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Bancroft Library Reckoning Committee: Resources on H.H. Bancroft and The Bancroft Library

Introduction

In Spring 2024, the Office of the Chancellor, the UC Berkeley Library, and the Division of Equity & Inclusion charged the Bancroft Library Reckoning Committee in response to the receipt of a proposal to unname The Bancroft Library, which outlines the writings and views of Hubert Howe Bancroft, for whom the library is named. The Bancroft Library Reckoning Committee is charged to consider and acknowledge the history of the name of The Bancroft Library, and to make recommendations regarding possible actions to address the legacy and impact of Hubert Howe Bancroft. Possible actions might include acknowledging the history in a visible way; exploring the possibility of unnaming; and/or engaging in a reckoning process, including, but not limited to, a public exhibition, signage that acknowledges the past, truth-telling and restorative justice circles, and ongoing research and scholarship on Hubert Howe Bancroft's legacy and impact.

The Committee has consulted the readings below—a mix of scholarly articles and primary resources, as well as additional readings on Hubert Howe Bancroft, his Library, and The Bancroft Library of today—as it works through its charge. The Committee will endeavor to keep the list updated as it comes across other relevant readings and resources.

For those who are interested in pursuing further research, please to contact The Bancroft Library Reference team at bancref-library@berkeley.edu.

All published articles are linked to their catalog record in UC Library Search where their full text can be accessed. Please note that most are UCB access only. Background documents on The Bancroft Library have been scanned from its archives, or are in the public domain.

Scholarly Articles

Toward an Environmental History of the Book: The Nature of Hubert Howe Bancroft's Works
Thomas G. Andrews
Southern California quarterly, 2011-04, Vol.93 (1), p.33-68

  • Andrews explores how "labor, capital, nature, and ideas came together to shape Golden Age print culture" to identify the connections between communication circuits and commodity chains in the creation of The Works. Thomas provides the basic narrative on H.H. Bancroft's movement West that has been told by other scholars and delves into the "history enterprise" of the publishing house. This essay balances the praise given to the production of The Works, its toll on the environment—ie. its effect on other industries like paper, glue, and tanning—and the criticism of H.H. Bancroft's treatment of his employees. By focusing on a few of the volumes of The Works, the author reveals how H.H. Bancroft's Whiggish metanarrative clashed with his "confidence in white supremacy" and his notions of progress.

"Historie Explorations Northward": HHB and the Beginnings of British Columbia History
Chad Reimer
Pacific Northwest quarterly, 1995-07, Vol.86 (3), p.131-138

  • Reimer delves into H.H. Bancroft's "ambitious project"—The Works—and its inclusion on the Pacific Northwest to trace the beginning of British Columbia's historiography. The author explores H.H. Bancroft's direct involvement in the production of British Columbia and the research that he and his wife, Matilda, conducted in the region. He also outlines the intellectual influences on H.H. Bancroft's thinking, including the "racialist and materialist premises of his own century" that were represented, on the one hand, by the view of Native peoples as a "doomed race" and the savagery committed against them through dispossession and extermination.

War and the Making of History: The Case of Mexican California, 1821-1846
Michael Gonzalez
The SHAFR Guide Online, 2022

  • Using much of the research materials collected by H.H. Bancroft on the Californios, this author proposes a new lens through which we should understand the history of Mexican California. He argues that the outdated image of the Californio as ranchero (the landowner)—an image propagated throughout H.H. Bancroft's depictions of Mexican California—would be better understood if historians focused instead on the seemingly constant threat of war that the Californio experienced.

"The Yankees, Señor General, Are Not Like Us:" Vallejo, Bancroft, and the Construction of California History
Rose Marie Beebe and Robert Senkewicz
The Western historical quarterly, 2020-04, Vol.51 (2), p.107-136

  • In this essay, Beebe and Senkewicz tell the story of the fraught relationship between H.H. Bancroft and Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo. It forms part of a larger corpus on the study of Californios (men and women) who contributed to H.H. Bancroft's History of California and who, for the most part, have remained obscured. In this particular study, the authors explore how the two men differed in their understanding of the historical record and of its telling. The preconceived notions of H.H. Bancroft differed vastly from the lived experience of Vallejo were so contradictory that it led to what Vallejo considered a complete misrepresentation of his writings. On the other hand, H.H. Bancroft, whose narrative was part of the prevalent understanding of the time, failed to earn the recognition as a historian.

Progress and Backwardness in Book Accumulation: Bancroft, Basadre, and Their Libraries
Ricardo Salvatore
Comparative studies in society and history, 2014-10, Vol.56 (4), p.995-1026

  • The author explores the formation of libraries by focusing on Hubert Howe Bancroft's autobiographical Literary Industries and Jorge Basadre's Memoria de un bibliotecario peruano to explore how the accumulation of materials leads to inequalities in intellectual cultures and academia. Salvatore argues that library collections are crucial in the production of knowledge, and how "colonialism, capitalist accumulation, and international wars" have played an integral role in the construction of libraries. The location of libraries, whether in academic centers or in the periphery, influences the type of knowledge produced, which, in turn, shape the "formation of new fields of study." He argues that H.H. Bancroft's collecting allowed for the creation of a settler-colonialist perspective in the history of the US West with "claims to cultural superiority," while Basadre's narrative focused on reimagining of Peru's history after the destruction of its national library.

Professors and Tycoons: The Creation of Great Research Libraries in the American West
Albert Hurtado
The Western historical quarterly, 2010-07, Vol.41 (2), p.149-169

  • Hurtado's essay explores how money played a major part in the development of research libraries in the American West. He traces the history of the Bancroft, Sutro, and Huntington Libraries, how their benefactors amassed their holdings and created spaces for research. The essay also exposes a common trope of the early twentieth century: the utter disregard of the history of Spanish America—especially in the Southwest—by scholars, especially Frederick Jackson Turner. In his detailed account of the University of California's acquisition of The Bancroft Library Hurtado also captures the sentiments from scholars and the taxpayers at that time.

Further Resources

The Bancroft Library, 1900-2000
Charles B. Faulhaber
Chronicle of the University of California, 2000, Vol.4, p.28-46

Native American collections in archives, libraries, and museums at the University of California, Berkeley
Andrew Garrett, Melissa Stoner, Susan Edwards, et al.
2019

Oral History: A Revived Tradition at the Bancroft Library
Willa Klug Baum
Pacific Northwest quarterly, 1967-04, Vol.58 (2), p.57-64

Library Resources: The Bancroft Library: Then and Now
Robert H. Becker
California historical quarterly, 1973-10, Vol.52 (3), p.267-271

Bancroftiana
Newsletter of the Friends of the Bancroft Library
1950-present