"Lazy, Improvident People": Myth and Reality in the Writing of Spanish History (review)

Spaniards (by which MacKay means Castilians) had great disdain for work, especially manual labor and mechanical arts, or so argued Reformers' treatises, literary works, foreign opinion, and most historians of Spain. Blaming climate, national character, a heightened sense of honor, and other factors, these sources maintained that manual work brought dishonor, was often associated with degrading tasks (such as tanning), and had been practiced by Jews and Moors in the past. Thus, the Spaniards' supposed proclivity to slothfulness became a ready explanation for the country's decline, loss of empire, and inability to embrace modernity. That trope of laziness has unfortunately haunted Spanish history and those connected to Spain to this very day.

These are the perceptions that Ruth MacKay demolishes in her stunning, courageous, and richly textured book. In "Lazy, Improvident People" — the words come from a British naval officer's letter in 1704 — MacKay examines three distinct but interrelated topics: what were the attitudes toward labor (specifically the so-called "vile," or mechanical, arts) in Spain from the late Middle Ages to almost the end of the nineteenth century? How were workers engaged in these vile crafts represented and perceived, and how did these representations change over time? And, finally, how did many of the most renowned historians of Spain internalize national and foreign pejorative opinions of Spain and its people, perpetuating the myth of the Spaniards' dislike for work?

To summarize this capacious book in the words allotted for this review is next to impossible. The first two chapters examine learned discourses on labor, the role of workers as citizens, and, with a plethora of examples, illustrate the real life of workers in late medieval and early modern Castile. As she clearly shows, notions of community and citizenship were inextricably linked to production. MacKay also documents how work was celebrated and how craftsmanship conferred honor. Arguing against Pike, Lynch, and others, she rejects the notion that some occupations were universally considered vile and degrading.

Part 2 traces the development of Enlightenment ideas about work, the end of trade and guild regulations, and how they led (or not) to a new work ethic. Mackay sees little or no change during the transition from the early modern period to the Enlightenment, either in the lives of workers or in their estimation of their work. Part 3 traces Spain's nineteenth-century political catastrophes and the eventual loss of the empire, while the concluding chapter engages, and challenges, the historiographical tradition that led to such negative depictions of work and workers in Spain.

This is an excellent and heartfelt book. Like Don Quixote, Mackay has taken on some gigantic windmills, but she has done so well-armed by an exhaustive and adroit mining of archival documents, by a mastery of literature sources and secondary works, and by showing, through myriad examples, the productive and honorable reality of workers' lives and citizenship, one which radically differs from the usual description of Castilian workers as lazy. She also notes, in passing, the role of race and ethnicity for converted Jews and Muslims, Africans and American natives, but partly discounts its importance as the dominant explanation for the Spaniards' alleged rejection of mechanical arts. Reading through the book is not always easy. Mackay refuses to offer facile explanations and conclusions. Everything is tangled and gray. There are no absolutes. Everything is problematized. Yet, in engaging in such thorough revision and critique of canonical historiography, she forces the reader to rethink how we have written and read Spanish history until now. Furthermore, interspersed throughout the book one finds powerful vignettes and insights that illuminate her arguments in decisive fashion.

This is a major book, one that deserves to be read not only by Spanish historians but by everyone. One can, of course, raise a few quibbles. Her evi-dence is strongest for the early...