International political sociology through the colonial mirror: a contrapuntal reading of the Spanish Civil War

Colas, Alex (2024) International political sociology through the colonial mirror: a contrapuntal reading of the Spanish Civil War. International Political Sociology 18 (2), olae009. ISSN 1749-5679.

Abstract

This paper invokes Edward Said’s notion of “contrapuntal reading” to present a transnational sociological account of the Spanish Civil War. Such a reading of the war raises important questions of sovereignty, violence, and identity which – filtered through a political sociological lens – offer novel perspectives on the power of empire and colonialism in relation to these key IR categories. Specifically, I argue that the Spanish colonial frontier in Morocco served as a laboratory for distinctive expressions of transnational state-building, violence and identity-formation which were reproduced in both the metropolitan heartlands of the Iberian Peninsula and in the Franco-Hispanic Protectorate itself during the interwar years. The complex interaction between core and periphery in this period had momentous implications for both Spanish and Moroccan history, many of which continue to play out in contemporary politics across the Gibraltar Strait.

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