Imperial Spain: 1469-1716

Elliott tells his story by focusing on the reigns of the great monarchs of the 15th and 16th centuries of Spain, and the considerably less great monarchs and their "favorites" (noblemen who actually ran Spain--as Elliott puts it at one point, the kings reigned, but the favorites ruled) of the 17th century. The highpoint of the story comes rather early, with the remarkable reign of Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon, surely the greatest monarchial partnership Europe has known. Two gifted, talented, and powerful monarchs, they worked together brilliantly to create one of the great empires of Europe, managing such feats as driving the Moors out of Spain and creating a dynasty in the New World (as well as funding Columbus' discovery of it). Unfortunately, they, the Most Catholic Kings, also were responsible for the Inquisition. Elliott takes a balanced approach to the Inquisition (not my own inclination, since it seems to me to be an unmitigable horror), not minimizing its effects, but trying to understand it in context.

From Isabella and Ferdinand, Elliott takes the reader through the reasons that Ferdinand was reluctantly forced to arrange for the monarchies of Castile and Aragon to the Habsburgs (it is fairly complex, but essentially there was no acceptable heir), and the eventual accedence of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V to the thrones of Spain. Although not quite as glorious a time as under Isabella and Ferdinand, Charles V's reign was also a highpoint in Spanish history. Although to a large degree an absentee monarch, his reign is characterized by his attempts to expand his empire--which embraced a substantial portion of Europe--and his wars against against heresy, i.e., protestantism, whether in its Lutheran, Calvinist, or English forms. Indeed, if religious zeal--even if profoundly misguided--were a criterion of religiousity, then Charles V might go down as the most religious monarch in European history. That protestantism survived is surely not to be blamed on Charles V (I'm a Baptist, by the way, so I'm hardly lamenting his failure). In the end, however, Charles V's wars put such a great strain on his various subjects as to lead to general financial chaos, and his expenditures led to multiple bankruptcies, not only in his own but in his son's reign.

Phillip II is in many ways the polar opposite of his father. Although the monarch of the Dutch territories and Spain, he was not like his father the Holy Roman Emperor. He was also not a warrior king, although many wars were fought under his reign. While Charles V waged war closer to the field, Phillip II waged war at his desk and papers with a pen. The last of the great Spanish kings of the imperial period, Phillip II struggled desperately to carry on his father's goals amidst dwindling funds and financial resources.

The final sections of the book chronicle the long, slow, depressing period of decline, the period depicted so vividly in DON QUIXOTE. Ironically, although the 17th century was a period of waning Spanish successes, it was nonetheless a far richer period artistically, not just through the work of such great writers as Cervantes and Lope de Vega, but a host of great painters like Velazquez and Zurburan.

Elliott is a truly fine historian, but he is also an engaging one. I remained interested in the fate of Spain from the beginning to the agonizing end. I would strongly recommend this volume to anyone who wants a stronger background into the formation of modern Europe. It also makes an absolutely perfect introduction to the historical setting of Cervantes's DON QUIXOTE (my immediate purpose in reading it).


A Distant Warning   July 27, 2005
Robert S. Newman (Marblehead, Massachusetts USA)
21 out of 21 found this review helpful

Spain experienced a metamorphosis in the 16th century. It had been a divided country battling with an age-old enemy. Its separate parts worked more against each other than with each other; Castile concentrated on the fight to reconquer the land from the Muslims, while Aragon and Catalonia fixed their sights on a Mediterranean trading empire and control of southern Italy. Under Ferdinand and Isabella, well-known as the patrons of Columbus, the Moors were conquered, the Jews expelled, and all three main parts of Spain joined under one crown. Spain soon acquired a vast empire in the Americas and Asia. Through marriage, its fortunes were hitched to the Habsburg crown, thus despatching Spanish arms and treasure to the endless European wars in Italy, Germany, and the Low Countries. Spain rose to a certain proud zenith, both in war and in administration of its vast lands. The arts began to flourish. Portugal came under the Spanish crown for sixty years. The glory days did not last long as history goes. By 1640, Spain had crashed. It was bankrupt, taxed-to-the-limit, and losing everywhere. Its European empire fell away, even Portugal threw off Castilian rule. Government fell to mostly incapable favorites of the weak and indecisive kings. Bereft of a middle class, the only good income was to be had from the church or the court. In short, the imperial greatness, which had shot across the world like a brilliant comet, had winked out in financial collapse and administrative failure, though literature and painting continued to shine. Poor education and religious ultra-conservatism had denied Spain the leaders that might have saved it.

Elliott's history of Imperial Spain paints a clear picture of the reasons for this abrupt rise and decline. He concentrates not on battles, foreign adventures or any sort of "glory", but on administration, finance, the strong differences between Castile and Aragon/Catalonia, the Inquisition, trade, and domestic policy. I admit that such a mix may not be everybody's cup of tea, but if you are serious about learning the reasons for Spain's brief term at the top, you will certainly need to read this work, an amazingly complete study that stands with some of the best history books ever written. Though the title contains the years 1469-1716, the vast bulk of the book concerns only the sixteenth century.

It seemed to me, as I read IMPERIAL SPAIN, that the book should be required reading in Washington, but of course our "leaders" are not interested in history. They reflect in their actions an uncanny resemblance to that Spain of its glory days, thinking that glory can never end, that the mighty shall not fall. Since we seem unable to avoid foreign wars, our education system is inadequate, we are facing a rising tide of religious obscurantism, and worst of all, we operate at a huge deficit, there are some disturbing parallels. Could we learn from the history of Imperial Spain ? No doubt. Will we ? No way.


A Superpower is Born   March 19, 2002
Matherson (Rhinebeck)
18 out of 23 found this review helpful

There are shades of Gibbon's Decline and Fall in this history: even in the glorious united reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, the seeds of economic ruin and cultural implosion are sown. It's hard to get dewy-eyed about the decline of a society in which slavery, religious intolerance, warfare and racial bigotry were endemic, but it's still remarkable that for brief periods between 1492 (when the United Crowns scored the double victory of Reconquest and Columbian discovery) and the humiliating 1713 Treaty of Utrecht (ceding Gibraltar and confirming the Bourbon succession), Spain (and through Spain, the House of Habsburg) controlled the entire New World, enjoyed a limitless gold supply, fielded Europe's most-feared army and looked to the Atlantic as a virtual private lake. Despite the occasionally dry prose, this is an illuminating discussion of history's great enigmas.


Thorough, perceptive, clear-headed, and yet...   February 29, 2000
Ima Dumas
16 out of 19 found this review helpful

Typical J.H. Elliott (The name itself is enough to summon associations of neo-Stoics dressed in Oxford academic gowns). Truly academia at its most noble, the pursuit of truth in the most unudulterated form. The logic is faultless and the analysis is penetrating. The author's success in revealing the very essense of that institution/concept/phenomenon/combination of phenomena so often lumped together under the collective title of the Spanish Empire is decisive. Although it is claimed in the introduction that this is a treatment of specialized topics rather than a factual overview, in truth the ideas behind this book have come to serve as the basis from which I personally, at least, view the social-economic-political climate in sixteenth and seventeenth century Spain.

And yet, alas, it becomes all too clear that John H. Elliott is no man of literature. Even when discussing the various neuroses of surely one of the most compelling individuals in all of history (Philip II of Spain), he somehow manages to sound dry and un-compelling. He's like some horrible ascetic scholarly Platonist who refuses to dilute the purity of insight with unnecessary 'human interest'. Is this intentional? I certainly hope not. Of course, the analyses can often be entertaining enough in themselves, and of course, one would be hard-pressed to find a better or more informative book on the subject, but still...


The classic history of Spain's golden age   April 4, 1998
Pete Doubleday (pdoubled@pacbell.net) (San Bruno)
13 out of 15 found this review helpful

This book has been the definitive basic text for the study of sixteenth and seventeenth Spanish history for as long as I can remember. Want to know whether silver or gold is more important? This book will tell you. Want to know how the Escorial worked under the world's first bureaucrat-king? This book will tell you. Want to know why the Duke of Parma was wrong when he threw off the classic response to the question "What about the Dutch pirates?" ("No es nada.") This book will explain it all to you. Oh, and if you want to understand the Spanish Inquisition, the importance of sheep and how to create your own silly walk, this is the book for you. The current edition doesn't cover silly walks, but if you've ever seen the Spanish army in motion, you'll know that it can only be a matter of time. Until then, this book gives you the best possible historical grounding in the other two Python topics.