In July 1713 Great Britain and Spain signed a Treaty of Peace and Friendship that brought to an end a conflict that had begun in 1701, following the death the year before of the Spanish King Charles II, who died without leaving a direct descendant or heir. The War of the Spanish Succession that ensued involved the major European powers who all had an interest in the question of who would occupy the Spanish throne. As a result of the various peace treaties that were signed between 1713 and 1714 between the warring countries Spain, Britain, France, the Austrian Empire, the Dutch Republic, the Bourbon candidate became king of Spain as Philip V, but Spain lost its last European possessions (the Spanish Netherlands, Naples, Sicily, and Sardinia, among others) and ceded to Great Britain the island of Minorca and Gibraltar. Considered by many historians to be the first real world war, as it involved fighting in the Americas as well as in Europe, the War of the Spanish Succession changed the map of Europe and led to significant alterations in the balance of power. In this volume twelve eminent historians and legal experts from Spain and the United Kingdom consider the political and legal context and consequences of the War and the Treaty of Utrecht that brought it to an end, consequences that still resonate today. This volume is edited by Trevor J. Dadson with the assistance of the Office for Cultural and Scientific Affairs, Embassy of Spain, London."

Challenges the view that that the Moriscos of Spain made little or no attempt to assimilate to the majority Christian culture around them, and that this led to their expulsion between 1609 and 1614. There has been a widely-held consensus among historians that the Moriscos of Spain made little or no attempt to assimilate to the majority Christian culture around them, and that this apparent obduracy made their expulsion between1609 and 1614 both necessary and inevitable. This book challenges that view. Assimilation, coexistence, and tolerance between Old and New Christians in early modern Spain were not a fiction or a fantasy, but could be a reality, made possible by the thousands of ordinary individuals who did not subscribe to the negative vision of the Moriscos put around by the propagandists of the government, and who had lived in peace and harmony side by side for generations. For some, this may be a new and surprising vision of early modern Spain, which for too long, and thanks in large part to the Black Legend, has been characterized as a land of intolerance and fanaticism. This book will help to rebalance the picture and show sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spain in a new, infinitely richer and more rewarding light. Trevor J. Dadson FBA is Professor of Hispanic Studies at Queen Mary, University of London, andis currently President of the Association of Hispanists of Great Britain & Ireland. In 2008 he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy.

In this book twelve eminent historians and legal experts from Spain and the United Kingdom consider the political and legal context and consequences of the War of the Spanish Succession and the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713 that brought it to an end, consequences that still resonate today.

The extent to which contemporary rhetorics of nation and kingship reflected the realities of social, economic and cultural life in Habsburg Spain. Early modern Spain's insistent rhetorics of nation and kingship, of a monolithic body of shared values and beliefs, especially in respect of racial and gender stereotypes, and of a centralized and ostensibly absolutist legislativeapparatus did not map unproblematically onto the complex topography of everyday life. This volume explores the extent to which these rhetorics and the ideology they helped to construct or underpin reflected or failed to reflect the realities of social, economic, and cultural life. It sets against their typically exorbitant claims the lived, messy, and sometimes contradictory experience of Spaniards across a broad social spectrum, both at the centre and atthe margins, not just of peninsular society, but of the Hispanic world overseas. Confronting ideology were questions of economic pragmatism, executive feasibility, jurisdictional competence, and, above all, the social and political complexity of the Spain of the period. RICHARD J. PYM is Senior Lecturer in Hispanic Studies at Royal Holloway, University of London. Contributors: TREVOR J. DADSON, MARGARET RICH GREER, BARRY IFE, ALISTAIR MALCOLM, MELVEENA MCKENDRICK, RICHARD J. PYM, HELEN RAWLINGS, ALEXANDER SAMSON, JULES WHICKER