The culmination of a half-century of historical investigation, A
People Betrayed is not only a definitive history of modern Spain
but also a compelling narrative that becomes a lens for
understanding the challenges that virtually all democracies have
faced in the modern world. Whereas so many twentieth-century
Spanish histories begin with Franco and the devastating Civil War,
Paul Preston's magisterial work begins in the late nineteenth
century with Spain's collapse as a global power, especially
reflected in its humiliating defeat in 1898 at the hands of the
United States and its loss of colonial territory. This loss hung
over Spain in the early years of the twentieth century, its
agrarian economic base standing in stark contrast to the emergence
of England, Germany, and France as industrial powers. Looking back
to the years prior to 1923, Preston demonstrates how electoral
corruption infiltrated almost every sector of Spanish life, thus
excluding the masses from organized politics and giving them a
bitter choice between apathetic acceptance of a decrepit government
or violent revolution. So ineffective was the Republic-which had
been launched in 1873-that it paved the way for a military coup and
dictatorship, led by Miguel Primo de Rivera in 1923, exacerbating
widespread profiteering and fraud. When Rivera was forced to resign
in 1930, his fall brought forth a succession of feeble governments,
stoking rancorous tensions that culminated in the tragic Spanish
Civil War. With astonishing detail, Preston describes the ravages
that rent Spain in half between 1936 and 1939. Tracing the
frightening rise of Francisco Franco, Preston recounts how Franco
grew into Spain's most powerful military leader during the Civil
War and how, after the war, he became a fascistic dictator who not
only terrorized the Spanish population through systematic
oppression and murder but also enriched corrupt officials who
profited from severe economic plunder of Spain's working class. The
dictatorship lasted through World War II-during which Spain sided
with Mussolini and Hitler-and only ended decades later, in 1975,
when Franco's death was followed by a painful yet bloodless
transition to republican democracy. Yet, as Preston reveals,
corruption and political incompetence continued to have a corrosive
effect on social cohesion into the twenty-first century, as
economic crises, Catalan independence struggles, and financial
scandals persist in dividing the country. Filled with vivid
portraits of politicians and army officers, revolutionaries and
reformers, and written in the "absorbing" (Economist) style for
which Preston is so revered, A People Betrayed is the first
historical work to examine the continuities of political unrest and
national anxiety in Spain up until the present, providing a
chilling reminder of just how fragile democracy remains in the
twenty-first century.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
