Download 20. The Rise of Spain

The Rise of Spain
The traditional approach in Combined Studies to the rise of Spain as a nation is to
take an opportunity to review some of the early content of the course. This lesson has
always served as a not-so-subtle reminder that you face a comprehensive final exam
covering everything we have studied together. Here is a sort of transition moment when
we can provide background knowledge from first-semester material to shine light on our
progress in the second semester through the advance of civilization. The rise of Spain,
therefore, is more properly referred to as Iberian history. We have not focused on this
interesting peninsula of Europe much before. Now is the time.
There are two great geographical realities of the Iberian Peninsula. First, it serves
as the gatekeeper to the outlet to the Atlantic Ocean. The southern tip of Spain is only
eight miles away from Africa! The other factor is that the Iberian Peninsula is cut off
from the rest of Europe by the Pyrenees Mountains that run right across the neck of the
peninsula between modern Spain and France. Of course these two geographical features
played a huge role in the history of this region—watch and see.
A tremendous variety of peoples have also played a role in Iberian history. The
list of settlers in this region is almost a comprehensive list of peoples you should know
from ancient history—Celts, Phoenicians, Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Barbarians,
Arabs, and Africans. Most of these groups were brought by the goals of empires, the
quest for converts, the desire for trade, or merely the lust to plunder. Cave paintings
suggest human habitation of the Iberian Peninsula as early as 1900-1600 BC with
evidence of agriculture, houses, and metalworking clearly placing these people in the
Neolithic Age.
The focus of the early history of Iberia is in what would be the province of
Andalusia in the South, but in the Pyrenees another people as mysterious as the Etruscans
took up residence. The origins of this people-group are unclear, and their language is
entirely unrelated to Spanish or to any other European language, but the Basques are still
around today. Their relationship with their neighbors has been strained as evidenced by
Basque Separatists being the first culprits suggested for recent terrorist bombings of
trains in Spain.
The attraction to Andalusia in the South was silver, drawing foreign invaders in
the form of Phoenicians as early as 800 BC. The Phoenicians founded Cadiz as the first
of many trading posts that opened up the Iberian Peninsula to the rest of the
Mediterranean world. Then Greeks arrived in 500 BC lured by the silver as well as
copper and gold in the mountains. Greeks brought olive trees and grape vines with them,
and these contributions have been the basis of Spanish agriculture ever since. By the
time the Greeks came the inhabitants of Andalusia were known as Iberians. The interior
of Iberia belonged to the Celts, a group of people who migrated from Asia all over
Europe bringing the broad sword, iron smelting, and pants (thankfully). Celts burned
their dead so little has been discovered about them.
Carthage took over Iberian trade after the Phoenicians were destroyed by
Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon in 573 BC. Some Greeks continued on as colonists but
Iberia was basically Carthaginian for around three hundred years. Carthage’s most
significant contribution was that they made Rome aware of Iberia and then lost it.
Remember the Punic Wars? Hannibal Barca had vowed to destroy Rome while a boy in
Iberia. When war erupted he went to Rome with elephants that first had to cross the
Pyrenees before taking on the Alps.
Hannibal went to Italy while two Roman legions went to Iberia under none other
than Scipio Africanus. Scipio captured Cadiz and began the official rule of Rome over
Iberia in 206 BC. Neither he nor any other Roman general, however, would completely
pacify Spain over the next 200 years. Did you know that guerrilla was a Spanish word?
Guerrilla warfare, of course, developed “in Spain of treacherous terrain.” Guerrilla
means “little war,” not “big, black ape,” and sabotage and ambushes plagued Rome for
centuries.
Romans called everyone in Spain “Iberians.” A series of revolts by Iberians
climaxed with Numantia where 20,000 Roman soldiers were captured by fewer than
8,000 Numantian Celts in 137 BC. Do you remember how Rome responded to such
events? They returned with 60,000 soldiers to crush the revolt. One final revolt was
begun by a half-Roman, half-Iberian named Quintus Sertorius, but he was pursued by
Pompey beginning in 80 BC and killed by 72 BC. Spain then became the scene of the
clash between Pompey and Julius Caesar in which most Iberians finally acknowledged
Roman rule and sided with Pompey. Do you remember whether that was a good choice
or not? It wasn’t, and as Rome turned into an empire Caesar Augustus beat the last
resistance in 19 BC and named the whole place Hispania. I’ll now call Iberia “Spain.”
Imperial Rome developed Spain more than all previous outside influences.
Romans brought urbanization, 12,000 miles of roads, aqueducts, amphitheaters, and
Iberians slowly gained access to citizenship. Spain in return became one of Rome’s most
productive holdings. The Empire received wine, olive oil, and grain which were exported
along with gold, silver, lead, copper, iron, and tin all the way to India. Pliny said Spanish
gold amounted to 20,000 pounds per year, or roughly one billion dollars in modern
money! Spain was given over entirely to Rome’s tenant farming system with both
Romans and native Iberians as landowners. A general tax instituted in 38 BC marked the
beginning of the calendar used until the medieval period. Fewer and fewer legions were
necessary to keep the peace, and intermarriage became widespread. A century later a
Spanish Roman, Trajan, became Emperor followed by his Spanish Roman nephew,
Hadrian, both born in Andalusia.
Rome gave Spain two important gifts. First, Rome provided a unifying language
that all Iberians of all backgrounds came to speak—Latin. Remember, Spanish is one of
the five languages derived from Latin known as the Romance languages (along with
Italian, Portuguese, French, and Rumanian). Secondly, Rome converted all Iberians to a
unifying religion, Christianity. After enduring persecution from the pagan interior, Spain
developed the most intense relationship with the Roman Catholic Church of any
European nation, even eclipsing France’s “special” relationship with Rome. A Spaniard,
Theodosius, was the Emperor who declared Christianity to be the official religion of the
Empire in 380 AD.
But, remember, Rome fell. Incredibly, six million Spanish Christians eventually
accepted the rule of 200,000 invading Visigoth barbarians who came in 409. That’s how
weak Rome had become prior to its ultimate collapse. Since the Visigoths were Arians, a
heretical form of Christianity, the Church became the only unifying force after 600 years
of Roman rule. The Visigoths erased most of the advances Rome had achieved for Spain
by the time the greatest Visigoth king, Leovigild, consolidated his control in 569.
Was Spain a nation once it was taken away from the Roman Empire? The
Visigoths elected their kings, the one possibly less stable method than that of the French
who divided kingdoms among sons. Yet historians count Leovigild the first Spanish
king—he had a crown; he had a throne; he produced a law code; he coined money, but he
provided no hereditary stability. More unity was achieved, however, when barbaric
German and Roman laws were combined in a new law code in 654.
By 710, Spanish Visigoths were still electing kings, and the inherent instability of
this practice was revealed when the winner was Roderick. Immediate rebellions broke
out and precipitated the next major milestone of Spanish history. Anti-Roderick nobles
in 711 enlisted Arabs from North Africa (7,000 mercenaries) led by Tarik. The Arab
force landed on a rock on the southern-most extremity of the Iberian Peninsula. The rock
has ever after been known as the Rock of Tarik, or Jebel-al-Tarik, or the Rock of
Gibraltar.
Roderick, by the way, disappeared in the ensuing battle but left behind two
accidental symbols of what had drawn everyone to Spain from the beginning, a golden
saddle and a silver shoe. Ironically, it was a Catholic bishop fighting for Roderick who
went over to the Arabs’ side that caused Roderick’s defeat. In one act the bishop
betrayed his king, his country, and his religion because the Muslims invited over the
Strait of Gibraltar could not be invited to leave for eight centuries.
Muslims therefore make up the next dominant cultural contribution to Spanish
history. They took only six years to subdue Christian Spain (by 718). Some Christians
fled, but most submitted and some even intermarried. Roman and Visigoth centralization
of power was allowed to fragment under various Muslim warlords. Muslims crossed the
Pyrenees and invaded France. They were not stopped until they felt the hammer of
Charles Martel in 732. They were driven back below the Pyrenees Mountains, an
essential fact since the mountains of northern Spain were left as a Christian stronghold,
the only hope of future reconquista.
Instead of demanding conversion to Islam, Muslim rulers tolerated Christianity
and Judaism as Religions of the Book. Allowing subjects to not convert, though, allowed
a poll tax on all remaining non-Muslims to raise revenue. Over three hundred years,
most Spaniards converted to Islam even if it was just to avoid paying the tax. Europe saw
Spanish society as divided into three groups—Jews, Mozarabs (cooperative Christians
who lived under Muslim rule), and Moors (invaders and converts to Islam). The word
moors is Latin for “people from Mauritania” in West Africa or Morocco.
Fleeing the division that erupted in Islam, Abd-al-Rahman I began to rule Spain in
756 until 788. Internal Muslim revolts allowed Christians in the North (shepherds) to
remain independent and even to encroach on the Muslim South while breeding giant,
ferocious sheep dogs called Great Pyrenees today. Being shepherds allowed Christians to
lead a lifestyle of invasion and retreat up into the mountains for sanctuary.
Under Abd-al-Rahman II from 822-852 the famous multi-cultural era in Spanish
history flourished. Abd-al-Rahman II gained military dominance with a navy of 300
ships and a standing army. This stability created peace with Christians which created
wealth in a dynamic we have seen repeatedly in all cultures in all times. Spanish traders
became famous for oil, wine, weapons (metallurgy going all the way back to the Celts),
cloth, Eastern luxuries, and perhaps the most important trading commodity of all, Eastern
knowledge. Books from Persia, India, and Greece were the only cultural connection
Europe had with ancient knowledge of philosophy, astronomy (astrology), medicine,
music, and poetry. Moors, Mozarabs, Christians, and Jews discussed ideas in Spain long
since forgotten in post-Charlemagne Europe.
The depth of these discussions is captured in a revealing cultural phenomenon
regarding the Spanish language. Whereas Visigoths contributed at best about 100 words
to modern Spanish, 7,000 words came from Arabic. While most of these words dealt
with agriculture and commerce, others are the lasting legacy of Spanish intellectual
exchange under Abd-al-Rahman II. An interesting fact is that the number of words Arabs
contributed to Spanish is the same as the number of Arabs who came over from North
Africa to depose Roderick, as if every Muslim soldier brought one word with him. As is
typical, however, peace gave way to persecutions that drove even Mozarabs north from
800-900. The advanced culture of southern Spain was thus transplanted even to Christian
kingdoms of the North like Leon and Castile. Perhaps a foreshadowing of what follows,
however, is the fact that Castile was named after the many castles Christian lords had
prepared for defense.