America's most prominent historian arguing the Second Republic's radicalization brought on the Spanish Civil War
The very expression 'historical memory' is an oxymoron, a fundamental contradiction in terms. Memory is intrinsically individual, subjective, and very frequently fallacious.
America's leading historian of modern Spain, Payne taught at the University of Wisconsin–Madison for 37 years and shaped the conservative interpretation of the Spanish Civil War through over twenty books on the Second Republic, Franco, and European fascism. His central thesis holds that the collapse of the Second Republic stemmed not from right-wing conspiracy but from the revolutionary radicalization of the Socialist-led left, reading the Civil War as a clash of revolution and counterrevolution. Since the 2000s, critics including Ángel Viñas, Helen Graham, and Paul Preston have charged his later work with excessive benevolence toward Francoism, yet Payne's revisionist framework remains an indispensable pole in Civil War historiography.
Career Timeline
- 1955B.A. in History, Pacific Union College
- 1960Ph.D. in History, Columbia University (advisor Shepard B. Clough)
- 1962–1968Assistant Professor of History, UCLA
- 1968–2005Professor of History, UW–Madison; Hilldale-Jaume Vicens Vives Professor
- 1987Corresponding member, Spanish Royal Academy of History
- 2004Professor Emeritus, UW–Madison