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Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide.

Print Price: $13.50

Format:
Paperback
186 pp.
numerous halftones, 111 mm x 174 mm

ISBN-13:
9780192803771

Publication date:
April 2005

Imprint: OUP UK


The Spanish Civil War: A Very Short Introduction

Helen Graham

Series : Very Short Introductions

This Very Short Introduction offers a powerfully-written explanation of the war's complex origins and course, and explores its impact on a personal and international scale. It also provides an ethical reflection on the war in the context of Europe's tumultuous twentieth century, highlighting why it has inspired some of the greatest writers of our time, and how it continues to resonate today in Britain, continental Europe, and beyond.

Throughout the book, the focus is on the war as an arena of social change where ideas about culture were forged or resisted, and in which both Spaniards and non-Spaniards participated alike. These were conflicts that during the Second World War would stretch from Franco's regime, which envisaged itself as part of the Nazi new order, to Europe and beyond. Accordingly, this book examines Spanish participation in European resistance movements during World War II and also the ongoing civil war waged politically, economically, judicially and culturally inside Spain by Francoism after its military victory in 1939. History writing itself became a battleground and the book charts the Franco regime's attempt to appropriate the past. It also indicates its ultimate failure - as evident in new writings on the war and, above all, in the return of Republican memory now occurring in Spain during the opening years of the twenty-first century.

Readership : General Readers interested in understanding the Spanish civil war in its domestic and international context. Also anyone who wants a summary of the historical debates and political polemics surrounding the war. Good for school students and undergraduates (Spanish Civil War has prominence in school curricula).

Reviews

  • `This is far and away the best short introduction to the Spanish Civil War that I have read in any language.'
    Professor Paul Preston, European Institute, London School of Economics

Preface
1. Introduction: the origins of Spain's civil war
2. Rebellion, revolution, and repression
3. Mobilise and survive: the Republic at war
4. The making of Rebel Spain
5. The Republic besieged
6. Defeat and victory: the wars after the war
7. The uses of history
Chronology
References
Further Reading

There are no Instructor/Student Resources available at this time.

Helen Graham is Professor of Spanish History at Royal Holloway, University of London. She has published widely on the Spanish left in the 1930s and is the author of The Spanish Republic at War 1936-1939 (Cambridge University, 2002), a major re-assessment of the left during the civil war. She is currently researching Spanish prisons in the 1940s as part of a social history of early Francoism. She also co-edited (with Jo Labanyi) and contributed to Spanish Cultural Studies: An Introduction (Oxford University Press, 1996).

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Special Features

  • Hugely emotive and enduring subject that inspired writers such as Hemingway, Orwell, and Laurie Lee.
  • Integrates the political, social, and cultural history of the civil war.
  • Discusses the latest historical debates and applies a highly dramatic narrative, with plenty of personal experience woven into the analysis.
  • Assesses the impact of the war on Spain's transition to democracy and its contemporary political culture.