Initialed notices were written by members of the editorial staff.
Seldom will a long-anticipated volume come as a greater disappointment. Those historians who have used the twenty-seven previously published volumes of the Documentos históricos (reviewed individually and collectively in the HAHR) have waited patiently for a research tool to facilitate use of the massive collection. A subject index most assuredly would have been a monumental chore (and one not likely to please anyone) but a name index, although a time-consuming task, seemed within the realm of possibility. The index published here is neither. It is simply a reprinting of the inadequate indices from those works already published. Although the word cronológico appears in the title, the document descriptions have not been arranged chronologically at all. In fact the dates of the respective documents are not even included. Those of us who had hoped for much more, but who would have settled for a little more, will have to resign ourselves to perusing the 3,500 documents and 8,364 pages of text without benefit of an index at all useful for historical purposes. Alas! The mountain brought forth a mouse.
