David Howarth. The Invention of Spain: Cultural Relations
between Britain and Spain, 1770-1870. Manchester: Manchester
University Press, 2007. xvii + 244 pp. $85.00 (cloth), ISBN
978-0-7190-6562-0. Reviewed by David Brown (Department of
History, University of Strathclyde) Published on H-Albion
(February, 2008) A British Face in a Spanish Mirror This is an
interesting and genuinely original view of Europe during a
period of profound change. David Howarth's study ranges across
politics, history, religion, literature, and art to assess the
"cultural relations" between Britain and Spain, although the
substance of the book is rather more one-sided than the subtitle
might suggest. In chronicling the "invention of Spain," Howarth
sets out, as he states in the opening to the book, primarily to
identify what British perceptions and understandings of Spain
reveal about the development of British politico-cultural
sensibilities as imperial hegemonies gave way to a new order of
international and domestic political relati