Spain at War

Spain at War demonstrates a truly impressive archival grounding, and will interest anyone who has perhaps read the broad strokes about the Spanish Civil War, but is ready to explore cutting edge research at the intersections of military and socio-cultural history. For the scholar of Spain, it is essentially reading. * EuropeNow * An inventive exploration of military mobilization during the Spanish Civil War, Jamie Matthews' wide-ranging volume offers new perspectives on the conflict by examining the experiences of spies, conscripts, children, and other ‘ordinary’ Spaniards during turbulent and dislocating times. * Mary Vincent, Professor of Modern European History, University of Sheffield, UK * This is an impressive collection which brings together a significant amount of new research, some of it in translation. Above all, the book presents a new vision of the Spanish Civil War. Instead of heroic, ideologically-motivated volunteers we see a landscape populated by conscripts, deserters, spies and black marketeers, all engaged in the daily struggle for survival. This is a very different – and all too credible – account of a country in the throes of a devastating civil conflict. * Tom Buchanan, Professor and Director of Studies in History and Politics, University of Oxford, UK * A lively, illuminating and welcome examination of the little-explored links between society, culture and the armed forces during and after the Spanish Civil War. * Nigel Townson, Professor of Spanish History, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain * [A] fairly coherent and well-structured volume in which short chapters present the most innovative and recent research on the Spanish Civil War ... this particular book allows the reader to keep abreast of the latest historiographical developments with relatively little effort. * Bulletin of Spanish Studies *