Navarre
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Navarre. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a province and ancient kingdom of Spain, bounded on the N. by France, on the E. by Aragon, on the S. by Old Castile, and on the W. by the Basque provinces; area 6,046 square miles; pop. 304,122. The surface is generally mountainous and bleak, but in the valleys and along the river banks the soil is very fertile. The principal rivers are the Aragon, Zidacos, Arga, Ebro, Arga, Ebro, and Bidassoa. Products, wheat, maize, barley, and oats. Minerals, iron, copper, and rock-salt. Principal towns: Pampeluna (capital), Tudela, Olite, and Estella. Navarre was inhabited at an early period by the Vascones, who were expelled by the Romans. It was seized by the Visigoths in 470, invaded by the Saracens early in the 8th century, and fell under the sway of Charlemagne in 778. It became an independent state in 855. In 1035 Navarre was divided into three kingdoms-Navarre, Aragon, and Castile. The first two became united in 1076, and again separated in 1134. In 1285, it became an appanage of France, but recovered its independence in 1328. Ferdinand conquered it in 1512. The estates of Navarre took the oath of allegiance to him in 1513, and it was incorporated with Castile in 1515. After this act of spoliation, there remained nothing of the ancient kingdom of Navarre beyond a small territory on the N. side of the Pryenees, which was subsequently united to the crown of France by Henri IV. of Bourbon, King of Navarre, whose mother, Jeanne d'Albret, was granddaughter of Queen Catherine; and hence the history of Navarre ends with his accession to the French throne, in 1589.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
na-var', an ancient kingdom of the Pyrenees. Its territory lay partly within northern Spain and partly within France. It arose about 900. Under Sanelo the Great, the Spanish kingdoms of Castile and Aragon were subject to Navarre. The Spanish portion of Navarre was conquered by Ferdinand, the husband of Isabella, in 1512. French Navarre remained independent until 1589, when Henry of Navarre ascended the French throne under the title of Henry IV. Thus Navarre bears somewhat the same relation to France that Scotland bears to England. It was the stronghold of the Huguenots.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Collier's counted 304,122 people in the province in 1921; Navarre today holds roughly 660,000, about a third of them in Pamplona — the "Pampeluna" of the old entry, now known worldwide for the San Fermín bull-running that Hemingway put into The Sun Also Rises in 1926. Both accounts treat Navarre as a kingdom whose history "ends" in 1589, but it has had a vigorous afterlife: since the statute of 1982 it has been the Comunidad Foral de Navarra, an autonomous community that keeps its medieval fueros to the extent of levying its own taxes and paying Madrid an agreed sum, and Basque is co-official in the north of the region. French Navarre is now part of the Pyrénées-Atlantiques department. Collier's line that the Vascones were "expelled by the Romans" no longer stands — historians take them for the ancestors of today's Basques, who never left, and the founding of the kingdom of Pamplona is now usually dated to Íñigo Arista around 824 rather than 855 or "about 900".
Written for this edition, 2026.