Henry Kamen facts for kids

Henry Arthur Kamen, born on October 4, 1936, in Rangoon, is a British historian. He has written many books about the history of Spain and the Spanish Empire.

Biography

Henry Arthur Kamen was born in Rangoon, which was then called British Burma (now Myanmar), in 1936. His father, Maurice Joseph Kamen, was an Anglo-Burmese engineer who worked for Shell Oil. His mother, Agnes Frizelle, had Anglo-Irish and Nepalese family roots.

Kamen went to Chislehurst and Sidcup Grammar School. From there, he won a special scholarship to study at the University of Oxford. He earned his doctorate degree at St Antony's College. During his National Service (a time when young people had to serve in the military), he learned Russian. His very first book was a translation of poems by Boris Pasternak.

Career

From 1966 to 1992, Kamen taught early modern Spanish history at the University of Warwick. He also worked at different universities in Spain. In 1970, he became a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, which is a group for historians.

In 1984, he was named the Herbert F. Johnson Professor at the Institute for Research in the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin - Madison. From 1993 until he retired in 2002, he was a professor at the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) in Barcelona. Even after retiring, he has continued to give talks and write. He now lives in Spain and the United States. He also writes for a Spanish newspaper called El Mundo.

Work

Henry Kamen believes that a historian's job is to explore the past. He does this by using both careful study and imagination.

He was greatly influenced by the Annales School of historians from France. This school focuses on long-term historical trends and social structures. Kamen tries to combine studying history with numbers (like statistics) and looking at how societies work. He also makes sure his writing is easy to understand.

At one point, he focused a lot on the history of economics using statistics. But then he changed his focus. He started writing biographies (life stories) of Spanish rulers. He felt these rulers had not been given enough attention by other historians.

Kamen is also known for challenging the traditional "black legend" view of the Spanish Inquisition. The "black legend" was a negative idea that painted the Inquisition as extremely cruel and unfair. Kamen's own ideas about the Inquisition have changed over time. In his 1998 book, he showed that the Inquisition was not always made up of fanatics who loved torture and executions. For example, he found that Inquisition prisons were often better run and more humane than regular Spanish prisons at the time.

One important review said that Kamen is one of the most important living historians of Spain. It noted that he has spent his career challenging the "Black Legend," especially in his books about Philip II and the Spanish Inquisition. Thanks to his many years of careful research, he has greatly changed how historians understand Spain in the 1400s and 1500s.

Selected publications

• Boris Pasternak, In the Interlude: Poems 1945-1960, Translated into English Verse by Henry Kamen. London, New York, and Toronto: Oxford University Press (1962)
• The War of Succession in Spain 1700-15. Indiana: University Press (1969)
• The Iron Century: Social Change in Europe, 1550–1660. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson (1971); New York: Praeger Publishers (1972)
• "A Forgotten Insurrection of the Seventeenth Century: The Catalan Peasant Rising of 1688," The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 49, No. 2 (June 1977), pp. 210–30.
• Spain in the Later Seventeenth Century. London: Longman (1980)
• Golden Age Spain. Basingstoke: Macmillan Education (1988)
• European Society 1500–1700. New York; London: Routledge (1984)(1992)
• "Lo Statista" in "L'uomo barocco" (R. Villari, ed.) Laterza, Roma-Bari, Italy (1991)
• The Phoenix and the Flame. Catalonia and the Counter-Reformation. London and New Haven: Yale University Press (1993)
• Philip of Spain. New Haven: Yale University Press (1997)
• The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision. London and New Haven: Yale University Press (1997)
• Early Modern European Society. London: Routledge (2000)
• Philip V of Spain: The King Who Reigned Twice. New Haven: Yale University Press (2001).
• Empire: How Spain Became a World Power, 1492–1763. New York: HarperCollins (2003)
• The Duke of Alba. London and New Haven: Yale University Press (2004)
• The Disinherited; Exile and the Making of Spanish Culture, 1492–1975. New York: HarperCollins (2007)
• Imagining Spain. Historical Myth and National Identity. London and New Haven: Yale University Press (2008)
• The Escorial. Art and Power in the Renaissance. London and New Haven: Yale University Press (2010)
• Spain 1469–1714: a Society of Conflict. London and New York: Longman (2014)

Selected reviews

Reviewers have praised Henry Kamen's books. For example, a review of Philip of Spain called it a "stunning achievement" that reads like a good novel.

His book Empire was described as "brilliant" and "lucid, scholarly and perceptive." Another review said it was a "revelation."

The Disinherited was called "wonderfully accomplished" and "beautifully told." One reviewer even said Henry Kamen is "the finest historian of Spain presently writing in any language."

For Imagining Spain, a review noted that Kamen looked at Spanish ideas of nationhood and empire in a fresh way. It said only someone who truly loves Spain could have written the book.

The Escorial: Art and Power in the Renaissance was praised as "lively and contentious" and "elegantly written."

However, not all reviews were entirely positive. A review of A Kinder, Gentler Inquisition suggested that while Kamen tried to show the Inquisition was not as bad as some believed, he might not have fully captured what it felt like for individuals living under it.