Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0334/03345.txt

Text File | 1991-06-25 | 29KB | 471 lines

$Unique_ID{COW03345}
$Pretitle{379}
$Title{Spain
History}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Embassy of Spain, Washington DC}
$Affiliation{Embassy of Spain, Washington DC}
$Subject{century
peninsula
first
mediterranean
kingdom
roman
spain
caliphate
europe
spanish}
$Date{1989}
$Log{}
Country:     Spain
Book:        Spain 1989
Author:      Embassy of Spain, Washington DC
Affiliation: Embassy of Spain, Washington DC
Date:        1989

History

     The Peninsula's first inhabitants, who were a hunting and food gathering
people, settled along the coasts from Cantabria to the Mediterranean, mainly
around the estuaries and along the longest rivers flowing from east to west,
which emptied into the Atlantic, such as the Duero, Tajo, Guadiana and
Guadalquivir; and along those flowing eastwards toward the Mediterranean, the
Ebro and Jucar-Turia rivers. The Peninsula's interior, in general of a
relatively high altitude with scant vegetation, subject to frost and irregular
and limited precipitation and separated from the coast by mountain ridges,
served as a hinterland for these first settlers. This, then, was the pattern
for human habitation in the Iberian Peninsula, which was maintained up to
approximately the 11th century, after which the dominant pattern changed to a
north-south delineation.

The First Human Settlements along the Peninsula's Coasts and River Basins

     For many thousands of years, people of different cultures reached the
Peninsula by sea and settled along its coasts. The Iberian Peninsula formed
the western extreme of a process of cultural diffusion which originated in the
Middle East around the 5th century B.C. and spread westward by way of the
Mediterranean.

     This process, known as the Neolithic revolution, basically consisted in a
change from a gathering economy to a productive one based on agriculture and
animal husbandry. From 5000 to 4000 B.C. to the 16th century A.D. another
important period in Peninsular history was initiated in which the
Mediterranean basin and civilization became clearly determinant.

     From approximately 1100 B.C. to the middle of the 3rd century B.C.,
commercial and cultural contact with the more developed Mediterranean
civilizations arrived with the Phoenicians (who settled from the Algarve in
the Atlantic southern part of the Peninsula to the eastern Mediterranean coast
or the Levant) and the Greeks (who were to be found from the Ebro estuary up
to the Gulf of Rosas in the north-eastern Mediterranean). By the end of this
period, both civilizations would be displaced by the Romans and the
Carthaginians respectively.

     In this way, a substantial difference became evident, between the 12th
and 4th century B.C. between an Iberia that extended from the northeastern
Mediterranean to the southern Atlantic, on the one hand,and the interior of
the country on the other. The latter was peopled by different tribes, some of
which were Celts, who had a relatively primitive organization and were nomadic
herders and who moved their flocks to the highlands in the north in summer
and to the southern sub-Meseta in winter. Herders who conquered pastures for
their flocks of sheep would constitute another geo-historic key to the Iberian
Peninsula's development.

     To the contrary, the coastal settlers, known generically as Iberians,
would by 400 B.C. form a group of city-states (Tartessus, the biblical
Tarshish or perhaps the mythical Atlantis) very similar to and influenced by
the more developed commercial, agricultural and mining urban centres of the
eastern Mediterranean. The first written records on the Peninsula date from
this period. It is said that Hispania, the name the Romans used for the
Peninsula, was in reality a term with Semitic roots originating from Hispalis
(Sevilla).

     The origin of these Celtic-Iberian peoples has been the object of heated
polemics between specialists defending their Mediterranean roots and those
partial to the African or continental (celtist) theory. One or the other of
these groups has frequently tried to support their claims with cultural or
even political conclusions of considerable magnitude.

The Lasting Imprint of the Roman Presence in Hispania

     The Roman presence in the Peninsula followed the route of the Greek
commercial bases; however, it commenced with a struggle between this great
empire and Carthage for the control of the western Mediterranean during the
second century B.C. In any case, it was at that time that the Peninsula would
enter as an entity in the international political circuit then in existence,
and from then on became a coveted strategic objective due to its singular
geographic position between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean and to the
agricultural and mineral wealth of its southern part.

     The penetration and the subsequent Roman conquest of the Peninsula
covered the prolonged period stretching from 218 to 19 B.C. The Romans were
alarmed by the Carthaginian expansion toward the northeast because, as did
Napoleon centuries later, they considered that the Rio Ebro constituted the
natural frontier of transalpine Gaul which was also under their influence.

     The second Punic War was fought for this reason. While Hannibal was
making his legendary crossing of the Alps, the Roman legion attacked his
Spanish base, Cartago Nova (present-day Cartagena), its port and its mines.
Its fall at the hands of Publius Cornelius Scipio (209 B.C.) marked the
decline of Hannibal's army in Italy and the beginning of the great Roman
conquest of Spain.

     The Romans did not merely want to replace the Carthigians, they also
wanted to extend their hegemony to the rest of the Peninsula. However, they
met with considerable resistance, above all in interior Hispania. Even prior
to this, there existed a phenomenon which later would become a constant in the
history of the Peninsula; the herding people of the highlands and the mountain
areas of the interior, lacking adequate grazing land and living space,
encroached upon the agricultural settlements of the southern valleys.

     Among the many confrontations that took place during the time of the
Roman Conquest of the interior of Hispania, the most renowned was the
Celtic-Iberian-Lusitanian war that lasted twenty years (154 to 134 B.C.). The
guerrilla tactics of the Lusitanian caudillo Viriathus and the legendary
although unproven collective suicide of the Numantian population who was being
besieged by the Romans has been celebrated by Roman historians.

     Some of the great myths on the "Spanish character" that would later be
compiled by Renaissance writers and which would be repeated by the Romantic
writers during the Napoleonic era had their origins during this period. The
independent pride of these original Spaniards, their bellicosity, cruelty and
valour in war and their capacity of resistance were renowned and over time
became recurring themes.

     The Roman presence in Hispania lasted for seven centuries during which
the basic frontiers of the Peninsula in relation to other European countries
were shaped. The interior divisions in which the Roman province was
compartmentalized have endured: Lusitania, Tarraconense and Betica. But the
Romans did not only bequeath a territorial administration, but also left a
legacy of social and cultural characters such as the family, language,
religion, law and municipal government the assimilation of which definitively
placed the Peninsula within the Greco-Latin and later the Judeo-Christian
worlds.

     The Romans chiefly settled along the coasts and rivers, and today's
cities such as Tarragona, Cartagena, Lisbon and above all Merida give an idea
of the geographic sense of the Roman presence. However, at the beginning of
the 5th century A.D., the map of population distribution began to change
significantly. It is then that different Germanic tribes, some predatory,
others allies, invaded the Peninsula, such as the Visigoths who settled in the
interior and the Suebi, in the west. Parallely, and from the 3rd century A.D.