William Spence Robertson

Background

William Spence Robertson was born in Glasgow, Scotland on 07. 10. 1872. The boy was named only William; he probably adopted his mother's maiden name after the family had immigrated to Milwaukee in 1880.

His father settled there as a joiner and millwright but later took up farming in central Wisconsin, becoming naturalized in 1893.

Education

Robertson's school-days, begun at Glasgow, were completed at the East Side High School in Milwaukee; he then became a country school-master. But a short course at the University of Wisconsin whetted his appetite; entering the university late, he received the Bachelor of Letters in 1899 at the age of 27 and the Master of Letters in 1900. He then transferred to Yale, which awarded him the Doctor of Philosophy. in 1903. At Wisconsin Robertson had fallen under the spell of Frederick Jackson Turner, a brilliant young teacher of American history, and it was Turner who awakened his interests in Spanish-American and diplomatic history. These interests were confirmed at Yale, where Edward Gaylord Bourne was his master and where his doctoral thesis, Francisco de Miranda and the Revolutionizing of Spanish America, won a Yale historical prize in 1903 and, in a much expanded form, the Herbert Baxter Adams Prize of the American Historical Association in 1907.

Career

From 1903 to 1909 Robertson taught at the College for Women, Western Reserve University, and for a few months in 1909, at Indiana University. In the autumn of that year he became assistant professor of history at the University of Illinois. The university made him a professor emeritus in 1941, but from 1943 to 1945 he returned to the history department while its staff was depleted by the war effort. Robertson's work ranged widely over the history of the United States, Canada, and above all, Spanish America. In 1916, at the American Congress of Biography and History at Buenos Aires, he became convinced, with Charles E. Chapman of the University of California, of the need for a periodical devoted to the history of Spain, Portugal, and Latin America. Their proposal was outlined in a joint letter to the American Historical Review. Robertson himself remained for nearly a year in South America. The project, somewhat modified, prospered, and the first number of the Hispanic American Historical Review appeared in 1918. Robertson remained one of its principal contributors. In the same year he published Rise of the Spanish American Republics as Told in the Lives of Their Liberators, the fullest account at the time of the revolutions for independence. An epic narrative, it was still in print nearly fifty years later, although by then its methodological limitations as a history of the independence movements and its comparative neglect of their social and economic aspects had become more apparent. A textbook of Latin-American history followed in 1922, and a compendious study, Hispanic-American Relations With the United States, in 1923. But the period of the Spanish-American revolutions remained Robertson's first love. His mastery of the subject and his indefatigable industry are illustrated in two major biographies, The Life of Miranda (1929) and Iturbide of Mexico (1952), published when he was eighty; an exhaustive study in diplomatic history, France and Latin-American Independence (1939); an edition of Miranda's diary written during his tour of the United States; monographs on the Monroe Doctrine and on United States and European diplomacy in Latin America; and bibliographical and other contributions to a number of general works. Robertson was a pioneer of the study of Latin-American history among the English-speaking peoples, and he promoted the subject with unremitting effort. His writing never took wing, but it displayed great integrity and scrupulous fair-mindedness. As a graduate student at Yale he had acquired that devotion to archival sources which took him on scholarly journeys to Spanish America, Spain, Portugal, England, France, Italy, and Austria, and led to his discovery of the great collection of Miranda manuscripts in the possession of Lord Bathurst at Cirencester. It was the solidity of their scholarly foundations that gave his books their strength. Robertson was an exacting teacher, whose dignity and austere manner concealed a warmhearted, courteous, and kindly man, fond of gardening, of golf, and of Burns. An avid book collector, he presented in 1953 a valuable collection of more than 9, 000 books, pamphlets, maps, and newspapers to the University of Illinois Library.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Iturbide de México (Spanish Edition)

    (Traducción al español, a cargo de Rafael Estrada, de la o...)

  • The Life of Miranda, Volume II

    (The second of a two-volume biography of Francisco de Mira...)

  • The Life of Miranda, Volume I

    (The first of a two-volume biography of Francisco de Miran...)

Personality

Robertson was an exacting teacher, whose dignity and austere manner concealed a warmhearted, courteous, and kindly man, fond of gardening, of golf, and of Burns.

His writing never took wing, but it displayed great integrity and scrupulous fair-mindedness.

Connections

On June 30, 1913, he married Gertrude Mueller of Cleveland, a graduate of Western Reserve University. They had two children. He was promoted to full professor in 1920 and to head of the department in 1937.

Wife:

Gertrude

On June 30, 1913, he married Gertrude Mueller of Cleveland, a graduate of Western Reserve University.