David Brading

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I have now found my field of study: sixteenth-century Spain and Latin America...The more I think of it, the more Latin America seems attractive. Sixteenth–century Spain, looking back to the Reconquista and forward to the Counter Reformation and the decadence. The nature of its Catholicism, its mysticism, the history of its expansion, the Jesuits, its art, architecture and poetry. Latin America with its archaeology and anthropology, the nature of its liberalism and its revolutions. [14]

After working for several months in the Civil Service as Assistant Principal at the Board of Trade, he received his M.A. from Cambridge University [19] and enrolled for a PhD at University College London, under the supervision of John Lynch.

Deciding to investigate silver mining in New Spain, Brading spent 15 months engaged in archival research, starting in the Archive of the Indies, Biblioteca Nacional de España and the Archivo Histórico Nacional before continuing in Mexico in the National Library of Mexico, General Archive of the Nation and finally the archive of Guanajuato. [14] The fruition of this research was the completion in 1965 of his doctoral thesis, [2] entitled "Society and Administration in Late Eighteenth Century Guanajuato with especial reference to the Silver Mining Industry" [20] which was examined by Charles Boxer and John Parry.

Returning to the United States as an assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley, Brading delivered three sets of lectures dealing with Mexico, Peru, and Argentina, before moving to Yale University as Associate Professor in 1971.

Brading's first book, Miners and Merchants in Bourbon Mexico 1765–1810 was published in 1971. It dealt with the general history of the silver industry in Mexico with a comprehensive study of Guanajuato and its mines, population and leading families. A review in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science called it a "landmark of dissertation research and organization" [21] while Fernand Braudel who is considered one of the greatest of the modern historians found it a "fascinating book". [22] It won the Bolton Prize in 1972. [9]

In 1973, Brading returned to Cambridge University as a University Lecturer in Latin American History and become Director of the Centre of Latin American Studies at Cambridge University from 1975 – 1990. He was a fellow of St Edmund's College from 1975 to 1988. In 1991 a LittD was awarded to Brading and he was made Reader in Latin American History at Cambridge University. The following year he was the Leverhulme Research Fellow in Mexico, received an honorary doctorate from the University of Lima in Peru. [2] and was elected member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts of which he is one of only ten British members in the humanities, the others being Roger Scruton, Richard Overy, Norman Davies and Timothy Garton Ash among others. [23] In 1999, Brading was made Professor in Latin American History at Cambridge University.

Works

In 1992, Brading's book The First America: The Spanish Monarchy, Creole Patriots, and the Liberal State, 1492–1867 was published. Its central thesis was that Spaniards born in the New World (creoles) had an American cultural identity, a creole consciousness, distinct from those born and raised in Spain (peninsulares). A review in the journal History declared it to be a book of major importance on the topic, [24] as did a review in the Journal of Latin American Studies. [25] The Mexican literary magazine Letras Libres "said it occupies a place of honor in the library of neophytes and scholars". [26]

In 2001, Brading published Mexican Phoenix, Our Lady of Guadalupe: Image and Tradition across Five Centuries, a detailed history of the most important religious icon in Latin America – the Virgin of Guadalupe. Foreign Affairs magazine commented in a review saying that it was "brilliant"... and had "remarkable insight". [26] [27]

Festschrift

In 2007, Brading was honoured by a Festschrift, with essays by former students and colleagues, as a "celebration of his outstanding contribution to the field of Mexican history". The result was Mexican Soundings: Essays in Honour of David A. Brading. [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] Its genesis lay in a September 1999 three-day conference, "Visions and Revisions in Mexican History held at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. [29]

Mexican Soundings is organised into two distinct halves, the opening three essays focus on Brading's work and life, and the six following highlight the themes that have marked his career and range from the late seventeenth to the twentieth centuries, focused on religion, political culture and Mexican national identity.

Enrique Florescano  [ es ]'s essay pays tribute to Brading's "thorough research for mining, agricultural production, land tenure and historical textual analysis of chronicles, political treatises and myths piece encapsulates the principal contributions of each of David Brading's major works". [28]

While Eric Van Young's "historiographical essay, in particular, underlines the impact that each of Brading's publications has made. . . Brading is the "chief architect" of the Age of Revolution periodization (1750-1850), which he calls "Brading's century;" that he led the way in "the socialization of elite studies in Mexican historiography…and that he is the leading scholar of intellectual history and the Catholic Church for colonial Mexico". [31]

The next two essays explore Colonial society and culture with Susan Deans-Smith's essay focusing on the work of painters and guild politics in colonial Mexico City. It is a "study finely tuned to questions of guild and community, Spanish presumptions of superiority, and the assertions of men of indigenous, mestizo, and mulatto ancestry." [28] Ellen Gunnarsdóttir's article is centred around Francisca de Los Ángeles, a Querétaro Beata who lived in the late seventeenth century and the first half of the eighteenth. "A fascinating portrayal of how women might break out of traditional gender restraints in colonial society". A trio of essays explores the middle decades of the nineteenth century and the liberal reform era's conflicts with Brian Hamnett's portrait of Tomas Mejia, a figure who linked local and national politics and illustrated the dense network of clientelistic relationships behind the familiar categories of 'liberal' and 'conservative' blurring the crucial period of 1840-1855. [28]

María Eugenia García Ugarte's recounting of the life of the Bishop of Puebla, Pelagio Antonio de Labastida y Dávalos "offers a narrative of how one influential member of the Catholic establishment sought to navigate a way through the more draconian measures of liberal reform designed to restrict Church privileges".

Guy Thomson's "Memoirs and Memories of the European Intervention in the Sierra de Puebla, 1868- 1991" offers an illuminating examination of the interactions among nineteenth-century historical narratives, modern historical memories, and scholarly historians. [31]

Alan Knight's discussion is on whether there is such a thing as "Mexican national identity…as it" is shifting and disputatious in nature, is a conceptual black hole, and that while the 1910 Revolution and its aftermath advanced some fundamentals of a common national identity in Mexico, "the objective national identity remained notoriously fragmented by region, locality, religion, ideology, age, gender, and ethnicity". Knight argues for an integrated economic, social, political, and cultural history, "as exemplified in the work of David Brading". [31]

Brading's autobiographical essay, "A Recusant Abroad" was an amplification of a piece published in Spanish in 1993. It was received enthusiastically by reviewers, Keith Brewster in the Bulletin of Latin American Research commented "We are afforded a rare glimpse of an eminent scholar's development from a hesitant graduate searching a true vocation into an accomplished master of his craft, while Cynthia Radding in the Journal of Latin American Studies called it "beautifully reflective". [14] [29] Timothy Anna in The Americas found Brading's essay to be fascinating "Declaring that his first love was Baroque art and architecture and Catholic political thought and mysticism, Brading provides his assessment of the origins, meanings, and purposes of his various publications." [31] Professor John Tutino of Georgetown University commenting in The Hispanic American Historical Review that "Brading's contributions to Mexican history are equalled by few and exceeded by none… No one can understand the silver economy, social processes, and government reforms of the late colonial era without knowing Miners and Merchants, the book that introduced David Brading to a generation. The First America took on even larger challenges, brilliantly tracing imperial power and ideology along with Spanish American cultural and intellectual responses and innovations over more than three centuries, reaching past independence to mid-nineteenth-century liberal reforms." [31]

Awards and honors

Brading has received honorary degrees from four universities, including Universidad del Pacifico, Universidad de Guanajuato, [12] Universidad de Lima, [2] [12] and the Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo. [33] [12]

Books in English

Books in Spanish

Books edited and prefaces

Articles and Book Chapters

(1969) pp. 275-318.

Nación 2, no. 11.1-2 (1970): 15-82.

económico (1971):101-111.

no. 1 (1986):1–23.

Ouweneel and Bijleveld. I". The Hispanic American Historical Review 69, no. 3 (1989): 531–38.

Academic achievements, awards, and honors

In the Spring 1998 newsletter of the Conference on Latin American History published by the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, William McGreevey in a study of the 11 volumes of The Cambridge History of Latin America, bibliographic essays, demonstrated that David Brading was "cited more frequently than that of any other writer on Latin American history". [17]

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References

  1. ↑ Contemporary Authors Online (2003). "D. A. Brading". Detroit: Gale. Retrieved 16 May 2016.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Who's Who (UK) (2016). "BRADING, Prof. David Anthony, PhD, LittD; FBA 1995". Oxford: A & C Black, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing plc, 2016; online edn, Oxford University Press, 2015. Retrieved 16 May 2016.
  3. ↑ British Academy (2016). "BRADING, David Emeritus Professor of Mexican History, University of Cambridge". London: The British Academy. Retrieved 16 May 2016.[ permanent dead link ]
  4. ↑ Vries, C. de (22 April 2024). "Professor David A. Brading (1936-2024)". www.latin-american.cam.ac.uk. Retrieved 22 April 2024.
  5. ↑ Cambridge University (2016). "BRADING, David Emeritus Professor of Mexican History, University of Cambridge". Cambridge: Cambridge University. Retrieved 16 May 2016.
  6. ↑ "Murió David Brading, estudioso de la historia de México". www.reforma.com (in Spanish). Retrieved 22 April 2024.
  7. ↑ Cambridge University (2016). "Cambridge University Reporter Special No 5 Tuesday 15 December 2015 Vol cxlvi". Cambridge: Cambridge University. Retrieved 16 May 2016.
  8. ↑ Vries, C. de (22 April 2024). "Professor David A. Brading (1936-2024)". www.latin-american.cam.ac.uk. Retrieved 22 April 2024.
  9. 1 2 "Bolton-Johnson Prize". Conference on Latin American History. 2016. Retrieved 16 May 2016.
  10. ↑ JUAN MANUEL, VENEGAS (12 November 2002). "El Aguila Azteca para Brading" (in Spanish). La Jornada. Desarrollo de Medios S.A. de C.V. Retrieved 18 May 2016. el presidente Fox distinguiera al profesor David Brading con el Aguila Azteca.
  11. ↑ Ruiz, José Luis (13 November 2002). "Inauguran muestra prehispánica". El Universal. Retrieved 18 May 2016.
  12. 1 2 3 4 "David Brading". Clare Hall. Retrieved 31 January 2023.
  13. ↑ "CONGRESO CONDECORÓ A HISTORIADOR BRADING". Congreso de la República Peru (in Spanish). Congreso de la República Peru. Retrieved 18 May 2016.
  14. 1 2 3 4 Deans-Smith, Susan; Young, Eric Van (2007). Mexican soundings : Essays in honour of David A. Brading. London: Institute for the Study of the Americas, University of London. ISBN   978-1900039734 . Retrieved 16 May 2016.
  15. ↑ Moya, Jose C (2010). The Oxford Handbook of Latin American History. Oxford University Press. p. 43. ISBN   9780195166200.
  16. ↑ "by world renowned historian, Professor David Brading FBA". British Academy. Archived from the original on 19 September 2015. Retrieved 16 May 2016.
  17. 1 2 Mcgreevey, William (1998). "Leading Scholars of Latin American History". Conference on Latin American History. 34 Spring. University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Retrieved 19 May 2016.
  18. ↑ Craske, Nikki; Lehmann, David (April 2002). "Fifty Years of Research in Latin American Studies in the UK". European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies (72). Celda: 61–80. JSTOR   25675968.
  19. ↑ "The Cambridge MA: : Student Registry". Cambridge University. 6 November 2014. Retrieved 16 May 2016.
  20. ↑ Brading, David. "Society and administration in late eighteenth century Guanajuato : with especial reference to the silver mining industry". copac.jisc.ac.uk. Retrieved 17 May 2016.
  21. ↑ Bernstein, Harry (1972). "Reviewed Work: Miners and Merchants in Bourbon Mexico, 1763–1810 by D. A. Brading". The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. 400. Sage Publications, Inc: 197–198. JSTOR   1039991.
  22. ↑ Braudel, Fernand (1979). Civilization and Capitalism, 15th–18th Century: The perspective of the world, Volume 3. Fontana. p. 402. ISBN   9780520081161 . Retrieved 19 May 2016. From D.A. Brading's fascinating book on eightteenth-century New Spain.
  23. ↑ "European Academy of Sciences and Arts Members". European Academy of Sciences and Arts. Retrieved 19 May 2016.
  24. ↑ Fisher, John (1992). "Review Reviewed Work: The First America: The Spanish Monarchy, Creole Patriots, and the Liberal State, 1492–1867 by D. A. Brading". History. 77 (251). Wiley: 464–465. JSTOR   24422114.
  25. ↑ Carr, Raymond (1992). "Reviewed Work: The First America: The Spanish Monarchy, Creole Patriots, and the Liberal State 1492–1867 by D. A. Brading". Journal of Latin American Studies. 24 (2): 437–439. doi:10.1017/S0022216X00023452. JSTOR   157074. S2CID   145628264.
  26. 1 2 Domínguez Michael, Christopher. "La Virgen de Guadalupe: imagen y tradición, de David A. Brading". Letras Libres. Retrieved 17 May 2016.
  27. ↑ "Mexican Phoenix, Our Lady of Guadalupe: Image and Tradition Across Five Centuries; Images at War". Foreign Affairs. 29 January 2009. Retrieved 16 May 2016.
  28. 1 2 3 4 Radding, Cynthia (2008). "Review of Mexican Soundings: Essays in Honour of David A. Brading". Journal of Latin American Studies. 40 (2): 341343. doi:10.1017/S0022216X08004082. JSTOR   40056672. S2CID   232350442.
  29. 1 2 3 Rankin, Monica A (2009). "Mexican Soundings: Essays in Honour of David A. Brading". Estudios Interdisciplinarios de América Latina y el Caribe. 20 (2). Tel Aviv University. Retrieved 16 May 2016.
  30. ↑ Anna, Timothy E (2008). "Mexican Soundings: Essays in Honour of David A. Brading". The Americas. 64 (3). Cambridge University Press: 452–454. doi:10.1353/tam.2008.0001. JSTOR   30139155. S2CID   144196293.
  31. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Tutino, J (2009). "Mexican Soundings: Essays in Honour of David A. Brading". Hispanic American Historical Review. 89 (1). Duke University Press: 165–167. doi:10.1215/00182168-2008-059.
  32. ↑ Buve, Raymund (2009). "Mexican Soundings. Essays in Honour of David A. Brading". Iberoamericana. Año 9, No. 35 (35). Frankfurt: Iberoamericana Editorial Vervuert: 285–287. JSTOR   41676953.
  33. ↑ "Historia de México, legado de nuestros antepasados que no debe morir". Universia (in Spanish). Universia. 9 June 2005. Archived from the original on 14 August 2016. Retrieved 20 May 2016. Por sus contribuciones a la historia de México, nombran Doctor Honoris Causa a Enrique Florescano, Friedrich Katz y David A. Brading en la Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo.
David Brading

FBA FRHistS
Professor David Brading (cropped).jpg
Brading in 2009
Born
David Anthony Brading

(1936-08-26) 26 August 1936 (age 87)
London, England
DiedApril 19, 2024
Cambridge,UK
NationalityBritish
Occupation(s)Historian, writer
Spouse
Celia Wu Brading
​
(m. 1966)​
ChildrenChristopher James Brading
Awards Bolton Prize (1972)
Order of the Aztec Eagle (2002)
Academic background
Education Pembroke College, Cambridge (BA, MA)
Yale University
University College London (PhD)
Doctoral advisor John Lynch
Influences
International
National
Other
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