King Charles III of Spain;: An enlightened despot [Hardcover]

Charles Petrie (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 241 pages
• Publisher: Constable; First Edition edition (1971)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0094572704
• ISBN-13: 978-0094572706
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,567,841 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars More from Petrie's worthwhile historiographical legacy, August 29, 2005

By 

R. J. Stove (Gardenvale, Victoria Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: King Charles III of Spain;: An enlightened despot (Hardcover)

For reasons that remain mysterious, Sir Charles Petrie (1895-1977) escapes even the redoubtable DICTIONARY OF NATIONAL BIOGRAPHY's attention; but during the 1950s and 1960s his works of worthwhile, well researched narrative history were as popular - especially in England - as those of Simon Singh or John Julius Norwich are these days. Here, in this late (1971) offering, Petrie does justice to one of the most impressive, yet least written-about, of all 18th-century leaders: Spain's King Charles III (born 1716, succeeded to throne 1759, died 1788).

As "Matherson" has noted, Petrie's account is not a personal biography. The king's existence seems to have made such a thing impossible to write. His private life was of the most decorous, chaste sort - at the opposite extreme from Louis XV's perpetual rutting - and several of his children are merely listed on one page. Seekers after meretricious gossip must look elsewhere. Yet this is an extremely readable, stylish account not only of Spain's internal affairs during Charles's rule (the climax of which rule was the Jesuits' expulsion in 1767), but of political life in Spain's American empire. Although more information about the precise nature of the reign's considerable domestic radicalism would have been useful - Petrie is apt to short-change that topic in his eagerness to concentrate on foreign affairs - and extra details of Spain's intellectual life would also have been useful, no reader is likely to be seriously disappointed by this account of a monarch who, paradoxically, combined reformist zeal with uncomplicated religious faith.

A Hispanophile to his fingertips, yet somehow very British in his dry empirical wit, Petrie ushered in an approach to Iberian culture much more intelligent and subtle than the "black legend" of Whiggish pseudo-scholarship which had previously prevailed.