Kategoria BISAC: History >> Europe - Spain

Fifty years after the arrival of Columbus, at the height of Spain's conquest of the West Indies, Spanish bishop and colonist Bartolome de Las Casas dedicated his Brevisima Relacion de la Destruicion de las Indias to Philip II of Spain. An impassioned plea on behalf of the native peoples of the West Indies, the Brevisima Relacion catalogues in horrific detail atrocities it attributes to the king s colonists in the New World. The result is a withering indictment of the conquerors that has cast a 500-year shadow over the subsequent history of that world and the European colonization of it."

This collection of previously untranslated court documents, testimonials, and letters portrays the Spanish Inquisition in vivid detail, offering fresh perspectives on such topics as the Inquisition's persecution of Jews and Muslims, the role of women in Spanish religious culture, the Inquisition's construction and persecution of witchcraft, daily life inside an Inquisition prison, and the relationship between the Inquisition and the Spanish monarchy. Headnotes introduce the selections, and a general introduction provides historical, political, and legal context. A map and index are...

First published in the early 1970s, Tree of Hate is Philip Powell's exploration of "the Black Legend"--the popular myth that colonial Spain and her military and religious agents were brutal and unrelenting in their conquest of the Americas.

"Powell seeks not merely to trace the origins of what he calls Hispanophobia but to analyze its impact on American education, textbooks, religion, and especially foreign policy. . . . The evidence easily demonstrates that English-speaking scholars and diplomats speak with a biased tongue. . . . Too many critics of Spain, to use Powell's...

The Marranos were former Jews forced to convert to Christianity in Spain and Portugal, and their later descendents. Despite economic and some political advancement, these "Conversos" suffered social stigma and were persecuted by the Inquisition. In this unconventional history, Yirmiyahu Yovel tells their fascinating story and reflects on what it means for modern forms of identity.

He describes the Marranos as "the Other within"--people who both did and did not belong. Rejected by most Jews as renegades and by most veteran Christians as Jews with impure blood, Marranos had no...

Between 1936 and 1939, almost 1,700 Canadians defied their government and volunteered to fight in the Spanish Civil War. They chose to leave behind punishing lives in Canadian relief camps, mines, and urban flophouses to confront fascism in a country few knew much about. Four hundred died there.

Michael Petrou has drawn on recently declassified archival material, interviewed surviving Canadian veterans, and visited the battlefields of Spain to write the definitive account of Canadians in the Spanish Civil War. It reveals who these men and women were, why they volunteered, how they...