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Title: Spanish History Since 1808 by Jose Alvarez Junco, Adrian Shubert, Jose Alvarez Junco ISBN: 0-340-66229-8 Publisher: Edward Arnold Pub. Date: September, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 (2 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Fantastic collection of essays
Comment: This book is a very helpful tool for those who know little or nothing about Spanish history, and provides excellent background knowledge to understand the many issues that make up what Spain is today. It is a great companion to any undergrad or grad history course, so any student wishing to expand her or his library with a solid book should think about getting this one.
Rating: 4
Summary: Not bad, but could be better
Comment: "Spanish History Since 1808" is a collection of twenty-one articles by American, British, and Spanish scholars. Like all books of its kind, it's hard to rate. Many articles are excellent in every respect, others aren't so great.
The editors, José Álvarez Junco and Adrian Shubert, begin the book with an insightful introduction about Spain's curious estrangement from European studies. As a result of the Black Legend (the accumulation of anti-Spanish attitudes in Europe and around the world) as well the shortcomings of non-Spanish historians in general, Spain is usually considered a field of Latin American history -- not without reason, of course, but awkardly as far as the period since 1808 is concerned. Alvarez Junco and Shubert question the wisdom of this.
Yet in spite of this initial approach -- Spain's exclusion from European studies -- none of the articles in the book actually address this issue. In fact, there is no organizing theme, something I think wouldn't have made the book more useful and unique. The contributors could have taken a historiographical approch to why Spain wasn't considered "European enough" or some other theme. Instead, it's just a collection of miscellaneous articles on Spain since 1808.
Still, it's a pretty good book. It's big strength is the inclusion of two sections -- approximately half the articles -- on the nineteenth century. This helps put important events in 20th-century Spain, such as the 1936-39 Civil War, into an appropriate Spanish context (yet I admit that approach, also, undermines the editor's concern about integrate Spain into European studies). For example, many students and scholars from outside the field of Spanish history often detach "the Civil War" from its historical roots in nineteenth-century Spain and do not realize that in fact it was not just the product of continent-wide European movements like anarchism, communism, and fascism, nor just the product of its immediate time period, but, as this book emphasizes, just the last and bloodiest of 120 years of brutal civil wars. These sections on 19th century Spain also help overcome the ignorance of 19th-century Spain in its own right.
Some of the better articles: Mary Nash looks at the cultural and gender aspects of National Catholicism under the Franco Regime. Edward Baker examines the intellectual life of Fin de siècle Spain, focusing on men like Ortega y Gasset, Juan Ramón Jiménez and the Generación del '27. Baker also writes about the Galician and Catalan "renaissance" in the pre-war years. Several other articles are also great, such as George Esenwein's on the Spanish Civil War, Enrique Moradiellos' on "Spain in the World: From Great Empire to Minor European Power", and Pamela Beth Radcliff's on "The Emergence of Mass Politics" in the late nineteenth century.
I thought some of the articles were dully written, but dullness is in the eye of the beholder. Also, the book is a little short on social history -- odd, since Adrian Shubert is the author of one of the best social histories of modern Spain.
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Title: Modern Spain, 1875-1980 by Raymond Carr ISBN: 0192801295 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: August, 2002 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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Title: The New Spaniards (Penguin Politics and Current Affairs) by John Hooper ISBN: 0140131914 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: September, 1995 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: Spain: A History by Raymond Carr ISBN: 0192802364 Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: January, 2002 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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Title: A Social History of Modern Spain (A Social History of Europe) by Adrian Shubert ISBN: 0415090830 Publisher: Unwin Hyman Pub. Date: January, 1991 List Price(USD): $39.95 |
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Title: Spain at War : Spanish Civil War in Context 1931-1939, The by Adrian Shubert, George Esenwein ISBN: 0582552729 Publisher: Addison-Wesley Pub Co Pub. Date: 12 April, 1995 List Price(USD): $50.00 |
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