In the decades following the American Civil War and leading up to the First World War, a definitive shift in power took place between Spain and the United States. This original book explores American artists’ perceptions of Spain during this period of turmoil and demonstrates how their responses to Spanish art helped to answer emerging, complex questions about American national identity. M. Elizabeth Boone focuses on works by Thomas Eakins, Mary Cassatt, William Merritt Chase, John Singer Sargent, Robert Henri, and other American artists who traveled to Spain to study the achievements of such great masters as Murillo, Velázquez, and Goya. The resulting American paintings, some well known and others now largely forgotten, provide intriguing insights not only into the 19th-century American struggle to define itself as an imperial power but also into the relations between the United States and the Spanish-speaking world today.

“The Spanish Element in Our Nationality” delves beneath the traditional “English-only” narrative of U.S. history, using Spain’s participation in a series of international exhibitions to illuminate more fully the close and contested relationship between these two countries. Written histories invariably record the Spanish financing of Columbus’s historic voyage of 1492, but few consider Spain’s continuing influence on the development of U.S. national identity. In this book, M. Elizabeth Boone investigates the reasons for this problematic memory gap by chronicling a series of Spanish displays at international fairs. Studying the exhibition of paintings, the construction of ephemeral architectural space, and other manifestations of visual culture, Boone examines how Spain sought to position itself as a contributor to U.S. national identity, and how the United States—in comparison to other nations in North and South America—subverted and ignored Spain’s messages, making it possible to marginalize and ultimately obscure Spain’s relevance to the history of the United States. Bringing attention to the rich and understudied history of Spanish artistic production in the United States, “The Spanish Element in Our Nationality” recovers the “Spanishness” of U.S. national identity and explores the means by which Americans from Santiago to San Diego used exhibitions of Spanish art and history to mold their own modern self-image.

How was Spain able to govern its enormous colonial territories? In 1573 the king decreed that his councilors should acquire "complete knowledge" about the empire they were running from out of Madrid, and he initiated an impressive program for the systematic collection of empirical knowledge. Brendecke shows why this knowledge was created in the first place – but then hardly used. And he looks into the question of what political effects such a policy of knowledge had for Spain’s colonial rule.

Through the rise and fall of empires, ideologies, and economies, tobacco grown on the tiny island of Cuba has remained an enduring symbol of pleasure and extravagance. Cultivated as one of the first reliable commodities for those inhabitants who remained after conquistadors moved on in search of a mythical wellspring of gold, tobacco quickly became crucial to the support of the swelling Spanish Empire in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Eventually, however, tobacco became one of the final stabilizing forces in the empire, and it ultimately proved more resilient than the best laid plans of kings and queens. Tobacco, and those whose livelihoods depended on it, shrugged off the Empire's collapse and pressed on into the twentieth century as an economic force any state or political power must reckon with. Cosner explores the history of this golden leaf through the personal narratives of farmers, bureaucrats, and laborers, all struggling to build an independent and lucrative economic engine. Through conquest, rebellion, colonial and imperial schemes, and the eventual Communist revolution, Cuban tobacco and cigars became a luxury item that commanded loyalty that defied mere borders or embargoes. Ultimately, The Golden Leaf is a story of two carefully cultivated products: Cuban tobacco, and its lofty reputation.

Four hundred years after his death, Philip II remains one of the most controversial figures in history, admired and reviled in equal measure. He is a figure of global importance, the first ruler on whose territories the sun never set. He led Europe in its defence against the seemingly irresistable power of the Ottoman Empire and many of the nations of Western Europe were forged in part by their responses to his ambitions - Portugal was conquered and most of Italy was controlled by him, while the Low Countries, England and France fought long and bitter wars against him. Philip proclaimed himself the leader of Catholic Europe but quarrelled incessantly with the popes of the Counter-Reformation. In consolidating his monarchy in Spain, Philip used the arts as a political tool; Titian and Palestrina did some of their greatest work for him. This new study traces the development of Philip II and of a kingship that lay at the heart of European political, religious and cultural evolution. It looks in detail at the ministers who worked with this most demanding of kings and at the government that evolved during his reign. It deals also with the pressures of a tortured private life and explores the paradox of a man who as a young ruler was deeply prudent but who became extraordinarily aggressive in his old age and who by his successes and failures - both of them on an epic scale - re-shaped the world in which he lived.

The Spanish Craze is the compelling story of the centuries-long U.S. fascination with the history, literature, art, culture, and architecture of Spain. Richard L. Kagan offers a stunningly revisionist understanding of the origins of hispanidad in America, tracing its origins from the early republic to the New Deal. As Spanish power and influence waned in the Atlantic World by the eighteenth century, her rivals created the "Black Legend," which promoted an image of Spain as a dead and lost civilization rife with innate cruelty and cultural and religious backwardness. The Black Legend and its ambivalences influenced Americans throughout the nineteenth century, reaching a high pitch in the Spanish-American War of 1898. However, the Black Legend retreated soon thereafter, and Spanish culture and heritage became attractive to Americans for its perceived authenticity and antimodernism. Although the Spanish craze infected regions where the Spanish New World presence was most felt--California, the American Southwest, Texas, and Florida--there were also early, quite serious flare-ups of the craze in Chicago, New York, and New England. Kagan revisits early interest in Hispanism among elites such as the Boston book dealer Obadiah Rich, a specialist in the early history of the Americas, and the writers Washington Irving and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. He also considers later enthusiasts such as Angeleno Charles Lummis and the many writers, artists, and architects of the modern Spanish Colonial Revival in the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Spain's political and cultural elites understood that the promotion of Spanish culture in the United States and the Western Hemisphere in general would help overcome imperial defeats while uniting Spaniards and those of Spanish descent into a singular raza whose shared characteristics and interests transcended national boundaries. With elegant prose and verve, The Spanish Craze spans centuries and provides a captivating glimpse into distinct facets of Hispanism in monuments, buildings, and private homes; the visual, performing, and cinematic arts; and the literature, travel journals, and letters of its enthusiasts in the United States.

During the early modern period, regional specified compendia – which combine information on local moral and natural history, towns and fortifications with historiography, antiquarianism, images series or maps – gain a new agency in the production of knowledge. Via literary and aesthetic practices, the compilations construct a display of regional specified knowledge. In some cases this display of regional knowledge is presented as a display of a local cultural identity and is linked to early modern practices of comparing and classifying civilizations. At the core of the publication are compendia on the Americas which research has described as chorographies, encyclopeadias or – more recently – 'cultural encyclopaedias'. Studies on Asian and European encyclopeadias, universal histories and chorographies help to contextualize the American examples in the broader field of an early modern and transcultural knowledge production, which inherits and modifies the ancient and medieval tradition.

This volume brings together innovative research across the diverse field of Iberian Studies, including insights from economics, society, politics, literature, cinema and other art forms, either in a revisionist perspective or incorporating new data. Reflecting recent developments in the field, the subject matter extends beyond the boundaries of Spain and Portugal, as it also includes transnational and transatlantic interconnections with Europe, Africa and the Americas and its scope ranges from the nineteenth century to the effects of the Catalan independence crisis and Brexit. The 18 chapters here are authored by established academics and early career researchers from the UK, Italy, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Argentina, Brazil, Japan and the USA. The book will appeal to students, researchers and all who have a particular interest in deepening their understanding of the countries of the Iberian Peninsula.