Building Alliances against the New? Monarchy and the Military in Industrialising Spain

A reconsideration of the impact of imperial disaster and its ensuing challenges for political and social structures in Spain, as well as the impact on evolving attitudes/perceptions across elite and popular constituencies. In particular, it examines the potentialities within the monarchist system for gradualist change/reform, as well considering the evolution of military cultures and conflicting attitudes within the military to the social and economic change attendant on accelerating (if highly uneven) industrialisation and urbanisation. It looks at a number of emergent contradictions and how these led to temporary military-industrialist alliances which speeded up the dissolution of the monarchist system itself. It also explores differing historiographical explanations (including some significant differences between production inside Spain and elsewhere) assessing their empirical basis. But connected to this, it analyzes the specific instrumental functions of much more overtly political and revisionist discourses/images of Restoration monarchy and military establishment which have appeared retrospectively.