Imperial Spain 1469-1716

by John H. Elliott

  The most comprehensive general survey of the period in English is provided by the three relevant volumes in the Blackwell series A History of Spain (ed. John Lynch): John Edwards, The Spain of the Catholic Monarchs, 1474–1520 (Oxford, 2000), and John Lynch's own two volumes, Spain, 1516–1598 (Oxford, 1991) and The Hispanic World in Crisis and Change, 1598–1700 (Oxford, 1992), which include useful sections on developments in Spanish America. All three volumes contain substantial bibliographical essays. Briefer accounts are provided by Henry Kamen, Spain, 1469–1714. A Society of Conflict (London, 1983), and A. W. Lovett, Early Habsburg Spain, 1517–1598 (Oxford, 1986). J.H. Elliott, Spain and its World, 1500–1700 (New Haven and London, 1989), is a collection of essays on a variety of themes in Early Modern Spanish history. Essays by various hands covering a wide range of topics are to be found in Spain, Europe and the Atlantic World, ed. Richard L. Kagan and Geoffrey Parker (Cambridge, 1995).

  Although overtaken by recent research, Roger B. Merriman, The Rise of the Spanish Empire in the Old World and the New (4 vols., New York, 1918–34; repr. 1962), is still useful for the information it provides on political and institutional history, and for the clarity of its narrative. For ecclesiastical history, and for biographies of leading figures in Spanish religious life, the Diccionario de historia eclesiástica de España, ed. Quintín Aldea, et al. (4 vols., Madrid, 1972–5), is a mine of information.

  3. ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL

  In the 1940s and 1950s J. Vicens Vives pioneered a modern approach to the economic and social history of Spain in his Manual de historia económica de España (Barcelona, 1959; Eng. trans., An Economic History of Spain, Princeton, 1969), and in the collective volumes of the Historia social y económica de España y América (5 vols., Barcelona, 1957–59), which he edited. Much has changed since these works were published, but both are still worth consulting. There is no up-to-date and fully satisfactory one-volume synthesis of the economic history of this period, but two good general social histories now exist for English-speaking readers: J. G. Casey, Early Modern Spain. A Social History (London and New York, 1999), and Teofilo F. Ruiz, Spanish Society 1400–1600 (London, 2001).

  Fernand Braudel's great work, La Méditerranée et le monde méditerranéen à l'époque de Philippe II (Paris, 1949), is available in a fine English translation, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II (2 vols., London, 1972–3). Although covering the whole Mediterranean region, it contains fascinating insights into social and economic developments in Early Modern Spain, as well as offering in Part III a detailed account of the struggle between the Spanish and Ottoman Empires, a theme that a century earlier had engaged the attention of another great historian, Leopold von Ranke, in his The Ottoman and Spanish Empires in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (London, 1843).

  Huguette and Pierre Chaunu, Séville et l'Atlantique (8 vols., Paris, 1955–9), is an immensely ambitious attempt, inspired by the work of Braudel, to study the ‘Spanish Atlantic’ of Spain and its American empire between 1500 and 1650. The volumes contain a vast quantity of valuable material, but the Chaunus' approach and conclusions have been challenged, notably by Michel Morineau, Incroyables gazettes et fab-uleux métaux (Cambridge, 1985). Morineau has used the evidence of gazettes to question not only the statistics compiled by the Chaunus, but also those published by Earl J. Hamilton in his classic account of the impact of American silver on the Spanish economy, American Treasure and the Price Revolution in Spain, 1501–1650 (Cambridge, Mass., 1934). For all the criticisms of detail and interpretation that Hamilton's work has received, it remains fundamental for its information on prices and wages, and on the quantities of silver shipped to Spain. Hamilton's articles and essays were collected and edited in a Spanish translation in El Florecimiento del capitalismo y otros ensayos de historia económica (Madrid, 1948).

  For demographic history, see especially Jorge Nadal, La población española, siglos XVI a XX (Barcelona, 1984), Vicente Pérez Moreda, Las crisis de mortalidad en la España interior, siglos XVI–XIX (Madrid, 1980), and Annie Molinié-Bertrand, Au siécle d'or. L'Espagne et ses hommes (Paris, 1985). An illuminating treatment of Castilian agrarian history is to be found in David E. Vassberg, Land and Society in Golden Age Castile (Cambridge, 1984). Nöel Salomon, La campagne de Nouvelle Castille á la fin du XVIe siécle (Paris, 1964), is an important study based on the famous relaciones topográcas drawn up in the reign of Philip II. For urban history, the best account of a single city is Bartolomé Bennassar, Valladolid au siécle d'or (Paris, 1967), while David R. Ringrose studies the impact of the growth of Madrid on its hinterland in Madrid and the Spanish Economy, 1560–1850 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1983). Spanish Cities of the Golden Age, ed. Richard L. Kagan (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 1989), is a splendid visual record that reproduces views of the principal Spanish towns by the sixteenth-century Flemish artist, Anton van den Wyngaerde.

  For wool and the wool trade, the foundation of the Castilian economy, see Carla Rahn Phillips and William D. Phillips, Spain's Golden Fleece: Wool Production and the Wool Trade from the Middle Ages to the Nineteenth Century (Baltimore and London, 1997), and the classic work by J.Klein, The Mesta: a Study in Spanish Economic History (Cambridge, Mass., 1920).

  4. SPECIALIZED STUDIES

  A book of this nature inevitably relies heavily on the work of others. Since it was not possible to equip it with footnotes, I included in the first edition of 1963 a brief survey of some of the more important books and articles used in writing the various chapters. For this revised bibliography I have kept much of the original bibliography as a guide to the principal sources that I used, but have added to it a highly personal selection of works, with a special emphasis on those published in English, that have appeared since the 1960s and that correct or amplify some of my interpretations and conclusions, or open up fresh perspectives.

  Chapters 1, 2, and 3 (The Union of the Crowns: Reconquest and Conquest: The Ordering of Spain).

  1. The fifteenth-century background.

  J. Vicens Vives was responsible for a radical reinterpretation of fifteenth-century Spanish history. His works on the period include: Juan II de Aragón: monarquía y revolución en la España del siglo XV (Barcelona, 1953); Historica critica de la vida y. reinado de Fernando II de Aragón (Zaragoza, 1962); and, in Catalan, Els Trastámares (Barcelona, 1956). The fifteenth-century background is systematically examined in the light of his, and other more recent, research in the second volume of J. N. Hillgarth, The Spanish Kingdoms, 1250–1516 (2 vols., 1976–8), which is particularly strong on the Crown of Aragon.

  The personality of Henry IV of Castile was subjected to a professional analysis by Dr Gregorio Marañón, Ensayo biológico sobre Enríque IV y su tiempo (2nd ed., Madrid, 1934). The case for La Beltraneja is put by Orestes Ferrara, L'Avénement d'Isabelle la Catholique (Paris, 1958). Pierre Vilar offers a brilliant analysis of the decline of Catalonia in vol. 1 of his La Catalogne dans l'Espagne Moderne (Paris, 1962).

  2. The reign of Ferdinand and Isabella.

  Readers were long dependent for their knowledge of the reign on W.H. Prescott's History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella (first published 1838) and H. Mariéjol, L'Espagne sous Ferdinand et Isabelle (Paris, 1892), of which an English translation by Benjamin Keen appeared in 1961 (The Spain of Ferdinand and Isabella, New Brunswick, New Jersey), with a preface by the translator assessing the book in the light of later research. Joseph Pérez, Isabelle et Ferdinand. Rois Catholiques d'Espagne (Paris, 1988, and Spanish trans. Madrid, 1988), incorporates much subsequent work in a wide-ranging synthesis, while Miguel Angel Ladero Quesada, La España de los Reyes Católicos (Madrid, 1999), is a comprehensive study by a historian who has made important contributions to our understanding of fifteenth-century Spain. Peggy Liss, Isabel The Queen. Life and Times (New York and Oxford, 1992), is a vivid and sympathetic biography. The best biography of Isabella in Spanish is the richly documented work of Tarsicio de Azcona, Isabel la Católica (Madrid, 1964
).

  The problem of the origins of the ‘modern state' was examined by J. Vicens Vives in a classic paper for the XIth International Historical Congress of 1960, which later appeared in an English translation, ‘The Administrative Structure of the State in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, published in Henry J. Cohn, ed., Government in Reformation Europe, 1520–1560 (New York and London, 1972), pp. 58–87. José Antonio Maravall, ‘The Origins of the Modern State’, Journal of World History, 6 (1961) is one of the few samples available in English of the work of one of the outstanding Spanish intellectual and cultural historians of the twentieth century. Maravall was especially fascinated by intimations of ‘modernity’ in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. José Cepeda Adán, En torno al concepto del estado en los Reyes Católicos (Madrid, 1956), examines the political beliefs and theories to be found in the Spain of Ferdinand and Isabella.

  While J.Vicens Vives, Política del Rey Católico en Cataluña (Barcelona, 1940), traces the restoration of government in Catalonia, Marvin Lunenfeld studies the pacification of Castile in The Council of the Santa Hermandad (Coral Gables, Florida, 1970), and looks at the character and role of the corregidores during the reign of Isabella in Keepers of the City (Cambridge, 1987). The religious policy of the Catholic Kings is examined by P. Tarsicio de Azcona, La elección y reforma del episcopado español en tiempo de los Reyes Católicos (Madrid, 1960). Economic questions are treated in R.S. Smith, The Spanish Guild Merchant (Duke University Press, 1940), and E.Ibarra y Rodríguez, El problema cerealista en España durante el reinado de los Reyes Católicos (Madrid, 1944) For the coinage see O. Gil Farrés, Historia de la moneda española (Madrid, 1959).

  For helpful discussions of the arts in this, and later, reigns, see G. Kubler and M. Soria, Art and Architecture in Spain and Portugal and their American Dominions, 1500 to 1800 (Pelican History of Art, London, 1959), and Jonathan Brown, Painting in Spain, 1500–1700 (New Haven and London, 1998). For universities, see G. Reynier, La vie universitaire dans l'ancienne Espagne (Paris, 1902), and Richard L.Kagan, Students and Society in Early Modern Spain (Baltimore and London, 1974), which develops an important thesis about the relationship between the expansion of university education and the requirements of growing royal and ecclesiastical bureaucracies. For introductions to the literary history of Early Modern Spain, see the relevant sections of P.E. Russell, Spain. A Companion to Spanish Studies (London, 1973; repr. 1977), and G. Brenan, The Literature of the Spanish People (Cambridge, 1951). Helen Nader, The Mendoza Family in the Spanish Renaissance, 1350–1550 (New Brunswick, New Jersey, 1979), traces the contribution of successive generations of a Castilian noble family to the patronage of the arts. The development of printing in Spain is the subject of two important studies: F.J. Norton, Printing in Spain, 1501–1520 (Cambridge, 1966), and Clive Griffin, The Crombergers of Seville. The History of a Printing and Merchant Dynasty (Oxford, 1988).

  3. Castilian expansion.

  For general introductions to Spanish and European overseas expansion, J. H. Parry, The Age of Reconnaissance (London, 1963) and The Spanish Seaborne Empire (London, 1966) remain admirable general surveys. See also the same author's The Spanish Theory of Empire in the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge, 1940), which should be supplemented by the discussion in Anthony Pagden, Lords of All the World. Ideologies of Empire in Spain, Britain and France c.1500–c.1800 (New Haven and London, 1995).

  The fifth centennial of the discovery of America in 1992 spawned an enormous literature of varying quality. Of the many books devoted to Columbus, Felipe Fernández-Armesto, Columbus (Oxford, 1991) is an up-to-date and accessible biography. There is now an enormous literature on the Spanish conquest and colonization of America, and readers should consult especially vols. I and II of The Cambridge History of Latin America, ed. Leslie Bethell (Cambridge, 1984), and the bibliographical essays in vol. XI (Cambridge, 1995). Peter Bakewell provides an excellent introduction to the colonial period in his volume of The Blackwell History of the World, A History of Latin America (Oxford, 1997). The best general survey in Spanish is by Guillermo Céspedes del Castillo, America hispánica, 1492–1898 (vol. VI of the Historia de España, ed. M. Tuñón de Lara, Barcelona, 1983). Mario Góngora's Studies in the Colonial History of Spanish America (Cambridge, 1975) is a work of abiding quality. In writing this book I found J.M.Ots Capdequi, El estado español en las Indias (3rd ed., Mexico; 1957), and Silvio Zavala, Ensayos sobre la colo-nización española en América (Buenos Aires, 1944), particularly helpful on the Spanish background to the settlement and organization of the American territories.

  Hugh Thomas, The Conquest of Mexico (London, 1993), is a splendidly readable account in the vein of W. F. Prescott's famous history, but readers should also try to get a direct feel for the period with the help of Hernán Cortés, Letters from Mexico, trans. and ed. by Anthony Pagden (New Haven and London, 1986; repr. 2001). Ida Altman, Emigrants and Society (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 1989), is a study of emigration from Extremadura, the region which produced so many leading conquistadores. The classic account of the process of conversion is Robert Ricard, La conquête spirituelle du Mexique (Paris, 1933; Eng. trans., The Spiritual Conquest of Mexico, Berkeley, 1966), while George Kubler, Mexican Architecture of the Sixteenth Century (2 vols., Yale, 1948), is a superb survey of the intense architectural activity in the first decades after the conquest, which never overlooks the social, religious, and economic conditions that made the building possible.

  The important debate over the correct method of approach to the American Indians has been extensively studied by Lewis Hanke, notably in The Spanish Struggle for Justice in the Conquest of America (Philadelphia, 1949) and Aristotle and the American Indians (London, 1959). Hanke's work should be supplemented by Anthony Pagden, The Fall of Natural Man. The American Indian and the Origins of Comparative Ethnology (Cambridge, 1982; revised repr. 1986). The massive unfinished biography of Bartolomé de Las Casas by Manuel Giménez Fernández (vol. I, Seville, 1953; vol. II, 1960) is overwhelmingly rich in its details of administration and politics in Spain and America in the early sixteenth century. J.H. Elliott, The Old World and the New, 1492–1650 (Cambridge, 1970; repr. 1992), attempts to assess in brief compass the cultural, economic and political impact of the discovery of America on Early Modern Spain and Europe.

  F. Braudel, ‘Les Espagnols et l'Afrique du Nord de 1492 à 1577’, Revue Africaine, 69 (1928), is a valuable article on Spain's North African policy. The meeting of civilizations in North Africa receives more extensive treatment in Andrew C. Hess, The Forgotten Frontier. A History of the Sixteenth-Century Ibero-African Frontier (Chicago and London, 1978).

  Chapters 4 and 5 (The Imperial Destiny: The Government and the Economy in the Reign of Charles V).

  Ferdinand's foreign policy and methods of diplomacy are examined in Garrett Mattingly, Renaissance Diplomacy (London, 1955). A.Walther, Die Anfänge Karls V (Leipzig, 1911), is a remarkable study of the Burgundian-Spanish connexion and of the complicated interlude between the death of Isabella and the establishment of her grandson on the Spanish throne. For the revolt of the Comuneros, Stephen Haliczer, The Comuneros of Castile: The Forging of a Revolution, 1475–1521 (Madison, Wis., 1981), has replaced H.L. Seaver, The Great Revolt in Castile (London, 1928), as the only detailed account in English. José Antonio Maravall, Las Comunidades de Castilla (Madrid, 1963; 2nd ed., 1970, repr. 1979), is an important interpretative essay which sees the revolt as the first ‘modern’ revolution. The best account of the revolt in any language is Joseph Perez, La revolution des ‘Comunidades’ de Castille, 1520–1521 (Bordeaux, 1970). For the Germania of Valencia, in addition to a suggestive article by L. Piles Ros, ‘Aspectos sociales de la Germania de Valencia’, Estudios de Historia Social de España II (1952), see Ricardo Garcia Cárcel, Las Germanías de Valencia (Barcelona, 1975).

  The fifth centenary of Charles V's birth in 1500 was accompanied by an important international exhibition (an English version of the magnificent catalogue, bearing the ex
hibition's title of Carolus, was published in Madrid, 2000) and generated a vast amount of scholarly activity. Another handsome volume generated by the Emperor's quin-centennial, Charles V, 1500–1558, and his Time, ed. Hugo Soly (Antwerp, 1999), consists of essays on different aspects of Charles's life and times by an international group of scholars. Manuel Fernández Alvarez, whose earlier biography of the Emperor was published in English under the title of Charles V (London, 1975), produced for the occasion a massive narrative account of his life, Carlos V, el César y el hombre (Madrid, 1999). In many ways the best introduction to Charles's reign is still the succinct survey by H. G. Koenigsberger in The New Cambridge Modern History, vol. II. Royall Tyler, The Emperor Charles V (London, 1956), remains useful for its chronology of Charles's life and travels. Some of the essays printed in Charles-Quint et son temps – the outcome of a symposium held in Paris in 1958 to commemorate the fourth centenary of the Emperor's death – are very valuable, as also is the important essay by F. Chabod, ‘Milan o los Paises Bajos?’ in Carlos V. Homenaje de la Universidad de Granada (Granada, 1958). M.J. Rodríguez-Salgado, The Changing Face of Empire (Cambridge, 1988), is a close and important study of the difficult transition from the reign of Charles V to that of Philip II between 1551 and 1559.