Backwardness and its discontents.

SPANISH history; SOCIAL history; SCHOLARLY periodicals; HISTORIOGRAPHY; SOCIAL change; POLITICAL change

This article introduces papers in the August 2004 issue of the journal "Social History." These papers are representative of some of the sensitivities shaping historiographical debates in Spain, Britain and North America. Debates have suggested fresh frameworks for thinking about analytical particularities and overcoming received wisdom about failures and absences. The authors intend to convey various dimensions of an intellectual commitment to revise persistent national narratives. Thus, emphasizing diverse methods and approaches, they have included articles that provide broad interpretative frameworks as well as monographs. The reader will also note a tension that can be said to define the particularity of contemporary Spanish historiography. In sum, the articles show that the histories of Spain shed new light on questions at the heart of contemporary European historiography, including the causes of general processes of social and political change, the formation of cultural, gender and national identities, and the consequences of imperial conquest and decolonization.