In the fall of 1919, I was one of the more than 1,100 students who sat in Wheeler Auditorium and listened to Professor Bolton’s History 8 lectures, given for the first time. I had come to the university to become a teacher, majoring in Spanish and mathematics. In my first year at Berkeley, I changed to a history major, becoming Bolton’s reader and teaching assistant in History 8. Since that time, my interest in history has never wavered. I have completed a half-century of teaching History 8 to thousands of college students.
I joined Bolton’s seminar, and he supervised my advanced work in history granting me the Ph.D. in 1926. Later, during my poor days as an instructor, it was Bolton who saved my scholarship by granting me a small aid “to carry on.” In 1931, I was a Fellow in Spain with Helen Carr. There we laid the foundation for Bolton’s first visit to Seville; I traveled with him in Andalucía and Extremadura, and later joined him during a short visit to London. I have many reminiscences concerning Herbert Bolton. I clearly recall that I was “emblazoned in a footnote” in his Rim of Christendom. I last saw Bolton during his terminal illness about six weeks before his death.
Recently a bevy of books and articles have appeared on great historians and teachers of history: Bolton, Webb, and Dale, in addition to a long line of studies on Frederick Jackson Turner. Bolton’s last Jesuit Ph.D., John Francis Bannon, has undertaken in this volume to sketch the life story of Herbert Eugene Bolton as a historian, and as a man. Bannon worked many years with the Bolton Collection in the Bancroft Library. He came up with an interesting and well-written picture of Bolton, the person; Bolton, the student, the family man, the teacher; Bolton, the researcher, the author, editor, and writer. John Bannon was joined by Bolton’s close associate secular scholar, and his successor, Lawrence Kinnaird. Kinnaird wrote an admirable introductory characterization of Bolton. It sets the tone for this fine book.
Bolton inspired many of his hundred and more Ph.D.’s who followed in his path to continue their scholarship and publications. His influence spread throughout America and abroad. This is best evidenced by his students giving him two festschriften.
Taught by Turner, by McMaster and Cheyney, Bolton learned much from them. In turn, his keen mind widened the horizons of American history to include all of the Americas in the interpretation of the term “American;” not a theory to be tested as his master Turner had given, but broader, and from ocean to ocean, rather than from north to south within the continental United States. His talent for grasping the larger significance of local history set a high standard for scholars in the field. He never took time to write the general history of the Americas which, incidentally, his pupil John Bannon has done.
Bannon has included many characterizations, many remembrances of Bolton by his students, a list of Bolton’s writings, as well as a list of the students who received their M.A. and Ph.D. degrees under him. There is also a complete index and many illustrations. Herbert E. Bolton left all of us a great legacy, one that cannot be stolen or destroyed. His work and his life told us that the purpose of the university is to provide the resources and environment where the pursuit of knowledge (not theories), the exercise of criticism, and the performance of research can occur in a creative atmosphere of dedication, and the fruits of these endeavors, both methodology and results, can be transmitted to society and to posterity through instruction and publication.
Bolton’s great personal achievement is seen in the many honors he received from the United States and foreign countries. His greatest accomplishment was his sound research and publication, emphasizing the importance and place of Spanish colonization in the early history of the Americas, most particularly the North American borderlands.
