Kategoria BISAC: History >> Europe - Spain

In the maelstrom of Napoleonic Europe, Britain remained defiant, resisting French imperial ambitions. This Anglo-French rivalry was, essentially, a politico-economic conflict for pre-eminence fought on a global scale and it reached a zenith in 1806-1808 with France's apparent dominance of Continental Europe. Britain reacted swiftly and decisively to implement maritime-based strategies to limit French military and commercial gains in Europe, while protecting British overseas interests. The policy is particularly evident in relations with Britain's ""Ancient Ally"": Portugal. That country...

From humble beginnings, in the course of three centuries the Portuguese built the world's first truly global empire, stretching from modern Brazil to sub-Saharan Africa and from India to the East Indies (Indonesia). Portugal had established its present-day borders by 1300 and the following century saw extensive warfare that confirmed Portugal's independence and allowed it to aspire to maritime expansion, sponsored by monarchs such as Prince Henry the Navigator.

Intent on finding a sea route to the source of the lucrative spice trade, the Portuguese discovered a route down Africa's...

This book seeks to deepen an understanding of the often overlooked nature of Spanish modernity by putting recent work on visual culture and modernity in a specifically Spanish historical context. This volume examines how mass print culture, early cinema, popular drama, photography, fashion, painting, museums and urban planning played a role in the way that Spanish society saw itself and was in turn seen by the rest of the world. The authors consider such subjects as the spectacle of the body, notions of race and gender, the changing meanings of time, space and motion, popular culture, and...

Of the communal institutions elaborated by medieval Spaniards, the most significant and longest-lived were the irrigation communities which the Muslims had established centuries earlier in the Valencian region.

The objective of these remarkably democratic communities was justice and equity in water distribution; and the irrigators succeeded in combining traditional rules with consensual authority to maintain their systems with a minimum of conflict. Above the community level, however, regional powers including king, nobles, church, and town all sought to derive, at each...