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FCG International Thought and Humanities Awards 2006: HUGH THOMAS
“During his extended academic trajectory, Hugh Thomas has been the author of a large number of essays, mainly related to the history of Spain and the Spanish-speaking world, all written with tremendous rigor and communicative ability. The Jury celebrates the coinciding of this award to Hugh Thomas –who has dedicated so much of his work to the Spanish-speaking world- with the 5th Centenary of the passing of Christopher Columbus”, according to the jury that met in Valladolid on July 7, 2006, chaired by, Mr. Demetrio Madrid López; 1st President of the Junta de Castilla y León and Member of the Consultative Council; Mr. Félix Colsa Bueno, Director General of Citizen Attention and Administrative Modernization at the Presidency and Territorial Administration Department of the Junta de Castilla y León [Castilla León Regional Government]; Mr. Miguel Ángel Cortés Martín, Deputy Spokesman for the Popular Party Parliamentary Group in the Spanish Congress, Ex-Secretary of State for Culture (1996-2000) and Ex-Secretary of State for International and Iber-American Cooperation (2000-2004); Mr. Alejandro Royo-Villanova Payá, President of “El Norte de Castilla” newspaper; Mr. Enrique Ybarra Ybarra, President of the Vocento Foundation.
HUGH THOMAS - Biography
Hugh Thomas was born in Windsor in 1931. In 1961, he published The Spanish Civil War. The book was condemned in Spain by General Franco’s government and only published there in 1976. It was immediately greeted as the first balanced study of the war and, in a revised version, remains in print in many countries, including Britain, the United States, France and Spain itself.
Hugh Thomas’s Cuba or the Pursuit of Freedom, published in 1971, continues to be condemned in Cuba. Conceived on a vast scale, it is the best known history of the island, beginning as it does with the British occupation of Havana in 1762. A long epilogue summarises the history of Cuba in the age of Castro.
Among Hugh’s other books are An Unfinished History of the World (1979), a thematic history, which devotes more attention to the history of coffee and sugar than, say, to Kings.
Hugh Thomas’s recent works have been The Conquest of Mexico (published in 1993), The Slave Trade (1997), and Rivers of Gold, The Rise of the Spanish Empire, published in 2003. The first of these was the first to make full use of the enquiry into the achievements of Cortés known as the Residencia which rested for centuries unconsulted, not even by the great American Prescott, in the Archivo de Indias in Seville. A companion volume Who’s Who in the conquest of Cuba (Quién es quién en la conquista de México) makes further use of unpublished material from the Archivo.
The Slave Trade is a study of the Atlantic commerce in slaves against a background of African slave trading for centuries before and, to some extent, after the European abolition of the traffic. It is an international study covering Portuguese, Spanish, French and Dutch trading as well as English (and US).
Rivers of Gold is the first volume of a projected three or four volumes on the history of the Spanish empire. It takes the story as far as the first circumnavigation of the world in 1522. It also includes research in the Archivo de Indias.
Hugh Thomas has just completed “Don Eduardo” a study of the XXth century Spanish entrepreneur, Eduardo Barreiros, a pioneer of private enterprise in both Spain and Cuba. This makes extensive use of the unpublished documents of Barreiros’ life in the Foundation devoted to his memory.
Hugh has written too a study of Beaumarchais in Spain in 1764 which examines the background to the playwright’s great plays so well-known through the operas of Mozart and Rossini based on them; and also a short book about Asturias, a part of Spain where he has spent the summer on several occasions.
Hugh is now at work on his second volume about the Spanish empire which will take the history up to the end of the age of expansion about 1580 when the conquest of the Philippines was completed and when King Philip II decided to refrain from conquering China. This also will rely heavily on unpublished papers in the Archivo de Indias.
Hugh Thomas received the Somerset Maugham prize 1961 for The Spanish Civil War and the Arts Council Prize for History 1980 for An Unfinished History of the World. He became a life peer as Lord Thomas of Swynnerton in 1981. The President of Mexico awarded him the order of the Águila Azteca in 1994 and King Juan Carlos of Spain the Gran Cruz de la Orden de Isabel la Católica in 2001. He is a corresponding Member of the Real Academia de la Historia of Spain.
Among his other books are Goya and The Third of May 1808 (1973), a study of one of Goya’s most famous pictures; a biography of the British Labour politician John Strachey (also 1973); and Armed Truce (1986), about the origins of the Cold War. This used a large selection of British and American official papers.
In his time Hugh has worked for the Foreign Office, the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, the University of Reading as professor of history, and as chairman of the Centre for Policy Studies under Margaret Thatcher. He was Juan Carlos I Professor of Spanish Civilisation in New York University in 1995-1996 and was a University Professor at Boston University 1996-1998.
However most of his life Hugh has been an independent writer unattached to institutions.