Adrian Shubert

“Charity Properly Understood”: Changing Ideas about Poor Relief in Liberal Spain

When the English cleric Joseph Townsend visited Spain at the end of the eighteenth century, he was impressed by the apparent tolerance with which beggars were treated and by what he called the “excessively generous” way in which charity was distributed. He cited, with both surprise and disapproval, the Bishop of Cordoba, who daily fed some 7,000 people by distributing 1,000 kilograms of bread. 1 This image of Spain as a paradise for the poor persisted until well into the nineteenth century. George Borrow, who travelled through the country in the 1830s trying to sell Bibles without much luck, remarked approvingly that poverty was not despised in Spain as it was in other countries: Yet to the honour of Spain be it spoken, it is one of the few countries in Europe where poverty is never insulted nor looked upon with contempt.…In Spain the very beggar does not feel himself a degraded being for he kisses no ones feet and knows not what it is to be cuffed or spitten upon.

Women Warriors and National Heroes: Agustina de Aragón and Her Indian Sisters

Historians of modern Europe have lately become interested in hero cults and what they can reveal about the construction of national identities. This interest has begun to move beyond studies located in individual states to examine this aspect of the politics of the past within a European rather than a purely national context. This article represents an initial effort to explore hero cults in an even broader frame by considering a European woman warrior and national hero, the Spaniard Agustina de Aragón, in comparative perspective. Taking Lakshmi Bai and Jhalkari Bai, two women warriors and heroes from Indias First War of Independence in 1857, as the point of departure, the article compares the ways in which the figure of Agustina de Aragón has been represented and used since her act of heroism against Napoleon in 1808. This comparison of hero cults in a European and a non-European country can potentially be a first step toward development of a globalized perspective on the politics of the past.

What do historians really think about biography

This article explores the ways in which historians have thought about biography as a genre of writing about the past and how these attitudes have changed over the last fifty years or so, from skepticism and even hostility to increasing acceptance and even advocacy. It also examines some of the ways in which biography itself has evolved and the contribution of historians to this evolution, before concluding with an example from the author’s forthcoming biography of the 19th-century Spanish military and political figure Baldomero Espartero (1793-1879).

El progresismo durante la Regencia de Espartero (1840-1843). Recensión a Pedro Díaz Marín, "La Monarquía Tutelada: el Progresismo durante la Regencia de Espartero (1840-1843)"

espanolRecension de: Pedro Diaz Marin, La Monarquia Tutelada: el Progresismo durante la Regencia de Espartero (1840-1843), Alicante, Publicacions de la Universiat d’Alacant, 2015, 420 paginas. EnglishReview of: Pedro Diaz Marin, La Monarquia Tutelada: el Progresismo durante la Regencia de Espartero (1840-1843), Alicante, Publicacions de la Universiat d’Alacant, 2015, 420 paginas.

Reviews : Wayne Thorpe, 'The Workers Themselves': Revolutionary Syndicalism and International Labour, 1913-1923, Kluwer Academic/International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam, 1990; xviii+352 pp.; £55.00

a munitioneer for the army of Italy between 1690 and 1698. There is only one article on the medieval period, by Elisabeth Nortier on the eleventh century, whereas there are three contributions on the seventeenth century, one on the eighteenth century, and three each on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In his introduction to the volume, Michel Brugui~re cited Jean Bouvier’s view that among professional historians in France there was ’une rdpugnance’ for the study of state finance and fiscality. The view seems to be borne out by the relative paucity of high-quality research on the subject as distinct from the prosopography of financiers, where there has been an outstanding contribution (we need mention only the names of Françoise Bayard, Daniel Dessert, Guy Chaussinand-Nogaret, Michel Brugui~re and Pierre-François Pinaud). Fundamental work remains to be done, particularly on the statistics of state finance and fiscality, and the economic consequences of fiscal policy. This is the purpose of the European Science Foundation programme on the origins of the modern state (section B, Economic systems and state finance) and of the British Academyand ESRC-assisted European State Finance Database Project. It is to be hoped that these programmes can be coordinated to prevent needless duplication of effort, and to enhance a most welcome initiative on the part of the ComitL4 pour I’histoire economique et financière de la France.