Attempts to show as a whole the peninsula made up of Spain and Portugal, with the slow unfolding of a pattern of society and an attitude to life still subtly distinct from those north of the Pyrenees. The successive occupations of Roman, Visigoth and Muslim span between them more than a thousand years. The Peninsula's great contribution to the modern age was the opening up of the New World in the west by Spain, and of new routes to the east by Portugal. Over the last century and a half the history of both peoples provides a case-study in the esential relativity of forms of government.
Contents
The Setting -- Roman Foundations -- Visigothic Overlay -- Irruption from Africa -- The Reconquest -- Patterns of Society -- The End of the Middle Ages -- Literature and the Arts -- I -- Involvement in Europe -- The Age of Retribution -- Literature and the Arts -- II -- 'No More Pyrenees' -- The Great Experiment -- Disillusion -- Literature and the Arts -- III.
