Great Mexican Numismatic Historians & Writers
Hubert Howe Bancroft was born in Granville Ohio on May 5 1832 and died in San Francisco California on March 2 1918. During his long life he created a fantastic library of over 60,000 volumes of books, periodicals and historical documents about the Western World, with the emphases on the Southwest, Far West, and Mexico. His personal library was donated to the State of California were it became the basis of California’s Historical Library and has become one of the greatest research tools for modern historical researchers.
During Bancroft’s life he produced 39 large volumes covering the early history of America’s Native People, the Western States, Southwestern States and Mexico that are unsurpassed even today for their completeness and accurse. While many numismatists may not consider Bancroft's works to be of a numismatic nature, many of his volumes covering the early history of Mexico have many interesting facts, stories and footnotes about the Mexican mints, mining operations and the people behind them not readily found elsewhere.
The entire series of books is generally very expensive, if and when it can be found, recently a complete series all bond in matching leather covers in very fine shape sold for over $1,500 (the last bid I saw) on eBay. I paid in excess of $250 for the few volumes I have and they are anything but very fine. However, after doing a little research on the Internet I found several websites that have converted the texts for some volumes and make them available at very reasonable prices for those of you wishing to save a few pesos. I don’t know if all of the volumes are available on line for Mexico, so do a little searching, if you are interested.
When I first saw and examined a couple of Bancroft’s volumes I was amazed that they stated “The Works” of Hubert Howe Bancroft. I couldn’t believe that one man had been able to research, assemble, footnote and organize such a vast amount of data in a time before computers! On one of the websites I visited it explained how this was done, you see Bancroft hired over 500 people to help him do the work, which is unbelievable for those days in San Francisco in my opinion for someone who had merely been a book salesman before beginning the task.
Bancroft moved to San Francisco in 1858 after several members of his family had already migrated to the “promised land” and began assembling his work in 1874 and completed this task in 1890. As I mentioned earlier he created 39 history volumes in addition to doing a series of books on the “builders of our nation” that I haven’t taken time to address yet. These books made Bancroft a very wealthy man as one of the websites stated he made well over a million dollars from their sales.
Now lets take a short look at how one volume is organized and some of the more interesting items that relate to Mexican Numismatics in the table of contents…
Volume XIII- History of Mexico: Volume 5: 1824 – 1861:
Chapter 1: Republican Organization 1823 – 1824
The New Government
Foreign Loans and Financial Matters
Federalists and Centralists
Revolutions
Chapter 2: Constitutional Government 1824 – 1829
Financial Problems
Disturbances in Vera Cruz
Chapter 3: Domestic and Foreign Relations 1823 – 1829
Recognition by Foreign Powers
Diplomatic Relations with Great Britain and France
Hostility to Spaniards
Siege of San Juan Ulua
Chapter 4: Foreign and Domestic Troubles 1828 – 1831
Monarchical Intrigues
Bustamante as the Executive
Chapter 5: Conservative Rule 1830 – 1832
Political Blunders
Institutions Prostrated
Santa Anna’s Pronunciamiento
His Defeat at Tolome
Chapter 6: The Federal System and Its Overthrow 1832 – 1836
Biography of Gomez Farias
His Political Principles and Administration
Santa Anna’s Biography and Character
Santa Anna Dictator
Chapter 7: Texas Independence; Mexico’s Centralized Government 1819- 1841
American Aims
Texas Separates from Coahuila
Spain Recognizes Mexican Nationality
Financial Distress
Political Troubles
Chapter 8: The Pastry War 1838 – 1839
French Demands
Mexico Declares War
Expulsion of Frenchmen
Chapter 9: Federalist Agitation 1838 – 1840
Chapter 30: Triumph of the Constitutionalists 1859 – 1861
Problems for Mexican Numismatists
The average coin collector and most Mexican Numismatists will have serious problems trying to glean facts from Bancroft’s works because there is so much useless information in the books, and he doesn’t present the data in what seems to be a logical order. Notice the time frames originally listed for the sample book: 1824 to 1861 and the overlap of dates in the individual chapters. Bancroft does not give his readers all of the history from the Republic Period in one or two volumes; it takes at least four volumes and the time frames and subject matter in each many times overlap and is sometimes redundant! This makes it difficult to gather the information that you want or need.
But, even more difficult are the thousands of Footnotes, which are in tiny print, that contain very important information and the numerous references that are made to other volumes, sometimes without a volume or page number, throughout the text. This said; I can fully understand how and why this might have happened without the aid of computers and with 600 different people poring through a 60,000-piece library over a period of almost 20 years.
Most average Mexican coin collectors will never see or want to see Bancroft’s History of Mexico. But serous Mexican Numismatists, researchers and historians will find these volumes to be a great help, because you will find information and data here that is currently unavailable anywhere else.
In the future we will publish several articles on this website where much of the information we have was taken directly from Bancroft’s work. This will allow you to see some of his work without the tedious reading. Here are the Bancroft books in my library:
Volume 9: History of Mexico: 1516-1521 Printed 1886
Volume 10: History of Mexico: 1521-1600 Printed 1886
Volume 11: History of Mexico: 1600-1803 Printed 1887
Volume 12: Do Not Have
Volume 13: History of Mexico: 1824-1861 Printed 1887
Volume 14: History of Mexico: 1861-1887 Printed 1888
Volume 15: History of Northern Mexican States and Texas 1531-1800 Printed 1884
Volume 16: History of Northern Mexican States and Texas 1801-1889 Printed 1889
These books get a 3 Star Rating on my scale of 5 Stars simply because they are so difficult to read and use.
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