Reviewed by:

• The Spanish Craze: America’s Fascination with the Hispanic World, 1779–1939 by Richard L. Kagan
• Ellen Prokop

RICHARD KAGAN’S latest book realizes the ambition disclosed in the author note to his 1996 essay, “Prescott’s Paradigm: American Historical Scholarship and the Decline of Spain” (The American Historical Review, vol. 101, no. 2, 1996, pp. 423–46): to produce a volume that documents “the image of Spain and its culture in the United States” (446). Achieving this goal was certainly not an easy task. Not only is the subject—more than a century and a half of Anglo-American interactions with and attitudes toward Spain and its overseas territories—vast, but any attempt to trace a history of beliefs and biases, fads and fashions is treacherous work. Opinions change, and change again, and there often is no accounting for taste. To produce a coherent narrative from such complex material, Kagan employs the metaphor of a “Spanish fever” (with attendant associations of contagion, infection, and epidemic) to explain the “seemingly insatiable appetite for the art and culture of Spain” (3) among foreigners and focuses his discussion on what he designates “the Spanish craze,” a period of roughly forty years stretching from 1890 to the early 1930s during which North American interest in Spain was at its peak. (While the Spanish-American War certainly fomented anti-Spanish feeling across North America, the United States’ decisive victory encouraged rapid rapprochement with its former enemy.) The scope of Kagan’s investigation is wide-ranging, encompassing history and historiography, literature and memoir, tourism and travel writing, art and collecting, architecture and real estate speculation. What emerges from his analysis is a picture of the United States as a young country forming its identity in part through the construction of a national character antithetical to its own; as Kagan neatly observes, “the Spanish craze was not so much the United States’ discovery of Spain but America’s discovery of itself” (132).

Chapter 1, “Rival Empires,” surveys the relations between the United States and Spain from the Revolutionary era to the war of 1898 and considers the racial stereotyping that inflected Anglo-Americans’ ideas about their political rivals. Anti-Spanish sentiment, shaped by territorial and trade disputes and fanned by differences in political culture and religion, was rife among eighteenth- and nineteenth-century North Americans. One example [End Page 127] is Henry Adams, whose first volume of the History of the United States of America during the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison (1889) includes a negative sketch of the court of Charles IV (1788–1808) and description of what he perceived as the fundamental differences between Spain’s national character and that of the United States. Drawing on the Black Legend (Protestant propaganda originating in the mid-sixteenth century that represented Spaniards as bigoted, backward, and cruel), Adams concluded that Anglo-Americans and Spaniards are so different as to be “natural enemies” (29). Therefore, it is surprising to learn that Adams enjoyed an 1879 visit to Andalusia, which he pronounced “first-class” in one of his letters (31). Such ambivalence is central to Kagan’s account and defines many North American responses to Spain—a mixture of antipathy and condescension, enchantment and admiration, colored by a romantic response to Spain’s landscape, customs, and art.

These shifting attitudes are delineated in the following two chapters. Chapter 2, “Sturdy Spain,” chronicles the rehabilitation of Spain’s reputation among Anglo-Americans, primarily the inhabitants of regions that had previously been controlled by the Spanish: Florida, New Mexico, and California. The concept of “Sturdy Spain” celebrates Spain’s imperial legacy, which, according to its proponents, bestowed the “gifts of civilization, learning, and religion” to the Americas (131), and casts the United States as the heir to this legacy. Historical connections between Spain and the United States were further strengthened in the public imagination by popular events such as Chicago’s World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 and monuments such as the tribute to Christopher Columbus outside Union Station in Washington, D.C. Chapter...

审核人：

• 西班牙热潮：美国对西班牙裔世界的迷恋，1779-1939年理查德 L. 卡根
• 艾伦·普罗科普

RICHARD KAGAN 的最新著作实现了作者在其 1996 年论文“普雷斯科特的范式：美国历史学术与西班牙的衰落”（《美国历史评论》）中所披露的雄心壮志。, 卷。101，没有。2, 1996, pp. 423–46)：制作一卷记录“西班牙形象及其在美国的文化” (446)。实现这一目标当然不是​​一件容易的事。不仅主题——超过一个半世纪的英美与西班牙及其海外领土的互动和态度——巨大，而且任何追溯信仰和偏见、时尚和时尚历史的尝试都是危险的工作。意见变了，又变了，而且往往没有考虑到品味。为了从如此复杂的材料中产生连贯的叙述，卡根使用了“西班牙热”的隐喻（伴随着传染病、感染、和流行病）解释外国人“对西班牙艺术和文化似乎永不满足的胃口”（3），并将讨论重点放在他所说的“西班牙热潮”上，这段时期从 1890 年到 1930 年代初大约有 40 年在此期间，北美对西班牙的兴趣达到顶峰。（虽然美西战争无疑在北美激起了反西班牙情绪，但美国的决定性胜利促进了与前敌人的迅速和解。）卡根的调查范围很广，包括历史和史学、文学和回忆录，旅游和旅游写作，艺术和收藏，建筑和房地产投机。从他的分析中可以看出，美国是一个年轻的国家，部分是通过建立与自己对立的民族性格来形成其身份的。正如卡根巧妙地观察到的那样，“西班牙的狂热与其说是美国对西班牙的发现，不如说是美国对自己的发现”（132）。

第 1 章，“竞争对手帝国”，调查了​​从革命时代到 1898 年战争期间美国和西班牙之间的关系，并考虑了影响英裔美国人对其政治对手的看法的种族成见。由领土和贸易争端形成并由政治文化和宗教差异煽动的反西班牙情绪在 18 世纪和 19 世纪的北美人中盛行。一个例子[End Page 127]是亨利·亚当斯，他的第一卷是托马斯·杰斐逊和詹姆斯·麦迪逊执政时期的美利坚合众国历史（1889 年）包括对查理四世（1788-1808 年）宫廷的负面概述，并描述了他所认为的西班牙民族性格与美国民族性格之间的根本差异。亚当斯利用黑人传奇（起源于 16 世纪中叶的新教宣传，将西班牙人描绘成偏执、落后和残忍）得出结论，英裔美国人和西班牙人是如此不同，以至于成为“天敌”（29）。因此，令人惊讶的是，亚当斯在 1879 年享受了对安达卢西亚的访问，他在一封信中将其发音为“一流的”（31）。这种矛盾心理是卡根叙述的核心，并定义了许多北美人对西班牙的反应——一种反感和傲慢、迷人和钦佩的混合体，被对西班牙风景、风俗和艺术的浪漫反应所染上色彩。

这些转变的态度将在以下两章中描述。第 2 章，“坚固的西班牙”，记录了西班牙在英裔美国人（主要是以前由西班牙人控制的地区的居民）中恢复的声誉：佛罗里达、新墨西哥和加利福尼亚。“坚固西班牙”的概念颂扬了西班牙的帝国遗产，据其支持者称，西班牙将“文明、学习和宗教的礼物”赋予了美洲（131），并将美国视为这一遗产的继承人。1893 年芝加哥世界哥伦布博览会和华盛顿联合车站外向克里斯托弗·哥伦布致敬的纪念碑等热门活动进一步加强了公众想象中西班牙和美国之间的历史联系。