Piel moruna, piel imperial. Imperialismo, nación y género en la España de la Restauración (c. 1880-c. 1909)

Abstract

In opposition to the widely-accepted interpretation whereby the scanty territorial expansion of Spanish imperialism in the 19th century was the counterpart of a reduced will to empire, this article proposes a fresh look at the role of imperialist visions in Spanish intellectual and cultural life during the Restoration, particularly their influence on how Spaniards portrayed their own national identity in cultural terms. Looking afresh at the importance of these cultural representations in the construction of a potent alterity—the creation of a colonial «other»—this article revisits the Empire-driven orientalist vision of North Africa, in which Morocco in particular was an object of imperialist fantasies. It posits that this way of viewing North Africa within the framework of a colonial movement is a key to understanding the influence of that discourse on the Spanish national identity. The will to forge an Empire in Morocco was a logical product of pressures for the regeneration of the Spanish nation starting in the 1880s (intensifying in the wake of the colonial disaster of 1898). In this respect, the ultimate failure or inability to fully realise this imperial project does not gainsay the central position that the imperial project held in intellectual circles and in the cultural self-representation of Spanish identity during the restoration. At the heart of this imperial discourse, the portrayal of North African women as objects of desire and symbols of Moroccan backwardness served to legitimise Spain’s civilising mission. Thus, gender, nation and empire came to be integral elements of Spanish identitary discourse.

Keywords

• cultural history
• history of women
• imperialism
• nationalism
• orientalism
• spanish national identity