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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.