A painstaking archival historian of the Spanish Civil War
He went to Spain to report a war and became the historian who spent a lifetime assembling the record of a defeated revolution.
Burnett Bolloten was a reporter who covered the Spanish Civil War and a historian who traced the power struggle and suppression of revolution within the Republican camp. Initially sympathetic to the Communist Party, he became convinced through his study of the May Days of 1937 and the repression of the POUM that Communist forces had curtailed the Republic’s revolutionary alliance. Over decades he assembled refugee testimony and extensive press and documentary materials, producing The Spanish Revolution and the posthumously published The Spanish Civil War, works that became central to debates over the conflict’s political history.
Career Timeline
- 1909Born in Wales
- 1936–1938United Press correspondent in Spain
- 1940년대–1980년대Collected and researched Civil War materials in Mexico and the United States
- 1961Published The Grand Camouflage
- 1979Published The Spanish Revolution
- 1987Died in California
- 1991The Spanish Civil War published posthumously