Spain's Road to Empire

Henry Kamen has taught and lectured at universities throughout the UK, USA and Spain and was most recently Visiting Professor at the University of Chicago. His books include The Spanish Inquisition and Philip of Spain. He lives in Barcelona.

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List of Illustrations

Chapter 1 The departure of Columbus's second voyage. From Caspar Plautius, Nova Typis Transacta Navigatio, 1621 (© American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, MA)

Chapter 2 The Entrance of Charles V into Bologna, 1529–30 (photo: Gabinetti dei Disegni e delle Stampe, Florence/Scala)

Chapter 3 Capture of the Inca Atahualpa by the Spanish. From Theodor de Bry, Grand Voyages, 1596 (photo: The Fotomas Index)

Chapter 4 Execution of prisoners after the surrender of Haarlem to the Spaniards, engraving, 1567 (photo: The Fotomas Index)

Chapter 5 Magellan enters the Pacific, engraving, c. 1567 (photo: The Fotomas Index)

Chapter 6 Early seventeenth-century map of South America (photo: The Fotomas Index)

Chapter 7 Pack train of llamas laden with silver from Potosí mines of Peru. From Theodor de Bry, Grand Voyages, 1602 (photo: Library of Congress, Washington DC/The Bridgeman Art Library)

Chapter 8 Tupi Indian dancers, Brazil. From Theodor de Bry, Grand Voyages, 1593 (photo: Library of Congress, Washington DC/The Bridgeman Art Library)

Chapter 9 The Battle of Rocroi, 1643, engraving by A. Boudan (photo: Mary Evans Picture Library)

Chapter 10 The port of Vigo in Galicia, 1702, engraving by Anon. (photo: Mary Evans Picture Library)

Chapter 11 The Inca Guyana Capac and a Spaniard discuss gold. From Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, The First New Chronicle and Good Government, 1613–15 (photo: The Fotomas Index)

Colour plates

1 Boabdil hands over the keys of Granada in 1492 to Ferdinand and Isabella. Sculpted relief from the choir stalls of Toledo Cathedral, c. 1492–1500, by Rodrigo Aleman (photo: AKG London)

2 Juan de la Cosa, Chart of the Western Hemisphere of the World, c. 1500 (photo: The Royal Geographical Society, London/The Bridgeman Art Library)

3 Pedro de Alvarado besieged by Nahua warriors. From Fray Diego Duran, History of the Indies, c. 1580 (photo: Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid/The Bridgeman Art Library)

4 A Tlaxcalan ally pulling Cortés out of a canal during the battle for Tenochtitlan. Mexican School, sixteenth century (photo: Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris/The Bridgeman Art Library)

5 The Taking of Tenochtitlan by Cortés, 1521. Spanish School, sixteenth century (photo: The British Embassy, Mexico City/The Bridgeman Art Library)

6 A Spaniard killing Indians in battle. From the Humantla Codex, a Nahua chronicle, 1519 (photo: Mary Evans Picture Library)

7 Francisco Pizarro. Undated portrait by Anon. (photo: Museo de America, Madrid/AKG London)

8 Capture of the Inca capital Cusco by Pizarro and his soldiers in 1533. From Theodor de Bry, Grand Voyages, 1596 (photo: The Fotomas Index)

9 The Raising of the Siege of Vienna, 1529, by Giulio Clovio. From Triumphs of the Emperor Charles V, c. 1556 (photo: The British Library, London/The Bridgeman Art Library)

10 The siege of the fortress of La Goletta in the bay of Tunis, 1535. Engraving by Franz Hogenberg (photo: Bridgeman Giraudon/ Lauros)

11 Charles V. Anon., in the style of Bernard van Orley (photo: Galleria Borghese, Rome/Scala)

13 Map tracing Magellan's world voyage, once owned by Charles V, 1545. By Battista Agnese (photo: John Carter Brown Library, Brown University, Providence, RI/The Bridgeman Art Library)

14 Galleass and galleon. Anon., nineteenth century (photo: Museo Naval, Madrid)

15 The Battle of Lepanto, 1571. Venetian School, sixteenth century (photo: Museo Correr, Venice/Scala)

16 Francisco Xavier visiting Japan. Lacquer screen by Japanese School, sixteenth century (photo: Musée Guimet, Paris/The Bridgeman Art Library)

17 Portolan map, 1570, by Fernao Vaz Dourado showing the coastline from India through the China Sea towards Japan (photo: Huntington Library and Art Gallery, San Marino, CA/The Bridgeman Art Library)

18 Philip II. Attributed to Lucas de Heere, c. 1570s (photo: Museo de Bellas Artes, Valencia/Index/The Bridgeman Art Library)

19 The execution of Flemish nobles by the Duke of Alba, Brussels, 1568. School of Zacharias Dolendo, sixteenth century (photo: The Stapleton Collection, UK/The Bridgeman Art Library)

20 The Spanish Fleet defeated by the English, 1588, c. 1600, by Hendrik Cornelius Vroom (photo: Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum, Innsbruck/AKG London)

21 El Dorado, or The Gilded Man. From Theodor de Bry, Grand Voyages, 1599 (photo: British Museum, London/The Bridgeman Art Library)

22 Gold figurine. Quimbaya culture, AD 1000–1500 (photo: British Museum, London/The Bridgeman Art Library)

23 Illustration showing how Negro slaves mine for gold in Varaguas. From Histoire Naturelle des Indes, French manuscript, c. 1586 (photo: Pierpont Morgan Library, New York/Scala)

24 Gold objects in an Aztec shop. From A General History of the Things of New Spain by Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, c. 1577 (photo: Biblioteca Medicea-Laurenziana, Florence/The Bridgeman Art Library)

25 View of Potosí, 1758, by Gaspar Miguel Berrio (photo: Museum Charcas, Sucre/AKG London)

26 Fernando Alvarez de Toledo, by Alonso Sanchez Coello, mid-sixteenth century (photo: Archivo Iconografico, SA/Corbis)

27 Alessandro Farnese, c. 1590, by Frans Pourbus the Younger (photo: Galleria Nazionale, Parma/Scala)

28 Ambrogio Spinola, 1625, by Peter Paul Rubens (photo: Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museums Braunschweig. Kunstmuseum des Landes Niedersachsen/Berndt-Peter Keiser)

29 The Surrender of Breda, 1625, c. 1635, by Diego Velázquez (photo: Prado, Madrid/The Bridgeman Art Library)

30 The Defence of Cadiz against the English, 1634, by Francisco de Zurbarán (photo: Prado, Madrid/The Bridgeman Art Library)

31 Indians on the road to conversion by the Spanish: meekly presenting themselves for baptism by Friars Angel and Martín de Jesus, and the punishments for crimes such as witchcraft, licentiousness and murder. From Pablo Beaumont, Cronica de Michoacán, 1792 (photo: Archivo de la Nación, Mexico City/New York Public Library/The Bridgeman Art Library)

32 Antonio de Mendoza, undated portrait by Anon. (photo: Museo de America, Madrid/Scala)

33 Panel showing the succession of the kings of Peru from the Inca Manco Capac to Ferdinand VI of Spain. Spanish School, c. 1750 (photo: Nuestra Señora de Copacabana, Lima/The Bridgeman Art Library)

34 A Couple with a Little Girl, by Miguel Cabrera, eighteenth century (photo: Museo de America, Madrid/Scala)

35 Idealized portrait of the emperor Montezuma. Spanish School, seventeenth century (photo: Museo degli Argenti, Palazzo Pitti, Florence/ Scala)

36 The Battle of Almansa, 1707, by Ricardo Balaca (photo: Palacio del Senado, Madrid/Scala)

37 Tumacácori Mission, 1855, by Henry Cheever Pratt (photo: Phoenix Art Museum, Arizona, Francis Hover Stanley and Carolanne Smurthwaite Bequest/The Bridgeman Art Library)

List of Maps

Preface

The young Alexander conquered India.

All by himself?

Caesar beat the Gauls.

Didn't he even have a cook with him?

Bertolt Brecht, ‘Fragen eines lesenden Arbeiters’

What would the whites do without the Indians?

A Guajiro Indian, New Granada, eighteenth century

When we contemplate the magnitude of Spain's hegemony, and compare it with the poverty from which it arose, we should not let ourselves give way to pride.

Ramón Carande (1969)

This book was born, in a way, on the battlefield at St Quentin, a small French town close to the border with Belgium, where in the year 1557 the king of Spain, Philip II, scored a notable victory over the army of the king of France. In my study Philip of Spain (1997) I gave a short account of the battle, based both on documents and on recent research. A distinguished historian, in reviewing the book, suggested that my account was ‘not anti-Spanish, but nevertheless surprising’ because it stated that the Spanish contingent in the battle had constituted only one-tenth of the troops, thereby undermining the classic view that St Quentin was a Spanish victory. The Spanish troops may have been few, he pointed out, but they were more effective than the rest, making it a Spanish victory. In any case, he added, the victory belongs to him who paid for the battle, and that was Spain. One way or the other it must have been, and therefore was, a Spanish triumph: ‘the battle was won by the Spanish contingent’. These objections seemed perfectly reasonable, and set off in my mind a series of questions that have resulted in the present book. Who did what? Who paid for what? They are queries to which answers are not always offered. Did Cortés conquer Mexico? The surprise of Bernal DÌaz del Castillo at reports b an official historian, Gómara, suggesting that Cortés had almost single-handedly overthrown the mighty Aztec empire, was no greater than mine at finding similar claims being made by scholars about the creation of the Spanish empire.

This study, then, pursues a few questions – and only a few – related to the rise of Spain as a world power. It is the fruit of a meditation not only on the battle of St Quentin but also on the evolution of Spain's history, and in that sense follows the direction of much of my research in the past thirty years. Some years ago I published, by way of homage to the people and land in which I now live, an examination of the family life, society and culture of the people of Catalonia in the age of the Counter-Reformation. The present study repays other long-standing debts: to the peoples of Spain, who over the years have allowed me to know, to appreciate and to question the complex characteristics of their culture and their history.

Many notable works, from R. B. Merriman's four-volume survey, The Rise of the Spanish Empire, to Salvador de Madariaga's well-known volumes on the same theme, take Spain as the central point around which their presentation has been created. In this view, a small nation startled the world by its incredible imperial prowess, and then relapsed into an inevitable ‘decline’. The emphasis on the role of Spain – and more particularly Castile – in the creation of empire has a very long pedigree. This essentially imperialist and Eurocentric perspective has dominated traditional history writing. Castilians were from the first proud of their part in the empire (which they usually referred to not as an ‘empire’ but as a ‘monarchy’) and therefore tended quite fairly to glorify and exaggerate their part in it. It became normal to believe, as a leading Spanish scholar of recent times did, that ‘the Spaniard occupied Italy, and marched victoriously through the heart of Europe and over the heights of the Andes’.¹ Castile (‘Spain‘) was seen as the universal colossus, the conqueror of peoples, the winner of battles. The nations with whom it came into conflict, such as the Portuguese, Mexicans, Italians and Catalans, also preferred to overstate the case in order to demonstrate their own ability to resist, against overwhelming odds, the might of Spain. The English did it magnificently in their folklore about the Spanish Armada of 1588.² The Dutch were even better. A well-known burgomaster of Amsterdam, Cornelis Hooft, stated around the year 1600 that ‘in comparison with the king of Spain we were like a mouse against an elephant’.³ For both Castilians and non-Castilians, the image of a mighty Spanish empire was a convenient one that they carefully cultivated in their folklore and their history books. On closer examination, however, it is difficult to perceive the elephant. Indeed, perhaps the most pertinent observation of all on this matter comes from the faraway Philippine Islands, where the Sultan of Jolo pointed out to a local Spanish official that ‘although it is true that we may be likened to a dog, and the Spaniards to an elephant, yet the elephant may one day find the dog on top of it’.⁴ It is hard to beat oriental perspicacity.

Much of our view of the past is permeated by myths and, as with those among us who still cling to the view that the earth is flat, there is no reason why we should not be allowed to go on cultivating them if they are harmless. The story of Spain's empire, however, is not harmless. The past, for Spaniards of today, is not a faraway country, it is an intimate part of the polemics that constitute their present and continues to be central to their political and cultural aspirations. The great age of empire is a crucial battleground in this area of myth and controversy. To the general reader the word ‘empire’ implies conquest and the extension of national power. Sixteenth-century Spaniards were quite conscious that in applying the word ‘conquistador’ to the adventurers of the American frontier they were claiming imperial status for the enterprise. The notion of power passed into general use, and with it the use of terms such as ‘the Spanish conquest of America’. More recently, however, historians studying imperial history have begun to call in doubt the ‘nationalist’ interpretation that views expansion as a simple projection of the power of one country. They have preferred to ask questions about the nature of that power.⁵

‘Power’ does not necessarily mean just the capacity to apply force. More exactly, it can be applied to the underlying structures that made empire possible, factors such as the ability to supply finance and services.⁶ In other words, who gave the men, who supplied the credit, who arranged the transactions, who built the ships, who made the guns? For example, few nations in the early modern period – as we know from the example of seventeenth-century Sweden – had the resources to launch a policy of conquest in Europe without the help of allies. In the same way, Spaniards alone never had the resources to subjugate the continent of America. They drew on the help of others, both Europeans and natives of the Americas. ‘Conquest’ and power turned out frequently to be of less importance than ‘business’, or the ability to marshal resources, and at various stages the Spanish world enterprise took on many of the aspects of a ‘business empire’.

The present book is essentially a very simple outline of some of the factors that contributed to the rise of Spain's empire. Little is said about Spain itself, because its historians have told the story many times and very effectively. My narrative is directed towards the untold story, viewing Spaniards not as the unique ‘movers and shakers’ who ‘fashion an empire's glory’ (in the words of the poet⁷), but as joint participants in an extensive enterprise that was made possible only by the collaboration of many people from many nations. The creators of empire, as presented here, were not only the conquerors from Spain. They were also the selfsame conquered populations, the immigrants, the women, the deportees, the rejected. Nor were they only the Spaniards: they were also the Italians, the Belgians, the Germans and the Chinese. Many Spaniards preferred and still prefer to consider the empire as a unique achievement of their own; these pages offer material towards an alternative view.

In a brilliant study published in 1939 the American historian William L. Schurz outlined a phenomenon that can serve most appropriately as an image of the Spanish empire. He described the fortunes of the Manila galleon, a lonely vessel that ploughed the waters of the Pacific between Asia and Acapulco for over two centuries, carrying in its hold the fortunes and hopes of Spaniards, Mexicans, Chinese, Japanese and Portuguese, a veritable symbol of the international scope of Iberian interests. The empire, like the relentless galleon, survived for centuries and served many peoples. Many of them were inevitably Spaniards, but they came also from every corner of the globe. I have attempted to narrate an imperial history rather than merely the history of one nation in an imperial role. My book presents the empire not as a creation of one people but as a relationship between very many peoples, the end product of a number of historical contingencies among which the Spanish contribution was not always the most significant. Historians of a previous generation preferred to focus only on the Spanish side of the story, and consequently ended up ensnared in imaginary and now wholly superseded problems such as the so-called ‘decline of Spain’.⁸ When the mechanisms of empire are defined clearly, ‘decline’ as a concept ceases to have any meaningful place in the picture.

Only by considering the role of all the participants can we begin to understand the unprecedented scenario that was beginning to develop. It may be helpful to begin at the end, by offering some conclusions. The first main conclusion is fundamental: we are accustomed to the idea that Spain created its empire, but it is more useful to work with the idea that the empire created Spain. At the outset of our historical period ‘Spain’ did not exist, it had not formed politically or economically, nor did its component cultures have the resources for expansion. The collaboration of the peoples of the peninsula in the task of empire, however, gave them a common cause that brought them together and enhanced, however imperfectly, peninsular unity.

The second conclusion is equally important: the empire was made possible not by Spain alone, but by the combined resources of the Western European and Asian nations, who participated fully and legally in an enterprise that is normally thought of, even by professional historians, as being ‘Spanish’. This book therefore attempts to deconstruct the role of Spain, in order to understand who really contributed to what. Fernand Braudel once described the empire of Philip II as being ‘un total de faiblesses’,⁹ literally a total of weaknesses, and I have deliberately looked at this side of the picture. In the process, the role of other Europeans is emphasized, for empire was always a joint enterprise. A scholar has recently reminded us that ‘European expansion, and more particularly the overseas imperial systems that followed upon it, were functions of general improvements in technology and Europe's resulting ability to produce goods and services more efficiently than the rest of the world’.¹⁰ The technology was, as we know, normally European rather than Spanish.

Two generations ago Américo Castro, in attempting to assess the Spanish contribution to civilization, affirmed with good reason that ‘no significant innovation ever originated in Spain’.¹¹ Religious ideas, humanism, technology, science, ideology, all came (he said) from outside. His views echoed those of the great neurologist Santiago Ramón y Cajal, who also recognized that ‘science, industry, agriculture, commerce, all aspects of thought and work in the epoch of Charles V, were wholly inferior to those of Europe’.¹² Yet it was this passive Iberian culture that had the ability to produce world power. Spain developed thanks to what it received from outside, but at the same time Spaniards made use of their own essential character in elaborating the path that led them to imperial status. My presentation, it should be noted, explicitly rejects the fashionable view that Europeans were the basis of power, and that some sort of miracle in Europe gave it world supremacy.¹³ Neither do I accept the view, elegantly argued by some historians, that Europe's role in the world was based on the ‘absolute superiority of western weaponry over all others’.¹⁴ The reader will see that for me the Spanish empire was created no less by native Americans, Africans and Asians, than by Europeans.

The chronology adopted here needs a brief explanation. Though its origins were earlier, I place the creation of empire only in the mid-sixteenth century, when the Castilian state began to seize the initiative from the many explorers, adventurers, missionaries and entrepreneurs who had made the whole venture possible. Unlike other empires both before and after, there was little conquest and expansion, for the Crown already claimed that it possessed, by God-given right, most of America and a good part of Asia, in addition to its associated territories in Europe. The task was to consolidate what it already in theory possessed. The subsequent two centuries (with which this book is principally concerned) were a challenging and unprecedented exercise in coming to terms with the problems of imperial power. Despite the rude shock represented by the Treaty of Utrecht (1713), Spain went on to affirm its right to empire until the historic Treaty of Paris (1763), which recognized its claims and confirmed the extent of its control. All the factors that produced the fragmentation of the empire were already in place by this date, making it a logical point at which to round off the narrative.

It is hardly necessary to say that only a fraction of the story is told here, and, for example, the fascinating new advances made in the history of the North American Indian have barely been touched on in my pages. This may not be enough for more demanding readers, or for those seeking a fine array of impressive bibliographical references. To them I may point out that an adequate survey of the entire theme would have been impossible to contain within the dimensions of one volume. ‘The writer rash enough to make the attempt’, commented Steven Runciman about a similar survey of his own, ‘should not be criticized for his ambition, however much he may deserve censure for the inadequacy of his equipment or the inanity of his results’.

It is important to stress what this book is not. It is not a narrative of the Atlantic empire, like J. H. Parry's masterly study (1966), nor is it an account of Spanish foreign policy in Europe (a much neglected subject). Neither is it intended to be in any way a work of controversy; the Spanish empire disappeared hundreds of years ago and it would be inane to polemicise about it now. I have been sparing in the use of names, technical terms, dates and statistics. Specialized terms and monetary values are explained in the glossary. The capitalized words Empire and Imperial are used here to refer only to the Holy Roman Empire of Germany; the non-capitalized words empire and imperial are used for the Spanish dominions and for other contexts. Citizens of the peninsular kingdoms are often identified by their places of origin in order not to sow confusion by imprecise use of the adjective ‘Spanish’. For ease of expression, I have retained the words ‘Indian’ for natives of the New World, ‘African’ for natives of Africa. Place names are given as we now know them, e.g. ‘Mississippi’ rather than the old Spanish name of ‘Espìritu Santo’. In the complex case of the Netherlands, I have made free use of the various terms used at the time, but tend to refer to ‘Belgium’ when talking of the Southern Netherlands. Most Spanish names are given in their authentic form; by contrast, I have usually stuck to traditional English usage (e.g. Montezuma) for transliteration of names in other languages such as Quechua, Arabic and Chinese. It is evident that an adequate bibliography would occupy the same length as the book itself; I have therefore restricted footnote references.

The begetters of this volume, who come first in my listing of thanks, are all those scholars of a previous and of my own generation, too numerous to name in this preface, whose painstaking researches are the foundation of my exposition and whose labours are gratefully acknowledged in the footnotes. Without their work this book could not have been written. I must next thank the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) for its financial support. My special thanks go to the personnel of the library of the Institució Milà i Fontanals (CSIC) in Barcelona, for their help in diligently obtaining for me the loan of essential books. As always, I have profited from the intellectual alertness and valuable criticism of my wife Eulàlia.

This modest work will, I trust, enable the reader to appreciate the contribution across time of the many individuals and nations who created, collaborated with and suffered under the first globalized enterprise of modern times, the ‘Spanish’ ‘empire’.

Foundations

The money from our realms alone would not be sufficient to maintain so big an army and fleet against so powerful an enemy.

Ferdinand the Catholic, July 1509

In a small ceremony in the year 1492 at the university city of Salamanca, in north central Spain, Queen Isabella of Castile was presented with the first copy, just off the press, of the humanist Antonio de Nebrija's Grammar of the Castilian language. She was slightly puzzled, and asked to know for what it served. Five years before, she had been presented with a copy of the same author's textbook of Latin grammar, and had found that to be undeniably useful; it had certainly helped her with her own earnest and not always successful efforts to learn Latin. But a grammar of one's everyday spoken tongue, as distinct from the formal study of a language used by professional people and lawyers, was something different. No other European country had yet got round to producing such a thing. Before Nebrija could reply, the queen's confessor, Fray Hernando de Talavera, bishop of Avila, broke in and spoke on his behalf. ‘After Your Highness has subjected barbarous peoples and nations of varied tongues,’ he explained, ‘with conquest will come the need for them to accept the laws that the conqueror imposes on the conquered, and among them will be our language.’ It was a reply that the queen could understand, for in the preceding months she had been actively engaged in military operations in the lands to the south of Castile, and the idea of conquest was uppermost in her mind.

In the preface that he subsequently wrote for the Grammar. Nebrija followed through Talavera's line of thought and claimed that ‘I have found one conclusion to be very true, that language always accompanies empire, both have always commenced, grown and flourished together.’ The sentiment was, by then, a commonplace; Nebrija copied the phrase from the Italian humanist Lorenzo Valla. The meaning of the reference was also no novelty, and reflected in good measure Nebrija's concern to advance his career by keeping on good terms with the government of the day. ‘Language’, in this context, was not limited to vocabulary and grammar. It implied, rather, the imposition of culture, customs and above all religion on subjected peoples. Language was power. Victors, as the Piedmontese humanist Giovanni Botero was to write a century later, ‘would do well to introduce their own tongues into the countries they have conquered, as the Romans did’. Over the next few generations, as Castilians came into contact with other peoples, they found that the problem of communication was a fundamental challenge. Talavera himself was to discover, from his experiences in the formerly Islamic territory of Granada, that conquest could not easily be followed by changes in laws or language. The task of understanding, and being understood, had to be resolved before power could be successfully imposed.

It was not an assignment that the Castilians could take on alone. Nebrija's Grammar, like everything he and his humanist colleagues in Castile did, leaned heavily on foreign influences and expertise. Since the 1470s Spain had begun receiving the new invention of the printing press, brought in by Germans. The entire printing industry in Spain until the early years of the next century was almost exclusively a foreign enterprise,¹ with Germans predominating but with an occasional French and Italian printer as well. It helped to connect the Spanish peninsula to the cultural activity of the Renaissance in Europe. But it also had an important political role, for among the first pieces of work produced by the presses for distribution to the public in Castile were the texts of royal decrees. Isabella from the beginning extended her patronage to the presses, financed their work and protected them with special privileges. Spaniards, however, were slow to develop the new invention. Scholars found it hard to get native printers with the expertise to print their works. ‘Alas,’ lamented a Castilian humanist in 1514, ‘that we have not yet been visited either by the prudence of an Aldus or the proficiency of a Froben!’² The complaint was a reflection on one of the problems that came to affect Spain's political future profoundly: its technological inexperience. A single small example will serve. Though Castilians were the first to have contact with the natives of the New World, the first drawing from life of an American Indian was done not by a Castilian but by a German, Christoph Weiditz, who encountered one in Spain in 1529.³ The first books to be published in the New World were also the work of a German, Hans Cromberger of Seville, whose agent, the Italian Giovanni Paoli, issued the first printed book in Mexico in 1539.⁴ In other respects as well, Castilians were slow to respond to the challenges of the age. Among the few pioneering Castilian printers was Miguel de Eguía, who complained a few years later that Spaniards depended on foreigners for printing and that authors had to wait for their books as if they were gifts from America.⁵ Though native printers eventually set up successful businesses, over the next two generations those who wished their books to be well printed took them abroad personally to France, Flanders and Italy.⁶

Foreign expertise was crucial. Fostered in its early stages by German printers, Renaissance learning in the Iberian peninsula owed its success in part to the training that Spanish scholars had received in Italy, in part to the numbers of Italian and Sicilian scholars who came to teach and sometimes to settle.⁷ The humanist Peter Martyr d'Anghiera, the papal diplomat Baldassare Castiglione, and the Sicilian scholar Luca di Marinis (known in Castile as Lucio Marineo Siculo) figured prominently among the Italian visitors. In addition to the strong native influences in peninsular culture, for the next half-century scholars from all parts of Spain looked to and accepted the literature and learning that came from abroad. When in 1534 the Catalan poet Joan Bosca published a Castilian translation of Castiglione's book The Courtier, his fellow poet and friend Garcilaso de la Vega declared it to be ‘perhaps the first work written in Spanish worthy of a learned man's attention’. Significantly, it was translated from Italian. The creative impulse became closely tied to the development of international learning, and Castile began to develop its capacities in the light of its experience with other peoples.

The Spain in which Nebrija lived was, in many senses, on the periphery of the continent of Europe. The Romans had always considered Hispania to be the edge of the world. The passage between the Pillars of Hercules – what we know as the straits of Gibraltar – led out, their poets explained, to an impassable sea of darkness. The Iberian peninsula therefore became the final destination of all the great expansionist civilizations. Celts, Phoenicians and Romans made it their home and settled among the native peoples. In the eighth century after Christ, Muslim invaders from north Africa swept up through the straits of Gibraltar and began a conquest that gave them three-quarters of the peninsula. By the tenth century the caliphate of Córdoba was a sophisticated, thriving empire, and the Arabs left a permanent imprint on the country. The small indigenous Jewish minority managed to survive under the Muslims, as it later did under the Christians who many generations later reoccupied the greater part of the territory and left the Muslims in control of only the south, known as al-Andalus. Hispania conserved a rich and complex heritage of political forms, languages and creeds that made it impossible for any unity to emerge within the peninsula. It is not surprising that contemporaries looked hopefully for signs of this unity. It would, they thought, bring them peace and a sense of purpose. In the event, co-operation came about only with dedication to great common enterprises beyond their own frontiers.

The territory known as Spain consisted of two main political units, the Crown of Castile and that of Aragon. Their rise to empire is, by common agreement, traced to the political accords that put an end to the long decades of civil war during the fifteenth century. The claimant to the throne of Castile, Princess Isabella, had the support of a group of powerful nobles, who during ten years of conflict backed her claim to succeed to the crown after her half-brother Henry IV. Various projects to marry the princess to powerful nobles ended when in January 1469 she agreed by treaty to marry the son of King Juan II of Aragon, the seventeen-year-old titular king of Sicily, Ferdinand. She herself was aged eighteen. Ferdinand travelled across the peninsula in disguise, with only a few attendants, until he reached the safety of the territory controlled by Isabella. The marriage was celebrated on 18 October 1469, in a simple ceremony at Valladolid. For some time to come, Ferdinand had little effective political power, since the realms he subsequently inherited in Catalonia were also involved in a civil war (1462–72). Isabella was recognized as queen of Castile in 1474, but the military struggles continued up to 1479. In this year Juan II of Aragon died and Ferdinand succeeded him on the throne. The young monarchs were at last able to set about pacifying their realms.

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 ‘emperor’ 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.

Spain's Road to Empire

Contents

List of Illustrations

Colour plates

List of Maps

Preface

1

Foundations