Viejos y nuevos imperios: Espana y Gran Bretana, siglo XVII-XX (review)

Viejos y nuevos imperios: España y Gran Bretaña, siglos XVII-XX. Edited by Isabel Burdiel and Roy Church. Colección Humanitas. Valencia, Spain: Ediciones Episteme, 1998. Table. Appendix. Notes. Bibliographies. 229 pp. Paper.

This book contains eleven essays that were presented at the Fourth Seminary of Spanish-British Historical Studies held in Valencia, Spain, in October 1997. The conference was organized by representatives of the University of East Anglia and the University of Valencia; individuals from both universities served as co-editors of this collection. The conference focused on several issues concerning the causes and effects of the "end-of-the-century" crisis in late-nineteenth-century Great Britain and Spain. The essays are in English or Spanish, depending on the language preference of the participant; most of the essays in English, however, were written by East Anglia faculty and the essays in Spanish were authored by scholars from universities in Madrid, Barcelona, Valladolid, and Valencia.

It is very difficult to summarize the contents of the book because each essay addresses a different aspect of the national histories of two disparate countries. Although the intent is comparative history, as is the case with the proceedings of most conferences, the resulting papers usually fall far short of the publisher's ideals. Some specific titles include the following: "Economic Imperialism and the Future of Britain: Some fin de siècle Speculations, 1803-1903"; "The Spanish Consciousness and the Two Losses of the Empire"; "The Spanish Empire and Economy in the Early Modern Age"; "Models of Empire" (comparing the Philippines with Cuba and Puerto Rico); and "Empire and National Identity: Spain and Russia in Comparative Perspective."

A substantial part of the Spanish empire was lost by 1824, but this loss did not give rise to the literature of agony that was characteristic of the "end-of-the-century" crisis in Spain. The Spanish Monarchy mourned the loss of its colonies in 1824, but the Spanish people (at least, the liberals) were more concerned about developing freedom for the nation, not defending the empire. The loss of Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the Philippines in 1898, however, was viewed as a defeat for the nation by the United States. Spain had already lost its colonies in 1824. The "agony of the nation" was not so much an imperial crisis, but an echo of the cries of elites who finally realized that the era of authoritarian liberalism had ended and the age nationalization and democratization of the masses had begun.

In the context of Spanish history, however, it is obvious from these essays that the events of 1810-24 and 1898 were very different. The political and economic world of 1824 was not exactly the fin de siècle world of nation-states and imperialism. As for Great Britain, the last decade of the nineteenth century witnessed a fierce debate among Britain's intellectual elites concerning the pros and cons of imperialism. Fear of competition from industrial Germany and the industrialized United States stirred much of the discussion. Fear that global capitalism would undermine industrial civilization in Great Britain led the radicals to call for the abolition of imperialism, while the social imperialists wanted to move Britain away from financial capitalism back to industrial capitalism. On some topics the antiimperialists joined hands with the "constructive" imperialists. Yet, as Roy Church notes, the entire debate may not have had much relevancy since the economic reality of Great Britain hardly justified the dark images of the intellectual elites.

While the eleven essays tell us about nineteenth-century attitudes and government policies in England and Spain, they do not relate much that could be called comparative history. The comparative ideal is left unfulfilled in these pages. It will take another conference, or perhaps another single author, to place the events of Spain and Great Britain in a comparative context--and...