Prescott, William H(ickling)

born May 4, 1796, Salem, Mass., U.S.

died Jan. 28, 1859, Boston, Mass.

U.S. historian.

Born to a prosperous family, Prescott graduated from Harvard University in 1814 but was prevented by poor health and eyesight from a career in law or business. His friends, including Washington Irving, led him to his life's work: recounting the history of 16th-century Spain and its colonies. He is best known for his History of the Conquest of Mexico (1843) and History of the Conquest of Peru (1847), for which he made rigorous use of original sources, and which earned him a reputation as the first scientific U.S. historian.

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▪ American historian

Introduction

born May 4, 1796, Salem, Mass., U.S.

died Jan. 28, 1859, Boston

 American historian, best known for his History of the Conquest of Mexico, 3 vol. (1843), and his History of the Conquest of Peru, 2 vol. (1847). He has been called America's first scientific historian.

Life and works

      Prescott was from a prosperous, old New England family. He received three years of rigorous instruction in a preparatory school headed by the Jesuit John Gardiner, who infused in him a love of classical learning. In 1811 he entered Harvard, where his academic record was good but undistinguished; he had serious difficulties with mathematics, and in later life the prospect of appraising the mathematical achievements of the aboriginal Mexicans almost prevented him from completing his work. Near the end of his junior year, a crust of bread thrown during a melee in the student commons caused virtual blindness in his left eye; the weakness of his other eye, caused by infection, sometimes prevented him from carrying on any kind of literary work. Throughout his life, Prescott's vision seems to have fluctuated from good to total blindness, and he often resorted to the use of a noctograph, a writing grid with parallel wires that guided a stylus over a chemically treated surface. Substantial portions of all his books and correspondence were composed on this device.

      Following his graduation from Harvard in 1814, Prescott's health deteriorated after attacks of what appears to have been an acute type of rheumatism, with swellings in his larger joints and lower legs. He convalesced at his grandfather's home in the Azores and then, encouraged by an apparent recovery, toured Europe. After his return to Boston, he embarked upon serious historical studies, shunning a career in business or law because both occupations demanded more stamina than his delicate health and eyesight could allow. In 1820 he married Susan Amory. With no obvious occupation, he was known as “the gentleman” by his Boston friends. His wife, as well as other readers, provided the eyes that helped Prescott at this time to embark on a literary career.

      His first publication was a number of reviews and essays in the North American Review in 1821. Some of these were reprinted in Biographical and Critical Miscellanies (1845). His “Life of Charles Brockden Brown” (1834) in Jared Sparks's Library of American Biography served notice of Prescott's high abilities as a writer. Largely on the advice of his friend the teacher and writer George Ticknor (Ticknor, George) and the later encouragement from the miscellaneous writer Washington Irving, Prescott turned to Spanish themes for his lifework. The appearance in 1838 of his three-volume History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic, the product of some 10 years of work, was an agreeable surprise to Boston's literary world. This work launched Prescott's career as a historian of 16th-century Spain and its colonies. In another such work, A History of the Reign of Philip the Second, King of Spain, 3 vol. (1855–58), Prescott produced graceful, authoritative narratives of Spanish military, diplomatic, and political history that had no equal in their time. Prescott's modern popularity, however, rests with his epic History of the Conquest of Mexico and his History of the Conquest of Peru.

      Working with a superb personal library of perhaps 5,000 volumes and with the help of such overseas associates as Pascual de Gayangos, the Spanish aide who discovered manuscripts and rare books for him, Prescott made rigorous use of original sources. His critical use of historical evidence was such that he might well be called the first American scientific historian.

Assessment

      That Prescott's histories continue to be popular with scholars as well as lay readers after more than a century of criticism attests to their vitality and readability. Though further research has revised his view of 16th-century Spanish monarchy, Prescott's basic work is still judged to be generally fair and accurate. It was in narrating the Spanish conquests at that time that Prescott's republicanism penetrates his histories so as to colour his picture of the Spanish state and the aboriginal governments of the Aztecs and the Incas. Moreover, his New England Unitarianism made it difficult for him to appreciate the acceptance of the miraculous or supernatural among peoples of another age or to understand the peculiarities of the conquistadors.

      Perhaps the most severe unfavourable criticisms of the Conquest of Mexico and the Conquest of Peru are based upon Prescott's romantic version of native civilizations, which later findings in archaeology and anthropology have found to be distorted. Prescott's failure to visit the historical settings of his narratives and to examine actual remains of the native cultures he described was partly responsible for this defect in his books. Yet modern scholars have concluded that Prescott's historical narrative, based upon Spanish chronicles, is essentially sound. What Prescott hoped to do with his histories was to instruct and to entertain. His history was narrative and descriptive rather than philosophical or analytical. His colourful prose dealt with conquests, war, diplomacy, and politics—not with cultural, social, or economic themes. In his Spanish histories his concern was almost exclusively with the Spanish courtiers and other aristocrats.

      Despite such criticisms, Prescott's achievements as a historian and as a literary artist were remarkable. For example, the persistent demand for the Conquest of Mexico has resulted in its publication in 10 languages at least 200 times and that of the Conquest of Peru in 11 languages at least 160 times. He was the first English-speaking historian to reach a wide audience outside the Hispanic world with a history expressing the Spanish point of view. Spaniards, in Prescott's histories, were often forerunners of progress. Thus the Moors in Spain and the aboriginal peoples of Mexico and Peru make way for the achievements of Spanish characters. Throughout the conquistador histories, Prescott exposes the reader to vivid landscapes, battles, and processionals as the march of Spanish civilization overwhelms the savage world. Prescott's literary artistry convincingly shows the conquistador Hernán Cortés caught up in a series of crises that, on the eve of final victory, tend to become more and more complex. In the end, however, the “pusillanimity” of the Aztec emperor Montezuma is the advantage that the forthright Cortés has in determining the outcome of events.

      Prescott weaves a dramatic fabric that completely envelopes his narrative. Indeed, much of the same story is repeated in both the Conquest of Mexico and the Conquest of Peru in respect to descriptions of battles, characterizations, use of metaphor, dramatic encounters, and crises, suggesting that Prescott perhaps manipulated his narratives for literary effect. Yet critics generally agree that he accurately follows his sources. His empathy with the Spanish point of view still makes him the greatest Anglo-American historian of the Hispanic world.

Wilbur R. Jacobs

Additional Reading

Prescott's writings are collected in Wilfred Harold Munro (ed.), The Works of William H. Prescott, 22 vol. (1904, reprinted 1968). C. Harvey Gardiner, William Hickling Prescott: A Biography (1969), is a critical study of Prescott as a writer and historian based upon exhaustive research. Gardiner and all other writers on Prescott are indebted to George Ticknor, Prescott's lifelong friend and associate, for his Life of William Hickling Prescott (1863, reissued 1968).

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