The Rise of Middle-Class Culture in Nineteenth-Century Spain

$42.50 Hardcover

The Rise of Middle-Class Culture in Nineteenth-Century Spain

by Jesus Cruz

312 pages / 6.00 x 9.00 inches / no illustrations

ebook available

History / West European | History / Spain & Portugal

Hardcover / 9780807139196 / December 2011

$42.50

In his stimulating study, Jesus Cruz examines middle-class lifestyles—generally known as bourgeois culture—in nineteenth-century Spain. Cruz argues that the middle class ultimately contributed to Spain’s democratic stability and economic prosperity in the last decades of the twentieth century.

Interdisciplinary in scope, Cruz’s work draws upon the methodology of various areas of study—including material culture, consumer studies, and social history—to investigate class. In recent years, scholars in the field of Spanish studies have analyzed disparate elements of modern middle-class milieu, such as leisure and sociability, but Cruz looks at these elements as part of the whole. He traces the contribution of nineteenth-century bourgeois cultures not only to Spanish modernity but to the history of Western modernity more broadly.

The Rise of Middle-Class Culture in Nineteenth-Century Spain provides key insights for scholars in the fields of Spanish and European studies, including history, literary studies, art history, historical sociology, and political science.

Jesus Cruz is professor of Iberian history at the University of Delaware. His publications include Gentlemen, Bourgeois, and Revolutionaries: Political Change and Cultural Persistence among the Spanish Dominant Groups, 1750–1850 and Los notables de Madrid: las bases sociales de la revolución liberal española. Currently he is the general editor of the Bulletin for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies.

Praise for The Rise of Middle-Class Culture in Nineteenth-Century Spain

“Extensively researched, impressively interdisciplinary and broad in scope, and elegantly written, this book could quite possibly be the best monograph on 19th-century Spain in generations. Highly and enthusiastically recommended.”—Choice

“Jesús Cruz has written a carefully conceived, amply cited, meticulous study of Spain’s middle classes to add to the larger cultural history of bourgeois life in the West. It is a superb historical study [that] bears the indelible mark of a professional historian doing first-rate history.”—David Ortiz, Jr., Bulletin of Spanish Studies

“In this clearly organized, convincing book, Jesus Cruz argues that the middle class culture that underpins the democratic stability and economic prosperity that Spain has enjoyed since 1975 originated in the nineteenth century. ... The argument is clear, the book well-structured and well-written, and the light it sheds on the interiors of Spanish middle-class society is unparalleled.”—Grace E. Coolidge, The American Historical Review

“Cruz provides a highly readable account of Spanish bourgeois culture....He presents fascinating insights into the rise and consolidation of the bourgeois way of life in Spain....A well-researched and highly informative book.”—Eric Storm, Journal of Social History

“Jesús Cruz has shown himself to be an acute historian of shifts in cultural sensibility....A major contribution.”—European History Quarterly

“An indispensable book for English readers who want a thoroughly and well-documented study of the cultural changes produced by the liberal revolution. . . . A fundamental book to all those interested in Spanish history.”—Human Figurations