Henry Kamen facts for kids

Henry Arthur Kamen (born October 4, 1936) is a British historian. He has written many books about the history of Spain and the Spanish Empire. He is especially known for his work on the Spanish Inquisition. His book The Spanish Inquisition was first published in 1965 and then updated in 1998.

About Henry Kamen

Henry Arthur Kamen was born in 1936 in Rangoon, which was then part of British Burma (now Myanmar). His father, Maurice Joseph Kamen, was an engineer, and his mother was Agnes Frizelle.

Henry Kamen went to Chislehurst and Sidcup Grammar School. He then won a scholarship to study at the University of Oxford, where he earned his doctorate degree. During his time in National Service, he learned Russian. His very first book was a translation of poems by a Russian writer named Boris Pasternak.

Kamen's Career

From 1966 to 1992, Henry Kamen taught early modern Spanish history at the University of Warwick in England. 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. Later, in 1984, he became a professor at the University of Wisconsin - Madison in the United States. From 1993 until he retired in 2002, he was a professor at the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) in Barcelona, Spain.

Even after retiring, he has continued to give talks and write books. Today, he lives in both Spain and the United States. He also writes articles for a Spanish newspaper called El Mundo.

How Henry Kamen Studies History

Henry Kamen believes that a historian's job is to explore the past. He does this by using careful research and also by thinking creatively about what happened.

He was inspired by a group of French historians who looked at history in new ways. He tries to combine facts and numbers with ideas about how society works. He also likes to tell stories in a way that is easy to understand.

At one point, he focused a lot on economic history, which is about money and trade. But then he started writing biographies, which are life stories, of Spanish rulers. He felt these rulers had not been given enough attention by other historians.

One of his most important contributions is challenging the traditional idea of the "black legend" about the Spanish Inquisition. This "black legend" made the Inquisition seem much worse than it might have been. Kamen's research, especially in his 1998 book, showed that the Inquisition was not always made up of cruel people who enjoyed torture. For example, he found evidence that prisons run by the Inquisition were often better and more humane than regular prisons in Spain at that time.

Key Books by Henry Kamen

Henry Kamen has written many important books. Here are some of them:

• Boris Pasternak, In the Interlude: Poems 1945-1960, Translated into English Verse by Henry Kamen (1962)
• The War of Succession in Spain 1700-15 (1969)
• The Iron Century: Social Change in Europe, 1550–1660 (1971)
• Spain in the Later Seventeenth Century (1980)
• Golden Age Spain (1988)
• The Phoenix and the Flame. Catalonia and the Counter-Reformation (1993)
• Philip of Spain (1997)
• The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision (1997)
• Empire: How Spain Became a World Power, 1492–1763 (2003)
• The Duke of Alba (2004)
• Imagining Spain. Historical Myth and National Identity (2008)
• The Escorial. Art and Power in the Renaissance (2010)
• Spain 1469–1714: a Society of Conflict (2014)