Agustina de Aragón in Cairo. Women warriors and National Heroes in Global History

Abstract

This article uses recent findings from studies of women warrior and national heroes as an enduring and complex transnational and global phenomenon to re-examine the figure of the iconic Spanish example of such a figure: Agustina de Aragón. Specifically, it explores how and why she, and not others, was turned into a national hero, how Spaniards managed the subversion of gender roles that a woman warrior represented, the effect of her long outliving the events of 1808 that made her famous, and the extent to and ways in which her figure as a woman warrior circulated beyond Spain.