Shepherd, William Robert

▪ American historian

born June 12, 1871, Charleston, S.C., U.S.

died June 7, 1934, Berlin, Ger.

      American historian known as an authority on Latin America and on European overseas expansion.

      Shepherd was educated at Columbia University, where he earned his Ph.D. (1896). He studied in Berlin, returned to Columbia as a professor of history, and taught there until his death in 1934.

      By 1908 Shepherd was considered an authority on Latin America and served that year as a delegate to the first Pan-American Scientific Congress at Santiago, Chile, and a year later as secretary of the U.S. delegation to the fourth International Conference of American States at Buenos Aires. He continued to participate in numerous pan-American conferences and lectured extensively abroad on Latin America. He became Seth Low professor of history at Columbia in 1924. Among Shepherd's major works on Latin America are Central and South America (1914), Latin America (1914), and The Hispanic Nations of the New World (1919). His Historical Atlas (1911) is perhaps the work by which he is best known, however. In addition, he served as advisory editor of The Hispanic-American Review and was a member of numerous scholarly societies. His continual criticism of U.S. imperialism in relations with Latin America was influential in the attempt to achieve greater pan-American unity.

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