9 ms·
Ill named?
by shsbdksn 2y ago
Ill named?
- juunpp 2y agoIll-named because it wasn't a reconquest of anything; Spain did not exist as a nation anytime prior to that. It was a bunch of tribes originally, followed by the Greeks settling in, then the Romans, then the Visigoths, and then the Arabs. A mesh of many cultures until the main kingdoms united and wiped the land of "non-Christian blood". And thereafter the Spanish government has gone back and forth trying to wipe the remaining cultures in the peninsula to impose its own, as can be learned from the recent history of the past century. Nothing to be proud of, really. I actually hope Columbus turns out to be Jew so they stop talking about him.
- LAC-Tech 2y agoSurely the intent of the name was a "re-conquest of Iberia from muslims by christians".
- juunpp 2y agoNamed by whom? The term did not even show up until the 20th century, so it wasn't the christians who named it like that. Pure Spanish myth. Oh, and the battle that started it all? Never even existed. Pure historical revisionism for nationalistic purposes with no more reality that horned vikings. There are many things wrong with the term. A "reconquest" also makes it sound like the area was under siege by the Arabs or something. But the fact of the matter is that the peninsula, except for perhaps the Basque country, has been a melting pot of cultures under the succession of rules by larger empires. It's not like those christians, or the "Spanish", held control at some point, lost it, and then got it back; they never had it in the first place or even existed as a nation. So it's just a ridiculous term altogether. https://www.lavanguardia.com/historiayvida/20191208/472055743507/historia-y-vida-reconquista-al-andalus-historia-rae-don-pelayo-covadonga.html https://www.lavanguardia.com/historiayvida/20191208/47205574... https://blogs.elpais.com/historias/2015/04/la-batalla-de-covadonga-casi-1300-a%C3%B1os-despu%C3%A9s.html https://blogs.elpais.com/historias/2015/04/la-batalla-de-cov...
- xeromal 2y agoRegardless of the term I'm glad it happened
- juunpp 2y agoWhy?
- kyleee 2y agoRed wine and tapas instead of the religion of peace?
- Tainnor 2y agoIt wasn't all sunshine and roses back then. When the Reconquista was completed, one of the first thing Spain did was expel all the Jews. Jews could in theory convert to Christianity instead, but then they became the prime targets of the Spanish Inquisition. We should be careful not mindlessly apply our modern ideas of Islam and Christianity to a completely different time period.
- WorkerBee28474 2y agohttps://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4ovuao/la_reconquista_was_reconquest_a_term_used_at_the https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4ovuao/la_re...
- juunpp 2y agoThis just confirms the point I made above about naming. What's your point exactly?
- cryptonector 2y agoThe point about the naming isn't very interesting. The concept existed since medieval times. In the 18th century it got termed reconquista. Later, in the 19th century it got capitalized. None of that is 20th century Francoist propaganda even if Franco did also push the concept.
- WorkerBee28474 2y agoYou pretend like it was a bunch of villages living in happy harmony until the Catholics arrived. You're lying. It was part of the post-Roman empire, then it got conquered by Muslims, then it got re-conquered by Catholics. Hence, reconquista.
- juunpp 2y agoI don't pretend or lie. Historians put the start of Spain as a unified nation with the Catholic monarchs. Spain did not exist as a nation prior to then. Hence, nothing to conquer "back", just a succession of empires and smaller kingdoms and a melting of cultures consolidating into the birth of the nation that it is today.
- WorkerBee28474 2y agoWhat was 'conquered back' was the Iberian Peninsula. Whether or not a particular state was there at the time doesn't matter, the land and people were conquered and reconquered.
- hn_throwaway_99 2y agoYou're making this weird semantic distinction that is irrelevant. Nobody is arguing that Spain was a single, completely unified polity before the Islamic conquests. But it was controlled by the Christian Visigothic Kingdom of Spain, and then it was conquered by the Islamic Umayyads, so the reconquista was to bring it back under Christian rule.
- juunpp 2y agoThe semantic distinction is relevant because Reconquista, with the capital R and everything, is an ideological, propagandistic narrative by the Spanish (central government) originating in the 20th century.
- cryptonector 2y agoIf we're going to be pedantic, the capital-R Reconquista name for the process of the -uh- re-conquest of Spain was introduced in the 19th century. And it was used throughout Latin America in elementary schoolbooks at least in the 1980s. Franco might have wanted to do some propagandizing with the term, but it was mainly seen as a non-partisan propaganda because Catholicism was a unifying force in Hispanic cultures rather than a partisan and divisive one.
- shsbdksn 2y agoThat's a very strange way to present Spanish history. Spain was unified province of Rome, and then its own country under the Visigoths for a total of 800 years. That's 800 years of unified governance. Spain had a common language (vulgate) and religion (various sects of christianity). We have the pre-Islamic negotiations on issues of Faith. The Visigoths were Arians but slowly became Catholics. We have the history of countless councils. Spain wasn't, but for some savages, empty land for the muslim armies to take. And it's ridiculous to think it could have been - where did the people to fight the most powerful army of the day come from? Asturias is just not that big.
- juunpp 2y agoHispania constituted several Roman provinces. I'm not sure what you mean by "unified". Unified legally under the Roman empire, sure, but not as a nation or even culturally. (By that token, we could say "Spain" was unified under the Arabs, too.) It is not until the marriage of the Catholic monarchs that historians put the start of Spain as a unified nation. So "reconquista" doesn't add up to reality; "unification" or "birth" would be a better term. I think your other points are fine, thanks for adding. > Spain wasn't, but for some savages, empty land for the muslim armies to take. It was fairly a walk in the park for them; took only a decade to get the peninsula under control and venture into France, until they lost their first battle there. That, and the Basque country; nobody can conquer the Basque country, which is why they speak a non-romance language to this day, among other things.
- anon291 2y agoThere was no such thing as nations in the way we think about them today back then.
- felipeerias 2y agoThe provinces of the Iberian Peninsula, as well as the Balearic Islands and the coast south of the strait of Gibraltar, formed the Diocese of Hispania until the Germanic invasions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diocese_of_Hispania https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diocese_of_Hispania
- anon291 2y agoThe Arabians were a conquering people in the peninsula. In that sense, kicking them out is absolutely a reconquista, and this sort of absolute denial of that is just flat out historical revisionism.
- jltsiren 2y agoReconquista is an anachronistic concept here, but so are nations in the modern sense. Instead of looking at the wars in Iberia in isolation, it's better to consider them in the context of the wider Europe. Medieval Europeans saw Christendom as the legitimate successor of the Roman Empire. (Or at least the elites did.) Many wars were fought to expand the borders of Christendom. Some of them against pagans, and some to take back land that used to be Christian. The wars that are often called the Reconquista were part of the latter. So, in a sense, it was not about taking Spanish land back for Spain, but about taking Roman land back for Rome.
- felipeerias 2y agoI've read different versions of that argument and it essentially boils down to saying that the Reconquista did not exist because there wasn't one single political entity implementing one single military plan over seven centuries. This obscures the fact that there was ample religious, social, linguistic, and even legal (Liber Iudiciorum) continuity since Late Antiquity.
- mytailorisrich 2y agoThe Iberic peninsula had been conquered by Arab Muslims, who moved into France before being pushed back. The term "Reconquista" is perfectly suited to describe what hapoened: European Christians re-conquered that land. Especially in term of Christendom this was a re-conquest.