Post by nockwasright on Nov 22, 2005 12:21:14 GMT -5
ienjoylurking said:
I agree on France being more important than Spain in European History, in fact I consider France and England the most important european countries.
I would say Germany is on their same level.
But imo, Spain has been more important than Italy.
Being responsible for the discovery of the new world which is almost always called the single most important event of the past millenium and being the first global superpower, and first power in Europe on land and on the sea for almost 150 years has to count for something right? Also, the spanish role stopping the protestant reformation, the wars against the turks, and all their involvement in the netherlands and Germany, and above all things, how the economic power shifted from center east mediterranean sea to the atlantic ocean, making venice, geneve, ottomans quite irrelevant, and the atlantic ports very wealthy have all been very important in shaping Europe to this day. They also had a cultural golden age, Quixote is generally considered the first modern novel for example.
Sometimes because of the decadence Spain experienced for so many centuries we forget they used to be da shit.
Well I meant relevant for European identiy, not for the World. The discovery and colonisation of the New World is in an European perspective not so crucial.
I don't think actually there's much point in trying to spot if Spain or Italy had more weight to shape European identity, but my feeling (quite just a feeling) keep being that Italy is more present in such identity.
Don Quixote is a cornerstone of world literature, but is an isolated phenomenon and is not the expression of a movement of thought that can be traced to Spain. The renaissance is instead at the core of European identity. Then, the cristian church's history is tied with Italy. And most of the European visual art is in Italy.
This told, I actually love Spain, go there often, and don't think it at all a lesser country than Italy. Somewhat Spain remains more on "her own" in my vision, a frontier country, which exported her identity to half the Americas, but that is periferic and somewhat odd in Europe.