The historian Josep Maria Fradera (Mataró, 1952) has won the 50th edition of the Anagrama de Essay prize, endowed with 10,000 euros, with the book Before anti-imperialism. Genealogy and limits of a humanitarian tradition, in which he recounts the origins of the critique of empires starting from the movements for the abolition of slavery in the late eighteenth century. "I am avant-garde, classic and sentimental", Fradera has assured, since although it is a "history book in which current concerns slip, in no case should they appear too much", and it is written from the perspective of the moment it deals with.
Daniel Rico, a member of the jury together with Jordi Gracia, Pau Luque, Remedios Zafra and the publisher Silvia Sesé, has defined the award-winning work as "a complex and brilliant book that explains why the first great wave of rejection and condemnation of empires did not it ended its expansive vocation and its mechanisms of oppression and exploitation, but rather the opposite”.
The winning work, which closes a long period that the author has dedicated to studying colonialism, tries to explain how the abolitionist movements born in the heat of the French Revolution and North American independence –“Quakers, evangelists, the first feminists, some paternalistic owners and the defenders of laissez faire” – had a reformist outlook, “they believe that empires can be part of the crusade against slavery”, since “prohibiting slavery gave prestige to the empire” and thus “the civilizing purpose of European societies was used to invade foreign territories. With the end of slavery – in the British Empire in 1833, in the French in 1848, and in the United States in 1865 – however, “imaginative capitalism produced workers tied to work, but by contract”, sometimes "in conditions worse than slavery itself."
The essay allows the historian to conclude that "reformists and humanitarians only attempt the moralization and reform of empires." In any case, for these abolitionist movements, "slavery is the greatest moral challenge", Fradera explained in a history master class to the press, to add that true anti-imperialism does not arise until "the emergence of non-European nationalism" , but it is not the central theme of the book and it is hardly pointed out. Now then: "When have real nations existed?", he insisted to recall the evidence that empires still have power today, since for example "the European garden is still protected by an empire" (USA), the war in Ukraine is the “result of a poorly resolved imperial bankruptcy” or the importance of China, “an empire that has always existed”.
Before presenting the winner, the editor of Anagrama Silvia Sesé recalled that the award, now in its 50th edition, "has given the tone of a type of essay on critical imagination in Spain during this time", an idea that was taken up again Jordi Gracia: the award "changed more lives, in addition to mine, from the very day I won it, and it has also changed Spanish intellectual life" in "two variations, capturing the historical moment and inciting public conversation ”. Gracia also thanked "Jorge Herralde for his generosity" in convening the award, which the founder of Anagrama recalled "is the only essay in the world that is 50 years old."
