This Miscellany edited by the Royal Historical Society is truly a miscellany. This volume has documents from the period of Henry VIII, a parliamentary diary of the late eighteenth century and an 1827 report on Bolivia by the private secretary (Joseph Barclay Pentland) of Charles Milner Ricketts, the British Consul General in Lima, Peru. The Pentland report, up to now unknown to me, is a most useful document for early Bolivian history. As the editor states, it should be considered “a short supplement” to Humphrey’s well known British Consular Reports on the Trade and Politics of Latin America.
Pentland (about whom the editor of the document, J. Valerie Fifer, gives us no information) left for Bolivia in September, 1826, and stayed in this newest Latin American country until April, 1827. He visited the areas of La Paz, Oruro, Potosí and Chuquisaca, missing Tarija and the vast east of Santa Cruz and the Beni.
The report has much about mining since Pentland visited nearly all mining districts. Here it is a storehouse of precise information that can hardly be duplicated. This is followed by a discussion of foreign and domestic commerce of the new Bolivia. This, too, is most useful and interesting. The last part deals with the political and administrative status of Bolivia at the time of his visit. This again has solid data. His sketch of President Sucre is most complimentary to him as a politician, statesman and writer. His ability as a writer is confirmed by my own research where Sucre impressed me with his exquisite penmanship and his many editorials in the first Bolivian newspaper. I am pleased that Pentland agreed.
In sum, this is a most useful study. Will it he known since it is buried in this collection of so different studies?
