Spain

1. Beevor, The Battle for Spain (10 Jan 2008)

by kurto

Chronicles the Spanish Civil War, a rich and hotly contested field that is a rare example of history dominated by the loser’s point of view. Pre-1930s Spain was so splintered and polarized that the combination of inept government, labor agitation in straightened economic circumstances, and conspiring generals (aided by the Church) led to rapid mobilization and then open warfare. Republican forces began with Madrid and Barcelona as well as the strategic edge; but primes inter pares Franco consolidated rightist forces and made fewer mistakes — particularly as the right was not beholden to propaganda. Both sides treated the opposition and civilians wantonly, and the fighting was both a microcosm and a proving ground for Europe (including Soviet Russia). Though focused on personal leadership and ideological conflict (particularly among Barcelonan leftists), Beevor skillfully depicts daily fighting. A worthy followup to

    Stalingrad

.

3. Kamen, Spain 1492-1763 (26 Feb 2012)

by kurto

Surveys Spain’s imperial era from the consolidation of Castilian power to the end of Anglo-French warfare. Not military conquest but adventurers, cooperative provincial elites, and Latin American coin fueled the global structure. Italy (Spanish Lombardy, based in Milan) provided crucial banking, armaments, and manpower. Spanish never became lingua franca; despite the civilizing mission of Catholicism, Castile’s elites remained intellectually and culturally insulated; and Europe did not look up to the peninsula. Power crested in 1635 and turned to France, which ‘took over’ in 1702 upon a Bourbon succeeding a Habsburg on the Spanish throne (prompting the War of Spanish Succession). Little interested in narrative politics and more attracted to sociocultural phenomena, the learned book grows dull in sections that dwell on Filipino and Ibero-American anthropology.