PROFESSOR DR. B.H. SLICHER VAN BATH

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Bernard Hendrik Slicher van Bath was born in 1910 and died in 2004. In 1941 he married Jacoba Petronella de Jong (1918-2009). Slicher was educated as a historian and archaeologist in Groningen and Utrecht. In 1945 he received his doctorate cum laude in Amsterdam on Mensch en land in de middelleeuwen. Bijdrage tot een geschiedenis der nederzettingen in Oostelijk Nederland (Man and Land in the Middle Ages. A Contribution to the History of Settlements in Eastern Netherlands). He became Rijksarchivaris (head of the Public Record Office) in Overijssel soon after that. He made the most of this position by doing research on the history of the province. In 1957 he published Een samenleving onder spanning. Geschiedenis van het platteland in Overijssel (A Society under Pressure. Agrarian History of Overijssel). He continued to work on the agrarian history of this province as well other areas of the Netherlands and Europe until 1970. In 1960 he published the authoritative De agrarische geschiedenis van West-Europa (500-1850) (The Agrarian History of Western Europe, A.D. 500-1850), which he had written at the request of the editors of the Cambridge Economic History of Europe. It was translated into English, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Japanese and brought him international recognition. He was professor of Economic History at the University of Groningen and Chair of Agrarian History at the University of Wageningen. Under his direction, a series of studies on the socio-economic history of rural areas in parts of the Netherlands and elsewhere was initiated. By 1950 Slicher had also developed an interest in Latin American history. In 1951 he began giving lectures in Wageningen on the history of the continent. His two-year position as guest professor at the University of Chicago (1967 and 1968) finally gave him the chance to travel in Latin America. The European regional agrarian history that he had researched for so many years became less and less interesting to him, now he wanted to begin a research programme on Latin America. In 1972 he resigned, and 30 years of studying Europe’s agrarian history ended.

Two years later, Slicher became the director of CEDLA, where he worked closely with the historian Adrian van Oss, who passed away at a young age (1947-1984). This was the beginning of the next thirty years of scholarly research – much of which was carried out after he retired. In these productive years he published five lengthy books: Spaans Amerika

omstreeks 1600 (1979) [Spanish America around 1600], and recently published in Spanish (2010); Bevolking en economie in Nieuw-Spanje (ca 1570-1800) (1981) [Population and economy in New Spain (ca 1570-1800)]; Real hacienda y economía en Hispanoamérica (1541-1820) (1989) [Royal treasury and economy in Spanish America (1541-1820)]; Indianen en Spanjaarden: een ontmoeting tussen twee werelden. Latijns Amerika 1500-1800 (1989) [Indians and Spaniards: an encounter between two worlds. Latin America 1500-1800]; and De bezinning op het verleden in Latijns Amerika, 1493-1820: auteurs, verhalen en lezers (1998) [Reflection on the Past in Latin America, 1493-1820: Authors, Stories and Readers]. He was appointed Endowed Professor in the History of Latin America at Leiden University (1976-1981) and at the Catholic University of Nijmegen – now Radboud – in 1983 as the L.J. Rogier Chair in the History of Latin America. His collaboration with Van Oss was centred on an integral historiography of Latin America. The quantitative methodology he applied was very similar to the approach he had used in the previous decades for his research on the agrarian history of Europe. However, because the two researchers now aspired to write an integral or holistic historiography, a broader scope was covered that included culture, science, art, church and religion, government, and politics. His last book De bezinning op het verleden in Latijns Amerika (A reflection on Latin America’s past), on which he worked almost daily for eight years, concerns an interpretation of the historiography of Latin America.