An account of the Spanish character and history through its culture

ISBN: 978 0 300 12641 9

An analytic and anecdotal narrative of the formation of Spanish culture in the western world, beginning with the Iberian peninsula, followed by its extension throughout the Atlantic world in the course of centuries and its special characteristics in Latin America and particularly in the US today.

Ferdinand Alvarez de Toledo, the third duke of Alba (1507-82) is known in history as `the butcher of Flanders`. The general who carried out Philip II`s repressive policies in the Netherlands, he was responsible for the massacre of thousands of men, women and children, considering it better to lay waste to an entire country than leave it in the hands of heretics. Alba came to represent for contemporaries as well as for future generations the unacceptable face of Spanish imperialiism. In this intriguing re-evaluation , henry Kamen narrates the duke`s personal history, looking beyond the conventional image to reveal motives and to explain rather than simply to condemn.

ISBN: 0 300 10283 6

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How did a barren, thinly populated country, isolated from the rest of Europe, become the world’s first superpower?

Henry Kamen’s superb book sheds fascinating new light on Imperial Spain’s journey to power, from the capture of Moorish Granada to the opening up of the frontiers in Texas and California. Drawing on extensive research and eye-witness accounts, he overturns our traditional view of the all-conquering enemy of Protestant Europe, demonstrating that the Spanish Empire was above all a global, collaborative venture, which depended as much on the cooperation (willing or otherwise) of native Americans, Africans and Asians as that of Europeans for its success. It was, he argues, this diversity of resources and peoples that made Spain’s impact on world history so overwhelming.

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Between 1450 and 1750 Europe underwent tremendous political, religious and cultural change - change which laid the foundations for the Europe we know today. Henry Kamen has here compiled an accessible biographical guide to Europe in this most exciting of periods, the time of the Renaissance and the Reformation, the time of da Vinci and Erasmus, Elizabeth I and Oliver Cromwell

ISBN: 0 415 14727 1

A completely revised edition of the most comprehensive book on the subject. Ever since the 16th century, the Inquisition has been held synonymous with terror, bigotry and persecution, and distorted views of its activities persist today.

ISBN: 1 84212 205 3

By considering the life of one small, but lively and distinctive, rural community, and the broader Mediterranean society of which it was part, "The Phoenix and the Flame" shows, how in Catholic Europe there in fact took place powerful changes which affected the daily life, belief and culture of the common people.

ISBN: 0 300 05416 5

Now reissued in its second edition, this survey gives coverage of both foreign and domestic policy in the golden age of imperial Spain. Far from a dynamic and predatory superpower, however, Henry Kamen shows us a poor nation thrust reluctantly into an imperial role for which she was never fully equipped, and which provoked deep internal divisions and conflicts.

ISBN: 0 582 06723 5

ISBN: 0 297 99353 4