Nativism has proved an enduring theme in the history of the New World. Successive waves of immigration have brought groups of diverse cultural and ethnic origins into intimate contact within the nations of the Americas. The bitter fruit of such contact has frequently been nativism, which here refers to a social movement that seeks to purge elements considered alien to a culture.

Nativist movements have usually been directed against latecomers who pose a threat to established groups. In 1798, for example, the Federalist administration of the United States attempted to use popular hostility toward French and Irish immigrants as a weapon against Jefferson's Republican party, which tended to attract new arrivals from Europe. The Alien Acts limited the political activities of immigrants and marked the foreign-born as potential subversives. The Sedition Act was designed to suppress criticism of the administration and indirectly challenged the liberal ideas of the French Revolution.

Located at the extreme periphery of the Spanish Empire, Paraguay suffered from its political role as a buffer state against the rival Portuguese colony of Brazil and the hostile Indian nations. Accordingly, during the late colonial period, extended tours of military duty contributed to the province's severe labor shortage. But of even greater consequence were the combined effects of Paraguay's monocrop economy and its economic dependency within the Imperial commercial capitalist system. Best described as a chain-like structure officially beginning in Spain and extending to the remote province via Panama, Lima, and Buenos Aires, this system served to depress Paraguay's economy and appropriate a great portion of its wealth, leaving the majority of the people in dire poverty.

Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda epitomizes in many ways, both personally and intellectually, the cosmopolitanism of Spanish political thought in the sixteenth century. Educated in Italy, disciple of Pomponazzi, translator of Aristotle, chronicler of the Emperor and mentor of his son Philip, Sepúlveda is best known—and often misunderstood as the defender of the more unsavory aspects of the Spanish conquest and colonization in America—for his bitter controversy with Bartolomé de las Casas. To that debate Sepúlveda brought a humanist's training and outlook anchored in his devotion to Aristotle, but strongly tempered by his attachment to Saint Augustine. It is the purpose of this paper to examine Sepúlveda's ideas on the nature of the American natives, particularly the question of whether the Indians are natural slaves. Considerations of space, of course, rule out the possibility of undertaking here a detailed scrutiny of the foundations upon which those ideas rest. It can be said, however, that they are typically Renaissance views, a blend of traditions characteristic of the composite nature of the age's intellectual milieu.

Scholars are increasingly using biographical data to study political elites in an attempt to penetrate the mysteries of the decision-making process. Determining why and how decisions are made is perhaps one of the most difficult tasks to attempt for not only do decision-makers intentionally obfuscate the process but often do not understand it themselves. Unable to penetrate the minds of the participants or to observe directly decisions being made, scholars often turn to studying the decision-makers (elites) themselves by identifying who they are. Biographical data are used because they form at least part of the definition of an individual; they are relatively easy to obtain; they can be coded and put in machine-readable form; and they lend themselves to statistical analysis. On this basis, the scholar can at least describe an elite group, infer why decisions were made, and suggest who future elites might be (assuming that the recruitment system is based on these variables and does not significantly alter in the future).

For the last several decades, scholars concerned with America's foreign relations have paid increasing attention to public opinion, to national images, to the ties between domestic politics and international events. And because contemporary American diplomacy seems entangled in webs of mass behavior, the same wisdom has been applied to earlier times to investigate the way foreign policy has sometimes been an extension of passions and forces from the country's street corners, kitchen tables, and church pews. In this regard, great attention has lately been paid to American stereotypes of the Orient, as sages attempt to find in age-old popular attitudes the reasons for enduring problems of statecraft. Inasmuch as public interest shifts from one area of crisis to the next with each morning's headlines, it should be useful to examine, for areas other than the Far East, how the methods and goals of American diplomacy have been influenced or shaped, sometimes thwarted or transformed, by a kind of people's diplomacy growing out of the limited knowledge and unrestrained emotions of the man in the street.

The scientific contributions of native scholars in the Americas have often been overlooked or neglected. The simultaneous discoveries of European scientists reached a wider audience because of the number of education centers in close proximity. The existence of several scholarly journals also facilitated the rapid dispensation of new scientific knowledge. Although Spanish American scholars lived far from the centers of European knowledge, there was no appreciable time lag between European discoveries and their circulation in Spain's colonies. On the other hand, Spanish American discoveries were unknown in Europe or North America except to a handful of prominent scholars.

Interesting insights into the Mexican scene were provided the State Department by two Kentuckians, John T. Pickett and R. B. I. Twyman, who shared the office of United States consul at Vera Cruz from 1853 to 1861. Pickett, the more dramatic of the two, has been described as a “Southern filibuster of the type of William Walker.” He had been a “general” in the Hungarian nationalist army of Kossuth, and had engaged in the López expeditions against Cuba. Most readers of United States diplomacy are well aware of Pickett's subsequent exploits in Mexico after having been appointed by Robert Toombs, Confederate Secretary of State, as diplomatic commissioner to the Juárez Government. Pickett had been recommended to Jefferson Davis by John Forsyth, former U.S. Minister to Mexico, who described him as eminently qualified. Pickett believed that he could advance the interests of the Confederacy by revealing to the Juárez Government the true nature of the Yankee Union's Puritan fanaticism; and, if the Juárez Party were to make cause with the Union, then he urged Confederate support of the Conservative Party. Upon arrival in Mexico, in July, 1861, he spoke with the Governor of Vera Cruz, Ignacio de la Llave, who assured him that his government would give equal treatment to the ships of the Union and of the Confederacy. Meantime, Thomas Corwin, Minister of the United States to Mexico, had the support of Liberal President Juárez. As the preference became more marked, Pickett became more indiscreet. Mr. Pickett was forceful, shrewd and widely known in Mexico; and had for a number of years been closely associated with Benito Juárez and a group of Liberals. But he was tactless when angry and sharp-tongued. The telling of his adventures, between May, 1861 and 1864 is found in Frank L. Owsley's King Cotton Diplomacy.