Spain's Road to Empire

by Henry Kamen

  10. Lockhart 1993, p.166.

  11. The few lines devoted here to one of the most famous events in world history are obviously an inadequate summary. A recent monumental narrative is that of Hugh Thomas, Conquest, Montezuma, Cortes and the Fall of Old Mexico, New York 1993.

  12. Fernando de Alva Ixtlixochitl, Ally of Cortes, trans. by Douglass K. Ballen-tine, El Paso 1969, p.23.

  13. Bernard Grunberg, L'univers des conquistadores. Les hommes et leurs conquête dans le Mexique du XVIe siècle, Paris 1993, gives a fascinating analysis, based on the details of around 58 per cent (or 1,212 individuals) of the conquistadors. He estimates that in total nearly 2,000 Spaniards were directly associated with the fall of the Mexica capital.

  14. Grunberg, p.41.

  15. Ibid., p.77.

  16. Ibid., p.104.

  17. His brothers, both illegitimate like himself, were Gonzalo and Juan; his half-brother, legitimate, was Hernando; another, Francisco Martin, was his mother's son by a different father, and his young cousin was Pedro.

  18. There are very many accounts of these events in English, notably that by John Hemming, The conquest of the Incas, New York 1970. My short summary is based on the classic account by Prescott, written in 1847 and used by me in the 1901 edition.

  19. Pedro de Cieza de León, Obras completas, 2 vols, ed. Carmelo Saenz de Santa Maria, Madrid 1984, 1, 276.

  20. ‘Since the Indians had no weapons it was easy to crush them without any risk’, in Prescott, Peru, p.432.

  21. Cieza de León, Obras completas, I, 278.

  22. ‘It was something to see a valley four or five leagues long, overflowing with people’, from the extract in Prescott, Peru, p.431.

  23. Lockhart and Otte, p. 5.

  24. Lockhart 1972, pp.18, 32, 38.

  25. During his imprisonment, Atahualpa sent out orders for the execution of Huascar.

  26. This is the probable date; most historians had previously accepted the date of 29 August. See Adám Szászdi Nagy, ‘Algo más sobre la fecha de la muerte de Atahuallpa’, Historiografía y bibliografía americanistas, 30(2), Seville 1986, p.76.

  27. Carande, III, 530.

  28. Hemming, The conquest of the Incas, p.201.

  29. As I write, in February 2002, archaeologists have announced the discovery of the ruins of Vilcabamba, in the mountains some eighty kms from the site of the ancient ruins of Machu Picchu.

  30. This is the vision offered in the well-known book of Miguel León-Portilla, The broken spears: the Aztec account of the conquest of Mexico, Boston 1962.

  31. Cieza de León, Obras completas, I, 2.

  32. Vargas Machuca, I, 102.

  33. Cf. also the presentation in Chapter 6 below.

  34. Alva Ixtlilxochitl, p.67.

  35. Quoted by Karen Spalding, The crises and transformations of invaded societies: Andean area’, in Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas, III, 1, p.928.

  36. Lockhart 1993, p.291.

  37. Ibid. 1993, p. 259.

  38. Cited in Jara, p.81.

  39. Lockhart 1993, p.265, from the ‘Annals of Tlatelolco’.

  40. Jones, p.17.

  41. Jara, p.86.

  42. Quoted in Millones, p.392.

  43. Restall, pp.87, 89–90. I have altered Restall's word ‘foreigners’ to ‘strangers’, and ‘cah’ to ‘community’.

  44. Restall, p.121.

  45. Ibid., p.44.

  46. Ibid. p.73.

  47. Cited in Jara, p.38.

  48. Otte 1988, p.432.

  49. Bray, p. 16.

  50. Leonard, p.34.

  51. Bray, p. 16.

  52. Konetzke, p.9.

  53. See the Historia General de la emigración española a Iberoamerica, 2 vols, Madrid 1992, I, 53. Since America did not have households of the style of Spain, the size of each American household should probably be estimated at around three persons. López de Velasco's figures coincide with other estimates of the time: cf. Rosenblat, I, 83–88.

  54. Steve J. Stern, ‘The rise and fall of Indian–White alliances: a regional view of “conquest” history’, HAHR, 61, iii, 1981, p.471.

  55. Otte 1988, p.555.

  56. Ibid. 1988, p.316.

  57. Cited in Jara, p.45.

  58. Richard Konetzke, ‘La esclavitud de los indios como elemento en la estructur-ación social de Hispanoamérica’, Estudios de Historia Social de España, 1, 1949, pp.441–79.

  59. MacLeod, p.52.

  60. Quoted in Cook 1998, p.4.

  61. Restall, p.14.

  62. Ibid., p. 124.

  63. Janusz Tazbir, ‘Los conquistadores en opinión de los polacos de los siglos XVI-XVIII’, Ibero-Americana Pragensia, año III, 1969, p.175.

  64. Cf. Cook 1998, p.17.

  65. Cf. Russell Thornton, American Indian holocaust and survival. A population history since 1492, Norman, OK 1987, pp.40, 44.

  66. Cf. Ann F. Ramenofsky, Vectors of death. The archaeology of European contact, Albuquerque 1987, pp.1–6.

  67. For a biting and entertaining commentary on the inflation of figures, see David Henige, Numbers from Nowhere. The American Indian contact population debate, Norman, OK 1998.

  68. Reff, p.275.

  69. Cook 1998, pp.202–204.

  70. Cf. Ramenofsky, p. 173.

  71. Linda A. Newson, ‘Old World epidemics in early colonial Ecuador’, in Noble D. Cook and W. George Lovell, eds, Secret Judgments of God. Old World disease in colonial Spanish America, Norman, OK 1991, p.109.

  72. Hanns J. Prem, ‘Disease outbreaks in central Mexico during the sixteenth century’, in Cook and Lovell, pp.33–34.

  73. Otte 1988, p.97.

  74. Cook 1998, p.206.

  75. Thornton, p. 14.

  76. Otte 1988, p.240.

  77. Ibid., pp.45, 327.

  78. Ibid., p.248.

  79. Ibid., p. 161.

  80. Ida Altman and James Horn, ‘To make America’. European emigration in the early modern period, Berkeley 1992, p.3.

  81. Auke P. Jacobs gives a good summary of a convincing argument in ‘Las migraciones españolas a América dentro de una perspectiva europea, 1500-1700’, in Jan Lechner, ed., España y Holanda, Amsterdam and Atlanta 1995.

  82. Otte 1988, p.236.

  83. Ibid., p.284.

  84. Ibid., pp.186, 338.

  85. Ibid., p.144.

  86. Ibid., p.376.

  87. Ibid., p.130. The italics are mine.

  88. Ibid., p.454.

  89. Leonard, p.136.

  90. Otte 1988, p.120.

  91. Konetzke, p.3 7.

  92. Otte 1988, pp.187, 110.

  93. Ibid., p.281.

  94. Ibid., p.349.

  95. Ibid., p.496.

  96. Ibid., p.467.

  97. Ibid., p.207.

  98. Ibid., p.415.

  99. Ibid., p.534.

  100. Ibid., p.524.

  101. Ward, p.34.

  102. Quoted in Friede, p.47.

  103. Quoted in ibid., p.48.

  104. Francisco Morales Padrón, ‘Colonos canarios en Indias’, AEA, 8, 1951, 399–441

  105. Francesco D'Esposito, ‘Portuguese settlers in Santo Domingo in the sixteenth century (1492–1580)’, JEEH, 27, ii, Fall 1998, pp.321–322.

  106. Milhou 1976, p.17 n.69.

  107. Eduardo R. Saguier, ‘The social impact of a middleman minority in a divided host society: the case of the Portuguese in early seventeenth century Buenos Aires’, HAHR 65:3, 1985, p.480.

  108. Enriqueta Vila Vilar, Hispanoamérica y el comercio de esclavos, Seville 1977, pp.101–102.

  109. Francesco d'Esposito, ‘Presenza italiana tra i “conquistadores” ed i primi colonizzatori del Nuovo Mondo (1492–1560)’, Presencia italiana en Andalucia, siglos XIV-XVII, Seville 1989, pp.493–533.

  110. Andrews 1978, p.39.

  111. Thornton, pp.72–97.

  112. A good general survey is Rolando Mellafe, La esclavitud en Hispanoamérica, Buenos Aires 1964.

  1
13. Magalhaes, IV, 195.

  114. Friede, p.121; Georges Scelle, La Traite Négrière aux Indes de Castille, 2 vols, 1906.

  115. Mercado, Suma de Tratos, chap.20.

  116. Thornton, p. 118, where his bases of calculation are given.

  117. Bowser, p.72.

  118. Slightly lower totals are given by Philip Curtin; the ones I give approximate to those of Paul Lovejoy, ‘The volume of the Atlantic slave trade: a synthesis’, in Manning, p.61; some detailed figures for the Spanish ports are offered by Enriqueta Vila, 1977, cited above, n.108.

  119. Patrick Manning, ‘Migrations of Africans to the Americas: the impact on Africans, Africa and the New World’, in Manning, p.66.

  120. The ship was English: Palmer 1981, p.45.

  121. Cf. sources cited in Rout, p.71.

  122. Milhou 1976, p.35.

  123. Quoted Palmer 1981, p.135.

  124. Bowser, p.75.

  125. Cited by Rolando Mellafe, La introduction de la esclavitud negra en Chile, Santiago de Chile 1959.

  126. Ward, pp.34–5.

  127. Rout, p.75.

  128. Jean-Pierre Tardieu, Noirs et Indiens au Pérou (XVIe-XVIIe siè), Paris 1990, pp.27, 29.

  129. Rout, p. 150.

  130. The pioneering study was that of José Antonio Saco, Historia de la esclavitud de la raza africana en el Nuevo Mundo, 2 vols, Barcelona 1879.

  131. Bray, p.61

  132. Bowser, p.301.

  133. Pérez-Mallaína and Torres Ramírez, p.106.

  134. Rout, p.79.

  135. For the identity of the black in Spanish America, see Chapter 8 below.

  136. The pioneering researches of Francisco Morales Padrón and Enriqueta Vila Vilar have helped to reorientate peninsular historiography on the subject.

  137. Vargas Machuca, II, 59

  138. Altman, pp.252–253.

  139. Lyon, pp.121–127.

  140. Lillian E. Fisher, Viceregal administration in the Spanish-American colonies, Berkeley 1926.

  141. For further discussion of imperial control, see Chapter 4 below.

  142. Otte 1988, p.291.

  143. What follows is drawn from Charles Gibson, Tlaxcala in the sixteenth century, New Haven 1952.

  144. Carande, I, 251.

  145. Lechner, p.7.

  146. The classic study is Robert Ricard, La ‘Conquête spirituelle’ du Mexique, Paris 1933.

  147. Mendieta, Historia eclesiástica indiana, Mexico 1997, p.344.

  148. Guaman Poma, I, 284.

  149. Spanish and Indian views of the Atahualpa incident are considered in Patricia Seed, ‘Failing to marvel: Atahualpa's encounter with the word’, Latin American Research Review, 26 (1), 1991, pp.7–32.

  150. Cf. for example López-Baralt, pp.396–7. López-Baralt's book is an excellent exposition of the semiotic content of the message presented by Poma. My own presentation in this book limits itself to the question of verbal communication.

  151. See below Chapter 11, Conclusion.

  152. MacCormack, pp.263, 316.

  153. For some aspects of the problem as seen by missionaries, Pagden 1982, pp.179–189.

  154. Mendieta, Historia eclesiástica indiana, Mexico 1997, p.373.

  155. Fernando de Armas Medina, Cristianización del Perú (1532–1600), Seville 1953, p.88.

  156. Pagden 1982, p. 158.

  157. Cf. the comment of J. Jorge Klor de Alva that ‘from the time of the fall of Tenochtitlán the primary requirement was tactical and ethnographic knowledge’, in ‘Colonizing souls: the failure of the Indian Inquisition’, in M. E. Perry and A. J. Cruz, Cultural encounters, Berkeley 1991, p.10.

  158. Jesús Bustamante García, ‘Francisco Hernández, Plinio del Nuevo Mundo’, in B. Ares and Serge Gruzinski, eds, Entre dos mundos. Fronteras culturales y agentes mediadores, Seville 1997, p.266.

  159. In what follows, I lean in part on Lockhart 1993, pp.27–46.

  160. Historia eclesiástica, p.120.

  161. Inga Clendinnen, Ambivalent conquests. Maya and Spaniard in Yucatan, 1517–1570, Cambridge 1987, pp.70, 116.

  162. Clendinnen, p.85.

  163. Letter of Motolinía to Charles V, 2 Jan. 1555.

  Chapter 4: Creating a World Power

  1. Política para Corregidores, II, 571.

  2. Much of what follows is drawn, without citing sources, from Kamen 1997.

  3. The account that follows is based largely on Philip's original military dispatches, in the British Library (BL), MS. Add.28264.

  4. The structure of the Netherlands is explained above in Chapter 2. In the present chapter the word ‘Flanders’ (and its adjective, ‘Flemish’) will be used frequently for the whole Netherlands even though it was only one constituent province, because that was common usage at the time in Spain. When talking only of the southern Netherlands, I sometimes use the terms ‘Belgium’ and ‘Belgian’.

  5. For a detailed account, see Kamen 1997, pp.66–70.

  6. Philip to Charles, Nov. 16, 1554, AGS: E leg.808 f.54.

  7. Such as the philosopher Fox Morcillo (Arco y Garay, pp.138–9) or the bureaucrat Vázquez de Menchaca (Pagden 1995, pp.56–62).

  8. Granvelle obtained his cardinalate in 1561.

  9. Charles Weiss, Papiers d‘État du Cardinal de Granvelle, 9 vols, Paris 1841–52, V, 643, 672.

  10. Philip II to Council of State, 1565, AGS: E leg.98.

  11. Cf. Kamen 1991, pp.98–111, 168–171.

  12. Braudel, II, 973–987.

  13. Brantôme, I, 105.

  14. Jeremy Black, Warfare, Renaissance to Revolution 1492–1792, Cambridge 1996, p.27.

  15. For two differing views, see Goodman 1997, p.31; and Thompson 1976, passim.

  16. Cf. the comments of Thompson 1976, pp.282–3.

  17. Henri Lapeyre, Simon Ruiz et les Asientos de Philippe II, Paris 1953, p.14.

  18. Braudel, I, 374.

  19. Cf. Parker 1998, pp.50–55.

  20. Cf. Anthony F. Buccini, ‘Swannekens Ende Wilden: Linguistic attitudes and communication strategies among the Dutch and Indians in New Netherland’, in J. C. Prins and others, eds, The Low Countries and the New World, Lanham, MD 2000, pp.16–17.

  21. Cf. the final chapter of this book.

  22. John Goss, The mapmaker's art, New York 1993, p.89; G. Parker, ‘Maps and Ministers: the Spanish Habsburgs’, in David Buisseret, ed., Monarchs, Ministers and Maps, Chicago 1993.

  23. For this and related matters, there is a good outline in Parker 1998, pp.59–65.

  24. Parker 1998, p.69.

  25. Edited by Richard L. Kagan, Spanish cities of the Golden Age. The views of Anton van den Wyngaerde, Berkeley 1989. In the same years Joris Hoefnagel also prepared a series of sketches of Spanish towns for a work he published in 1572.

  26. Philip D. Burden, The mapping of North America, Rickmansworth 1996, pp.xxvi, xxxi.

  27. Ibid., p.xxix–xxx.

  28. Goodman 1988, pp.68–71, gives a useful brief summary. See also H. Cline, ‘The Relaciones Geográficas of the Spanish Indies’, HAHR, 44, 1964.

  29. As in Naples and Sicily: See Koenigsberger, p. 50.

  30. ‘The Catalans are not very diligent in serving the crown’, an official reported to Philip II in 1562: cited in Joan Lluís Palos, Catalunya a l'Imperi dels Austria, Lleida 1994, p.41.

  31. Joseph Rübsam, Johann Baptista von Taxis, Freiburg 1889, p.32.

  32. Ibid., p.32.

  33. Quatrefages, p.113.

  34. Ibid., pp.295–298.

  35. Ibid., p.47. Two outstanding exceptions were the war in Granada in 1570 and the invasion of Portugal in 1580, for which tercios were raised in order to fight in the peninsula.

  36. Brantôme, I, 122.

  37. The best discussion is in Thompson 1976, pp.103–107.

  38. Parker 1979, p.186.

  39. J. Albi de la Cuesta, De Pavia a Rocroi. Los tercios de infantería española en los siglos XVI y XVII, Madrid 1999, p.380.

  40. Parker, in Thomas and Verdonk, p.277.
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  41. James B. Wood, The King's Army. Warfare, Soldiers and Society during the Wars of Religion in France, 1562–76, Cambridge 1996, p.233.

  42. J. R. Hale, ‘Armies, navies and the art of war’, in The New Cambridge Modern History, vol.III, Cambridge 1968, p.181. The exception to the rule was Sweden, which already in the mid-sixteenth century had an army composed only of Swedes, ‘the first truly national army of modern times’ (Michael Roberts, Gustavus Adolphus, 2 vols, London 1953–58, II, 191). During the Thirty Years War, however, the Swedish army also included foreign troops.

  43. Parker 1984, p.192.

  44. See Figure 4 in Parker 1972, p.28.

  45. Friedrich Edelmayer, ‘Soldados del Sacro Imperio en el Mediterraneo en la epoca de Felipe II’, in Bruno Anatra and Francesco Manconi, Sardegna, Spagna e Stati italiani nell'età di Filippo II, Cagliari 1999, p.94.

  46. Quoted by Mario Rizzo, ‘Milano e le forze del principe. Agenti, relazioni e risorse per la difesa dell'impero di Filippo II’, in Felipe II (1527–1598). Europa y la Monarquía Católica, 4 vols, Madrid 1998, II, 736.

  47. Quoted by Croce, p. 105.

  48. Cited in Calabria, p.90 n.21.

  49. Gráinne Henry, The Irish military community in Spanish Flanders, 1586-1621, Dublin 1992, p.20.

  50. Karin Schüller, Die Beziehungen zwischen Spanien und Irland im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert, Munster 1999, p.123.

  51. R. A. Stradling, The Spanish monarchy and Irish mercenaries, Dublin 1994, p.139.

  52. Ibid., p.25.

  53. Ibid., p.266.

  54. Parker 1972, p.44.

  55. Stradling 1994, p.266.

  56. Thompson 1976, p.126.

  57. Castillo de Bobadilla, II, 571, 579.

  58. Jerónimo de Urrea, Diálogo de la verdadera honra militar, Venice 1566, cited in Arco y Garay, p.3 27.

  59. Andrés Ponce de León to Philip II, Apr. 1575, cited in Thompson 1976, p.22.

  60. Thompson 1976, p.25.

  61. Ibid., pp.23 5–7.

  62. Quatrefages, p. 194.

  63. Thompson 1976, p.26.

  64. Isaba, p.215.

  65. Goodman 1988, pp.110–117, 121, 127.

  66. Thompson 1976, p.167.

  67. Haring, p.207.

  68. Botero 1605, II, iv, 134.

  69. See Chapter 7 below.

  70. J. Leitch Wright Jr., Anglo-Spanish rivalry in North America, Athens, GA 1971, p.7.

  71. Cambridge History, I, i, 340.