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Podcast: New Books in Western European Studies
Episode: Felipe Fernández-Armesto and Manuel Lucena Giraldo, "How the Spanish Empire Was Built: A 400 Year History" (Reaktion, 2024)
Description: Sixteenth-century Spain was small, poor, disunited and sparsely populated. Yet the Spaniards and their allies built the largest empire the world had ever seen. How did they achieve this?In How the Spanish Empire Was Built: a 400-year History (Reaktion, 2024) Dr. Felipe Fernández-Armesto and Dr. Manuel Lucena Giraldo argue that Spain’s engineers were critical to this venture. The Spanish invested in infrastructure to the advantage of local power brokers, enhancing the abilities of incumbent elites to grow wealthy on trade and widening the arc of Spanish influence.Bringing to life stories of engineers, prosp...