This book is the latest contribution to a unique series in a common format documenting in great detail the warships of the major naval powers during the age of sail. To date, four volumes have covered the British Navy, two have been devoted to the French Navy and one each to the Dutch and Russian Navies. This volume on the Spanish Navy, for much of its history the third largest in the world, fills the final gap in the ranks of the major maritime powers. This book is the first comprehensive listing of these ships in English and covers the development of all the naval vessels owned or deployed by Spain during the period of the Bourbon monarchy from 1700 to 1860 (including the period of French control during the Napoleonic Wars), but it also sets the scene for that period by summarizing the origins of Spanish naval development under the preceding Habsburg regime. As with previous volumes in the series, the main chapters list all the naval vessels from 1700 onwards (including those 16th century ships which survived into the new regime in 1700) by type, with the first chapters listing the ships of the line (navíos in Spanish terminology) and frigates in descending order of firepower, and subsequent chapters covering minor and ancillary vessels. Where available, a brief service history of each individual ship is given. A comprehensive introductory section includes a group of background essays designed to provide the reader with a deep understanding of how Spanish naval forces operated, and the context within which they were organized. Certain to become the standard English-language reference work, its publication is of the utmost importance to every naval historian and general reader interested in the navies of the sailing era.

Since the early modern era, historians and observers of Spain, both within the country and beyond it, have identified a peculiarly Spanish disdain for work, especially manual labor, and have seen it as a primary explanation for that nation's alleged failure to develop like the rest of Europe. In "Lazy, Improvident People," the historian Ruth MacKay examines the origins of this deeply ingrained historical prejudice and cultural stereotype. MacKay finds these origins in the ilustrados, the Enlightenment intellectuals and reformers who rose to prominence in the late eighteenth century. To advance their own, patriotic project of rationalization and progress, they disparaged what had gone before. Relying in part on late medieval and early modern political treatises about "vile and mechanical" labor, they claimed that previous generations of Spaniards had been indolent and backward. Through a close reading of the archival record, MacKay shows that such treatises and dramatic literature in no way reflected the actual lives of early modern artisans, who were neither particularly slothful nor untalented. On the contrary, they behaved as citizens, and their work was seen as dignified and essential to the common good. MacKay contends that the ilustrados' profound misreading of their own past created a propagandistic myth that has been internalized by subsequent intellectuals. MacKay's is thus a book about the notion of Spanish exceptionalism, the ways in which this notion developed, and the burden and skewed vision it has imposed on Spaniards and outsiders. "Lazy, Improvident People" will fascinate not only historians of early modern and modern Spain but all readers who are concerned with the process by which historical narratives are formed, reproduced, and given authority.

Biographical and critical notices, with translations of various poems.