The wreck of Catalonia : civil war in the fifteenth century / Alan Ryder.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ryder, A. F. C. (Alan Frederick Charles)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Civil war--Spain--Catalonia--History--To 1500.

Civil war.

Aragon (Spain)--History--John II, 1458-1479.

Aragon (Spain).

Physical Description:

ix, 286 pages : maps ; 22 cm

Place of Publication:

Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2007.

Summary:

This is the story of the disaster which befell Catalonia in the fifteenth century. It was a society already destabilised by rural and urban conflict. There was unrest among a peasantry resentful of outdated burdens; merchants and artisans were struggling to wrest control of the towns from entrenched oligarchies, and the aristocracy devoted itself to endless feuding. Catalonia was driven into civil war by the intransigency of its oligarchies defending the status quo against an alien monarch resolved to bend them to his will.

How that blind, aged ruler overcame the patriotic fervour whipped up by his adversaries in ten years of fighting is a major theme of the book. The material devastation inflicted on Catalonia is also discussed, together with the long-lasting psychological humiliation brought about by its incorporation in the new Spanish state of Fernando and Isabel. For centuries Catalans have been struggling to undo that outcome.

Contents:

Part I The Coming Storm

1 A Fine, Well-Ordered Country 3

2 Strains in the Fabric 9

3 'A Widowed Land' 17

4 A Clamorous Peasantry 30

5 Turmoil in Barcelona: Busca and Biga 40

6 A Peasantry Expectant 51

7 Busca in Triumph and Disillusion 55

8 The Violence of an Urban and Rural Aristocracy 61

9 Catalonia Defiant 72

10 Juan II, a Monarch Beset 80

Part II War, Civil and Foreign

11 The Drawing of Swords 109

12 Catalonia at Bay: Enter Castile 124

13 Diplomacy, or War by Other Means 138

14 The Portuguese Saviour 151

15 In Extremis, France 175

16 The Castilian Marriage 192

17 A Rebellion in Ruins 210

18 The Lost Lands 226

Part III Fernando the Catholic

19 The Monarch Triumphant 253.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references pages [270]-277 and index.

ISBN:

9780199207367

0199207364

OCLC:

84150745