19th-Century Spanish London

This book provides an exploration of 19th-century London's diverse Spanish community and its cultural, intellectual and material legacy in the city. Using censuses, civil, consular and church records, historical newspapers, business and family papers, published books and memoirs, visual and material objects, art gallery and museum holdings, and the built environment, 19th-Century Spanish London reconstructs the individual, family, and community stories underpinning London’s nodal role in the entangled histories of the 19th-century British and Spanish empires.Through case studies of prominent individuals, businesses, neighbourhoods, and family networks, Kirst Hooper investigates how the ‘double agency’ of Spanish-born, London-domiciled individuals reveals the extent to which both British and Spanish imperialism fed through – and were challenged by – the shifting allegiances and codes of transoceanic colonial networks. Paying particular attention to the Spanish community’s self-projection and changing views of what it meant to be ‘Spanish’ in the 19th-century British imperial capital, it also considers the community’s legacy: their impact on London’s cultural, intellectual, religious and commercial spheres, and the tangible and intangible traces of their existence still visible in London’s fabric today.