History of Technology: v. 30: European Technologies in Spanish History

(Hardback)

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Description

This book focuses on the development of four key issues in the development of modern Spain; knowledge, manufacturing, energy and telecommunications, and public works. If technology transfer from advanced nations to less developed systems always worked, then the whole world would now be rich. That this is not the case is so obvious, we might well expect that the history of the processes, successes and failures of technology transfer across nations would be a very well-established field of enquiry. In fact, the theme is still a developing one, and the present Special Issue centres on the case of Spain as exemplary in many respects. The collected essays focus upon the four major themes of knowledge, manufacturing, energy, and telecommunications and public works. Essays range in time from the 18th century to the present time, from studies of espionage and early links between craftsmen and savants, to the institutions of technology (from training systems, to private enterprise activity, or patents), to case-studies of silk manufacture, shipbuilding, mining, paper-making, and pharmaceuticals. Each essay offers a broad variety of material to bring to bear on a major problem of world development, past, present, and future.

Reviews

"The book should find a home not only on the desks of specialist scholars, but also in advanced university seminars on technology and Spanish history." - Benita Blessing, University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA, European History Quarterly

Author Bio

Ian Inkster is Research Professor of International History at Nottingham Trent University. He has broad research interests across the history of industrialisation and technological change, and in global history.