Importance of Helen Graham’s concept of the “culture wars”
Essay Question.
Consider the importance of Helen Graham’s concept of the “culture wars” for an understanding of the Spanish Civil War as a European war.
War is a painfully familiar instrument wielded by man against fellow man throughout history. Each war has its own set of triggers, conflicts, and consequences; however, one undeniable truth is that war has the uncanny capability to bring change. Whether the change is positive or not depends on which side of the divide you end up on when the guns are silenced. According to Graham, Spain’s domesticWar is among the infamous wars of contemporary history.”
Helen Graham equates SpanishdomesticWarfareto World War II in literary epitaph rather than in physical devastation and human loss. The civil war generated from a number of causes and had a variety of consequences from a national and international context. Graham examines the factual history of the Spanish war and places them against a social background.
The Spanish conflict resulted from the country’s rebelliousmilitary officers, the Right Wing group (18July 1936). General Francisco Franco called army officers to rise against the government and overthrow the republican government. The military had a long-standing history of intervening in Spain’s governmentalaffairs,but this particular coup had a unique purpose. The coup intended to terminate the country’s democracy, which resulted from FirstWorld War and Russians’ revolution
Graham shows the how the external involvement propagated the Spanish conflict. However, the military coup inspired immediate violence in most parts of Spain. Graham isolates three factors that connect the war to the pre-war domestic climate.
The first factor is the disproportionate development in Spain. Against the background of unequal development, the military coup created several cultural wars that is, rural traditional lifestyle versus urban and cosmopolitan lifestyle. Religious versus secular that is the traditional gender alignments against the modern woman. Other factorscomprised of liberal political ideologists set against authoritarians,Youth versus age among others. The second issue was Manichaean Catholicism, which generated most of the intensity with which opposing sides clashed in the culture wars. The third factor is the inflexible and intolerant political culture perpetuated by officers during the early period of the 20th Century.
Through the course of the war, there were characteristics that became distinguishing factors in Spain’s domestic fight. The Spanish internalbattle was the first European warfareto target civilians in groups through bomb raids. Photojournalism made the Civil War the first photogenic war by showing the world the devastating effects of the strife. The battle spread to Europe and the entire world showing a clear sight of the effects of fighting.
Many filmmakersavoided focusing on the conflict in an effort to avoid antagonizing either the nationalists or republican ideologists.
The protagonists, who were the Republicans, were mainly urban workers, agriculturalists and the population that constituted the educated middle-class members of the society. These parties’ political differences attracted much anger from each side. Within these groups, there existed extremist groups who were covering the aspects of politics from the monarchy. The groups ensured its conservatism by liberalism and socialism, including the communistrevolution, which comprised of those who followed the Soviet Union.During the war throughout Spain, the peasants and other manual workers fought against the uprising. However, in the cities, the Republican government denied the civilians weapons making the Nationalists get to the control.
Graham examines theorigin,the nature and effects of Spain’s domestic war, whichrecorded reverberating forms of political and socio-cultural opposition.The writer also explains the impacts of the war globally.Our emphasis is on the rising enormitysenses in European context, the resistance of Republican war efforts: Nazi adventurism, and the wider intra-continental conflicts of ethnicity and political cleansing that comes along with it. As Grahamexplains, the Spanish war was not only politically instigated. Still, we can viewthe conflict from the lenses of cultural war as analyzedlargely in this paper.
Helen Grahaminvestigatesnature, Origin and the consequencesof the civic war in Spain and her European neighbours. The aftermath of the war engulfed the Country with many challenges, including culture resistance, political reforms and legacywitnessed in the Country thereafter. The war has been in the Country's memory and has become what Helen Graham describes as “the past which will not pass away.” A reflection of World War II brought aspects similar to those of Spanish domestic fight. The community assumedthat Spainknew the facts about the war having been the first country to experience civil conflict from which theygot kwon as the war of 'Historian'. After the Spanish war, many other conflicts erupted among the European nations.
The war, which followed, was the Europe war, predominantly fought leading to death of many civilians. Invaders neither perpetrated the killings but their fellow citizens, including their neighbours. Throughout Europe, Hitler’s war, which waged for territorial expansion after 1938, ignited a multitude of small conflicts across the European Continent. The wars were mainly resulting from either cultural differences or political matters, as explained by scholar Graham. The wars were later seen as the ‘cleansing’ bullheadedness as those who initiated them were looking forward to achieving more integrated communities irrespective of their differences in ethnicities, political inclinations or coming from different religious groups.Much of these wars prefigured and compared to the Spanish war where a section of soldiers opted to rebel Republicans leadership. A group of Nazis only saved the war alongside the Fascist army, which intervened.
During the European cultural Wars as Helen Graham denotes, the army rebels started up conflicts, which would lead to mass killings of innocent civilians. The new military authorities would then oversee the extermination of the sectors related to the changes, which the Republicans were pushing for, especially those related to their specific cultural aspects. In anti-republican coups, there was high resistant coupledwith the murder of civilians. The act of these extrajudicial killings taught Spain great and essential lessons, which eventually brought sanity to both their political differences as well as creating in the peaceful cultural blend. This how Spain's political path was changed forever after witnessing a war that proved a big blow not only to the Country but also taught profound lessons throughout the European countries. The armies continued to bomb the open cities as well as refugee columns during the war against the ‘enemy’.
According to Helen Graham, the civil war in Spain stood at crossroads and marked the twentieth century as a dark one. She goes ahead to say that it is through the brutal killing of the innocent civilians that Europeans learned the reality and that they had to learn the truth through a hard way. Although the dictatorial government influenced the Spanish conflict, the military plan to overtake the ruling government also played a bigger role in acceleratingthe war in the country..The extrajudicial killing without the interjection by the Nazi and the Fascist is unbelievable since the Nazigroup that assisted the Spanish Military through equipping them. This civil war in Spain became the embodiment of the other cultural wars across Europe, especially when prefiguring the many other underlying civil wars later witnessed within the European Continent.
The Spanish war was quite short, although expensive when analyzed from both the resources as well as in the aspect of human life. This made the war attract many historical reviews from Historians throughout the world. Although the war resulted in Disastrous immediate results for Spain, what followed was a complete reconstruction and restructuring in the Country's life. A modern Historian described Spain to have felt the era of the overseas leaving it after the war, and then for them they believed that the future was now brought home. The Country's eyes, which have since wandered around the world, had to focus within its boundaries. Two key indicators of development, which the Spain achieved as per Historians opinion,comprise ofdevelopments inagriculture, industrial, mining and well-equippedinfrastructure to aid in reviving its economy destroyed during the conflict.
The Spanish Age bracket of 1898 gave Spain a number of thinkers who established and braced the global intellectual community.This saw Spain overturning the literary Prowess of Europe, which it had enjoyed for ages as these brilliant groups of intellectuals, gave Spain intellectual prominence. The United States came out of the war as a world superpower as it had managed to stretch its boundaries and extend into the Caribbean across the Pacific Ocean and Hawaii seized during the war. Economic challenges, which the war brought about,had played some little part, which contributed to the war.However, these civil wars brought varied economic and cultural impacts on the countries where they broke. Social pressure is among the immediate effects of a conflict. Thefear generated cultural disintegration, whichcontributed to aggression.
During the Spanish war in 1936, the civilians’ supporters feared what would ensue from the coup. They had a lot of uncertainty about what the future holds, especially relating to their lives and the changes, which the war would have brought to their beloved environment. The unresolved fears connected to other fights witnessed in the European land, for example, political battles and fighting for natural resources, which form the core of regional economic control. The pre-emptive motive of cleansing Spain justifies their plan to kill all of their 'enemies'.
The Spanish war has since been to bring a fascination and emphasis among the various historical events, especially the civil wars that preceded World War II, amid the catastrophe that it brought. The Spanish war attracted various historical aspects like politics, cultural backgrounds, as well as social perspectives. In addition, these aspects, which were in one-way or the other related to Spanish wars, drew the attention of various International Intellectual experts including Helena Grahams, SandieHolgium among several other international Historians.Histories studied and brought out by some of these international intellectuals tryto locate what led to the rapid rising of modernism, which has engulfed Europe. Graham, a history enthusiast, manages to narrate Spanish domestic conflict in her accounts of the occasions through her writing, ‘The Spanish Civil War.’
Throughout Europe from the Baltic, across France and Ukraine, all the conflicts, which later ensured had their underlying root causes. In her book, Helena Graham denotes that the layout of the conceptual frame of these conflicts opens up real stories of those who endured the war times and survived the devastation, which occurred in Spain. Reich intensified the aspect of the homogeneity of the nations and their superiority. This knowledge used in both the states and the actors, was already developing in the Francoist, which was in Spain.
The fight created their influential victors and forces, which has been quite beneficial to the society, which remained to brace the aftermaths of the war. The process of changing from the impacts of the civil wars continue to grow continuously after the visitors who only came in to help during war started aimingat the victims. After the conflicts, there was a relentlessnotice to survivors and the defensive systemput up. According to Sebald in his historical book of domestic battles in Europe and how they brought out the subtle nature of humankind and rendering the conflictobsolete while still in progress. Nevertheless, in much-diversifiedfactual history, a striking mechanism is similar to the one, which the Military used, in the Spanish civil war. The strategy functioned a lot in Yugoslavian and Serbia’s conflicts as new Serbian national identity and their memory faked through the mythological evolution, which occurred in the nation.
The nationalists in Croatia who used the tool to educate the people and end their political dissimilarities also applied the mythological technique. Of course, the domestic fights come with a huge accountability left to a particular community. As explained by Valis, Sebald in his work fearful imaginary projected into the war; he employs an analogy, which outlines the economic fears and the atmosphere of political uncertainty, which ensues in any warring nation.The National memory of Serban made his imagination of existentialist intimidation, projected as the enemy’s gracious intentions. There are several diversions on Francoist, which came to realization in the late 1930s and early 1040s, which are substantive.
The point of thinking comparatively concerning the Francoist and Nationalists is not to try to equate the two diverse forms of Nationalists,but rather to show a resonating distinction in which allows for deeper thinking into the mechanisms that bring about the violence in all the cases.When a rebellaunches war, all activities change everything and new meanings result from the prevalentevents. When fighting, especially by those who supremely dreamed of post-warcommunity, there is always brutality against the public. The aggrievedSerbs citethe raids done by Muslim forces and if those occurrences were enough justify the massacre. However, from the historians, Muslim crimes during wars do not make the obvious meaning of the events flow. Just as Franco’s military rebellion, Bosnian Serbs initiated a conflict that got public justification as a way of resisting the most dreaded fatebrought about by causing the injustices to rivals. The mechanism also tends to reduce the opponent to the same level as the enemy. It even provides more space for them to engage and makes thing more ugly at the same time bringing the idea of a long-lasting solution, which according to the both the Bosnian and the Serbs instances it is a bid to accommodate the spirit of national integration within the intended territory.
It remains a fact that the diverse ethnical dimensions propagate the mass killings for example, in the case of Yugoslavian civil war, where during the Second World War suppressed in Tito's leadership and formed a foundational adage in Tito's governance. The idea gave Serbs elite much larger collateral for igniting widespread anxieties, a brought a sense of victimization as well as unresolved fears.The Spanish conflict remains the most influential war in Europe and across the world with many of their components adopted in other countries’ politics. The monarchy governance later re-imposed in 1975 in Spain. Although this regime also had its essential aspects and, imposed fear elite to groups, it also influenced the retainer constituencies that entirely depended on the former status quo. The fear developed by the monarchical rule influenced the rise of black revolution and many other resistance theories that rotated around the action as a justification to total repression.
The level of these resistance moves and the black rebellion showed up in the Deep South in which estates that sat on enormous lands sat with a number of employees and squatters, the former social captives. These fears stretched up to the North and submerged even the economically stable individuals in major cities. In major cities, the memory signalled some sort of a rebellious and robust group against Military. Later, the resistance resulted into economic adversities hitting the Country hard and administrative marginalization felt in rural areas. Eventually, a cycle of rural revolutions and conflicts in the streets followed putting an end to the major fight.It is evident that monarchical leadership replaced these fears probably existed in 1920 in Spain but unrevealed because of the dictatorship government finally overthrown by the military during Spain’s domestic war and later.
Graham argues that Germany- Italy’s solidarity with rebels fostered destructions in Spanish war. The 1936 polls resulted in the formation of a famous Front, which intended to fight the rebels. The newly formed government began to introduce reforms by reinstating political freedoms, solving the land problems through the subdivision of the wider domains and refining firm’s employees. Graham describes the soldiers’ intentions to seize the power. . The rebellious soldiers from the country and its colonies led by General Francoinitiate a fight against the ruling government.
The Spanish fight united Germany and Italy and the two countries gave rebels military support in their fight against the ruling Spanish government. The civil war in Spain was no longer a Spanish affair, but a European war. The fascists seized the power, many people suffered from torture and alliances were formed for example the Soviet Union united with republican government while countries like Italy and Germany colluded with rebels.
The Spanish conflict caught the attention of the whole world resulting to even more destruction and influencing the Second World War. The war also marked the beginning of many other revolutionary movements globally.
Holguin argues thatSpain’s civil conflict was not seen as just a Spanish business, but a global affair, threatening the whole worldthrough its fascism and aggressiveness with many of the groups siding with republicans.
In conclusion, there was the participation of international intellectuals in Spain’s civil conflict, as Graham explains, artists globally used their creations to show their solidarity with the Republican government, the most famous being the Guernica painter who narrated how the rebels destroyed the town.The rebels succeeded in taking up the state political power (1939) and attained honor from a number of super powers British and United States who also got opportunity to test their military powers against their opponents and this triggered the second World Warfare.
Bibliography
Graham, Helen, ‘the Spanish Civil War:’A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005)
, ‘the Spanish Republic at War 1936-1939:’ Cambridge University Press (2002).
, “A War for Our Times: The Spanish Civil War in 21st C perspective”, in The War and Its Shadow: Spain’s Civil War in Europe’s Long 20th Century. Eastbourne: The Cañada Blanch: Sussex Academic Studies, (2014), pp. 11-24.
Holguin, Sandie "National Spain Invites You": Battlefield Tourism during the Spanish Civil War. The American Historical Review (2005). 110(5), 1399-1426.
, “Navigating the Historical Labyrinth of the Spanish Civil War” in Valis, Noël (ed). Teaching Representations of the Spanish Civil War. New York: The Modern Language Association of America, (2007), pp. 23-32
Creating Spaniards: culture and national identity in Republican Spain. Univ of Wisconsin Press (2002).
Montalvo, José G, and Marta Reynal-Querol, "Ethnic Polarization, Potential Conflict, And Civil Wars", American Economic Review, 95 (2005), 796-816 <https://doi.org/10.1257/0002828054201468>
Peter N. Carroll, the Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994), 107.
Valis, Noel, (Ed.). Teaching Representations of the Spanish Civil War (Vol. 19). Modern Language Assn of Amer(2007).
