Spanish national character imposed and exposed

This epic history compares the empires built by Spain and Britain in the Americas, from Columbus's arrival in the New World to the end of Spanish colonial rule in the early nineteenth century. J. H. Elliott, one of the most distinguished and versatile historians working today, offers us history on a grand scale, contrasting the worlds built by Britain and by Spain on the ruins of the civilizations they encountered and destroyed in North and South America. Elliott identifies and explains both the similarities and differences in the two empires' processes of colonization, the character of their colonial societies, their distinctive styles of imperial government, and the independence movements mounted against them. Based on wide reading in the history of the two great Atlantic civilizations, the book sets the Spanish and British colonial empires in the context of their own times and offers us insights into aspects of this dual history that still influence the Americas.

Natural Law, Constitutionalism, Reason of State, and War: Counter-Reformation Spanish Political Thought (Volumes I and II) aims at understanding how Spanish thinkers in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries approached the emerging institution of the state. The volumes are divided evenly into four distinct but related parts that cover the Spaniards' central concerns. In the first, a fundamental question is asked: Is the state a natural institution? In the second, the theme is the best form of government. The third part is concerned with the imperative need to define the ethical boundaries beyond which the state must not trespass. Finally, the fourth part examines the question of war as an instrument of policy.

This volume, published in honor of historian Geoffrey Parker, explores the working of European empires in a global perspective, focusing on one of the most important themes of Parker’s work: the limits of empire, which is to say, the centrifugal forces - sacral, dynastic, military, diplomatic, geographical, informational - that plagued imperial formations in the early modern period (1500-1800). During this time of wrenching technological, demographic, climatic, and economic change, empires had to struggle with new religious movements, incipient nationalisms, new sea routes, new military technologies, and an evolving state system with complex new rules of diplomacy. Engaging with a host of current debates, the chapters in this book break away from conventional historical conceptions of empire as an essentially western phenomenon with clear demarcation lines between the colonizer and the colonized. These are replaced here by much more fluid and subtle conceptions that highlight complex interplays between coalitions of rulers and ruled. In so doing, the volume builds upon recent work that increasingly suggests that empires simply could not exist without the consent of their imperial subjects, or at least significant groups of them. This was as true for the British Raj as it was for imperial China or Russia. Whilst the thirteen chapters in this book focus on a number of geographic regions and adopt different approaches, each shares a focus on, and interest in, the working of empires and the ways that imperial formations dealt with - or failed to deal with - the challenges that beset them. Taken together, they reflect a new phase in the evolving historiography of empire. They also reflect the scholarly contributions of the dedicatee, Geoffrey Parker, whose life and work are discussed in the introductory chapters and, we’re proud to say, in a delightful chapter by Parker himself, an autobiographical reflection that closes the book.

The Power of Cities focuses on Iberian cities during the lengthy transition from the late Roman to the early modern period, with a particular interest in the change from early Christianity to the Islamic period, and on to the restoration of Christianity. Drawing on case studies from cities such as Toledo, Cordoba, and Seville, it collects for the first time recent research in urban studies using both archaeological and historical sources. Against the common portrayal of these cities characterized by discontinuities due to decadence, decline and invasions, it is instead continuity – that is, a gradual transformation – which emerges as the defining characteristic. The volume argues for a fresh interpretation of Iberian cities across this period, seen as a continuum of structural changes across time, and proposes a new history of the Iberian Peninsula, written from the perspective of the cities. Contributors are Javier Arce, María Asenjo González, Antonio Irigoyen López, Alberto León Muñoz, Matthias Maser, Sabine Panzram, Gisela Ripoll, Torsten dos Santos Arnold, Isabel Toral-Niehoff, Fernando Valdés Fernández, and Klaus Weber.

This book offers the first systematic analysis of the cultural and religious appropriation of Andalusian architecture by Spanish historians during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. To date this process of Christian appropriation has generally been discussed as a phenomenon of architectural hybridisation. However, this was a period in which the construction of a Spanish national identity became a key focus of historical discourse. As a result, cultural hybridity encountered partial opposition from those seeking to establish cultural and religious homogeneity. Spain's Islamic past became a major concern in this period and historical writing served as the site for a complex negotiation of identity. Historians and antiquarians used a range of strategies to re-appropriate the meaning of medieval Islamic heritage as befitted the new identity of Spain as a Catholic monarchy and empire. On the one hand, the monuments' Islamic origin was subjected to historical revisions and re-identified as Roman or Phoenician. On the other hand, religious forgeries were invented that staked claims for buildings and cities having been founded by Christians prior to the arrival of the Muslims in Spain. Islamic stones were used as core evidence in debates that shaped the early development of archaeology, and they also became the centre of a historical controversy about the origin of Spain as a nation as well as its ecclesiastical history.

The early Stuart funeral elegy was a copious and digressive genre, and exceptional deaths pressed elegists to stretch beyond the usual rhetoric of grief and commemoration. This book engages in a broad reading of the period’s rich trove of funeral elegies, in both manuscript and print, and by poets ranging from the canonical to the anonymous. The book stands apart from earlier studies by its greater focus upon the subjects of funeral elegies (rather than the poets), and how the particular circumstances of death and the immediate contexts affected the poetic response. Individual deaths are understood in relation to each other and other prominent events of the time. While the book covers the period 1603 to 1640, the 1620s stand out as a tumultuous decade in which the genre most fully engaged in matters of political controversy and satire.

This important and timely volume brings together a distinguished set of international scholars who provide rich information about the social, economic, political, and historical factors responsible for shaping ageing policy in the Mediterranean region.

The Routledge Hispanic Studies Companion to Early Modern Spanish Literature and Culture introduces the intellectual and artistic breadth of early modern Spain from a range of disciplinary and critical perspectives. Spanning the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (a period traditionally known as the Golden Age), the volume examines topics including political and scientific culture, literary and artistic innovations, and religious and social identities and institutions in transformation. The 36 chapters of the volume include both expert overviews of key topics and figures from the period as well as new approaches to understudied questions and materials. This invaluable resource will be of interest to advanced students and scholars in Hispanic studies, as well as Renaissance and early modern studies more generally.

Gathering a group of internationally renowned scholars, this volume presents cutting-edge research on the complex processes of identity formation in the transatlantic world of the Hispanic Baroque. Identities in the Hispanic world are deeply intertwined with sociological concepts such as class and estate, with geography and religion (i.e. the mixing of Spanish Catholics with converted Jews, Muslims, Dutch and German Protestants), and with issues related to the ethnic diversity of the world’s first transatlantic empire and its various miscegenations. Contributors to this volume offer the reader diverse vantage points on the challenging problem of how identities in the Hispanic world may be analyzed and interpreted. A number of contributors relate earlier processes and formations to Neo-Baroque and postmodern conceptualisations of identity. Given the strong interest in identity and identity-formation within contemporary cultural studies, the book will be of interest to a broad group of readers from the fields of law, geography, history, anthropology and literature.