The Spanish Enlightenment Revisited

Traditional historiography has tended to disregard and even deny Spains role in the Enlightenment, banishing the country to a benighted geographical periphery. In The Spanish Enlightenment revisited a team of experts overturns the myth of the dark side of Europe and examines the authentic place of Spain in the intellectual economy of the Enlightenment. Contributors to this book explore how institutional and social changes in eighteenth-century Spain sharpened the need for modernisation. Examination of major constitutional and social initiatives, such as the development of new scientific projects and economic societies, the reform of criminal law, and a re-evaluation of the countrys colonial policies, reveals how ideas, principles and practices from the wider European Enlightenment are adapted for the countrys specific context. Through detailed analysis authors investigate: the evolution of public opinion, and the Republic of letters; the growth of political economy as an intellectual discipline; the transmission and reception of an Enlightenment discourse in the Spanish Empire; Spains role in shaping a modern conception of the natural sciences. The portrait of a demarginalised, modernising and enlightened Spain emerges clearly from this book; in so doing, it opens up new avenues of research both within the history of the pan-European Enlightenment, and in colonial studies.