The historian who made the Spanish Civil War a global narrative
Thomas began The Spanish Civil War without knowing a word of Spanish, and the book was banned by the Franco regime and smuggled into Spain as a clandestine best-seller.
Hugh Thomas was an English historian whose 1961 The Spanish Civil War made a large, readable survey of the conflict available to an international audience. Drawing on printed diplomatic sources, participant accounts and interviews, he presented the Republican struggle and its internal violence without simply adopting either Communist or anti-Communist polemic. The book became a clandestine bestseller in Francoist Spain, was repeatedly revised, and remained a foundational point of reference despite factual and interpretive criticisms. His later work ranged across Cuba, the Spanish empire and world history, while his political career moved from Labour to the Conservatives and then the Liberal Democrats.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1931–1952Born at Windsor; educated at Sherborne School and Cambridge, studying history
- 1952–1953First-class History Tripos result; president of the Cambridge Union Society
- 1954–1957Served in the British Foreign Office, including the UK delegation to the UN Disarmament Commission and the Paris embassy
- 1957Lectured at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and published his first novel, The World's Game
- 1961Published The Spanish Civil War; won the Somerset Maugham Award in 1962
- 1966–1976Professor of History at the University of Reading
- 1971–2014Published major works on Cuba, the conquest of Mexico, the Spanish empire and world history
- 1981–2017Created Baron Thomas of Swynnerton and sat in the House of Lords; died in 2017
Related historical events
Writing The Spanish Civil War and Criticism from Both Sides
Thomas wrote the book over almost four years, from the summer of 1957 to the spring of 1961. It is unclear whether he actually consulted Spanish archives, but he used the British Foreign Office papers then being opened, League of Nations documents in Geneva and printed collections of American, German and Italian diplomatic records, and above all took as his core sources the books participants had written in many languages. He met and recorded dozens of figures from the war's various camps, and later editions printed a list of the 36 Spaniards and 49 people of other nationalities he had interviewed.
Reactions on publication were divided. Michael Foot called the book a masterpiece, and the Daily Herald judged that although the author supported the Republic he remained faithful to the facts as a scholar. Criticism from the radical left, by contrast, was fierce. Vernon Richards condemned it as the most cynical book on the war, one from which its protagonists, the revolutionary workers, had vanished, while William Alexander and Herbert Southworth objected to the author's refusal to take sides. On the right, Peter Kemp acknowledged the vast research conducted across both camps but found that a prejudice against Franco was not entirely concealed.
The first judgements of professional historians were also mixed. John Lynch praised the book for clearing away the smokescreen laid by journalists and propagandists; Raymond Carr called it balanced but pointed to problems of proportion and detail, saying a taste for anecdote blurred the overall picture. Stanley Payne recognised its detail and emotional detachment while faulting its lack of archival research and its organisation and style.
Thomas went on revising the book. It was revised and enlarged in 1965, 1977 and 2001, a revised fiftieth-anniversary edition appeared in 2011, and the 2012 edition was the last in his lifetime. Reissued many times, it has been translated into more than thirteen languages and is reported to have sold over a million copies worldwide. It could not be published in Franco's Spain, but it has remained the starting point that later research on the war continues to cite.