Reinventing America on the battlefields of Spain or following the party line: conflicting perceptions of the Spanish Civil War in the present and in the past

Isolationism and neutrality are two of the recurrent themes in the study of the history of the U.S. foreign policy in the interwar years. The trauma of the Great War, which had swept away 130.000 U.S. lives and had cost $30 billion, had led public opinion to strongly oppose any involvement with European affairs. Besides, the urgent need for economic recovery during the dismal years of the Great Depression did not leave Roosevelt much room for manoeuvre to influence international events. His positions regarding the intentions of the Fascist states remained, at best, ambivalent. These facts notwithstanding, about 2800 U.S. citizens crossed the Atlantic and rushed in to help democratic Spain, which was on the verge of becoming one more hostage in the hands of the Fascism. They joined the other British, Irish and Canadian volunteers and formed the XV International Brigade. 900 Americans never returned home. This alone should challenge the commonly held assumption that the American people were indifferent to the rise of the Fascist threat in Europe. But it also begs other questions. Considering the prevailing isolationist mood, what really motivated them? With what discursive elements did these men construct their anti Fascist representations? How far did their understanding of the Spanish democracy correspond to their own American democratic ideal? In what way did their war experience across the Atlantic mould their perception of U.S. politics (both domestic and foreign)? How far did the Spanish Civil War constitute one first step towards the realization that the U.S. might actually be drawn into another international conflict of unpredictable consequences? Last but not the least, what ideological, political and cultural complicity existed between the men from the English-speaking battalions? In order to unearth some of the answers, I intend to examine their letters and see how these men recorded the historical events in which they took part. Their correspondence emerged from the desire to prove their commitment to a common cause and spoke of a common war experience, but each letter, in its uniqueness, ends up mirroring not only the social and political background of each individual fighter, but also his own particular perspective of the war, of world politics and of the Spanish people. We shall see how these letters differ and converge and how these particular accounts weave, as in an epistolary novel, a larger-than-life narrative of outrage and solidarity, despair and hope.

Lives of the heroes of the American Revolution: comprising the lives of Washington and his Generals and Officers who were the most distinguished in the war of the Independence of the USA.

UANL

The British ‘failure’ that never was? The Anglo-American ‘productivity gap’ in large-scale interwar retailing—evidence from the department store sector

Interwar British retailing has been characterized as having lower productivity, less developed managerial hierarchies and methods, and weaker scale economies than its US counterpart. This article examines comparative productivity for one major segment of large-scale retailing in both countries—the department store sector. Drawing on exceptionally detailed contemporary survey data, we show that British department stores in fact achieved superior performance in terms of operating costs, margins, profits, and stock-turn. While smaller British stores had lower labour productivity than US stores of equivalent size, TFP was generally higher for British stores, which also enjoyed stronger scale economies. We also examine the reasons behind Britain's surprisingly strong relative performance, using surviving original returns from the British surveys. Contrary to arguments that British retailers faced major barriers to the development of large-scale enterprises, that could reap economies of scale and scope and invest in machinery and marketing to support the growth of their primary sales functions, we find that British department stores enthusiastically embraced the retail ‘managerial revolution���—and reaped substantial benefits from this investment.

The Political Candidacy of EU Migrants in their European Countries of Residence. The Case of British and Romanians Standing in Spanish Local Elections

What explains the variation in how European citizens of diverse origins are politically incorporated in the member states of residence? This paper argues that immigrant groups’ status in the host society plays an important role in political party responses to immigrants’ political participation. Drawing on the case of Romanian and British candidacies in the Spanish local elections from 2011, the paper finds that the level of competition between parties is the key mechanism for incorporating candidates from a positively/neutrally perceived group. Instead, a greater level of ethnic diversity encourages the incorporation of candidates from the negatively perceived group. To demonstrate this, the paper uses an original data-set with the Romanian and British candidates in a large number of Spanish localities.

The British Influence in the Birth of Spanish Sport

Sports started to gain relevance in Spain around the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century as a leisure and health option of the upper classes imported from Britain. Its early development was intertwined with the spread of other kinds of physical activities with much more tradition on the continent: gymnastics and physical education. First played by the ruling classes – aristocracy and high bourgeoisie – sports permeated towards petty bourgeoisie and middle classes in urban areas such as Madrid, Barcelona, San Sebastián and Santander. This pattern meant that the expansion of sports was unavoidably tied to the degree of industrialisation and cultural modernisation of the country. Since 1910, and mainly during the 1920s, sport grew in popularity as a spectacle and, toa much lesser degree, as a practice among the Spanish population.

Visions of the Spanish Revolution: identities and conflicts in post-welfare societies

This is a case study that analyzes photographic documents of the social protest in Spain between 2011 and 2013. The analysis is qualitative and considers the use of space, the visual expression of the messages and the orientation toward the causes or effects of political, economic and social changes. Visual sociology allows us to appreciate, in the case of the Spanish Revolution, a dynamic of “reflexivity” unrecognizable from other research approaches. Two successive waves of social mobilization in response to two different shocks can be appreciated. The first is given by political corruption, unemployment and the threat to consumer society. The second shock is caused by the savage cuts in the Welfare State. Social mobilization is expressed differently in each phase, and the forms taken by the protests show how the class structure in post industrial society shapes the reactions to the crisis of the Welfare State.

Index of the Rolls of honor (ancestor's index) in the Lineage books of the National society of the Daughters of the American revolution, volumes 41 to 80.

Mode of access: Internet.

America in English fiction, 1760-1800; the influences of the American Revolution

"America in the novel, 1761-1800": p. 439-442; "The West Indies in the English novel, 1761-1800": p. 443-445; "The East Indies in the English novel, 1761-1800": p. 446-448; "List of chief works consulted": p.449-460.