Imperial Spain 1469-1716

The schoolchild described a net as a lot of holes tied together with string, and Spanish history might be called a lot of gaps tied together with guesses. On the 16th century, Spain’s great age, numerous books have been written of late by Spanish scholars, for whom modern history is more or less forbidden ground. A good deal of their labour (though by no means all) has been devoted to questions about how many theologians could stand on the point of a 16th century pin; and even on that epoch out ignorance is still extensive. Dr. Elliott’s task was therefore an exceedingly difficult one, and the degree of success he has achieved is remarkable. His own period is the early 17th century, and for the two and a half centuries as a whole he has naturally to rely on the special studies of other writers. He is careful to point out not only these, but also the problems that still await study, or remain controversial. His book thus forms a critical review of the existing state of knowledge, with many valuable ideas and suggestions of his own added, and the whole mass of material combined into an intelligible pattern.

His grand theme is one of the most intriguing in world history. How was it that backward Spain burst on Europe, about 1500, so ‘suddenly, and even miraculously’? ‘What makes a society suddenly dynamic, releases its energies, and galvanizes it into life?’ And little mot than a hundred years later, what was it that plunged Spain back into a condition of national imbecillity such as few nations have ever sunk to? Elliott’s approach to history qualifies him to treat it as a broad interplay of many connected forces. He notes, for instance, that the political turmoil of 15th century Catalonia must be seen as at bottom a social crisis, part of the general crisis of late-mediaeval Europe. Art and culture are not among his main topics, but he brings them in from time to time with a sure touch; as when he writes of Don Quixote as a product of the disenchantment that held Spain in its grip by 1605, or discusses the literature of the ‘golden age’ in terms of its wormeaten economic foundations. Whatever disagreements or criticisms on points of detail may suggest themselves, the book deserves to be called a model of its class. General readers coming more or less fresh to the subject will be grateful for this masterly introduction to it; readers who have struggled with it already will receive much fresh light.

Aiming as he tells us at ‘interpretative synthesis’ instead of conventional narrative, Elliott nevertheless manages to supply an adequate synopsis of political history; and its more dramatic episodes, like the story of Philip II and Antonio Pérez in Ch. VII, are not wasted. Space is distributed unevenly, it might be said; out often chapters, the first eight get us only up to 1610, and the last, covering 1665–1716, is in the nature of an epilogue. Attention is concentrated on internal affairs rather than on foreign policy; for this too there are good reasons, though it may give less than due prominence to the Spanish influence on Europe, in a way the most important outcome of the whole story. One might wish also for a little more space for military and naval matters, especially for the Spanish infantry that was for so long, unlike the ill-named Armada, invincible. Personalities are often strikingly drawn, as well as episodes: an admirable example is the thumb-nail sketch of Olivares. The rulers, with their various outlooks and conceptions of kingship, occupy the foreground. Ferdinand is pictured more as a conscientious public servant, less as an egotistic Machiavellian, than has usually been his lot: a statesman labouring into old age for ‘a Spain he had already served so long and so well’. He is credited too with genuine religious zeal, of a ‘messianic’ cast, and with seriously intending to promote a universal peace in Europe as preliminary to a crusade in the Holy Land—an intention some will find it as hard to believe of him as of that other old fox, Shakespeare’s Henry IV. There is illuminating description also of the administration these rulers were building up, and their ways of working through it. Law and theology were the staple training of the bureaucracy, and did not equip it very well, Elliott points out, for grappling with some of its responsibilities, in the economic field particularly. There is more than a distant kinship between the learned councillors of old Spain and the mandarins of old China; both served theocratic monarchies, both took themselves very seriously as they contemplated the world through horn spectacles, and both had meagre salaries and open minds and pockets when bribes were in the offing.