by Daniel I. Wasserman-Soler
This valuable volume (The Early Modern Hispanic World: Transnational and Interdisciplinary Approaches, edited by Kimberly Lynn and Erin Rowe, New York, Cambridge University Press, 2017) offer a “state of the field” analysis of early modern Spanish studies. The book’s purpose is twofold: first, it demonstrates how recent scholarship is reshaping our understanding of early modern Spain as a dynamic polity; it also highlights Iberia as a key locus for important trends in historical scholarship, such as studies of empire, borderlands, religious diversity, and comparative, trans-local, trans-regional, and interdisciplinary history. The introduction by Lynn and Rowe contains a wealth of references to both classic and more recent works that explore Spanish history within these contexts. Dedicated to Richard L. Kagan, the patriarch of early modern Spanish history in the United States, the book contains essays by sixteen leading scholars of the early modern Hispanic world.
The preface by Geoffrey Parker, Richard L. Kagan, an Appreciation, offers more than the title suggests. Through a synopsis of Kagan’s many contributions to the field, Parker offers the reader a snapshot of major developments in the study of early modern Spanish history over the last fifty years. The conclusion by Sir John Elliott offers a broad overview of the field’s transformation, emphasizing how key changes coincided with significant cultural and political developments in the twentieth century. He closes by noting the relative absence of political history among the essays and by challenging current historians to integrate their new findings with “the best of the old.”
Moving onto Part I (City and Society), Ida Altman examines the relatively neglected subject of Spanish Caribbean towns, c. 1492-1550. The author argues that although some Caribbean settlements experienced sharp population declines, several remained important sites, in part due to their strategic economic locations as well as the familial connections forged between Spanish settlers and indigenous inhabitants. Returning to Iberia, James Amelang explores how English and Spanish writers composed textual “walking tours” of their cities. Drawing on an impressive command of English literary studies, the historian Amelang suggests that these writers used both classical as well as contemporary, vernacular sources, demonstrating a complex form of writing that intertwined both high and low culture. Finally, Erin Rowe offers an essay that intertwines history, literature, and iconography, investigating two religious festivals from the early reign of Philip IV. Those who planned these events placed depictions of the saints together with that of the king. These festivals, Rowe argues, served as vehicles for the king to consolidate a vision of a sacred monarchy.
Part II (Religion, Race, and Community) begins with Sara Nalle’s chapter on the evolution of the converso community in Sigüenza between 1492 and 1570, drawing upon her quantitative research using SPSS (Statistical Program for the Social Sciences). Rather than think about Spain’s converso minority as one group, Nalle shows that inquisitors differentiated between those who converted long before 1492 and those who converted in 1492. Mercedes García Arenal and Felipe Pereda tackle another religious minority in a historiographical essay on alumbradismo. The topic has puzzled many historians, resulting in a range of arguments regarding the alumbrados’ origins. The authors offer some clarity by exploring the scholarly lineage of the topic, highlighting how the alumbrados might (or might not) have connected with conversos, moriscos and others beyond the Spanish kingdoms. Benjamin Ehlers’ chapter, The Spanish Encounter with Islam, examines the tenure of Don Pedro Luis Galcerán de Borja as governor of two Spanish presidios in North Africa: Orán and Mazalquivir. Far from embarking on a long-term crusade against Islam, Galcerán – Ehlers argues – spent his energies on providing protection and supplies for the impoverished presidios, on ransoming Christian captives, and on intermittent raids against moros de guerra (Muslims of war). Like Ehlers and Altman, Allyson Poska examines one of the less-studied “borderlands” of the Spanish territories, studying a late eighteenth-century migration to Patagonia and rural Río de la Plata. Poska explains a fascinating shift, in which poor peasants from northern Spain, many times described as “slaves” themselves, became slave-owners in a multi-racial society.
Opening Part III (Law and Letters) is María Portuondo’s On Early Modern Science in Spain. After surveying recent scholarship in the history of science and how it has contributed to understanding the “scientific enterprise” in Spain, Portuondo offers an overview of early modern Spanish science, arguing that Spaniards confronted the same questions as scientific scholars elsewhere in Europe. They differed, however, in their continuing commitment to a natural philosophy that placed scientific knowledge within the relatively limited space allowed to empirical knowledge. Next, Kimberly Lynn’s essay emphasizes the diverse ways that Spanish inquisitors thought about and used different modes of communication. While historians are now acquainted with the gap between the inquisition edicts and actual enforcement, Lynn argues that the writings of Spanish inquisitors themselves suggest the contested nature of inquisition power. As Lynn accentuates the many voices within the Inquisition, Katie Harris similarly examines competing claims regarding how to write sacred history. While the Sardinian Dionisio Bonfant sought to proclaim the validity of his city’s relics and its ancient Christian past, the German Lucas Holstenius – among others – offered a sharp critique of Bonfant’s methods. Far from writing off Bonfant, Harris attempts to understand the social logic of his text and provide insight into differing standards and priorities in writing sacred history. Shifting from the history of religious ideas to the political, Xavier Gil studies how seventeenth-century Spanish writers engaged the ideas of Giovanni Botero (Della ragion di stato, 1589). Gil demonstrates that Botero’s work achieved remarkable longevity in Spain: after its 1593 translation into Spanish, it continued to offer compelling theories for political reformers well into the mid-seventeenth century.
In Part IV (Performance and Place), the art historian Fernando Marías analyzes a woodcut image (“The Light-Shy Owl,” c. 1540), described in the inquisition trial of Esteban Jamete (1557-58). Marías broadens our understanding of the range of iconography that inquisitors found objectionable, including images that may not have been intended as Lutheran propaganda. Next, Elizabeth Wright examines Lope de Vega’s The Holy League, a comedy centered on the Battle of Lepanto. Wright explores why the playwright, who aspired to become a salaried royal chronicler, offered a comic treatment of the epic Spanish battle. The play, she argues, evinces the playwright’s conviction that comedies could both inform the audience of important news and entertain playgoers. In the volume’s final essay, Staging Feminity in Early Modern Spain, Marta Vicente examines how theatre served an imagined sense of cultural unity for the eighteenth-century empire. While Spanish ilustrados sought to craft a unique Spanish identity, separate from French influence, the celebrity status and “excessive femininity” of women performers invited the audience to rethink what it meant to be Spanish.
Readers should note that the volume says relatively little about Latin America (two of the fourteen essays). Nonetheless, the book succeeds in capturing the richness and diversity of early modern Spanish studies at present. It will serve seasoned experts, and it will provide an excellent introduction to the field for graduate students, exposing them to the wide range of methods at work in early modern Spanish studies.
