Nineteenth century Spain deserves wider readership. Bedevilled by lost empires, wars, political instability and frustrated modernisation, the country appeared backward in relation to northern Europe and even in relation to much of its own geographical periphery. This new history, the first survey of its kind in English in more than a hundred years, offers a fresh perspective on this century, showing how and why elements of backwardness and modernity ran in parallel through Spain. Bounded by the military and imperial crises of 1808 and 1898, this study pays special attention to the experience of war on politics and society, and integrates the latest historical debates in its analysis.

Since Spain’s transition to democracy there has been rapid economic modernization, the establishment of a functioning liberal democracy, and a cultural renaissance. One area in which ordinary Spaniards have noted a massive change since the 1970s has been in the transformation of the road and rail networks, and also in local amenities—from sporting facilities to centers for the aged. Also impressive is the cleanliness of Spanish cities and the efforts put into town planning. And from the 1980s the country also built a successful public health system. As a result, for the first time since the 19th century Spaniards can largely look toward the West without any sense of inferiority (though, in recent years, confidence has been hit by the deep recession of 2008–2011 and the constant corruption scandals). This third edition of Historical Dictionary of Spain contains a chronology, an introduction, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 700 cross-referenced entries on important personalities, politics, economy, foreign relations, religion, and culture. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Spain.

CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title 2017 This book provides a comparative history of the domestic and international nature of Spain's First Carlist War (1833-40) and the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), as well as the impact of both conflicts. The book demonstrates how and why Spain's struggle for liberty was won in the 1830s only for it to be lost one hundred years later. It shows how both civil wars were world wars in miniature, fought in part by foreign volunteers under the gaze and in the political consciousness of the outside world. Prefaced by a short introduction, The Spanish Civil Wars is arranged into two domestic and international sections, each with three thematic chapters comparing each civil war in detail. The main analytical perspectives are political, social and new military history in nature, but they also explore aspects of gender, culture, nationalism and separatism, economy, religion and, especially, the war in its international context. The book integrates international archival research with the latest scholarship on both subjects and also includes a glossary, a bibliography and several images. It is a key resource tailored to the needs of students and scholars of modern Spain which offers an intriguing and original new perspective on the Spanish Civil War.

This work explores the background and first two years of the First Carlist War--a conflict that pitted conservative northern peasants against the liberal Madrid government in the largest and most sustained case of armed peasant resistance to modernization in nineteenth-century Europe. Originally published in 1984. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Spain's First Carlist War was an unlikely agent of modernity. It pitted town against country, subalterns against elites, and Europe's Liberal powers against Absolute Monarchies. This book traces the individual, collective and international experience of this conflict, giving equal attention to battle fronts and home fronts.

In this debut work, Scott Eastman tackles the complex issue of nationalism in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Spanish Atlantic empire. Preaching Spanish Nationalism across the Hispanic Atlantic challenges the idea that nationalism arose from the ashes of confessional society. Rather, the tenets of Roman Catholicism and the ideals of Enlightenment worked together to lay the basis for a "mixed modernity" within the territories of the Spanish monarchy. Drawing on sermons, catechisms, political pamphlets, and newspapers, Eastman demonstrates how religion and tradition cohered within burgeoning nationalist discourses in both Spain and Mexico. And though the inclusive notion of Spanish nationalism faded as the revolutions in the Hispanic Atlantic world established new loyalty to postcolonial states, the religious imagery and rhetoric that had served to define Spanish identity survived and resurfaced throughout the course of the long nineteenth century. Preaching Spanish Nationalism across the Hispanic Atlantic skillfully debates the prevailing view that the monolithic Catholic Church -- as the symbol of the ancien régime -- subverted a secular progression toward nationalism and modernity. Eastman deftly contends that the common political and religious culture of the Spanish Atlantic empire ultimately transformed its subjects into citizens of the Hispanic Atlantic world.

In 1872, there were more than 300,000 slaves in Cuba and Puerto Rico. Though the Spanish government had passed a law for gradual abolition in 1870, slaveowners, particularly in Cuba, clung tenaciously to their slaves as unfree labor was at the core of the colonial economies. Nonetheless, people throughout the Spanish empire fought to abolish slavery, including the Antillean and Spanish liberals and republicans who founded the Spanish Abolitionist Society in 1865. This book is an extensive study of the origins of the Abolitionist Society and its role in the destruction of Cuban and Puerto Rican slavery and the reshaping of colonial politics.