José Joaquín de Mora and Britain: Cultural Transfers and Transformations

This book explores the connections that José Joaquín de Mora (1783–1864) established with Britain, where he was exiled from 1823 to 1826 and was to return as diplomat in the following decades. His admiration for the British materialised in a series of cultural transfers aimed at the promotion and diffusion of British culture in Spain and Spanish America. He contributed to the popularization of Bentham’s utilitarianism, the principles of British classical economy, and the philosophy of the Scottish School of Common Sense; he translated texts by Scott and Shakespeare and wrote an unfinished version of Byron’s Don Juan; and, above all, he presented Britain as a model for the political, economic, and literary regeneration of the Hispanic world.