This book explores the representation of music in early modern Spanish literature and reveals how music was understood within the framework of the Harmony of the Spheres, emanating from cosmic harmony as directed by the creator. The Harmony of Spheres was not ideologically neutral but rather tied to the earthly power structures of the Church, Crown, and nobility. Music could be "true," taking the listener closer to the divine, or "false," leading the listener astray. As such, music was increasingly seen as a potent weapon to be wielded in service of earthly centers of power, which can be observed in works such as vihuela songbooks, the colonial chronicle of the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, and in the palace theater of Pedro Calderón de la Barca. While music could be a powerful metaphor mapping onto ideological currents of imperial Spain, this volume shows that it also became a contested site where diverse stakeholders challenged the Harmonic Spheres of Influence. Music and Power in Early Modern Spain is a useful tool for upper-level undergraduates, postgraduates, and scholars interested in musicology, music history, Spanish literature, cultural studies, and transatlantic studies in the early modern period.

As Spain encountered economic and political crises in the seventeenth century, the imagery of musical performance was invoked by the state to represent the power of the monarch and to denote harmony throughout the kingdom. Based on contemporary sources, Gonzalez is able to unravel the complex iconography of Spanish politics.

While the Civil War of 1936-39 dominated Spain's twentieth-century history, the country's fateful and bloody division into left and right had its roots in the events of the Napoleonic era. In Modern Spain: A Documentary History, the first broad-ranging collection in English of writings from this entire period, Jon Cowans presents 76 documents to trace the history of Spain as it struggled for political and social stability and justice through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Beginning with Napoleon's occupation of Spain in 1808, the selections include decrees of the liberal Cádiz Cortes of 1810-14, an 1841 plea for the revival of the Catalan culture and language, an 1873 anarchist manifesto, an 1892 argument for the education of women, a Basque nationalist's 1895 diatribe against Spaniards, José Ortega y Gasset's Invertebrate Spain, General Francisco Franco's 1936 manifesto and his 1940 letter to Hitler, the Spanish bishops' 1950 press release on immorality and indecency in the mass media, King Juan Carlos's speech on the attempted coup d'état of 1981, and a 1999 report by SOS Racismo on immigration and xenophobia in contemporary Spain. Covering political, cultural, social, and economic history, Modern Spain: A Documentary History provides a valuable opportunity to explore the history of Spain through primary sources from the Second Republic, the Civil War, and the Franco dictatorship, as well as from the period of Spain's profound transformation following the ascension of King Juan Carlos in 1975.

Roots of Empire is the first monograph to connect forest management and state-building in the early modern Spanish global monarchy. The Spanish crown's control over valuable sources of shipbuilding timber in Spain, Latin America, and the Philippines was critical for developing and sustaining its maritime empire. This book examines Spain's forest management policies from the sixteenth century through the middle of the eighteenth century, connecting the global imperial level with local lived experiences in forest communities impacted by this manifestation of expanded state power. As home to the early modern world's most extensive forestry bureaucracy, Spain met serious political, technological, and financial limitations while still managing to address most of its timber needs without upending the social balance.

Using a wide array of archival documentation, including Inquisition records, wills, dowry contracts, folklore, and court cases, Poska examines how early modern Spanish peasant women asserted and perceived their authority within the family and community and how the large numbers of female-headed households in the region functioned in the absence of men.

Scholars have long argued over whether the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, which ended more than a century of religious conflict arising from the Protestant Reformations, inaugurated the modern sovereign-state system. But they largely ignore a more fundamental question: why did the emergence of new forms of religious heterodoxy during the Reformations spark such violent upheaval and nearly topple the old political order? In this book, Daniel Nexon demonstrates that the answer lies in understanding how the mobilization of transnational religious movements intersects with--and can destabilize--imperial forms of rule. Taking a fresh look at the pivotal events of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries--including the Schmalkaldic War, the Dutch Revolt, and the Thirty Years' War--Nexon argues that early modern "composite" political communities had more in common with empires than with modern states, and introduces a theory of imperial dynamics that explains how religious movements altered Europe's balance of power. He shows how the Reformations gave rise to crosscutting religious networks that undermined the ability of early modern European rulers to divide and contain local resistance to their authority. In doing so, the Reformations produced a series of crises in the European order and crippled the Habsburg bid for hegemony. Nexon's account of these processes provides a theoretical and analytic framework that not only challenges the way international relations scholars think about state formation and international change, but enables us to better understand global politics today.

The fourteen essays that comprise this volume concentrate on festival iconography, the visual and written languages, including ephemeral and permanent structures, costume, dramatic performance, inscriptions and published festival books that ’voiced’ the social, political and cultural messages incorporated in processional entries in the countries of early modern Europe. The volume also includes a transcript of the newly-discovered Register of Lionardo di Zanobi Bartholini, a Florentine merchant, which sets out in detail the expenses for each worker for the possesso (or Entry) of Pope Leo X to Rome in April 1513.