David Armitage’s recent book, Civil Wars: A History in Ideas, traces some of the major questions that have accompanied civil wars throughout history. His scrutiny of civil wars delves into their origin and development; the problems involved in defining them; the different treatment given them by historians and social scientists; and the extraordinary scarcity of comparative studies. In this article, I pay attention to Armitage’s key ideas and dedicate the final part to examining in what way his work serves to confirm or question interpretations of the Spanish Civil War, the historical case to which I have devoted some of my main research.

Publicado en la revista ‘Critical Analysis of Law’ (Vol 4, No 2, 2017), accesible aquí.