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The rich cultural and political life of Spain has emerged from a complex history, from the diversity of its peoples, and from continual contact with outside influences. Spanish history stretches from prehistoric times to the present and includes key themes that have shaped the country’s past and present. These include its varied landscapes and climates; the impact of waves of diverse human migrations; the relations between tradition and transformation; the interplay between Spain and its overseas colonies; and the importance of its location as a bridge between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, and between Europe and Africa. Religion also has played a major role in Spanish history, including militant Catholicism and its centuries of conflict and coexistence with Islam, Judaism, and Protestantism, as well as debates over the place of the church in Spain itself.

BIOGRAPHY

William D. Phillips, Jr., is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Minnesota, where he retired in May of 2013 after teaching there since 1988. He previously was a professor of history at San Diego State University. He directed Minnesota’s Center for Early Modern History from 2001 to 2008. His publications include Slavery in Medieval and Early Modern Spain (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013); the co-edited Religious Conflict and Accommodation in the Early Modern World (Minneapolis: Center for Early Modern History, 2011); A Concise History of Spain (with Carla Rahn Phillips, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); the co-edited Conversion to Christianity from Late Antiquity to the Modern Age: Considering the Process in Europe, Asia, and the Americas (Minneapolis: Center for Early Modern History, 2009); the edited Testimonies from the Columbus Lawsuits (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2000); The Worlds of Christopher Columbus (with Carla Rahn Phillips, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992, "Spain in America" (Second) Prize, awarded by the Spanish government); Slavery from Roman Times to the Early Transatlantic Trade (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985); and Enrique IV and the Crisis of Fifteenth-Century Castile (Cambridge, Mass.: Medieval Academy of America, 1978). He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Philosophical Society and is a corresponding member of the Spanish Royal Academy of History.

Carla Rahn Phillips is Union Pacific Professor Emerita in Comparative Early Modern History at the University of Minnesota, where she retired in 2013. Her previous publications include A Concise History of Spain (co-authored with William D. Phillips, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); The Treasure of the San José: Death at Sea in the War of the Spanish Succession (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007, Award for Excellence in World History and Biography/Autobiography of the Professional and Scholarly Publishing division of the American Association of Publishers); Spain's Golden Fleece: Wool Production and the Wool Trade from the Middle Ages to the Nineteenth Century (with William D. Phillips, Jr., Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997, "Leo Gershoy Award" of the American Historical Association, 1998); The Worlds of Christopher Columbus (with William D. Phillips, Jr., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992, "Spain in America" (Second) Prize for 1992); Six Galleons for the King of Spain: Imperial Defense in the Early Seventeenth Century (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986, "Leo Gershoy Award" of the American Historical Association, 1987; "Spain in America" First Prize, 1987; and Ciudad Real, 1500-1750: Growth, Crisis and Readjustment in the Spanish Economy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979). She has received grants and fellowships from the John Carter Brown Library, the Huntington Library, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, the Tinker Foundation, and the Guggenheim Foundation. She was elected as a corresponding member of the Spanish Royal Academy of History in 2005 and received an Encomienda in the noble Royal Order of Isabel the Catholic, designated by King Juan Carlos I of Spain, in July 2008.

ASSIGNED READING

William D. Phillips, Jr., and Carla Rahn Phillips, A Concise History of Spain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010)