Spanish Throne Research Articles

Queering/Querying the Text in Patricia Powell's The Pagoda and Sui Sin Far's "Jamaica Works"

Queering/Querying the Text in Patricia Powell's The Pagoda and Sui Sin Far's "Jamaica Works" Giselle Liza Anatol (bio) and Joo Ok Kim (bio) Although African/Jamaican novelist Patricia Powell and Chinese/ Canadian writer Sui Sin Far were born almost exactly a century apart, their artistic works are strongly linked by setting—both time and place—and the authors' forceful critiques of the British Empire and its productions of colonial knowledge.1 For Far, the empire entangled transnational links from Shanghai, where Far's English father met her Chinese mother; to England and the British dominion of Canada, where she spent her childhood; to her work as a journalist in the United States—founded as a British colony—to Jamaica, another British colony, which Canada provided with "an ongoing force of women office workers" (White-Parks, Sui Sin Far/Edith Maude Eaton: A Literary Biography, 32). Her writings, particularly "Leaves from the Mental Portfolio of a Eurasian" (1909) and "The Sugar-Cane Baby" (1910), provide sharp expositions on the racialized, gendering plantation labor system and white supremacist colonial violence routed through the circuits of empire. Patricia Powell's novel The Pagoda (1999), which features a gender-queer Chinese/ Jamaican protagonist seeking firm footing in post-emancipation colonial Jamaica, holds significance in the historiography of the Chinese Americas and multiple global souths—including the U.S. South—which invites exploration beyond the book's conventional categorization as queer fiction of the Anglophone Caribbean. Thinking through the Chinese/Jamaican community as represented in Powell's novel in conjunction with Sui Sin Far's stories set in Jamaica, we explore the ways [End Page 121] both authors challenge xenophobic and imperialist regimes, particularly those predicated on knowledge production and literacy. Far's decision to "fight… battles" on behalf of Chinese people in North America by writing articles in local papers ("Leaves" 223) and Powell's artistic choice to open and close her narrative with the act of letter-writing foreground the ways that composing and deciphering all kinds of texts contribute to empire building and whether, as Audre Lorde so provocatively questioned, these "master's" tools can indeed "destroy the master's house." Like Ella Shohat, we argue for the Caribbean's significance in understanding Orientalism: the myth of Columbus's "discovery" of the so-called "New World" in 1492 can be tied to the expulsion of Muslims and Jews in Spain in the same year—commonly known as the Reconquista. The events are linked in terms of both discourses of travel and conquest and expurgatory practices. As Shohat claims, Perhaps the first modern orientalist was none other than Columbus. After his arrival in the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, he wrote to the Spanish throne praising the war against both Muslims and Jews, and thanking the queen for having sent him to the regions of India to convert its people to the holy faith. Here, discourses about Muslims, Jews, and (Asian) Indians crossed the Atlantic… arming the conquistadors with a ready-made us-versus-them ideology aimed at the regions of India, but applied instead towards the indigenous peoples of the accidentally discovered continent. (47) Significantly, Shohat's argument hinges on acts of writing: Columbus's missive to the queen; his travel journals, diaries, and maps; Bibles for converting "heathens"; and later, historical accounts of empire and colonization are essential to constructions of race, geographies of the "backward" cultures of the Global South, idealized notions of the "progress" of the Global North. In U.S. history, denied or restricted access to literacy was essential—even after the abolition of slavery—to preventing Black, Indigenous, and other people of color from participating in the political sphere. Twentieth-century literacy tests, for example, served as obstacles to citizenship: barriers to African American enfranchisement and, in the form of entrance applications, impediments to Chinese immigrants' physical entry to the nation. Despite its centrality to the liberation narratives of prominent figures, such as Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, and others, literacy has been utilized for "regulation, imposition, surveillance," and other means of control that regularly "do damage or inflict harm on individuals" (Pritchard 9, Prologue). These considerations of reading, writing, and power...

Reflection of the Developments of “Sexenio Democratico” (1868—1874) on the Example of the Catalan Caricature

The Sexenio Democrático (1868—1874) is one of the most eventful periods in the history of Spain in the 19th century. It was a time of ideological conflicts, civil wars, the First Spanish Republic and etc. All these events were actively discussed in the pages of the Spanish press, which thrived after the Glorious Revolution of 1868. Satirical press became an important means of communication, through which information about political, economic, and social changes was conveyed in a humorous and ironic form. Republicans, leading the ideological struggle, utilized expressive imagery in their activities. This article analyzes the visual language of the magazine La Flaca and its heteronyms: La Carcajada, La Madeja Politica, El Lio and La Madeja which had a significant influence on the Republican political culture. Specific topics such as the depiction of right and left-wing political figures, candidates for the Spanish throne, the church, Carlists, and cantonal uprisings the main opponents of the Republicans are examined in this study.

Romantic Strife: The First Carlist War (1833–1840) in British Fiction

British volunteers fought on both sides of the First Carlist War (1833–1840), the dynastic struggle between the liberal factions that championed Isabella II and the reactionary forces that supported Don Carlos’s claim to the Spanish throne. Despite British intervention, the conflict did not arouse as much interest in Britain as the Peninsular War (1808–1814), but it served as the setting for several English literary works that reconstructed it from different perspectives. These fictional texts include George Ryder’s Los Arcos (1845), Frederick Hardman’s The Student of Salamanca (1845–1846), and Edward Augustus Milman’s The Wayside Cross; or, the Raid of Gomez (1847). This paper analyses these texts focusing on their representations of Spain and the First Carlist War and shows that they mostly ignore British intervention in the conflict and perpetuate the romantic image of Spain that had emerged in Britain during the Peninsular War.

Los juegos de la política: Las independencias hispanoamericanas frente a la contrarrevolución

In Los juegos de la política, Marcela Ternavasio invites the reader to ponder what would have happened to the Spanish American processes of independence if the Portuguese and Spanish armies had formed an alliance to defeat them. While Luso-Spanish alliance never came to fruition, the question allows the author to dwell on “what happened in the context of what could have happened” (p. 13). Sitting at the intersection of Atlantic politics, war, and diplomacy, Los juegos de la política unearths the history of expectations, fears, and calculation that the move of the Portuguese royal family to Brazil, the restoration of Ferdinand VII to the Spanish throne, and Napoleon's defeat in France generated on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.The book is divided in three parts, each addressing one specific conjuncture and the potential scenarios that this conjuncture enabled. In the first part, Ternavasio compares and contrasts the diplomatic correspondence of different agents of the Portuguese and Spanish crowns to exhume the myriad political calculations that surrounded the fate of the expedition led by General Pablo Morillo. The author shows how the final destination of the expedition (New Granada) emerged from a politization of European diplomacy in which the role of colonial agents in Montevideo, Rio de Janeiro, and Buenos Aires was central. The second part explores the diplomatic negotiations over a double marriage between the Braganzas and the Bourbons and the feverish political realignments and speculation that this possibility elicited. Certainly, dynastic marriages were an established part of European diplomacy, but Ternavasio's analysis reveals the significant role that princesses, Carlota Joaquina specifically, played in forging these alliances (p. 114). Moreover, Ternavasio highlights the role that the Portuguese invasion of the Banda Oriental (present-day Uruguay) played in the international diplomatic arena by influencing the fresh political realignments that the Congress of Vienna had made possible. Finally, the third part traces how the declaration of independence of the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata forced a resolution of the Luso-Spanish alliance. The intense negotiations over the type of government that the United Provinces would adopt—a republic or a monarchy—show the significant role that local powers played in the international diplomatic arena. In the end, the book dissects a political game that all players involved would end up losing. In the Banda Oriental, after building one of the most radical political alternatives of the era, the leader José Gervasio Artigas lost his political ascendance and went into exile. Moreover, in the United Provinces, the internal divisions among different regional leaders resulted in the implosion of the central government in 1820. The European powers did not fare well either. The Portuguese royal family had to leave Brazil after a liberal revolution took place in Portugal. Ferdinand VII of Spain faced the revolt of Rafael de Riego, which not only derailed a military expedition to the Río de la Plata but also reinstated a constitutional monarchy under the liberal principles of the Constitution of Cádiz.Ternavasio's methodological choices aid in the reconstruction of a highly convoluted political scenario. The author utilizes the present tense to stress the contingency of each conjuncture and to recover the level of fear, excitement, and scheming that those conjunctures generated among the European nations and the revolutionary elites in Spanish America. Likewise, the author utilizes the metaphor of politics as a game to highlight the capital importance that calculation had in the decisions that the actors made and the actions that they performed. Ternavasio successfully reveals the complicated and convoluted trajectory that absolutist and independence ideas had. In an ever-changing political and military scenario, political players constantly measured their ideological choices against hypothetical alliances that could ultimately secure political and military victory. Ultimately, Ternavasio's methodological choices reveal the profound impact that the Spanish American processes of independence had in international diplomacy. The Congress of Vienna had created a new balance of power within Europe that the revolutionary experiments in Spanish America questioned. As Ternavasio shows, the wars of independence in Spanish America forced the European powers to broaden the geographical scope of political negotiation outside Europe. In doing so, the wars played a significant role in the construction of a global and interdependent concert of nations.This book complements and expands the ideas explored in Ternavasio's previous book, centered on the figure of Carlota Joaquina. Written in agile prose, Los juegos de la política will make a fantastic addition to any graduate-level class on Latin American history. More importantly, it is a fantastic example of the potential benefits that a new diplomatic history of Latin America can offer, not just for Latin American history but for global history as well.

¿Los Gitanos, un pueblo marginado en España?

The Gypsies, an Indian people, emigrated to Spain. On their arrival, they first lived in harmony with the Spanish until the Reconquest of the territories under Muslim occupation, a reconquest carried out by the Catholic Monarchs. From 1499 onwards, they passed laws to force the Gypsies to abandon their nomadic lifestyle and adopt a settled life. From that period onwards, the life of the Gypsies would be made of problems with the monarchs who succeeded each other on the Spanish throne from the Golden Age until the vote of 1978 Constitution, which recognised rights and freedoms of the Gypsy people. These rights will be extended by those of the European Union, which is engaged in a tremendous struggle for the respect of human rights and the social integration of minorities.

Jesuit Superior General Luis Martín Garcia and his Memorias: 'Showing Up' by David G. Schultenover SJ

Reviewed by: Jesuit Superior General Luis Martín Garcia and his Memorias: 'Showing Up' by David G. Schultenover SJ Oliver Rafferty SJ David G. Schultenover SJ, Jesuit Superior General Luis Martín Garcia and his Memorias: 'Showing Up' ( Leiden and Boston, Brill, 2021), 960 pages. Fr Schultenover's book is the crowning achievement of decades of research and writing on and around the topic of Luis Martín (1846–1906), the 24th Superior General of the Society of Jesus. It builds on Schultenover's masterly biography of George Tyrrell, George Tyrrell: In Search of Catholicism, and his 1992 work, A View from Rome: On the Eve of the Modernist Crisis. His aim here is to reduce the more than 5000 pages of Martín's Memorias to a manageable digest in English of that remarkable work, which has been published in Spanish in two volumes. For the most part the author allows Martín to speak for himself, but there is a considerable scholarly apparatus and some eighty pages of commentary on the Memorias placed at the end of the work. Although the original is mostly in Spanish, Martín employed some six languages in his memoirs. It constitutes the first attempt by a general of the Jesuit order since Ignatius Loyola to record the significant aspects of his life. What are we to make of it? How does one encapsulate the enigma of Luis Martín, a man deeply given to the things of God, and yet in a way very deeply flawed – marked perhaps more profoundly by the scars of his culture, his upbringing and the historical context in which he lived than most other important church figures in the last 200 years? Social background There are perhaps three or four revealing aspects of his life and personality that help us understand not only who Martín was but how he conducted affairs in the various offices he held in the Jesuit order. Firstly, there is his social background. Given that he was born into relative poverty he was initially at a serious social disadvantage when he joined the Jesuits. Many of their best recruits were themselves products of Jesuit schools and tended to come from the upper echelons of Spanish society. Martín, however, so aligned himself with the social position of the Jesuits in Spain that he became quite adept at dealing with the aristocracy, even with Carlos VII, the pretender to the Spanish throne, and his mother Maria Beatriz. He also had contact with [End Page 74] the Queen Regent, Maria Cristina, and most extraordinarily of all with the Marquis of Comillas. It was in his skillful dealing with that individual that he managed to establish one of the most enduring institutions the Society has produced in Spain in modern history, the Comillas Pontifical University in Madrid. Martín was mindful as both provincial and general to be on good terms with those in Spain by whose patronage the Society of Jesus was enabled to carry on its work. By contrast he became increasingly distant from his own family. To some extent it became a source of embarrassment for him, at least as a young priest, even to the extent that he did not ask permission to go to see his dying mother even though she pleaded with him to visit her. Was his vocation to the Jesuits then in some measure a product of social ambition? He had after all initially intended to be a diocesan priest. Although as a very young student he had a certain distrust of the Jesuits based on stories he had heard about them, he ended up joining a group whose position in Spanish cultural life allowed them to deal on equal terms with the leading lights of Spanish society. Personality and mindset There can be little doubt about Martín's intellectual, cultural and organisational abilities. One of the factors in his choosing to join the Jesuits was the effect on him of reading the Spanish translation of Jacques Joly's six-volume history of the order. In itself, this was a remarkable achievement for a young teenager, but it was fully in keeping with his intense lifelong...

Sad Presentiments


 
 
 Goya completed Los Desastres de la Guerra during the Peninsular War (1808 to 1814), soon after Napoleon’s brutal occupation of Spain, which sparked a popular uprising among the Spaniards and violent repression by the French. The full title for the series was Fatales consequencias de la sangrienta guerra con Buonaparte. Y otros caprichos enfáticos en 85 estampas. Inventadas, dibuxadas, y grabadas por el pintor original D. Francisco de Goya y Lucientes. (translated: Fatal consequences of the bloody war with Buonaparte, and other emphatic inventions in 85 prints. Invented, drawn, and engraved by the original painter Francisco de Goya y Lucientes). The artist may have initially held Bonapartist sympathies, admiring the liberal vision for a more egalitarian world. Goya became thoroughly disillusioned, however, as he observed the depredations, domination, and systematized violence inflicted by the invading French as Napoleon installed his own brother on the Spanish throne.
 There are very few precedents for this wrenching level of graphic depiction of war, notably the 18 etchings circa 1633 of Les Misères et les Malheurs de la Guerre (The Miseries and Misfortunes of War) of Jacques Callot, a set that was widely circulated. Goya echoes the format of Callot’s print cycle in placing text beneath graphic depictions of atrocities and executions, but Callot’s images seem remote, historic narrative, whereas Goya’s grisly scenes ard brought to the forefront, producing immediate, visceral reactions. They are impossible to look at without feeling abhorrence and revulsion, their impact undiminished even now in an era where violent, horrific, uncensored images can be transmitted virtually instantly around the world (and we see the murder of George Floyd in nearly real time).
 
 

Carlism Berween Liberalism and Right-Wing Conservatism. The Case of Juan III (1861–1868)

The article is dedicated to Juan III (1822–1887), the Carlist pretender to the Spanish throne in 1861-1868, who opposed himself to the Carlist «mainstream» by expanding the ideological framework of this movement to the left up to liberalism. As a liberal, Juan III becomes an exponent of the trend (left-wing bias within Carlist conservatism) which originates from Carlist general R. Maroto Yserns` activities who signed in 1839 the peace of Vergara with the Isabelites and expresses in Carlos VI`s attempts to find an agreement between the two branches of the Spanish Bourbons in the form of a dynastic marriage with Isabel II. The article analyzes the failures of Juan III as a political practitioner who sought to combine in his activities the desire to integrate himself into the New — liberal-bourgeois — Order (but for that it was necessary to find agreement with the liberal-conservative wing of the «moderados» on the right and the progressives on the left) and to remain at the head of the Carlist «mainstream» which stood on the positions of right-wing conservatism. To identify the contradictions between such incompatible intentions, Juan III's views are contrasted with — the second wife of Carlos V — Maria Teresa, Princess de Beira`s ideas who expressed the interests of the Carlist «mainstream» on the eve of the liberal-bourgeois revolution of 1868-1974 and the third Carlist war. It is shown that the figure of Juan III — for all its irrelevance in the socio-political conditions of Spain in the XIX century — becomes a kind of herald for the modern leaders of Carlism (traditionalist and liberal conservative ones) who live and act separately from the currently marginal “right-wing faction” of Carlism which still stands on the positions of right-wing conservatism.

Становление конституционного мышления на Кубе. Первые конституционные проекты

The emergence of Cuban constitutional thinking as a political culture is directly related to the events in Spain of the early decades of the 19th century, in particular, with the abdication of the Spanish King of Charles IV and the captivity of the legitimate Spanish King Ferdinand VII, the ascension to the Spanish throne of a new dynasty, the libera-tion war of the Spanish people against the French occupation (1808-1814), preparations for the convening of the General Courtes (1808–1810), the drafting and adoption of the 1812 Cadiz Constitution. The participation and legislative activities of Cuban deputies in the discus-sion of the articles of the Cadiz Constitution have become a kind of school and an important experience of constitutional creation. The first constitutional drafts that had emerged on the island at the time showed that Cuba, despite its colonial status, had embraced new liberal politi-cal and philosophical ideas brought from the European centre to the Latin American periphery. The authors of the first constitutional pro-jects were prominent public and political figures of Cuba, philosophers and economists, representatives of the "Creole" Enlightenment - Francisco Arango y Parrenio (1765–1837), Jose Agustin Caballero (1762–1835) and lawyer Joaquin Infante (1775–1827?). The article introduces the reader to the first projects of autonomy for Cuba and the first project of independence.

Surviving Dynastic Change: The High Nobility during the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–15)

The accession of the House of Bourbon to the Spanish throne after the death of the last Habsburg king, Carlos II, in 1700 brought important changes for the court high nobility. Historians have seen Philip V’s reign as the beginning of the titled nobility’s withdrawal from the front line of politics. The process, encouraged by the Bourbon’s reformism during the War of the Spanish Succession, was carried out by the nobility in several ways. This article will analyze the careers of aristocrats such as Pedro Manuel Colón de Portugal and José Solís y Valderrábano, dukes of Veragua and Montellano, and Rodrigo Fernández Manrique de Lara, Count of Frigiliana, who adapted their actions to the new regime’s politics in order to enjoy the patronage of new political actors. They took part in royal court circles to achieve important political positions without renouncing their right to oppose change through strategies linked to the political culture of the previous dynasty: for example, their involvement in political gatherings and their absence in important court celebrations. My article posits that, although the relations between the House of Bourbon and these nobles were undoubtedly complex and ambivalent, as their career at court shows, they were far more nuanced and fluid than has previously been revealed.

ПРИОРИТЕТЫ ВНЕШНЕЙ ПОЛИТИКИ ИСПАНИИ В ПЕРИОД ВТОРОЙ РЕСПУБЛИКИ

The article analyzes the priorities of Spanish foreign policy during the Second Republic. It was proclaimed in Spain after the municipal elections. Then King Alphonse XIII was forced to leave the country and announced that he did not give up his rights to the Spanish throne. As for the priorities of foreign policy during the Second Republic, the author states that Spain at that time showed a lack of interest in international problems, as was the case under the dictatorship of General Miguel Primo de Rivera y Orbanehi. On October 14, 1931, the head of the government, Manuel Azaña y Díaz, after the resignation of the Provisional Government of Niceto Alcala Zamora, emphasized that “foreign policy is inherited from regime to regime”. During this period, the European direction became the main one in foreign policy. The fundamental interests of the Spanish state revolved around the classical "axis" of the Mediterranean, Great Britain, France, Italy. In the period from the end of 1935. and until the summer of 1936. the priority of domestic political problems over foreign ones was observed. Since the acuteness of internal tension associated with the Spanish Civil War has made adjustments to the principles proclaimed by the governments of the Second Republic.

Изобразительные девизы на испанских монетах XVII в.

The article is devoted to the study of badges depicted on the coins of the last Spanish Habsburgs (Philip III, Philip IV, Charles II). The badges on the coins of the first Habsburgs on the Spanish throne in the 16th century have already been studied, however, the badge culture re-flected in the coins as a whole, especially systemically, has not been studied. Historiography devoted to this problem is practically absent, many researchers focus only on the arms, therefore a decision was made about such a study. The article discusses a number of problems related to coin minting in both the Old and the New Worlds, changes in badg-es, the partial loss of some trends in the Spanish badge culture, and the influence of the Spanish badge tradition on other cultures. The minting of coins with badges in the vice kingdoms outside the Iberian Peninsu-la is also being studied. Spanish Habsburgs in the 17th century on Ital-ian coins, with the help of mottos, revealing the meaning of the mes-sages to patrials, sought to show in their badges the zeal in defending the faith, the desire to establish peace and abundance. In Milan, com-memorative coin-like tokens with badges were dedicated to the visits of the Spanish queens. Perhaps this was a local peculiarity of reverence and respect for the suzerain and members of his family. The article ex-plores new trends in coinage with the predominant use of monograms and propaganda issues.

Portuguese Diplomatic Correspondence and Information Channels during the War of the Spanish Succession

During the War of the Spanish Succession, Portugal joined the Grand Alliance in 1703. It made it involved, from that year on, in the conflict that included most of the major European Powers in a dispute for the Spanish throne, which, ultimately, represented a contest for dominance in Europe. Under these circumstances, several diplomats were in charge of representing Portugal at the main European courts, protecting its interests and communicating regularly with the court of Lisbon. This paper addresses an understudied set of the correspondence written in this period by Francisco de Sousa Pacheco, the Portuguese envoy to The Hague, to Joao de Almeida Portugal, Portuguese ambassador to the court of Archduke Charles of Habsburg, one of the pretenders to the Spanish throne, in Barcelona. The main objective of this article is to study the information network established in Europe, mainly in the Grand Alliance side, and the different routes letters followed from The Hague to Barcelona, either using the existing postal system or known intermediaries. Letters were not the only means diplomats had to convey information to their addressees. They also sent other sources of information, like periodicals, accounts of events and pieces of information gathered from different sources, including propaganda in its various forms. It also analyses the developments of the war, the structure and evolution of these letters and the struggle of these diplomats with the other states to make sure their commitments to send military and financial support to the troops were fulfilled. He also wrote about the espionage within the various courts, and the interception diplomatic letters suffered from the opposite side. Ultimately, we’ll see the efforts of these ambassadors as a means for Portugal to gain recognition within Europe, although it ended up with an increasing dependency on foreign states support.

Different German Perspectives on Spanish Politics in the 1670s: The Reaction of Vienna and Berlin on the Coup of Juan José de Austria in the Year 1677

Abstract The past thirty years has brought an important change into the scholarship of the period of the last Habsburgs on the Spanish throne. Named after the book by Christopher Storrs, the long-term paradigm of the decline of the Spanish monarchy in the last half of the seventeenth century has been reestablished, however, the research of the relationships between the Spanish Habsburgs and Central Europe in the last quarter of the seventeenth century has yet to be to be considered. This study presents a more complex perception of the coup led by Juan José of Austria in the year 1677 and discovers an important perception of the situation from the point of view of the Emperor Leopold I and the Elector of Brandenburg Frederick William. The new Spanish government, as well, enacted shifts in their politics which could endanger their positions, however both accepted the new situation differently.

Gossip’s Politics: Reading Between the Lines of Emilia Pardo Bazán’s 1889 Short Story ‘Morrión y Boina’

‘Morrión y Boina’ was the first composition to appear in the first issue of La España Moderna. Emilia Pardo Bazán lent significant support to its founder, José Lázaro Galdiano, and, arguably, ‘Morrión y Boina’ was chosen as a ‘signature’ piece on Restoration politics to ‘lead’ that first issue. It is also gossip from beginning to end. Applying Ricardo Piglia’s theses on the short story, this article reveals the multiple narratives in this short story, and how its secret stories are key to its gossip form. The protagonists of ‘Morrión y Boina’ epitomize, and undercut, the ‘personalism’ and caciquismo that was to be the death of Carlist politics in the nineteenth century. The first-person female narrator, a choice that is unusual for Pardo Bazán in this genre, is one of them. She is not a proxy for the author, I argue, but chisme personified. A female Ariadne, she provides an additional, alternative, allegorical response to the criticism and political furore Pardo Bazán incited through her account of her meeting in Venice in January 1888 with the then (fourth) Carlist pretender to the Spanish throne, Carlos María de Borbón, Duke of Madrid (Carlos VII).

Nacer en palacio. El ritual del nacimiento en la corte de los Austrias by María Cruz de Carlos Varona

Reviewed by: Nacer en palacio. El ritual del nacimiento en la corte de los Austrias by María Cruz de Carlos Varona Emilie L. Bergmann María Cruz de Carlos Varona. Nacer en palacio. El ritual del nacimiento en la corte de los Austrias. centro de estudios europa hispÁnica, 2018. 296 pp. nacer en palacio is a much-needed contribution to scholarship on early modern Spanish women's lives and a gendered historiography of the Spanish Habsburg court. The confluence of social science, obstetrical practices, and history of art in this generously illustrated study of royal pregnancy and childbirth makes a compelling argument for maternity as a field of research in its own right, with the potential to change academic approaches to the history of the family as well as material culture and court ritual. The authority and physical activity of women as midwives and birth attendants in Spanish accounts and visual depictions of these events challenge the models of feminine silence and passivity in literary and didactic texts, as well as the commonly accepted view of antagonism between midwives and medical men in early modern Europe. The author draws on documents in the royal archives, including letters, official accounts of religious observances during Habsburg pregnancies and births, and inventories of furnishings and religious objects brought to the queen's chambers in anticipation of the delivery. Among the portraits in chapter 1, "En busca de un heredero," are those of young women, some barely past puberty when the paintings were made, under consideration as possible progenitors of male heirs to the Spanish throne. Thus, verbal accounts emphasize their good health and disposition, the predominance of boy children born to their mothers and aunts, and measurements including the young women's height and the width of their hips. Objectifying as this process of selection was, de Carlos Varona's research also gives evidence of the emotional bonds between monarchs and their wives, citing, for example, Felipe III's grief at the death of Margarita de Austria. The approach to royal childbirth as a cultural system is most evident in chapters 2, "El espacio del parto regio," and 4, "El espacio simbólico de la maternidad regia: el oratorio de la reina," addressing the material culture of royal childbearing. These are also the most relevant chapters for scholars of the comedia, as they address the ways in which royal pregnancy and [End Page 247] childbirths were framed as performances, with processions to chapels within the palace and in the surrounding neighborhoods and with religious objects placed in the queen's personal oratory. The liturgical texts and devotional practices, together with paintings, sculpture, and other religious images, symbolized the identification of the dynastic role of the queen's pregnancy and delivery with key moments in the life of Christ's mother. This link is made explicit in the celebration of the Nativity matins for each royal birth and in two paintings by Juan Pantoja de la Cruz: the Annunciation (ca. 1604), in which Margarita de Austria is depicted as the Virgin Mary, and the Birth of the Virgin (1603), in which the queen's mother is depicted as the midwife and Margarita's sisters as attendants. De Carlos Varona's discussion of devotional practices and religious images in the oratory of Isabel de Borbón demonstrates the consistency of rituals surrounding royal pregnancy and childbirth, aspects of which continued into the reign of Isabel II. The detailed color reproductions of portraits of princesses and queens allow readers to examine significant jewels worn by these women in the belief that they could ensure a healthy pregnancy and birth. Particularly significant among such objects are the marten's heads fashioned from gold and decorated with precious stones, described in inventories and visible in portraits of Isabel de Valois and her daughter Catalina Micaela. The marten, believed to conceive through the ear and give birth through the mouth, was associated with fertility and childbirth as well as with the Immaculate Conception. Margarita de Austria's death at age twenty-six after giving birth to eight children in ten years, of whom only half reached adulthood, provides context for the justifiable anxiety underlying the use of...

Bárbara de Braganza. Una aproximación a su faceta como coleccionista.

La presente investigación analiza la faceta coleccionista de la reina Bárbara de Braganza tomando como referencia a su predecesora en el trono español, Isabel de Farnesio, y a partir de las pinturas y piezas de orfebrería que donó al monasterio de las Salesas Reales. Para ello analizamos previamente la educación recibida y su papel en la corte de Fernando VI. Adjuntamos la transcripción del inventario correspondiente a las pinturas.

Introduction: The Spanish Habsburg Court during the Reign of Carlos II (1665–1700)

Carlos II inherited the Spanish throne on 17 September 1665, a few months short of his fourth birthday. His death in 1700 without descendants marked a major historical event: it brought a new rulin...

The Spanish Resurgence, 1713–1748

Chris Storrs's book is a welcome counterpoint to the dominant thrust of the scholarship on eighteenth-century Spain and its empire, which tends to focus on the Atlantic and to neglect Spain's long-standing possessions and strategic interests in the Mediterranean. In this rich and erudite political, diplomatic, and military history, Storrs examines the first half of the eighteenth century, which corresponds to the reign of Philip V. The narrative begins with the aftermath of the War of the Spanish Succession, which resulted in the replacement of the Hapsburg by the Bourbon dynasty, and concludes with the War of the Austrian Succession. In particular, Storrs wishes to recover Spain as an expanding power on the offensive and not the defensive, above all in North Africa and Italy.This effort is by no means an innocent recasting of Spain's place in Europe but rather a polemical one. Building on his earlier study The Resilience of the Spanish Monarchy, 1665–1700 (Oxford University Press, 2006), Storrs seeks to counter the still prevailing view that Spain was a power in terminal decline, experiencing a brief revival during the reign of Charles III (1759–1788) before the final collapse of its global empire in the early nineteenth century. In Storrs's account, military defeats in northern and central Europe in the previous centuries came to be accepted, and Spain reimagined its sphere of influence and pursued a consciously Mediterranean-oriented policy in these years.The interest in North Africa owed something undoubtedly, as Storrs explains, to a vestigial religious, even crusading, mentality, but it was also driven by strategic considerations, as a potential source of grain and timber. Success in North Africa was equivocal, with the gains outweighed by the loss of troops and treasure, but it formed part of a comprehensive western Mediterranean strategy that found greater, lasting gains in Italy, where Naples and Sicily came under Bourbon control and where Milan, the Duchy of Savoy, and Piedmont were occupied in the mid-1740s. In 1746, 56,000 troops under Spanish command were on Italian soil. Moreover, while historians tend to treat Anglo-Spanish rivalry in the Americas and Caribbean—disputes over the asiento, contraband, piracy, the Darien colony, and Oliver Cromwell's Western Design, among others—the Mediterranean itself was the site of equally belligerent disputes, over Minorca and Gibraltar.There is, then, some validity to Storrs's claim that “until the Spanish resurgence in the western Mediterranean is restored to its true place in the history of international affairs in Europe, relations between the European powers in that generation will not be properly understood” (p. 12). His book is a valiant and largely successful effort to redress the woeful imbalance of existing Atlantic-focused historiography. It might be said that focusing on the latter eighteenth century would further bolster Storrs's contention for the importance of the Mediterranean. After all, Charles III ruled at Naples for a quarter century before his accession to the Spanish throne, and his preoccupation with the geopolitics of Italy was at least as sustained as his commitment to the Americas.Though Storrs's case for the importance of the Mediterranean is persuasive, his decision to set America aside, ostensibly because it has been the object of study for most other historians of the period, is less so. If not quite a case of Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark, it comes dangerously close to embodying this quip. Given that fully a quarter of the Spanish state's revenues derived from the Americas, to say nothing of profits gained by merchants through reexports of Spanish American products to northern Europe, Storrs's decision to ignore the Atlantic sphere requires more justification than he offers in the book. The book would have been improved by integrating the Atlantic and the Mediterranean into a single narrative, thus offering a more capacious, even global interpretation of the Spanish state's strategies than one finds in Storrs's book or, indeed, in Atlantic-centered histories.This criticism aside, The Spanish Resurgence should be of interest to historians of colonial Spanish America, as it provides a very fine portrait of the Spanish state during the first stirrings of the vaunted Bourbon reforms. It is an entreaty to historians of Spanish America who aim to contextualize Spanish governance and aspirations in a truly transatlantic framework. This richly textured and well-researched account deserves attention from Latin Americanists, even though Storrs largely ignores Latin America.

On Tyranny and Succession: Rethinking Monarchical Legitimacy in Calderón's En la vida todo es verdad y todo mentira (1659)

On Tyranny and Succession:Rethinking Monarchical Legitimacy in Calderón's En la vida todo es verdad y todo mentira (1659) Harrison Meadows By early 1659, the Spanish crown faced the undeniable reality of declining political and military influence in Europe. Hope for victory in the Franco-Spanish War in Flanders was all but lost after strategic locations had recently fallen into French and English hands, which would force Felipe IV to agree to the unfavorable terms of the Treaty of the Pyrenees later in the year. Meanwhile, the war to recover Portugal for the Spanish crown showed no signs of abating. Nevertheless, the royal family maintained appearances through lavish royal celebrations, even though the coffers were long empty from the administration of a global empire and the unrelenting burdens of war. However, the lively festivities that took place at court during February 1659 for Shrovetide, while not an exception, came on the heels of events that offered reason for rekindled optimism. In December of the previous year, Mariana of Austria had given birth to Fernando Tomás, the second royal issue in as many years. He and his older brother Felipe Próspero renewed hope in Habsburg succession to the Spanish throne after over a decade without a legitimate male heir following the death of Balthasar Carlos in 1647.1 [End Page 257] As part of the entertainments for the Carnival season in 1659, Pedro Calderón de la Barca, a favorite playwright of the court, was commissioned to write a comedia to be staged for the king and queen at the Buen Retiro Palace. For the occasion, Calderón composed En la vida todo es verdad y todo mentira, a play that takes place during an especially chaotic period of contested succession in the seventh-century Byzantine Empire.2 As in many of his historical and mythological plays, Calderón applies poetic license liberally in fashioning the details of the historical narrative for his own dramatic purposes.3 In the opening scene, Focas, the emperor of Constantinople, arrives at Trinacria (modern-day Sicily), where he is greeted by Cintia, the queen of the island. In a lengthy opening monologue, Focas provides his backstory: he was raised by wolves in the mountainous landscape near Mount Etna, and later, the king of Trinacria—Cintia's father—had contracted him to defend the island from Mauricio, the emperor of Constantinople at that time. After killing Mauricio in battle, the treacherous Focas betrayed Cintia's father and usurped the imperial throne for himself, on which he has reigned for the twenty years leading up to the present moment in Calderón's work. In the political context of the seventeenth century, usurpers were considered tyrants, and therefore Focas would have been understood as such by a contemporary audience, irrespective of more modern notions of tyranny that focus almost exclusively on "the despotic or cruel exercise of public power" (Brincat 214). As a nuance to the modern view, classical notions of monarchical legitimacy viewed usurpation as the contravention of a divine plan, and a usurper's mismanagement of authority therefore was an expected consequence of someone other than the divinely appointed monarch sitting on the throne. Abuse of power flowed naturally—necessarily [End Page 258] even—out of the tyrant's false claim to the power afforded the position. When Cintia identifies Focas as "un tirano" (1.25) in an aside at the beginning of En la vida…, she not only highlights his reckless administration of royal power, but also the illegitimacy of his right to rule at all, having ascended to the throne through usurpation.4 In terms of the play's conflict, Focas's tyrannous reign constitutes a disturbance in the natural order, which can only be restored by his demise and the ascension of a legitimate king to the throne. On the one hand, staging the death of a tyrant is a politically cautious choice on the part of Calderón. Theatrical audiences have always been captivated by watching a threat to society's ideological commitments eliminated in theatrical space, and usurpation was universally condemned yet not an immediately pressing concern for the Spanish crown in 1659. On the other...