Spain's Road to Empire

by Henry Kamen

  The lands they ruled were by no means a promising inheritance. Civil war had ended, but the kingdoms continued to be beset by instability. The countryside was effectively in the hands of the nobles, warlords who controlled the rural economy and enjoyed the allegiance of thousands of vassals. In order to survive, the crown had to make alliances. With firmness, the monarchs began to develop institutions and mechanisms that would enable them to collaborate with the nobles, the cities, the Church and the commercial sectors. They enjoyed few economic resources, however. Spain was a poor region that suffered from extremes of climate, bad land distribution, poor communications, and inadequate raw materials. The main industry was the wool trade, with Spanish wool going principally to northern Europe. In return the peninsula imported many of its basic necessities, especially textiles, grain, armaments, paper and small manufactures.8 In addition to internal tensions in their states, the new rulers were faced with military threats from neighbouring France and Portugal, as well as from the emirate of al-Andalus, which had its capital at Granada and commanded the greater part of the coastline facing Africa. With a total population of perhaps 5.5 million people around the year 1500, Castile and Aragon appeared destined to remain as two more small states marginal to the life of Europe. Yet Ferdinand and Isabella, with few means at their disposal, were able to bring peace to their kingdoms and initiate overseas enterprises.9 Castile, with eighty per cent of the country's population and two-thirds of its territory, inevitably became the basis of their power.

  When the civil conflicts ended in Spain, the monarchs brought peace by the brilliant strategy of organizing rather than eliminating violence. In parts of northern Castile, they backed the formation of urban vigilantes, known as Hermandades (brotherhoods), whose task was to execute rough and ready justice on delinquents and who became famous for their brutality. They soon also set the entire south of Spain on a war footing, actively encouraged citizens to keep arms, and took steps to raise local militia, partly for peacekeeping and partly to offset a new threat from the Muslim rulers of al-Andalus. Commentators quickly recognized them to be efficient rulers. They took care to be present at all times wherever they were required, and in their ubiquity lay the unique contribution they made to the strengthening of royal authority. They moved around their realms tirelessly, certainly the most-travelled rulers of their time in Europe. In 1481 Isabella accompanied her husband to visit the Crown of Aragon (which comprised the provinces of Aragon, Catalonia and Valencia) and was confirmed as co-ruler. They did not return for six years. During their absence viceroys ruled the provinces in their name. Ferdinand spent most of his time in Castile, where he was in charge of the wars against Granada, and where the Cortes had promised support only on condition that he resided there. In a total reign of thirty-seven years he spent less than three in Aragon proper, only three in Catalonia and a mere six months in Valencia. Isabella, for her part, was almost permanently resident in Castile. During her reign she visited every corner of the kingdom, covering in some years well over two thousand kilometres of terrain. Few residents of Castile did not see her directly at some time in their lives. The judges of the royal council travelled with her and she dispensed justice personally, even in small towns and villages. Ferdinand continued to handle all business of Aragon through his team of travelling secretaries. Both rulers used their presence to impose their authority and pacify the country. The policy undoubtedly worked: ‘everyone trembled at the name of the queen’, a foreign visitor reported in 1484. However, it was a personal monarchy based not on fear but on collaboration. The rulers used their presence to build up alliances, and nobles who had warred against each other were encouraged to sink their differences in a common cause. The élite came to recognize the achievement of their king and queen. One of the grandees, the admiral of Castile, reminisced years later in 1522 that ‘they were rulers of our realm, of our speech, born and bred among us. They knew everybody, gave honours to those who merited them, travelled through their realms, were known by great and small alike, and could be reached by all.’

  At every level, their subjects were made to feel that the crown was with them. This was particularly important in the case of the minority communities, for the kingdoms of the Iberian peninsula were the only ones in Western Europe to recognize the legal existence of three religions: Christianity, Judaism and Islam. The many small Islamic communities in Castile and Aragon, remnants of a great medieval culture, were usually under noble rather than royal control. By contrast the small Jewish community was normally under royal jurisdiction. With the help of their advisers, Ferdinand and Isabella put into effect an impressive series of alliances that achieved political stability without altering the traditional structures of power. They made laws, but only through the traditional Cortes; they raised taxes, but always with the consent of the taxpayers; they punished crime, but only through the machinery that existed in the towns. The achievements of the Spanish rulers soon became legendary. Through collaboration between their respective crowns, they laid the basis for the emergence of a political community that chroniclers termed ‘Spain’ or ‘the Spains’. They brought an end to the civil dissension that had torn the peninsula apart, and diverted the militant spirit of the nobles into foreign wars. Above all, they laid the foundations of expansion overseas. The aspiration had already existed in the imagination of their supporters, usually clergymen, one of whom foretold that the rulers ‘will possess universal monarchy’.10

  The expansion of Spanish influence was an achievement that impressed contemporaries and gave rise to exaggerated propaganda in Castile. Looking back on his successes years later in 1514, the king claimed that ‘the crown of Spain has not for over seven hundred years been as great or as resplendent as it now is’. Nebrija, a persistent spokesman for kingly power, wrote that ‘though the title of Empire is in Germany, in reality the power is held by the Spanish monarchs who, masters of a large part of Italy and the Mediterranean, carry the war to Africa and send out their ships, following the course of the stars, to the isles of the Indies and the New World’. The king, never one to minimize his own achievements, had a solid confidence in his destiny. He was also stimulated by the reassurance from a visionary nun that ‘he was not to die until he had won Jerusalem’.

  Military success opened up seemingly endless possibilities. The views won favour in the king's circle, and became even more firmly established a century later, when it became clear that the partnership of the Spanish kingdoms had been achieved during his reign. The opinion prevailed that Ferdinand and Isabella had made Spain great and established the foundations of the universal empire. It is reported by Baltasar Gracián, the seventeenth-century writer, that Philip II one day stopped before a portrait of Ferdinand and commented, ‘We owe everything to him.’ In the century after Ferdinand's death, through their writings the historians Jerónimo de Zurita and Juan de Mariana firmly asserted the claim that he had been the creator of Spanish imperial power. A generation after them, Fernández de Navarrete confirmed that the king ‘not only set up our government, he extended the empire to Italy and the New World, thereby beginning the greatness of this immense monarchy’. ‘King Ferdinand’, agreed Pedro Portocarrero in 1700, ‘was the one who established the empire.’ The imperial idea took root firmly in Spain's history, side by side with an imperishable legend about the greatness of the monarchs.11 It seemed, from the Castilian point of view, to be a unique achievement, unequalled by any other nation in Europe.

  What were the roots of the ‘imperial’ aspiration that Spain embraced? The word ‘empire’ (imperium) in the early sixteenth century still retained its old Latin sense of autonomous ‘power’ rather than its later sense of territorial ‘dominion’. In Castile in 1135 King Alfonso VII had been crowned as ‘emperor’ and had been known as ‘emperor of Spain’, a title that reflected his pretensions but not the reality of his power. In the time of Ferdinand the Catholic, the notion of ‘imperium’ continued to fascinate European rulers. The most commonly recognized ‘empero
r’ in Europe was the ruler of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, a position normally reserved for Germans. The post was elective, so that other European rulers also yearned after the title and could offer their candidature. By the time of the Reformation, an adviser of the king of England, Henry VIII, was able to assure his master that England too was an ‘imperium’ in its own right. As we have seen, Nebrija, like other Castilians, felt that Spain did not need any empty titles of empire, for it already had the substance of ‘imperium’.

  The reality of power in Spain was very much less comforting than royal propaganda claimed. Ferdinand of Aragon's authority was more that of a constitutional ruler than of an imperial conqueror. In the peninsula the three provinces of the Crown of Aragon over which he ruled were wholly autonomous states, each with its own laws, taxes and parliament. He was also king of Sicily and Sardinia, and had hereditary claims to the crown of Naples, which he came to rule after 1504. Since all these realms were independent of each other, the king had no way of creating a common government, administration or army. His marriage to Isabella of Castile did not resolve the problem. Castile and Aragon remained as independent entities in every way. The notion of ‘Spain’, found commonly in speeches and writings and used habitually since medieval times, referred to the association of the peoples in the peninsula; it had no concrete political meaning, any more than the words ‘Germany’ or ‘Italy’ had for the people of those parts. The Aragonese writer Diego de Valera, in a work dedicated to Isabella in 1481, wrote that ‘Our Lord has given you the monarchy of all the Spains’, a term in which he also included Portugal. The rulers constantly used the word ‘Spain’ but because of its imprecision never put it in their formal title, calling themselves instead ‘King and Queen of Castile, León, Aragon, Sicily’ and so on. The union between these realms was always precarious. When Isabella died in 1504, Ferdinand had to resign his position as ruler of Castile to his daughter Juana, and then left the peninsula for his Italian realms. He returned only in 1507, and agreed to resume governing Castile because of Juana's mental health.

  Because there was no overall ‘Spanish’ government, Ferdinand was forced to operate through a network of personnel and alliances that made it more possible for him to rule over his diverse territories. He thereby helped bring into existence the entire web of relationships that came to characterize Spanish power. It was a web, moreover, in which non-Spaniards frequently played a decisive role, because the Spanish realms were not in a position to supply all the needs of the monarchy. Castilian commentators at the time paid little attention to the existence of the network, limiting their accounts mainly to acclaim of the exploits of their own people. In this way they successfully created a highly distorted image of what was happening. The truth was that, despite the crucial role of the Castilians, empire was never a purely Castilian enterprise. A case in point was the rivalry with Portugal.

  Both in the Atlantic and later in Eastern Asia the Castilians arrived after the Portuguese, benefited from their expertise and ended up collaborating closely with them. The Portuguese had intervened directly in Castilian affairs during the civil wars of the fifteenth century, in an attempt to place their candidate on the throne. They had also been active at sea, occupying the Atlantic islands of Madeira and the Azores. No sooner was she recognized as queen in 1478 than Isabella agreed to help Castilian nobles and adventurers who wished to challenge Portugal's expansion down the coast of Africa. Over half a century before, French and Castilian nobles had made a tentative occupation of some of the Canary Islands. The four smaller islands (Lanzarote and Fuerteventura, with Ferro and Gomera) were confirmed in the ownership of the noble Herrera family by a legal decision of the Castilian royal council in 1477, and remained in their control till the end of the eighteenth century, but the three larger islands (Grand Canary, Palma and Tenerife) were eventually yielded to the Castilian crown. From 1478 a few Castilian nobles, financing themselves but enjoying crown support, joined in the enterprise of recruiting mercenaries to take possession of the archipelago.

  There was strong resistance from the few natives, an isolated people who were hunters rather than farmers and still lived in caves. Even with the few weapons available to them, they managed to hold the invaders off for several years. The biggest island, Grand Canary, was not subdued until 1483. The hero of the conquest was Alonso de Lugo, a man of considerable wealth and military experience, who first went out to the islands in 1479 and in 1491 secured from the king the supreme command of royal expeditions. He was largely responsible for securing Palma, where he landed in September 1491. He succeeded in controlling it by the summer of 1492, after collaboration from many of the natives, who were deeply split by internal tribal quarrels. The next year he landed in Tenerife with a large number of soldiers and a few horsemen, supplemented by native auxiliaries. But the force was wiped out and the island not brought under control until 1496. When Lugo finally returned to Castile in 1497 he was treated as a hero, created adelantado and granted the governorship of La Palma and Tenerife. After further campaigns in the islands he retired to spend his last days in Tenerife, where he died in 1525, the first and least known of the conquistadors who created the Spanish empire.

  Occupation of the islands had a disastrous impact on the indigenous population, whose numbers were significantly reduced by the war. In search of labour to work the difficult volcanic terrain, the invaders began enslaving the local communities of Canarians, Gomerans and Guanches.12 After protests by the natives, the Castilian crown issued orders to restrict the practice of slavery. The orders were not observed, and there are records of six hundred slaves from the Canaries being sold in Valencia alone between 1489 and 1502.13 The total population loss in the islands was in excess of ninety per cent. Natives collaborated actively in the task of conquest, and Spaniards depended on them in expeditions against natives of other islands. Some were even recruited in 1510 to go to Italy to fight in the wars there. By the mid-sixteenth century an inquisitor calculated the total number of original natives left in the islands did not exceed 1,200 families, but there was also a growing mestizo population ‘since very few women came with the conquistadors’. A generation after the conquest the social and economic circumstances of the natives had greatly changed. The colonization also had a negative effect on the environment: trees were used up for building and navigation, and water became difficult to find.14 It was a foretaste of the problems that would ensue when other tropical islands came to be occupied by the Spaniards.

  The occupation of the Canaries offered a glimpse of the way in which the Spanish empire would evolve. Though Castilians pioneered the enterprise, the Portuguese, Italians, Catalans, Basques, Jews and Africans played a very substantial role; and Moriscos and northern Europeans also took part.15 Funds for expeditions were made available through contracts between adventurers and bankers, because expansion was always a question of business, with attendant risks. The Canaries undertaking was made possible by financing from Genoese bankers, principally the Ripparolio, with the close collaboration of the Seville merchant Juan de Lugo. Francesco Ripparolio financed the conquest of Tenerife and of Palma,16 and his firm set up the first sugar mill in Grand Canary. The Genoese directed the economy of the islands. ‘Without me’, one of them claimed, speaking of Tenerife, ‘this island would not be as well peopled as it is.’17 In Grand Canary, the queen noted in 1499, over half the land used for sugar production was in Genoese hands. In the early sixteenth century various Genoese settlers were members of town councils and took part in the government of the islands, even though they were, as foreigners, formally excluded from such posts. Without the capital investment of the Genoese, and the manpower of Portuguese immigrants, the islands would have remained a barren conquest. The Portuguese, effectively, were the largest non-Castilian community in the islands.18 Their labour, supplemented by that of natives and imported black slaves, was essential to the success of Spain's first colonial venture, and continued to be important in the decades that followed, f
or immigration from Spain began to fall off in the 1520s, as adventurers looked instead to distant and potentially more exciting horizons opening up in the New World.

  The incessant activity of the king and queen reflected that of their society. The Iberian peninsula, like other parts of Europe, was opening itself gradually to experiences of the outside world. There had always been a high degree of movement and migration among Spain's population.19 Some of the movement was seasonal and temporal: young people went to the towns to learn a profession, family men went to earn money helping with the harvest in other areas. Typical was the Extremadura village where it was reported that ‘most of the people are poor, and they go to Andalusia to earn enough to eat and are gone most of the year’. But there was also a substantial permanent migration: villagers moved to other villages in search of a livelihood or a life partner, country dwellers moved to the expanding towns. Few moved beyond the peninsula, yet that would soon change. The new reign began to offer unprecedented opportunities for movement and enterprise.

  The famous year 1492 stands out as one in which the foundations of Spain's international reputation were laid. On 2 January the army under King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella entered the Muslim city of Granada, which was now integrated into the Crown of Castile. The military triumph inspired among Spaniards a wave of messianic optimism, which the rulers exploited in order to decree on 30 March the expulsion of the Jews of their realms. A few days later, in mid-April, they issued a commission to a Genoese sailor, Christopher Columbus, who had been present at the surrender of Granada because he was hoping to win the support of the crown for what many royal councillors thought to be a chimeral enterprise. However, the queen gladly gave her support to his plan for exploration across the western seas. By late summer, when the expulsion of a proportion of the Jews had been completed, the Christian rulers were bursting with confidence. In recognition of their achievement at Granada, and not least in order to obtain their military aid in Italy, the grateful pope Alexander VI in 1494 awarded them the title, which all rulers of Spain subsequently used, of ‘the Catholic Monarchs’. Ferdinand and Isabella spent the latter part of 1492 and most of 1493 in the Crown of Aragon, mainly in Barcelona, where in spring 1493 they received an excited Columbus, who reported that he had just returned from his voyage and had discovered a new way to the Orient.