Joaquín Álvarez Barrientos (ILLA) y Juan Pimentel (IH) coautores del libro "The Spanish Enlightenment revisited"

The Spanish Enlightenment Revisited es el título del libro editado por Jesús Astigarraga, en el que han contribuido Joaquín Álvarez Barrientos (ILLA) como autor del capítulo titulado The Spanish Republic of Letters in its European Context: Images, Economics, and the Representation of the Man of Letters  y Juan Pimentel (IH) como autor del capítulo titulado The Indians of Europe: the role of Spain´s Enlightenment in the making of a global science.

Descripción (en inglés)

Traditional historiography has tended to disregard and even deny Spain´s role in the Enlightenment, banishing the country to a benighted geographical periphery. In The Spanish Enlightenment revisited a team of experts overturns the myth of the "dark side of Europe" and examines the authentic place of Spain in the intellectual economy of the Enlightenment.

Contributors to this book explore how institutional and social changes in eighteenth-century Spain sharpened the need for mordernisation. Examination of major constitutional and social initatives, such as the development of new scientific projects and economic societies, the reform of criminal law, and a re-evaluation of the country´s colonial policies, reveals how ideas, principles and practices from the wider European Enlightenment are adapted for the country´s specific context. Through detailed analysis authors investigate: the evolution of public opinion and the Republic of letters; the growth of political economy as an intellectual discipline; the transmission and reception of an Enlightenment discourse in the Spanish Empire, and Spain´s role in shaping a modern conception of the natural sciences.

The portrait of a demarginalised, modernising and enlightened Spain emerges clearly from this book; in so doing, it opens up new avenues of research both within the history of the pan-European Enlightenment, and in colonial studies. 

Jesús Astigarraga, is Professor of Political Economy at the University of Zaragoza (Spain). His most recent publications include: Luces y Republicanismo (2012) and his edited book L´Economie politique et la sphère publique dans les débats des Lumières (2013).

Joaquín Álvarez Barrientos is a research scientist at the ILLA - Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and author of many books, the most recent: Memoria de hispanismo (2011) and El crimen de la escritura. Una historia de las falsificaciones literarias españolas (2014).

Juan Pimentel is Researcher al the IH - Spanish National Research Council (CSIC). He has recently published  with along José Ramón Marcaida "Green treasures and paper floras. The business of Mutis in New Granada (1783-1808)", History of Science (2014, Vol. 52,3, pp. 277–296).

Referencias bibliográficas

Joaquín Álvarez Barrientos, “The Spanish Republic of Letters in its European Context: Images, Economics, and the Representation of the Man of Letters”, en Jesús Astigarraga (ed.), The Spanish Enlightenment Revisited. Oxford, The Voltaire Foundation, Oxford University, 2015, pp. 40- 61.

Juan Pimentel, "The Indians of Europe: the role of Spain´s Enlightenment in the making of a global science". en Jesús Astigarraga (ed.), The Spanish Enlightenment Revisited. Oxford, The Voltaire Foundation, Oxford University, 2015, pp. 83-104.

ISBN: 978-0-7294-1160 8.