The Spanish Enlightenment revisited

Book

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 scientific projects and economic societies, the reform of criminal law, and a re-evaluation of the country’s colonial policies, reveals how ideas, principles and practices from the wider European Enlightenment are adapted for the country’s specific context. Through detailed analysis authors investigate:
• the evolution of public opinion, and the Republic of letters;
• the growth of political economy as an intellectual discipline;
• the transmission and reception of an Enlightenment discourse in the Spanish Empire;
• Spain’s role in shaping a modern conception of the natural sciences.
The portrait of a demarginalised, modernising and enlightened Spain emerges clearly from this book; in so doing, it opens up new avenues of research both within the history of the pan-European Enlightenment, and in colonial studies.

Jesús Astigarraga, Introduction: admirer, rougir, imiter – Spain and the European Enlightenment
María Victoria López-Cordón Cortezo, The merits of good gobierno: culture and politics in the Bourbon court
Joaquín Álvarez Barrientos, The Spanish Republic of Letters in its European context: images, economics, and the representation of the man of letters
Jesús Astigarraga, Economic societies and the politicisation of the Spanish Enlightenment
Juan Pimentel, The Indians of Europe: the role of Spain’s Enlightenment in the making of a global science
Javier Usoz, Political economy and the creation of the public sphere during the Spanish Enlightenment
Ignacio Fernández Sarasola, Constitution projects during the Spanish Enlightenment
Gabriel Paquette, The reform of the Spanish empire in the age of Enlightenment
Jesús Astigarraga, Niccolò Guasti and Juan Zabalza, The Spanish debate on public finance: a privileged laboratory for enlightened reforms
Joaquín Varela Suanzes-Carpegna, The image of the British system of government in Spain (1759-1814)
Javier Fernández Sebastián, From the ‘voice of the people’ to the freedom of the press: the birth of public opinion
Alejandro Agüero and Marta Lorente, Penal Enlightenment in Spain: from Beccaria’s reception to the first criminal code
Summaries
Bibliography
Index

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Voltaire Foundation
• Publication date: 2017-11-30
• ISBN: 9780729411608
• Language: English