Spain: Backgrounds

J. H. Elliott, Imperial Spain: 1469-1716. London: Edward Arnold 1963; reprinted London: Penguin, 2002.

Garrett Mattingly, The Armada. Boston: Hughton Mifflin, 1959; reprinted 2005.

So as part of my thesis, I'm looking at the printing environment of propaganda works concerning the brief flash in the Anglo-Spanish War (1585-1604) that became known in English speaking accounts as "The Attack of the Spanish Armada." Given that I don't want my retelling to simply reinforce the persistent Two-State account of the event (It was Spain! against England!), but rather to situate the pamphlets I'm looking at in the larger context of international relations in the period, it seemed like a good idea to bone up on A. Spanish history from a Spain-focused point of view, and B. The "best" available account of the attack itself. Hence these two Oldie-but-goodie history books make my list.

J. H. Elliott barely mentions the Armada at all. Beginning with the unification of Castile and Aragon, he traces a complex history of Spain that emphasizes its Italian, Netherlands, and American possessions as integral parts of Spanish identity. The Anglo-Spanish War, which loomed so huge in English imagination, doesn't evoke the same emotional resonance in this Spanish focused account. Instead, far more space is given to the economic factors that shaped Spain's destiny, and the religious and political struggles that shaped its foreign policy. The Netherlands, a possession of Philip II by virtue of his lineage from his father, Charles V's maternal grandmother, Mary of Burgundy.

This work is true Great Man History; it focuses on the interior court struggles, the basic economics, and the personal philosophies which affected the decision making of Ferdinand and Isabella, Philip the Fair (married to Juana the Mad), their son Charles V, and his grandson Philip II. It's worth reading just for the chart of the Spanish Hapsburg lineage, which makes you realize both A: how close the English royal family and the Hapsburgs were, and B: That family tree has loops in it. Suddenly it's easy to understand why Charles II, Philip II's great grandson, looks positively *ill* in every portrait.

While lacking in the pieces of everyday life that social historians today find so appealing (woman? there were women in Spain?) Elliott gives a compelling glimpse into the economic forces which tied Spain to the rest of Europe, and the social forces which errected a thick barrier between its society and the possible intrusions of unorthodox outsiders.

Garrett Mattingly's work is a different beast all together. Focusing on the events leading up to the event itself, as well as a blow-by-blow telling of events, it's aimed at a general history readership. Which means, infuriatingly enough, there are no footnotes. Even so, it's one of the most reputable academic works on the event out there, even though it's a good 51 years old at this point. There are very abbreviated endnotes, however, with brief source descriptions amounting to perhaps one line about every three sources. The notes to chapter 30, "Drake is Captured!", which dealt with some of the print reaction, will be particularly useful to me. It has an intriguing note which describes the pamphlet Discours veritable de ce qui s'est passé entre les deux armées... which claims to have been published in Paris, as "Obviously from the same press" as La copie d'une lettre ... à Don Bernardin de Mendoza, which is one of my main focus texts. Mattingly identified the Italian and Dutch translations of Copie of a Letter, but seems to have missed the second French translation and the German. This chapter does a good job of sketching some of the print reaction. Mattingly credits Medoza with much of the force of the propaganda reaching Spain, but perhaps neglects the impact of English efforts in French and other continental languages. Like most accounts which focus on English Vs. Spanish viewpoints, he also manages to sideline and discount the import or reason for the Dutch and German publications. I just hope I can do them justice without necessarily going out and learning sixteenth century High German right now. I just don't have time, yo.

Digital Humanities: History and Future

I find myself having more difficulty with this assignment than I originally expected. This post may sound like a book-report in search of a point, but I think the usability of these sources is inherently informing of their content. If Humanities Computing is the act of putting the output of human creativity into a computer or other electronic device in order to save it for future generations, analyze its content, or cause it to be more easily and effectively accessed and utilized, then it is only successful to the extent that it fulfills these goals.

The readings seem to aim to provide a history of the field, and I actually expected Fraser’s “A Hypertextual History of Humanities Computing,” would be more like the University of Michigan’s timeline for digital technologies and preservation: (this is a really great at-a-glance timeline for technology) but focusing on technologies applied to the humanities. While clearly not finished yet (it currently has an extremely fragmentary feel) this seems like an accessible mode to present this information. The fragmentary nature of the writing makes me wonder how complete the information itself is; are there significant gaps in the units that are up, or is it just waiting for a final read-over?

The mapping exercise (found here), on the other hand, creates a visual overview of the many related fields touched on and influenced by Humanities computing. This visualization is necessarily cramped by the sheer amount of information it attempts to maintain. This is a system of visualization that would benefit greatly from the 3d technologies like those employed by the The Visual Thesaurus, or even the color-dimensions of other modeling software.

I feel like an extensive reading of the ListServ would, eventually, also give an overview of the field, but it isn’t set up for that manner of information retrieval. Like any topical discussion among specialists, the ListServ is chock full of jargon which I’m sure professionals in the digital humanities field understand. Perhaps ironically, my experience in library science makes some of the posts perhaps more obscure than they would be otherwise – I feel like the terminology is just off enough that I’m missing something important while skimming through the archive. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be an effective search method for the archive, and the ability to organize “by thread” is only marginally helpful. There’s something that looks like a word-search under ArchTracker Display, but I couldn’t get it to work. Some sort of tagging system would be ideal.

The field of Digital Humanities/ Humanities Computing is about stretching our mental model of humanities to encompass a wider range of display, access, and analysis models. We understand how to access these new forms by employing established mental models (of how to use/examine/analyze “humanities” objects. New technologies allow us to stretch these models by creating new analogies to other, established models (folders, surfing, journaling, forums, classified ads). I feel like the current repositories for digital humanities texts about digital humanities (Ur-Humanities texts?) are currently not living up to the full potential of the medium.