Richard Herr - Böcker

"More political than cultural in its emphasis, this enormously detailed, scholarly yet thoroughly readable book about modern Spain under Franco should fascinate any reader curious to know what changes have been wrought in that country in the past 30 years. Professor Herr (UCLA and Berkeley) has researched painstakingly and drawn a clear, authentic and meaningful portrait of Spain today as it is rapidly being transformed from an agrarian society to one now predominantly industrial." (Publishers Weekly). "Professor Herr is also seeking the origins of modern Spain; his history is Aristotelian in that the end dominates the process. He seeks these origins in the later eighteenth century when the traditional order was perceived to be a bar to progress. A group of civil servants influenced by the European Enlightenment sought to bring Spain into Europe believing that industrial progress, education and agrarian reform would do the trick; but all their reforms were opposed by Catholic traditionalists. Hence the division into the 'two Spains.'Yet it is not the old crude version of two Spains, so often served up to explain everything from the failure of university reform to the Civil War, that Professor Herr plumps for. He sees the course of Spanish history explained by the rise and modification of the Moderado oligarchy...he does throw out a lifeline in a sea of complexities and gives us the best short account of Franco Spain." (Spectator). "This is a work of substantial interest and value which must be recommended as a well-balanced, readable, and scholarly introduction to a subject which has never ceased to be controversial and is still in the process of reinterpretation...commands a high place among the general histories of Spain." (Journal of Modern History).

Throughout Spain's tumultuous twentieth century, women writers produced a dazzling variety of novels, popular theater, and poetry. Their work both reflected and helped to transform women's gender, family, and public roles, carving out new space in the literary canon. This multilingual collection of essays by both scholars and creative artists explores the diversity of Spanish women's writing, both celebrated and forgotten. The contributors include: Nicole Altamirano, Marta E. Altisent, Emilie L. Bergmann, Alda Blanco, Sara Brenneis, Kathleen M. Glenn, P. Louise Johnson, Jo Labanyi, Geraldine Cleary Nichols, Pilar Nieva de la Paz, Soledad Puertolas, and Clara Sanchez.

Rural Change and Royal Finances in Spain at the End of the Old Regime by Richard Herr offers a comprehensive examination of the social, economic, and political transformations that reshaped Spain’s countryside in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Through a meticulous study of the disentailment (desamortización) of ecclesiastical and communal properties under Carlos IV, Herr demonstrates how the monarchy’s fiscal crisis intersected with agrarian reform, bringing long-entrenched property regimes into upheaval. Drawing on parish records, cadastral surveys, and local archives, the book reconstructs the lived realities of rural communities, showing how demographic pressures, rising grain prices, and state interventions shaped agricultural practice, land tenure, and peasant livelihoods.Herr situates Spain’s experience within broader European debates on enlightened reform, tracing the intellectual legacy of figures such as Campomanes and Jovellanos while analyzing the political fragility of the Bourbon monarchy on the eve of Napoleonic invasion. The study balances close portraits of individual towns in provinces like Jaén and Salamanca with wide-ranging assessments of national policy, revealing both the promise and limits of agrarian modernization. At once a fiscal history, a study of rural society, and a meditation on the fate of enlightened absolutism, the book illuminates how conflicts over land, taxation, and subsistence foreshadowed Spain’s nineteenth-century struggles with liberalism, conservatism, and uneven economic development.This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1989.

Rural Change and Royal Finances in Spain at the End of the Old Regime by Richard Herr offers a comprehensive examination of the social, economic, and political transformations that reshaped Spain’s countryside in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Through a meticulous study of the disentailment (desamortización) of ecclesiastical and communal properties under Carlos IV, Herr demonstrates how the monarchy’s fiscal crisis intersected with agrarian reform, bringing long-entrenched property regimes into upheaval. Drawing on parish records, cadastral surveys, and local archives, the book reconstructs the lived realities of rural communities, showing how demographic pressures, rising grain prices, and state interventions shaped agricultural practice, land tenure, and peasant livelihoods.Herr situates Spain’s experience within broader European debates on enlightened reform, tracing the intellectual legacy of figures such as Campomanes and Jovellanos while analyzing the political fragility of the Bourbon monarchy on the eve of Napoleonic invasion. The study balances close portraits of individual towns in provinces like Jaén and Salamanca with wide-ranging assessments of national policy, revealing both the promise and limits of agrarian modernization. At once a fiscal history, a study of rural society, and a meditation on the fate of enlightened absolutism, the book illuminates how conflicts over land, taxation, and subsistence foreshadowed Spain’s nineteenth-century struggles with liberalism, conservatism, and uneven economic development.This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1989.

The first part of the book is an able survey of 'the Enlightenment' in eighteenth-century Spain. The second part, on 'the Revolution,' is something more. Originally published in 1958. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Professor Herr's brief and attractively presented Tocqueville and the Old Regime is to be commended to all who are interested in Tocqueville and his great hook on The Ancien Regime and the Revolution Originally published in 1962. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

The first part of the book is an able survey of 'the Enlightenment' in eighteenth-century Spain. The second part, on 'the Revolution,' is something more. Originally published in 1958. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Professor Herr's brief and attractively presented Tocqueville and the Old Regime is to be commended to all who are interested in Tocqueville and his great hook on The Ancien Regime and the Revolution Originally published in 1962. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.