Learning objectives
Descriptor I: Knowledge of European history of 1930s and relative historiography. Critical analysis of primary and secondary sources. Descriptor II: Ability to develop an autonomous judgement on historiography. Descriptors III, IV, V: According to what specifically defined in the Course objectives and in the learning area.
Prerequisites
The course requires a basic knowledge of contemporary history with a particular focus on the years between WWI and WWII.
Course unit content
The course will focus initially on the remote premises of the Spanish conflict of 1936-39 and on the main features of the Spanish Church from the end of the 19th century. Then, it will survey the years of Primo de Rivera’s dictatorship (1923-1930) and of the Second Republic according to the international framework and the crisis of democracy in many European countries.
Main topics during classes will be:
- Military uprising: dynamics, motivations and historiographical interpretations
- Conflict internationalization (Italian, German and Soviet interventions)
- Anti-clerical violence: dynamics, motivations and historiographical interpretations
- The five Spains: republican, “national”, revolutionary, the “third Spain”, Basque country
- Repression and political violence at the front and behind the lines
- First reactions from the Vatican, “L’Osservatore Romano”, Spanish bishops (Múgica e
Olaechea); the “crusade” and the Spanish episcopate’s Collective letter of July 1937
- War evolution and political situation in the two fronts
- Diplomatic attempts for a mediation
- Re-Christianization and Vatican’s fear of a possible Nazi and Fascist drift of the new Spanish regime
- The building of the winners’ regime and the debate about Francoist regime: authoritarian or totalitarian?
Full programme
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Bibliography
- G. Ranzato, L’eclissi della
democrazia, Torino, Bollati Boringhieri, 2004
- A. Botti (ed.), Clero e guerre spagnole, 1908-1939, Soveria Mannelli, Rubbettino, 2011,
Teaching methods
Frontal lectures and students' exercises on pertinent primary sources.
Assessment methods and criteria
Oral examination to prove student’s knowledge about the main dynamic of the religious factor in Spanish Civil War according to historiography and to verify student’s ability of analysing one of the primary source considered during the course.
Other information
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