HIS32370 The Spanish Civil War

Academic Year 2018/2019

This module examines the economic, social, political, cultural and religious roots of the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) and places them within the wider international historical context. The domestic causes of the military coup in July 1936 will be explored in conjunction with a focus on ideals and ideologies and other key factors that favoured its internationalisation and ultimately led to foreign intervention (Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union) and “malevolent neutrality” (Great Britain, France and the United States). The violence and hatred between Nationalists and Republicans that were unleashed in this conflict will be analysed as part of a broader discussion of the highly polarised rhetoric that inspired it. The war’s dual nature, revolutionary and reactionary, and the short and long-term repression that it triggered will be examined by drawing on a wide selection of primary and secondary sources, such as archival records, propaganda posters and cartoons, newspapers, photography, literature, memoirs, film, graphic novels and art. Interpretative categories that have attracted increasing attention in recent historiography, such as gender and race, will also be discussed.