The Emancipation of South America/Translator's Preface
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.
The title of this translation is the second title of the original "History of San Martin." This transposition of title is an index to the relation which the translation bears to the original. This latter is truly a biography of San Martin, whose life could not be understood unless very full account were given of the events in which he took so prominent a part, therefore the biography is also a history.
No man who plays a prominent part in the history of a revolution can escape becoming involved in disputes with his contemporaries, and in many intricate questions which are of interest only to a very small number of their successors. These disputes and these questions greatly affect the career of a man, but have small influence upon the history of a Nation. Of such troubles San Martin had his full share, his biographer has entered fully into them, and with much detail has given proofs of the correctness of the view he takes of them. These details are, for the most part, suppressed in the translation, and all matters concerning San Martin himself are greatly curtailed, while prominence is given to the events of the times in which the scene passes. The translation is thus a history in which enter the biographies of the two principal personages, San Martin and Bolívar.
This translation is intended only for the general mass of English-speaking readers, to whom minute details are wearisome, and is thus in every part a condensation of the copious accounts which are given in the original of the stirring events described. The student of history will not find in it that ample information which he requires, in order fully to understand the subject in all its bearings; for him the original provides a mine of historic wealth, enriched as it is with notes and with a voluminous appendix.
William Pilling.