herbert Eugene Bolton, and J. Fred Rippy asking if any of them had anything they could possibly send. Whitaker had just finished a piece on Jose Silvestre Rebello, Brazil's first diplomatic representative to the United States, and promised to send it off the next day. The August 1940 issue was then complete.