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A Spanish Prisoner in the Ruins of Napoleon's Empire - The Diary of Fernando Blanco White's Flight to Freedom (Hardcover)
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A Spanish Prisoner in the Ruins of Napoleon's Empire - The Diary of Fernando Blanco White's Flight to Freedom (Hardcover)
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Between 1808 and the mid-1820s, Spaniards struggled to liberate
their country from French rule while also fighting to retain
control over their vast American empire. Spain's War of
Independence eventually led to the French evacuation of the Iberian
Peninsula and the restoration of the Bourbon monarch Ferdinand VII
in 1814, but the wars in the Americas were much more tortuous. A
Spanish Prisoner in the Ruins of Napoleon's Empire offers a rare
primary document from this period, the journal of Fernando Blanco
White. As a Spaniard whose family made its fortune in trade in
Seville- historically Spain's vital link to the American empire-
Blanco White experienced the turmoil of this time period, both as a
prisoner of war and as a free man. His diary offers personal
insights into how people in Europe and across its global empires
coped with these profound transformations. Taken prisoner by the
French in 1809, Blanco White fled from captivity in 1814. Along
with other Spanish escapees, he traversed Switzerland, the
Rhineland, and the Netherlands before finally setting sail for
England. Unlike most of his countrymen, who were quickly whisked
back to Spain, Blanco White stayed in England for two years, during
which time he composed his account of his flight across Europe. His
diary offers gripping, witty, and sometimes cranky accounts of this
time, as he records rich descriptions of places he passed through,
his companions and fellow Spaniards, and his many encounters with
soldiers and civilians. He writes vividly about his imprisonment,
his fear of recapture, his renewed exercise of autonomy, and the
inverse, his ""slavery""- a term he employs in evocative fashion to
describe both his captivity at the hands of the French and the
condition of Spaniards more generally under the absolutist Bourbon
monarchy. Never before published, Blanco White's diary tracks
firsthand the Spanish experience of war, captivity, and flight
during the War of Independence.
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