Jorge Alfredo Basadre Grohmann (12 February 1903 – 29 June 1980) was a Peruvian historian known for his extensive publications about the independent history of his country. He served during two different administrations as Minister of Education and was also director of the Peruvian National Library. Early life Jorge Basadre was born to Carlos Basadre Forero and Olga Eloísa Grohmann Butler in Tacna, which was then under Chilean administration. Basadre said that his great grandfather was José Toribio Ara y Cáceres, a cacique who participated in the Peruvian War of Independence. Basadre began his training at the Liceo Santa Rosa, a Peruvian school that operated clandestinely in Tacna but changed to the German School of Lima when his family moved to this city in 1912. He undertook his final year of secondary education at Our Lady of Guadalupe National School in 1918. In 1919, Basadre entered the National University of San Marcos where he graduated as a Ph.D. in Humanities in 1928 and in Law in 1935. While studying, he intervened in the University Conversation of 1919, along with other young students of the so-called Generation of the Reformation, and he also worked at the Peruvian National Library from 1919 up to 1930. He was a professor at the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos in 1928, teaching a course in the History of Peru. In 1929 he assumed the titular chair of History of the Republic of Peru, and in 1935 that of History of Peruvian Law, which he held until 1954 (although with intervals due to absences outside the country), when he departed from professional teaching for devote yourself entirely to research. He undertook postgraduate studies in the United States and Germany between 1931 and 1935, receiving a scholarship from the Carnegie Institution to study in the United States and taking his courses at the Humboldt University of Berlin. During that time, he traveled to Spain to conduct research in archives at the University of Seville. Public life Between 1925 and 1926 he was part of the Peruvian delegation that was sent to the south to coordinate the holding of the Tacna and Arica plebiscite. He was carrying out this task when he was wounded by a stone in the head, thrown by a Chilean nationalist. The plebiscite was never held due to lack of guarantees. Two years later, Tacna was definitively reincorporated to Peru, while Arica remained