This thesis advances our understanding of the effects of foreign aid programmes in the Spanish economy during the 1950s. It does so by concentrating on three aspects. First, it considers the contribution to economic growth of aid-financed goods by relieving input bottlenecks. Results from an input-output analysis downplay the alleged importance of aid in increasing Spanish output by providing raw materials and other inputs. Second, it discusses the extent to which foreign donors influenced Spanish economic policy-making. Based on original archival sources from both recipient and donors, it is argued here that the United States was particularly ineffective at imposing its economic policy agenda. Surprisingly, the best way to increase the likelihood of the adoption of economic policy reform was not to exercise outright leverage but to provide further unconditional aid disbursements. The analysis of the involvement of the International Monetary Fund and Organisation for European Economic Co-operation to underwrite the 1959 Spanish Stabilisation Plan suggests that the multilateral organisations were acutely aware of the overriding importance of a true commitment to the reforms by the local policy-makers. Rather than relying on formal conditionality, they ascertained such commitment by monitoring the internal support for the reform programme whilst carefully avoiding any instance that may jeopardise the cohesion of the domestic pro-reform coalition. Third, the dissertation motivates a 'credibility hypothesis' under which the American aid-for-bases programme improved the political credibility of the regime and with it private businesses' expectations. A range of both qualitative and quantitative evidence, of which the use of financial market data is paramount, supports the hypothesis. This result contributes to solving the puzzle of Spanish economic history during a period that sees the resumption of economic growth after a stagnant first decade under Franco's rule despite very limited policy change.

A vast body of knowledge has been produced in the field of war remembrance, particularly concerning the Spanish Civil War. However, the representation and interpretation of that conflictual past have been increasingly contested within the wider context of ‘recuperation of historical memory’ which is taking place both in Spain and elsewhere. An academic gap has been identified with regard to the part played by the Basque Children (Niños Vascos) who were evacuated to the UK in 1937 as a result of the war. This thesis investigates the impact that forced migration has had on these children’s identity construction, particularly those who settled permanently in the host country. The thesis is a comparative examination of the process of memory construction and memorialisation, across transnational spaces and time. It analyses the nature and development of commemorative practices both in the UK and in the Basque Country, addressing some of the most fundamental issues related to agency and categorisations. My analysis of the social actors goes beyond Jelin’s ‘memory entrepreneurs’ to include those memory profiteers who benefit from a return to the past in order to fulfil their own personal agendas. I introduce the new term ‘conmemoraccionistas’ to refer to them. The central question dealt with here is how identities are constructed and reconstructed in the social and political arenas in which remembrance takes place. By using ethnography and a multimodal approach, this study provides an in-depth analysis of the discourses of the main agents engaged in memory production, and their agendas. It also identifies reasons for disengagement. Finally, it examines the interrelated narratives of those social actors and how they build on interaction with each other in a complex and continually changing social reality, where I argue, identities can no longer be approached from an essentialist polarising and dichotomising perspective. On the contrary, new approaches are needed which see identitarian development as a dynamic and accumulative process in which different actors have an input and identities are displayed according to particular contexts, settings, and audiences.

This thesis investigates the economic culture that fostered the constitutional history and political cosmology of late medieval and early modern Genoa. Genoese economic actors are here studied through their diversified trades and businesses, as they moved from the shores of the Black Sea into the Atlantic. Genoa’s late medieval economic expansion is described through several case studies and briefly compared to the state-run military expansion of Venice’s empire. Genoese colonial history is found to be both peculiar and relevant, as entrepreneurial techniques, institutions and attitudes later transferred to the Atlantic first originated in the private networks built by Ligurian businessmen in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The adaptability and entrepreneurial skills that allowed Genoese merchants and bankers, captains and businessmen, tax collectors and clergymen to enter the Spanish Atlantic in the sixteenth century are linked to the medieval history of the Genoese commune, to the specific idea of libertà progressively defined and protected by its fluid elite, and to the development of Hispanic-Genoese diplomatic and financial relations. Through the study of diverse documents in Italian, Genoese dialect, Venetian dialect, Spanish, Latin, and English, Genoa’s civic ideology and institutions are revealed to be intertwined with Genoese entrepreneurs’ simultaneity of careers, cosmopolitan self-perception, and mimetic imperialism. The thesis closes with a survey of the Genoese economic activities in Spain’s American kingdoms, whose most significant result is the illustration of Genoa’s multifaceted roles in the building of the Hapsburg Atlantic. This work thus constitutes the first chronologically and thematically broad attempt to explain the prolonged Genoese presence on the stage of intercontinental commerce as well as the existence of a modern Ligurian Atlantic.

During the past three or four months, May to July 1918, there has been a great pandemic of so-called influenza which, starting in Spain, has spread over the whole of Europe and even other parts of the world. It has caused considerable wastage in our own Army and those of our Allies and has, therefore, been the object of much study amongst the medical services.