J.H. Elliott > Quotes

“These men were dedicated fighters – tough, determined, contemptuous of danger, arrogant and touchy, extravagant and impossible; examples, perhaps a little larger than life size, of the kind of man produced by the nomadic, warrior society which inhabited the dry tableland of medieval Castile.”
― J.H. Elliott, Imperial Spain 1469-1716

“Había, por tanto, un fuerte núcleo de franceses en casi todas las ciudades catalanas de importancia,”
― John H. Elliott, La rebelión de los catalanes: Un estudio de la decadencia de España

“«Siempre la lengua ha sido compañera del imperio»,”
― John H. Elliott, La rebelión de los catalanes: Un estudio de la decadencia de España

“Pero estudiar trajo placer, y el placer una creciente sensación de dominio”
― J.H. Elliott, History in the Making

“Columbus sent home shiploads of Indians to be sold as slaves, but the theologians protested, the Queen's conscience rebelled, and enslavement of the Indians was formally prohibited in 1500. Exceptions were made, however, for Indians who attacked Spaniards, or practised atrocious habits such as cannibalism, and Cortés had no difficulty in finding pretexts for the enslavement of numerous men, women, and children.”
― J.H. Elliott, Imperial Spain 1469-1716

“For many years the
survival of the settlement was to hang in the balance, with alternating peace and hostilities between the Powhatans and the English, until the so-called `Great Massacre' of some 400 of the 1,240 colonists in 1622 precipitated a conflict in which the English gradually gained the upper hand.70 But the Virginia colony that emerged from these harsh birth-throes differed sharply in many ways from the viceroyalty of New Spain. Unlike New Spain, it was not established on the tribute and services of the indigenous population, whose numbers were rapidly depleted by hunger, war and disease. And salvation, when it came, came not from gold but from tobacco.”
― J.H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America 1492-1830

“La fuerza defensiva francocatalana se enfrentó al ejército de Vélez en la montaña de Montjuich,”
― John H. Elliott, La rebelión de los catalanes: Un estudio de la decadencia de España

“They were the supreme representatives of the Catalan nation, acting as spokesmen for it in any conflict with the Crown, and seeing that the laws or ‘constitutions’ of the Principality were observed to the letter; and at times they were, in all but name, the Principality's government.”
― J. H. Elliott, Imperial Spain 1469-1716

“Cataluña había cambiado un señor por otro.”
― John H. Elliott, La rebelión de los catalanes: Un estudio de la decadencia de España

“muy pocos catalanes podían resistir a las llamadas de su propio interés.”
― John H. Elliott, La rebelión de los catalanes: Un estudio de la decadencia de España

“i després d’haver fetes les lleis no estan subjectes a ellas…”
― John H. Elliott, La rebelión de los catalanes: Un estudio de la decadencia de España

“While the conquistadores possessed an important advantage in the superiority of their weapons, it is in their personal characteristics that the secret of their triumph finally lies. A few small cannon and thirteen muskets can hardly have been the decisive factor in overthrowing an empire more than ten million strong. There must here have been a superiority that was more than merely technical, and perhaps it ultimately lay in the greater self-confidence of the civilization which produced the conquistadores.”
― J.H. Elliott, Imperial Spain 1469-1716

“why there is any need to bother with Spain at all. ‘Why Spain?’ was a question that I had to answer for myself even as I attempted to answer it for others. My own answer, as it has evolved over the years, is that this is an endlessly fascinating country whose history, made up of striking successes and equally striking failures, embraces topics of universal import. Here is a country and a people whose past saw the construction and subsequent deconstruction of complex religious and ethnic relationships as it stood poised between the worlds of Christianity, Judaism and Islam; a country that took the lead among European powers in conquering and governing a vast overseas empire, and that has persistently sought, and never quite succeeded, in reconciling the conflicting demands of unity and diversity on its own territory; and a country whose religious, cultural and artistic achievements over the course of the centuries have made an enormously rich if often controversial contribution to human civilization.”
― J.H. Elliott, History in the Making

“The kingdom of Aragon possessed an official known as the Justicia, for whom no exact equivalent is to be found in any country of western Europe. An Aragonese noble appointed by the Crown, the Justicia was appointed to see that the laws of the land were not infringed by royal or baronial officials, and that the subject was protected against any exercise of arbitrary power. The office of Justicia by no means worked perfectly, and by the late fifteenth century it was coming to be regarded as virtually hereditary in the family of Lanuza, which had close ties with the Crown; but none the less, the...”
― J. H. Elliott, Imperial Spain 1469-1716

“Spain, for so long a mere geographical expression, was somehow transformed into an historical fact.”
― J. H. Elliott, Imperial Spain 1469-1716

“From the legal point of view it was early established that the Indians were the proprietors of all lands which they possessed and cultivated at the time of the Spaniards' arrival, while the rest of the land and all the sub-soil became the property of the State.”
― J.H. Elliott, Imperial Spain 1469-1716

“propuso que el Principado se colocase bajo el gobierno del rey de Francia,”
― John H. Elliott, La rebelión de los catalanes: Un estudio de la decadencia de España

“Cataluña, como nación, era tradicionalmente, y violentamente, antifrancesa,”
― John H. Elliott, La rebelión de los catalanes: Un estudio de la decadencia de España

“A shrewd notary from Extremadura, turned colonist and adventurer, and a one-armed ex-privateer from Limehouse, in the county of Middlesex. Eighty-seven years separate the expeditions, led by Hernan Cortes and Captain Christopher Newport receptively, that laid the foundation of the empires of Spain and Britain on the mainland of America.”
― J.H. Elliott

“Cataluña era una república independiente. Pero solo iba a durar una semana.”
― John H. Elliott, La rebelión de los catalanes: Un estudio de la decadencia de España

“los nobles y los ricos burgueses se refugiaron en las iglesias”
― John H. Elliott, La rebelión de los catalanes: Un estudio de la decadencia de España

“The origins of Aragon's independent history, and of the fundamental characteristics which differentiated it so sharply from Castile, are to be found in the long struggle of medieval Spain against Islam. The Arabs had invaded the Iberian peninsula in 711, and conquered it within seven years. What was lost in seven years it took seven hundred to regain.”
― J. H. Elliott, Imperial Spain 1469-1716