overgeeked
B/X Known World
Almost done with The Rise and Fall of the Spanish Empire by William S. Maltby. Though I’m thoroughly intrigued with the subject, I cannot recommend this book.
It’s a super-condensed version of the history of the Spanish Empire clocking in at only 250 pages. Considering the Spanish Empire lasted from 1492-1976, that’s 484 years, you could get maybe 1/2 a page per year. But, as Lenin said, “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” So it makes sense that some decades can be skipped over entirely, but the amount that’s glossed over…and what’s glossed over…is frankly staggering.
The colonies in the Americas are mentioned several times, and while some bits of the Spanish atrocities are mentioned, the author seems to go out of his way to minimize those atrocities. Seemingly a proponent of the “Black Legend” conspiracy theory colonial apologists engage in. If you’re not familiar, the “Black Legend” is the notion that historians and the indigenous peoples of the Americas were and are all lying about the Spanish Empire and that colonialism and the multiple genocides they committed weren’t really that bad, actually. To my mind, it’s a bit worse than Holocaust denialism.
The text reads like a short intro to a much longer work. To do justice to the topic the book would need to be much, much longer. Something like Europe’s Tragedy, a 1000+ page book on the Thirty Years’ War. Or Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia clocking in at 800 pages. This is like a slightly longer Very Short Introduction only not as well written.
ETA: The last 1/5 of the book details the various independence movements of Mexico, Central and South America, and the caribbean holdings of the Spanish Empire. The author continues to downplay the atrocities of the Empire throughout.
ETA2: Weirdly, the author spends more time talking about US interventions in Latin America post-Spanish Empire than he does on the atrocities of the Spanish Empire.
ETA3: Wow. Turns out the author dedicated the last 30-some pages of the book to detailing how bad off the former colonies are now so he could make the argument that the colonies were better off under Spanish rule. The cursing I know in three languages does not cover what a monumental tool this guy is.
It’s a super-condensed version of the history of the Spanish Empire clocking in at only 250 pages. Considering the Spanish Empire lasted from 1492-1976, that’s 484 years, you could get maybe 1/2 a page per year. But, as Lenin said, “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” So it makes sense that some decades can be skipped over entirely, but the amount that’s glossed over…and what’s glossed over…is frankly staggering.
The colonies in the Americas are mentioned several times, and while some bits of the Spanish atrocities are mentioned, the author seems to go out of his way to minimize those atrocities. Seemingly a proponent of the “Black Legend” conspiracy theory colonial apologists engage in. If you’re not familiar, the “Black Legend” is the notion that historians and the indigenous peoples of the Americas were and are all lying about the Spanish Empire and that colonialism and the multiple genocides they committed weren’t really that bad, actually. To my mind, it’s a bit worse than Holocaust denialism.
The text reads like a short intro to a much longer work. To do justice to the topic the book would need to be much, much longer. Something like Europe’s Tragedy, a 1000+ page book on the Thirty Years’ War. Or Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia clocking in at 800 pages. This is like a slightly longer Very Short Introduction only not as well written.
ETA: The last 1/5 of the book details the various independence movements of Mexico, Central and South America, and the caribbean holdings of the Spanish Empire. The author continues to downplay the atrocities of the Empire throughout.
ETA2: Weirdly, the author spends more time talking about US interventions in Latin America post-Spanish Empire than he does on the atrocities of the Spanish Empire.
ETA3: Wow. Turns out the author dedicated the last 30-some pages of the book to detailing how bad off the former colonies are now so he could make the argument that the colonies were better off under Spanish rule. The cursing I know in three languages does not cover what a monumental tool this guy is.
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