Spain, Europe and the Spanish Miracle 1700-1900

The author here reexamines the history of Spain in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. He challenges the pessimism of prevailing assumpitons about that history, and its conventional separation into pre- and post-Napoleonic eras. This book also questions the importance of the empire for Spain´s own economy, suggesting instead that Spain evolves as part of Europe; indeed, some of the recently documented modernization of the nineteenth century was already well under way in the eighteenth. In addition, the emergence of a governing elite closely tied to provincial society is placed in the context of traditional networks of patronage based upon close-knit family ties. Such a perspective makes the transitions of the 193os and 197os to explain.