Prologue

"Be it known, therefore, that this said honest gentleman…[for] the greatest part of the year, addicted himself to the reading of books…which he perused with such rapture and application…and was more than once inclined to seize the quill, with a view of performing what was left undone; nay, he would have actually accomplished the affair, and published it accordingly, had not reflections of greater moment employed his imagination, and diverted him from the execution of that design."

- Miguel de Cervantes y Saavedra, Don Quixote
Vol. I, Book I, Translated by Tobias Smollett

In early September I will cross the Atlantic for the start of a nine month stay in Spain generously supported by the Fulbright Program. During my time in Spain, I expect to spend a sum total of three months in the capital city of Madrid and roughly six months in the southwestern Andalusian city of Seville with the occasional diversion to other parts of the country and, hopefully, other parts of Europe as well.

Over the course of my stay, I will collect documentation for use in my Ph.D. dissertation focused on the origins of constitutional culture and liberalism in Spain. This work will take me to the National Library and major state archives, but also to a range of smaller archives located throughout the Province of Seville. My ultimate goal is to explain the extent to which reforms ending absolute monarchy launched at the national level extended to the political culture of local elites during the period 1808-1823. I also seek to frame the experience of Spaniards within the larger Napoleonic Wars and the independence movements of Spanish America, especially that in Mexico.

Along the way, I hope to publish updates concerning my adventures on this blog. In proper Quixotic fashion, perhaps, my entries may take a rather sporadic and even random character and will only very rarely contain the sort of completeness sought by readers. After all, there is work to be done; eventually I will have to put quill to paper and that process will require a steady to commitment to the collection of data and information found only in Spain.

I’ve never been the sort of person to keep a journal, much less a public one, though I now find myself committed to doing so for the better part of a year. My only prior experience of this sort was keeping a paper journal during a summer research trip to Bilbao when I was in college. That project failed, I think, because it had an audience of one; hence, my drive to make the current project public. At the same time, learning to use this format may prove…interesting (read: difficult).

That said, I hope to use this site mainly as a depository for photos. Though a picture is said to be worth a thousand words, in most cases I will probably devote a few to explaining the circumstance and, more often than some might appreciate, the appropriate historical background. While I’d like to say that I plan to update this site regularly, I also know that my ability to do so will depend greatly on certain technical issues that may remain largely beyond my control. If I ever start to lag, I hope my readers will keep me in line.