This book traces the political evolution of the Iberian peninsula from a group of late Roman imperial provinces to the Spanish and Portuguese monarchies of the Trastamara and Braganza dynasties of the mid-fifteenth century. The book is planned as a series of essays on the main chronological periods of medieval Spain, and sketches the major political, economic, social and intellectual features of each age and the interaction of Christian, Jew and Muslim in the Iberian peninsula. It also describes the effects of successive invasions, and the evolving interaction between a relatively weak Islamic rule and a variety of Christian kingdoms whose consolidation had only just begun by the late Middle Ages. There is currently no other volume in English or Spanish which provides such a wealth of analysis or description in so compact a fashion and yet which covers the entire medieval period.