Early U. S.-Hispanic relations, 1776-1860

In these times of online catalogs and bibliographic databases, a printed bibliography has to justify itself. U.S. Relatinos with the Hispanic World, 1776 to 1860 is the only annotated bibliography on the subject. Most bibliographies on this subject begin with the wars of independence in Spanish America, but Mr. Tarrago has gone back to 1776, when the thirteen rebel English colonies in North America sought the help of the Spanish Crown in their struggle for independence from England. His bibliography thus includes titles useful for the study of navigation in the Mississippi before the Louisiana Purchase, and of United States trade with Spain and the Kingdoms of the Indies between 1789 and the beginning of the wars of Independence of the Kingdoms of the Indies. This is a selective bibliography, including many printed primary sources, as well as monographs and journal articles. Mr.Tarrago consulted each one of the titles that he has included in his bibliography. Since he did his research at the Library of Congress, the University of Texas at Austin Libraries, the Harvard College Libraries, and the New York Public Library, users of his bibliography can be assured of the availabilities of entries at one of these four institutions. His concise entries on reference sources, document collections, memoirs, monographs, and articles makes this bibliography useful not just to faculty, students, and the average user interested in history, but also to diplomats and librarians building a basic collection on the relations of the United States with the Spanish speaking nations.

Rafael E. Tarrago (MA, Catholic University; MLS, Simmons College Graduate School of Library Science) is Bibliographer for Latin American Studies at the Hesburgh Library, in the University of Notre Dame. Mr. Tarrago has published articles on Latin American themes in various publications. His bibliographic essay "The Relations between the United States and Cuba from 1776 to 1898" appears in the December 1993 issue of CHOICE. He is working on Experiencias politicas de los cubanos en la Cuba espanola: 1512-1898, an anthology of documents with an introductory essay.