Spain Since 1812

Spain since 1812 is an ideal introduction to the history of Spain. The chapters are arranged chronologically and each begins with an overview of major events and movements in Europe as a whole. Emphasis is placed on understanding major developments, their causes, and the relationships between them. Spanish terms associated with key concepts and figures are introduced and explained throughout the text. Extracts from key Spanish texts, in Spanish and in translation, enable students to see, first hand, the mood of the time. Chapters end with topics for discussion to encourage critical thinking. This new edition has been revised and updated to take account of events since the Socialists' return to power in 2004. It looks at the new government's social reforms, its attempts to end ETA's violence and its response to Catalan demands for further autonomy. Also considered are changes in the country's political climate and external relationships, as well as the crisis facing Spain's economy. Written in an accessible style and assuming no prior knowledge, the books in this series address the specific needs of students on language courses, as well as anyone with an interest in modern history. Approaching the study of history via contemporary politics and society, each book offers a clear historical narrative and sets the country or region concerned in the context of the wider world.

This book is the first in an innovative new series written specifically for students of modern languages. Each book seeks to provide students with the historical background they need to understand the ideas and references they encounter in their discussions, readings, and travels. Spain 1812-1996 is a practical history of modern Spain, accessible to students from a wide range of backgrounds. The emphasis is on political history, although cultural and economic topics are discussed where relevant, and the main theme is the struggle to establish the institutions and practices of liberal democracy. The thematic approach helps students follow the key trends in Spanish history without getting lost in detail. The book begins with a prologue describing briefly what Spain was like in 1812 and then proceeds to cover the next two centuries of Spanish history in ten chronological chapters. In addition to a concise description of the period, each chapter includes an outline of related events in the wider world, a glossary of key terms, one or two exhibits--short, original texts that illustrate key points--and a short list of discussion questions which cover both the exhibits and the chapter as a whole. Ideal for anyone who would like a quick introduction to modern Spain, the book also includes suggestions for further reading and a comprehensive index with both Spanish and English terms.

Spain since 1812 is an ideal introduction to the history of Spain. The chapters are arranged chronologically and each begins with an overview of major events and movements in Europe as a whole. Emphasis is placed on understanding major developments, their causes, and the relationships between them. Spanish terms associated with key concepts and figures are introduced and explained throughout the text. Extracts from key Spanish texts, in Spanish and in translation, enable students to see, first hand, the mood of the time. Chapters end with topics for discussion to encourage critical thinking. This new edition has been revised and updated to take account of events since the Socialists' return to power in 2004. It looks at the new government's social reforms, its attempts to end ETA's violence and its response to Catalan demands for further autonomy. Also considered are changes in the country's political climate and external relationships, as well as the crisis facing Spain's economy. Written in an accessible style and assuming no prior knowledge, the books in this series address the specific needs of students on language courses, as well as anyone with an interest in modern history. Approaching the study of history via contemporary politics and society, each book offers a clear historical narrative and sets the country or region concerned in the context of the wider world.

This book is the first in an innovative new series written specifically for students of modern languages. Each book seeks to provide students with the historical background they need to understand the ideas and references they encounter in their discussions, readings, and travels. Spain 1812-1996 is a practical history of modern Spain, accessible to students from a wide range of backgrounds. The emphasis is on political history, although cultural and economic topics are discussed where relevant, and the main theme is the struggle to establish the institutions and practices of liberal democracy. The thematic approach helps students follow the key trends in Spanish history without getting lost in detail. The book begins with a prologue describing briefly what Spain was like in 1812 and then proceeds to cover the next two centuries of Spanish history in ten chronological chapters. In addition to a concise description of the period, each chapter includes an outline of related events in the wider world, a glossary of key terms, one or two exhibits--short, original texts that illustrate key points--and a short list of discussion questions which cover both the exhibits and the chapter as a whole. Ideal for anyone who would like a quick introduction to modern Spain, the book also includes suggestions for further reading and a comprehensive index with both Spanish and English terms.

Written in an accessible style and assuming no prior knowledge, the books in this series address the specific needs of students on language courses. Approaching the study of history from an interest in contemporary politics and society, each book offers a clear historical narrative and sets its region into a world context. Beginning in 1812, the year of Spain's first Constitution, and ending with the 2004 general election, Spain 1812-2004 focuses on political history. This new edition has been revised and updated to take account of the rise of the centre-right People's Party, the renewed economic boom of the late 1990s, the resurgence of tension in the Basque Country, Spain's evolving relationship with the European Union and the impact of globalisation. Chapters begin with a brief overview of the main contemporary developments in European history. Emphasis is placed on understanding major developments, their causes, and the relationships between them. Inserts embedded in the text provide details of key concepts, while short extracts from contemporary Spanish texts in the original and in translation provide a flavour of the ideas developed. This new edition also includes: * a brief exploration of recurrent themes * topics for discussion on each chapter * summary boxes at the end of each chapter * annotated suggestions for further reading which include websites and TV documentaries * a combined index/glossary

Resurrecting a forgotten chapter in transatlantic history, James G. Cusick tells how, just before the United States went to war against Great Britain in 1812, an ill-advised invasion of a Spanish colony became a stage on which the young republic clumsily acted out its imperial ambitions and racial fears. With the halfhearted backing of President James Madison and Secretary of State James Monroe, a party of Georgians invaded East Florida, confident that partisans there would help them swiftly wrest the colony away from Spain. The raid was a strategic and political disaster. Few sympathizers materialized, official U.S. support dissolved, and an extended guerrilla war ensued. This was the "other war of 1812," or the Patriot War. Cusick, a lively storyteller as well as a meticulous scholar, conveys the savagery of the borderlands conflict that pitted American adventurers and anti-Spanish partisans against Spanish loyalists and their allies, who included Seminole Indians and escaped slaves. At the same time, Cusick looks at the American motivations behind the invasion, including apprehensions about Florida's growing population of unregulated blacks and geopolitical intrigues involving Spain, Britain, and France.

Momentous changes swept Spain in the fifteenth century. A royal marriage united Castile and Aragon, its two largest kingdoms. The last Muslim emirate on the Iberian Peninsula fell to Spanish Catholic armies. And conquests in the Americas were turning Spain into a great empire. Yet few in this period of flourishing Spanish power could define “Spain” concretely, or say with any confidence who were Spaniards and who were not. Speaking of Spain offers an analysis of the cultural and political forces that transformed Spain’s diverse peoples and polities into a unified nation. Antonio Feros traces evolving ideas of Spanish nationhood and Spanishness in the discourses of educated elites, who debated whether the union of Spain’s kingdoms created a single fatherland (patria) or whether Spain remained a dynastic monarchy comprised of separate nations. If a unified Spain was emerging, was it a pluralistic nation, or did “Spain” represent the imposition of the dominant Castilian culture over the rest? The presence of large communities of individuals with Muslim and Jewish ancestors and the colonization of the New World brought issues of race to the fore as well. A nascent civic concept of Spanish identity clashed with a racialist understanding that Spaniards were necessarily of pure blood and “white,” unlike converted Jews and Muslims, Amerindians, and Africans. Gradually Spaniards settled the most intractable of these disputes. By the time the liberal Constitution of Cádiz (1812) was ratified, consensus held that almost all people born in Spain’s territories, whatever their ethnicity, were Spanish.

This book commemorates the bicentenary of the landmark Spanish Constitution of 1812. Drafted by Spanish and colonial Spanish American liberals (and non-liberals) holed up in Cadiz as Napoleon’s troops occupied the surrounding hills, this war-time Constitution set out radically to redefine ‘the Spanish nation’ for a new age. In the event, it divided Spaniards and threw into sharp relief the question of Spain’s legitimacy in her American colonies. Cadiz 1812 is a defining moment in the modern history of the Spanish-speaking world. Bringing together specialists in the history, politics and culture of Spain and Latin America (the Cadiz text was a cultural and ethnic document as much as a politico-legal one), this volume represents the only large-scale commemoration in the UK of one of the world’s first liberal constitutional tracts. The point of the book, however, as of the conference and accompanying exhibition on which it is based, is not solely to reflect on the significance and repercussions of Cadiz 1812 on both sides of the Hispanic Atlantic at the time. The book also considers later interpretations of Cadiz 1812 and examines, in addition, other constitutions in the Spanish-speaking world beyond 1812. Subjects treated include: Spain’s crisis of absolutism; the Inquisition before the Constitution; liberalism and Catholicism; discourses of the 1812 Constitution; the question of sovereignty; political theatre during the Napoleonic invasion; Goya; the Spanish crisis in the British press; Lord Holland and Blanco White; Pérez Galdós’s Cádiz; futuristic literary representations of Spain’s nineteenth-century crisis; political and philosophical echoes in Latin America in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries – in Cúcuta, Mexico, Argentina and Cuba; and, finally, politico-philosophical echoes in Spain – in the Liberal Triennium, in the mid-nineteenth century, in the Spanish Second Republic, in 1978, and in 2011 in the midst of the financial (but it is also a constitutional) crisis. The volume includes a specially-conducted interview with Spanish politician Alfonso Guerra, one of the figures behind the Spanish Constitution of 1978.