Offers a compelling examination of how historians in Spain and the Americas have come to understand and write about the Spanish colonial past and its meanings for national presents. Working from a transnational perspective, the book brings together scholars of Spain, Latin America, the Caribbean, and the United States. The eight essays situate historians' writings within the context of their day, suggesting how 'history' has -- perhaps more often than not -- responded to present-day needs, agendas, and expectations. This collection retraces the link between historiography and nation-building in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It also explores how and why Spain and its colonies came to be depicted as 'backward' and 'marginal' to other European and US 'modern' regimes. Finally, it questions the contours of contemporary discussions of colonial and postcolonial histories that have remained largely silent about the legacies of centuries of Spanish rule.
Uncharted Landscapes of ""Latin America"": The Philippines in the Spanish Imperial Archipelago; The Wealth of Empire: Fransisco Arango y Parreno, Political Economy, and the Second Slavery in Cuba; Visions of Empire and Historical Imagination in Puerto Rico Under Spanish Rule, 1870-1898; ""Spain and America: All is One"": Historiography of the Conquest and Colonisation of the Americas and National Mythology in Spain c. 1892-1992; Spanish, Spain and the Hispanic Community: Science and Rhetoric in the History of Spanish Linguistics; Colonialism and National Histories: Jose Manuel Restrepo and Bartolome Mitre; When Tourists Came, the Mestizos Went Away: Hispanophilia and the Racial Whitening of New Mexico, 1880s-1940s; Epics of Greater America: Herbert Eugene Bolton's Quest for a Transnational American History; Afterword: Echoes of Colonialism: Peninsulares, Wholesome Hispanics, Steamy Latins; Index.
