Association for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies (ASPHS): Digital Commons
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Bienvenido, Mickey Mouse!?: Hopes for a Magic Kingdom in Post-Franco Spain
No full textWho doesn\u27t love Mickey Mouse? Apparently, not the French in the 1980s, as they actively fought to keep the mouse and his friends out of France. Many Spaniards, on the other hand, were quite eager to lure the Magic Kingdom to their country. What accounts for the difference? It appears as though Spain did not suffer from the same kind of cultural insecurity and anxieties that plagued other European nations during this period. Instead, many Spaniards apparently welcomed American investment, business know-how, and cultural products, including a Disney theme park, with open arms. In these cases, it seems that they were comfortably willing to accept American cultural products to serve their own ends, namely economic development, international prestige, and a feeling of full European integration. However, at the same time, there was a certain degree of anti-Americanism in Spain, often as a result of Cold War politics. Debates surrounding the NATO referendum and the presence of American military bases, and nuclear weapons in particular, did provoke anti-American sentiment during this period. Spain’s attempt to lure Disneyland to the Iberian Peninsula demonstrates that not all European countries in the postwar period have embraced (or rejected) American culture influence in the same way, to the same degree, and for the same reasons
Review of Richard Kagan, The Spanish Craze: America’s Fascination with the Hispanic World, 1779-1939
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Tropical Medicine behind Cocoa Slavery: A Campaign to Eradicate Sleeping Sickness in the Portuguese Colony of Príncipe Island, 1911-1914
Full text linkDiseases such as malaria and the sleeping sickness jeopardized the feasibility of the European empires in the African continent in early twentieth century. Among the colonial potencies, there was Portugal, a country with limited economic and military resources, but with significant ultramarine domains. One of its most profitable colonies were the small islands of São Tomé and Príncipe, an important producer of cocoa, which cultivation was assured by shipments of slave workers coming mainly from Angola. The environmental conditions of the islands, as well as the circulation of people from endemic areas for the sleeping sickness, triggered a severe epidemic outbreak of this disease in Príncipe Island, which was also the setting of the anti-slavery campaign led by William Cadbury, a British chocolate maker, in 1908. In light of this setting, a campaign to eradicate the sleeping sickness vector – the tsetse fly – was initiated in 1911 and, in 1914, the island was considered to be free of the genus Glossina, but with significant social and environmental consequences. The purpose of this article is to discuss these consequences and the historical context that determined the creation of a campaign to fight the disease in a small, but relevant, Portuguese ultramarine territory by means of parliamentary documents, health reports and newspapers of that time
Review of Rosina Lozano, An American Language: The History of Spanish in the United States
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Review of Michael Vargas, Constructing Catalan Identity: Memory, Imagination, and the Medieval
Full text linkReview of Dian Fox, Hercules and the King of Portugal: Icons of Masculinity and Nation in Calderón’s Spain
Full text linkThe Ruin of a State is Freedom of Conscience: Religion, (In)Tolerance, and Independence in the Spanish Monarchy
No full textHispanic clerics, intellectuals, and radicals avidly discussed religious tolerance in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. For most, liberty, political independence, and freedom of the press remained paramount concerns. They agreed that religious liberty could not be implemented in the Spanish Monarchy. In this sense, the collective superseded the individual right of worship. Although Hispanic liberals did not include religious tolerance among their foundational principles, they crafted a heterodox ideology that guided the construction of modern Spanish institutions and represented a rallying cry for many on the left throughout the nineteenth century in Spain, Spanish America, and beyond