Spanish Imperialism and the Political Imagination: Studies in European and Spanish-American Social and Political Theory 1513-1830

From the early sixteenth to the early nineteenth centuries, Spain was regarded as a unique social and political community -- the most exalted, the most feared, the most despised, and the most discussed since the Roman Empire. In this important book, Anthony Pagden offers an incisive analysis of the lasting influence of the Spanish Empire in the history of early modern Europe and of its place in the European and Spanish American political imagination.