The death of Charles E. Nowell, professor emeritus of history, the University of Illinois (Urbana), on May 5, 1984 in Fresno, California ended the life of one who accepted John Donne’s assertion that “Every man is a piece of the continent.”
Nowell was a graduate of Leland Stanford University (bachelors and master’s degrees) and of the University of California at Berkeley (Ph.D., 1932). His mentor at Berkeley was the distinguished historian Herbert Eugene Bolton. Nowell’s scholarly contributions included books and articles in Latin American history, Iberian history, and the history of voyages of discovery and exploration. His early interest in Iberian-American independence history was soon surpassed by research in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Portuguese and Spanish voyages of discovery and exploration. His articles were published in journals such as HAHR, The American Historical Review, The Pacific Historical Review, Speculum, and The Journal of Modern History. Nowell wrote 5 books, parts of 3 other books, 35 articles, and approximately 100 book reviews. Of this array, I believe that on this occasion he would like being remembered for his distinguished books, The Great Discoveries and The First Colonial Empires.
During my years at the University of Illinois, I was a student in all of Nowell’s classes and seminars on Latin America. Gifted with a phenomenal memory, he was an excellent teacher and a wise and considerate advisor. Those were the years before affirmative action and equal opportunity, yet I became an assistant in the department and received the first Illinois black doctorate in history. Nowell’s personality, cosmopolitan outlook, and keen sense of humor made him a popular individual to the post-World War II graduate students.
Nowell was employed at two California institutions, San Diego State and Fresno State Universities, before he joined the History Department at the University of Illinois in 1942. When he became professor emeritus in 1969, he had served the University and contributed to the department’s distinction for 27 years. His The Rose-Colored Map, published 13 years after his retirement, is an essay on Portuguese Africa concerning the effort to make Angola and Mozambique an ocean-to-ocean possession, which was halted by British intervention. Nowell’s research in Portuguese and British archives led to the publication of this book. The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois has established the Charles E. Nowell Distinguished Professor of History Chair in his honor.
