A wonderfully concise and very readable history of Spain, perfect for travellers This is the extraordinary story of Spain, from early tribalism and Roman rule to the Moorish conquest, Spain's eighteenth-century revival under the Bourbons, the Peninsular War and revolution in Spanish America right up to the catastrophic civil war and Franco's totalitarian regime. A key theme from Columbus' first voyage in 1492 was Spain's trans-oceanic empire which was central to the country's global impact. And the story continues with a look at contemporary Spain, not least Catalonia, and its future. Black succeeds in covering not only political and military history, but also environmental and cultural factors. He looks, too, at what makes Spain's regions distinct, and how the history of the Iberian peninsula, could, at various points, have taken some very different turns.
Author
Professor Jeremy Black MBE is an English historian and a Professor of History at the University of Exeter. He is a senior fellow at the Center for the Study of America and the West at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He is the author of over 100 books, principally but not exclusively on 18th-century British politics and international relations, and has been described as "the most prolific historical scholar of our age". Black graduated from Queens' College, Cambridge with a starred first, and then undertook postgraduate work at St John's and Merton Colleges, Oxford. He taught at Durham University for 16 years from 1980 to 1996, firstly as a lecturer and then as a Professor. In 1996 he moved to Exeter University where he took up the post of Professor of History. He has lectured extensively in Australasia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy and the U.S.. He was editor of Archives, the journal of the British Records Association, from 1989 to 2005. He has served on the Council of the British Records Association (1989–2005); the Council of the Royal Historical Society (1993–1996 and 1997–2000); and the Council of the List and Index Society (from 1997). He has sat on the editorial boards of History Today, International History Review, Journal of Military History, Media History and the Journal of the Royal United Services Institute (now the RUSI Journal). He is an advisory fellow of the Barsanti Military History Center at the University of North Texas. He was awarded an MBE in 2000 for services to stamp design, as advisor to the Royal Mail from 1997.
