Exhuming Franco: Spain’s second transition

Abstract

struggles that ultimately led to the independence of Spain’s American colonies. However, no historian is uniformly equipped to write a history that covers multiple continents and disparate regions across the globe. It is understandable then that not all chapters derive from archival research. The opening chapters rely heavily on secondary sources, and there is little new or fresh insight provided in these sections. Furthermore, a harsh critic might highlight several campaigns and events that have received little to no attention within the narrative. The British expeditions to the West Indies in the 1790s, and the brutal violence that took place during the Haitian Revolution, could have received greater consideration. Without the benefits of modern medicine, microbes are frequently more lethal than musket or cannon, and this reviewer feels that Mikaberidze could have better accounted for the appalling human cost of disease in campaigns across the globe. While this book should be praised for illustrating the global ramifications of the war in impressive detail, the narrative rarely pauses to reflect on how viewing the war in a global context might change our understanding of the conflict. Despite the global approach to the subject, Mikaberidze tends to ask overly familiar questions that have been posed by earlier scholars: Was Napoleon integral to the failure of the Peace of Amiens? Was he justified in rejecting peace proposals in 1813? Was the legacy of Napoleonic reform a positive one? Greater attention could have been paid to how war acted as a medium for intellectual, cultural, and technological exchange between different military bodies stationed around the world. Despite these faults, the expansive breadth and depth of Mikaberidze’s account will satisfy popular and scholarly audiences. It is a strong singlevolume account of the Napoleonic Wars.