Traditional historiography has tended to disregard and even deny Spain’s role in the Enlightenment, banishing the country to a benighted geographical periphery. In The Spanish Enlightenment revisited a team of experts overturns the myth of the ‘dark side of Europe’ and examines the authentic place of Spain in the intellectual economy of the Enlightenment. Contributors to this book explore how institutional and social changes in eighteenth-century Spain sharpened the need for modernisation. Examination of major constitutional and social initiatives, such as the development of new...

This book contains a systematic study of economic institutions during the Spanish Enlightenment in the areas of print culture (the press, merchants’ handbooks, teaching materials), education (university chairs in political economy and commerce) and the organisation of financial matters at state level (economic societies, trade consulates and the official statistics agency). A Unifying Enlightenment is a fresh interpretation of political economy’s contribution to the development of the European Enlightenment. Jesús Astigarraga shows that, far from being a straightforward intellectual...