{"id":13796,"date":"2021-11-15T17:20:53","date_gmt":"2021-11-15T17:20:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.cervantes.es\/londres\/?p=13796"},"modified":"2021-11-15T17:41:32","modified_gmt":"2021-11-15T17:41:32","slug":"richard-kagan-americas-discovery-of-spain-was-a-discovery-of-itself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.cervantes.es\/londres\/2021\/11\/15\/richard-kagan-americas-discovery-of-spain-was-a-discovery-of-itself\/","title":{"rendered":"Richard Kagan: \u201cAmerica\u2019s discovery of Spain was a discovery of itself\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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The director of Instituto Cervantes London, Ignacio Peyr\u00f3, interviews Richard Lauren Kagan, American historian specializing in modern history, at ABC Cultural Spanish newspaper<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Richard L. Kagan is Arthur O. Lovejoy Professor of History at the Johns Hopkins University where he has been a member of the faculty since 1972. A graduate of Columbia University (BA 1965) and Cambridge University (Ph.D. 1968), he is the recipient of many awards, among them grants from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, the Fulbright Association, the Getty Trust, and the National Endowment of the Humanities. In 1997 His Majesty Juan Carlos II honored him with the title of Comendador in the Order of Isabella the Catholic and in 2012 he was elected Corresponding Member of Spain\u2019s Royal Academy of History for his contributions to the history of Spain.
Specializing in the history of early modern Europe, with particular interests in Spain and its empire, Prof. Kagan is the author and\/or editor of eleven books as well as numerous articles, essays, and reviews. His recent publications include Spain in America: The Origins of Hispanism in the United States (2002); and a revised edition of Inquisitorial Inquiries: Brief Lives of Secret Jews and Other Heretics (2011). Forthcoming publications revolve principally around his current book, \u201c\u2018The Spanish Craze:\u2019 The \u2018Discovery\u2019 of the Art and Culture of Spain and Spanish America in the United States, ca. 1890- ca. 1930.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

-How did this book come about? Until now there has not been such a systematic and detailed study of the US romance with Spain.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The origins of the book go back to 1992, when I first began to explore changes in the different ways historians in US wrote about the history of Spain. I soon realized that, except for studies of the \u201cblack legend\u201d, and its opposite, \u201cthe white or pink legend\u201d, much remained to be learned. For reasons connected to my on-going interest in El Greco and the history of art collecting in the USA, this research led me initially to explore the growing interest ca. 1890 in Spanish Golden art, a \u201c school\u201d (as it was then called) previously denigrated in the US. That interest unleashed the equivalent of artistic gold rush among wealthy American collectors \u2013think Isabella Stewart Gardner, for instance, who led the way for the Havemayers., Frick, Widener, and others, Archer Milton Huntington among them, desperate to snap up choice canvases by Velazquez, Goya, Zurbaran and other artists. Works by El Greco \u2013 whose so-called \u2018extravagant\u2019 style was perceived a precursor to modern art, were particularly in demand, so much so that one critic likened it to a disease he called \u201c Elgrecophilitus.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In any event, I soon discovered that there were other facets in America\u2019s \u201cdiscovery\u201d of Spain. One, particularly important, was in architecture, which started in late 1880s with the construction of series of skyscrapers and towers modeled after Giralda \u2013first in NY, then California, Chicago and elsewhere, including Cleveland and Kansas City\u2014 along with that of large resort hotels built in \u201c Spanish\u201d style -actually a mish-blend of Mudejar and Spanish plateresque and baroque, with some Mexican elements. The town of St Augustine, Florida, fastening on to its Spanish origins, led the way, others followed suit. Almost simultaneously, in California and other parts of the South West, architects created \u201cmission-style\u201d buildings modeled after the region\u2019s then crumbling Spanish 18th<\/sup> C missions, followed by more elaborate constructions \u2013known as Spanish revival : a blend of Mexican colonial and Spanish baroque \u2013 which became so popular that one critic suggested Congress declare it the country\u2019s \u2018 national style.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Be that as it may, as I began writing about art collecting and Spanish architecture in the US, I realized that it was tantamount to a fashion trend, a craze \u2014John Singer Sargent, the artist, called it a fever\u2013 that quickly spread, Covid-like, nation-wide, and which also spilled over into a fascination with Spanish-themed popular music, Spanish-style clothing \u2013 the mantilla and mant\u00f3n de Manila were all the rage in the 19teens and 20s. It also popped on Hollywood\u2019s Silver screen with a rash of Spanish themed moving pictures (Zorro, for example), and more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In short, I was looking at something cultural historians in the US had simply overlooked or ignored, and when I asked my good friend, the art historian, Jonathan Brown, whether I should write book on the subject, he answered, tersely \u201cgo for it\u201d. Which I did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

-From the Dutch craze to the Japanese craze, there were other \u00abfevers\u00bb that conquered America. What was specific about the Spanish craze?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Starting in the decades following America\u2019s Civil War ( 1861-65) \u2013the era Mark Twain called the Gilded Age\u2013, the culture in the US became increasingly cosmopiltan, with new interest in arts and cultures of various parts of the world; an interest, of course, that paralleled the country\u2019s emergence as economic world power. Cosmopolitanism bred \u2018crazes\u2019 of various sorts \u2014a Dutch one, another focused on Japan, still others on Ottoman culture, and in the 1930s, Mexico. The Spanish Craze in this sense was just one of many, but in contrast to the others, which were generally quite ephemeral, it proved exceptionally-long lived, spanning the decades from the late 1880s until the start of the depression of the 1930s, save for a brief interruption in the run-up to the war of 1898. Why? One is that, as Walt Whitman, the poet, in 1883 called the \u201c Spanish element\u201d in our population, the Spanish Craze could be traced to the Spain\u2019s presence in North America, signs of which especially are apparent in Florida, Texas, California and much of the west. These signs were present in place names (states: California, Florida, Colorado, Texas), those of rivers and towns (Los Angeles, El Paso, etc), and even in many state flags \u2014and more signs of same origin could be found in region\u2019s vernacular architecture, starting with the missions. In other words, whoile the Dutch and Japan craze were basically imports, certain aspects of the one for Spain were autocthonous, home-grown, in ways the imports were not. In this sense, America\u2019s discovery of Spain was, in part, a discovery of itself, and this helped to power the craze it describes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

-How was this Spanish seduction possible after centuries of indifference and a war in 98?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c Forgive and Forget\u201d \u2013this idea, which appeared in the immediate aftermath of the war of 98, helps to explain it. Just as America romanticized and embraced the \u201c vanishing Indian\u201d in the late 19th<\/sup> C, after 1898, having defeated one remaining imperial rival in the New World, Spain, was able to embrace its arts and culture as never before. The roots of this embrace can be traced back to the romanrticized portrait of \u201c sunny Spain\u201d that Washington Irving in his Tales of the Alhambra did so much to create. It can also be found in the mid-19th C writings of such widely-read historians such as Prescott, who helped to create the image of Spain as a brave, energetic country who had brought civilization and religion in the guise of Christianity to the Americas, north, central, and south. Today, of course, many observers have a different, far more critical view of Imperial Spain and its presence in the Americas, but in the 19th<\/sup> C that vision of \u201csturdy Spain\u201d a brave Spain, \u201cseemed to anticipate what Americans thought they were doing in the \u2018winning of the west\u2019 \u2013that is, bringing civilization to its native peoples. That idea \u2013Spanish history as a kind precursor to the history of the US\u2013 found its way symbolically into the rotunda of the new capitol in the guise of William H Powell\u2019s monumental painting \u201c Hernando de Soto and Discovery of the Mississippi\u201d, hung there in 1846 ( and still there), part of a series of historical paintings documenting various scenes in the history of the country. The idea: that Spain\u2019s history was part of, integral to US history ,also helps to explain the origins of what later mushroomed into the Spanish Craze.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

-A curious feature of American Hispanophilia is that it was cultured \u2013Irving, Huntington- but it was also very popular: cinema, music\u2026 And modern. And with a legacy that distinguishes it from the Spanish passions that French or British have felt: its projection in architecture. Could it be that the Americans, somehow, thought they had Spain \u00abat home\u00bb, because of the Hispanic footprint in its southern part?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes : high brow and low brow, the middle as well \u2013 the embrujo cut across all social classes. The wealthy bought paintings by the Spanish Old Masters \u2013you can see them today in museums in New York, Boston, Cleveland, Detroit, Toledo, Los Angeles and elsewhere today \u2013 and lived in mansions built in the Spanish style. As for working\/ middle class, housing developers sold them the idea of living in their own \u201c castle in Spain\u201d. The idea of such a castle dates back of course to the Middle Ages and French troubadours. One out side New York was called \u201cThe Shores of Seville\u201d bungalows built in the same Spanish style and starting the 1920 Sears Rooebuck & Co even fabricated \u201c home kits\u201d \u2013 that the makings of an entire house \u201cmarketed as the \u201cBarcelona\u201d or \u201c Seville,\u201d The idea of Spanish house as a \u2019 castle\u2019 blended with \u201coriental\u201d luxury Irving associated with the Alhambra, producing a cocktail that was judged simple yet charming, luxurious as well. So marketed, that cocktail proved a enormous success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What happened in architecture occurred elsewhere \u2014hispanofilia ran along two somewhat separate tracks. Prescott, an archtypical Boston Brahmin, had a broad popularship \u2013 generations read his history of the conquest of Mexico. Irving was even more popular \u2013 his romanticized Spain cropped up in several generations of travel writers who depicted Spain as a place where Americans lived in crowded cities could find simplicity, romance, along with scenes of the picturesque in every day life. That Sunny Spain also factored in the literary success of such books as Helen Hunt Jackson\u2019s Ramona, the 2nd<\/sup> best selling book in 19th<\/sup> C US, which featured kindly friars and idyllic missions where natives found a refuge from nasty anglo-saxons eager to seize their lands. We now know that those missions were not nearly so idyllic as Jackson and another popular, hispanofilic writer, Charles Lummis, represented them to be, but it was that image that copped on the Silver Screen –Hollywood directors relaeased no fewr than four different versions of Romana in the early 20th<\/sup> C along with other movies featuringf alluring Carmen-like Spanish women and dashing \u201c Spanish\u201d heros such as Zorro who protected women from various nefarious types \u2013 often depicted, sad to say, as Mexicans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ruinning parallel to all this \u2013 -a line of \u201c academic\u201d or elite hispanism emerged in the 1820s in the classes of George Ticknor\u2019 at Harvard , later in his influential History of Spanish Literature ( 1849), and the work of other hispanists \u2014 by the dawn of the 20th<\/sup> C Unamuno described the American school of hispanism the best there is. Integral to this more elite school \u2013 and effectively a product of it \u2013 was Huntington and his Hispanic Society of America, founded in 1904. Mention is often made of the popular success of Sorolla exhibition Huntington organized there in 1909, but essentially the HSA operated behind closed doors \u2013 a museum for \u201c students,\u201d a library for scholars, a place for learned tertulias \u2014 a model followed in Madrid by Guillermo de Osma, founde of the Instituto Valencia de Don Juan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Interestingly Huntington\u2019s high-brow brand of Hispanism, however, had little in common wuith demand for Spanish language education that \u201cboomed\u201d in the early 20th<\/sup> C. In conjunction with growing interest in \u201cpanamericanism,\u201d growing US economic interest in S Anmerica, and the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914, enrollments in Spanish languages boomed \u2014 instructors of French and Italian complained about the lack of students in their classes, so too did Huntington about interest in \u201c business\u201d Spanish as opposed to the great works of the Golden Age, but the study of Spanish took root and reflected in Theodore Roosevelt in a visit to madrid in 1914 that it had the makings of a \u201cuniversal language.\u201d I never thought of TR as much of a prophet,m but in this instance the man who had fought fought Spaniards on Cuba\u2019s San Juan hill was right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

-It seems that, in some way, the US vision of Spain is inevitably linked to what they call the \u00abLatin\u00bb world \u2026<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For most of the 19th<\/sup> C\/ early 20th<\/sup> C as well, for most Anglos and other Americans from northern Europe, the \u201c Spanish\u201d signified a Spanish speaker\u2013 -whether from Iberia, Mexico or other parts of the central\/ south America. \u201cLatino,\u201d in other words, or Hispanic. Interestingly, it was in places like New mexico where wealthy ranchers and landowners \u2013 the so called ricos \u2013 of Mexican origin began to consider themselves \u201c Spanish\u201d to distinguish themselves from their landless poorer brethren, the braceros, or what anglos in the region called \u201cgreasers.\u201d Spain, Spanishness, for these families became a mark of pride\u2013 they claimed direct descendance from the conquistadors, and laid claim to Spanish culture. Much the same happened in California \u2014 there too Lummis and others, notably the wealthy ranchers, the so called californios of Mexican heritage, seeking to recrate the \u201cold Spanish days\u201d in the guise of festivals, music, even architecture, played up Spain and Spanishness to the detriment of Mexico. Later critics denounced this as racist, and they were riught, but here it is important to remember that blanket terms such as \u2018 latino\u2019 as used today tends to erase the divisions that once permeated the Hispanic population in the US<\/p>\n\n\n\n

-Paul Fussell affirms that the United States was made by embracing the heritage of those who came to the East Coast (the Mayflower, to understand us) and denying the Hispanic. Has that perception been changing?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the last 20, perhaps 30 years, scholars have challenged the idea \u2013 basically it dates back to such 19th<\/sup> C Harvard-based historians as George Bancroft \u2013 that the US had its origins in New England. As I argue in the book, aready in the 19th<\/sup> C historians such as Thomas Buckingham Smiuthg took issue with Bancroft, so too did -early 20th<\/sup> C scholars such as Herbert Bolton and his disciplines, notably David Weber whose work on the \u201cborderlands\u201d – roughly much of southwest \u2013 underscored the influence of Mexican-cum-Spanish influence on that region\u2019s economy and society. Even so, we still have much to learn about the history of what Whitman termed the \u201c Spanish element in our nationality\u201d along with the varied contributions of Spain to the history of the US, even though there is an effort afoot to raise the profile of Bernardo de Galvez, who opened a second, western front v the British in the US war of Independence has yet to achieve the stature of the Marquis de Lafayette, nor do school children learn much about other Spanish contributions to the victory of the colonies in that conflict. Yet I am optimistic \u2013 the rewriting of US history is well underway. The Mayflower will not sink, but the country\u2019s Hispanic heritage, as Whitman predicted, is coming increasingly to the fore, pushed, in part, by the on-going increase in the country\u2019s population of Latino \u2013 or Hispanic \u2013 background.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Link to the interview in Spanish<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The director of Instituto Cervantes London, Ignacio Peyr\u00f3, interviews Richard Lauren Kagan, American historian specializing in modern history, at ABC Cultural Spanish newspaper. Richard L. Kagan is Arthur O. Lovejoy Professor of History at the Johns Hopkins University where he has been a member of the faculty since 1972. A graduate of Columbia University (BA […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":269,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cervantes.es\/londres\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13796"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cervantes.es\/londres\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cervantes.es\/londres\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cervantes.es\/londres\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/269"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cervantes.es\/londres\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13796"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cervantes.es\/londres\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13796\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13808,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cervantes.es\/londres\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13796\/revisions\/13808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cervantes.es\/londres\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cervantes.es\/londres\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cervantes.es\/londres\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}