Author Description

This course uses the year 1492 to examine the events that made Spain a country and an empire. It traces the centralization of power in Castile under Ferdinand and Isabella, the expulsion of Jews and Muslims from the Iberian Peninsula, and the developments that led to the voyages of Columbus. You will study the political, economic, religious, and cultural reforms that made Spain a European power; the Edict of Expulsion that forced Jews to become Christian or leave Spain; and the details and implications of Columbus's discoveries. These lectures present Spanish history from the perspective of the victors and the defeated: the Muslims, Jews; and New World natives for whom 1492 was not a time of wonder, but of terror and despair.