Spain: A History [Hardcover]

Raymond Carr (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 28, 2000 | ISBN-10: 0198206194 | ISBN-13: 978-0198206194

Sir Raymond Carr is one of the world's leading authorities on the history of Spain. In Spain: A History, he and eight other leading scholars--including Sebastian Balfour and Felipe Fernandez-Armesto--provide an authoritative overview of a country that has played a vital role in the history of the Western world.
Here is an up-to-date and engaging tour of Spain through the ages. We read of prehistoric Spain and of the imposition of Roman rule, which created the idea of Hispania as a single entity. There are knowledgeable discussions of the Visigoth monarchy, Moorish Spain, the establishment of an empire, and the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, all of which not only chart the political and economic development of Spain, but also examine the extraordinary artistic and literary achievements of the Spanish people. We read of the rise of liberalism in the nineteenth century, and of its fall, which ushered in a period of political instability culminating in the Civil War and authoritarian rule. The book concludes with a look at modern Spain as a fully integrated and enthusiastic member of the European community.
Attractively illustrated with eight pages of color plates and twenty-four black-and-white plates, Spain: A History is the best historical account of Spain currently available for general readers.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Spain, influential historians once maintained, was an "exceptional" country--meaning that, in many key respects, it lay outside the course of European history. Unlike any other nation of Western Europe, Spain was for centuries the province of Islamic rulers, and the crowned heads of other parts of the continent scorned it as an "oriental," necessarily backward nation--when in many ways it was considerably more advanced than its neighbors.

The exceptionalist view of Spanish history was misguided and damaging, writes the eminent historian Raymond Carr, but it was one that many Spanish people accepted: to them, it helped explain why Spain, once so mighty and rich an empire, should have fallen behind while the rest of Europe grew stronger and wealthier, and why a retrograde ruler like Franco could have remained in power when democracy flourished elsewhere.

Carr and his colleagues, including several Spanish scholars, seek to restore Spain to the mainstream of European history in this highly useful survey. Taking in a view that extends deep into prehistory and forward to the recent presidential elections, the contributors emphasize the diversity of Spain's many peoples, whose union under the kings and queens of Castile and Aragon would bring so much of the world under Spanish dominion, and the difficulty of maintaining that political union in the recent climate of ethnic and regional rivalry. --Gregory McNamee

From Publishers Weekly

Potent yet palatable, this history of Spain is remarkably seamlessAespecially considering that it traces the development of a fractious society and that it is the creation of nine collaborating authors. The work's fluidity is both evidence of editor Carr's diligence and a manifestation of the authors' unity of purpose. Together and individually they dismiss the romantic notion that, to preserve traditional values, Spain has repeatedly resisted social change and intentionally sacrificed its own prosperity. Instead they propose that Spain's unique path toward integration with modern Europe has been the result of the perpetual clash of its diverse inhabitants and conquerors. Far from isolating itself from Europe, they argue, Spain grew in power by exploiting its ties to other European societies. The authors' shared thesis spans the centuries from Roman domination, to the Islamic invasion, to the tyranny of Franco, but their narrative styles and interests are by no means uniform. Carr (a former warden at St. Anthony's College at Oxford and author of Modern Spain, 1875-1980) displays what amounts to contempt for Spanish culture of the mid-19th century; Felipe Fern ndez-Armesto (professor of history, Oxford) combines effervescence with erudition in his discussion of the Spanish Golden Age; Sebastian Balfour (assistant director of Spanish studies, London School of Economics) employs the brevity demanded by the book's structure to heart-wrenching effect in his account of the Spanish Civil War. As era is layered upon era, the events of history become linked not only by a causal relationship, but by a creative one as well: this book suggests that the concept of Spain has evolved through the continuous and repeated reinterpretation of a rich and controversial past. 8 pages color and 70 b&w illus. not seen by PW. (Sept.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (September 28, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0198206194
• ISBN-13: 978-0198206194
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #769,335 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Brief, Yet Complete, History, April 7, 2001

By 

Timothy Haugh (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Spain: A History (Hardcover)

I am shortly leaving on my third trip to Spain and, every time before I go, I try to read another history of the country. This time around it was this book, Spain: A History.

Oxford University Press can usually be counted on to put out a good product and this book is no exception. It is a nice coverage of the very complex past of Spain from pre-history to the present. It is edited by Raymond Carr but the individual chapters were written by different authors. Carr himself covers only the period from 1833-1931.

Ironically, it is Carr's section that I find the weakest of the book. He wanders through so many different names and governments that I became a bit lost. This is one of the main dangers about writing of Spain's recent past, I guess, since it seems that the leadership often changed minute by minute. Still, the earlier sections of the book are much more engaging.

Overall, I found this book to be a good read. It is quite detailed but still rather brief. Sometimes these histories tend to get lost over a thousand pages or so. This book can be read in a reasonalbe amount of time. I was also pleased to see how the importance of regionalism in Spain is brought out. For anyone interested in getting the big picture of Spanish history, this is a book for you.

37 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A coherent, interesting introduction to a broad subject, June 18, 2002

By 

Peter J. Adams (Pittsburgh, PA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Spain: A History (Hardcover)

First, you must realize that a 300-page book that covers 2500 years of history can only accomplish the briefest of surveys. This book does a solid job with this task. The text is sensibly divided into nine chapters, each covering a distinct historical period. Raymond Carr is the editor and author of one chapter. Considering that each chapter has a different author, the book has a remarkably unified feel. Carr has done a good job making sure each chapter supports the others and avoiding redundancy. There is good balance as well; most chapters touch on social, demographic, economic, and cultural trends as well as the obligatory political narrative. This gives the reader nice insights into the character of each period and helps to understand the course of events.

Also, there are several high-quality pictures included, a bonus for a short survey history book. The bibliography has helped me choose other books to read. It is organized by chapter, which is helpful although some referenced books ought to have been included under more than one chapter.

I do have one complaint: there is no chapter on Islamic Spain. This topic is not covered at all, except peripherally when the Moors directly impinge upon the medieval Christian kingdoms. The Moorish presence is probably the single factor that, more than any other, distinguishes Spanish history from that of other Western European countries. Islamic Spain also made a huge contribution to the development of Western civilization by serving as the avenue for the reintroduction of Aristotle's works to Western Europe in the Middle Ages. Also, most of Spain was under Islamic rule for about 500 years. These facts are all discussed from the outsider view point of the Christian kingdoms, but I feel a chapter highlighting the nature of Islamic civilization in Spain would have been a tremendous addition.

Overall, however, the book quickly familiarizes the reader with the broad panorama of Spanish history in a coherent and enjoyable way. If you need such an introduction, I recommend this book.

[Reviewer's background: I am a non-historian who mostly reads history in his spare time. After a fascinating trip to Spain, I decided to pick this book up as my first introduction to its history.]

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Short, fairly easy, big picture history, June 10, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Spain: A History (Hardcover)

Since it is written by various authors, the book is not entirely of an even quality. The earlier parts and the last chapter are the best. But it is all reasonably good. It is fairly clear cut and brief so you do not get bogged down. It has a great reading list for further adventures. It does not have a lot of nit-picking footnotes that I have to compulsively read. It does have a lot of excellent and helpful black and white illustrations. I rarely finish a history book. I finished this one.