Spain and Its World, 1500-1700: Selected Essays

by J.H. Elliott

It used to be said that the sun never set on the empire of the King of Spain. It was therefore appropriate that Emperor Charles V should have commissioned from Battista Agnese in 1543 a world map as a birthday present for his sixteen-year-old son, the future Philip II. This was the world as Charles V and his successors of the House of Austria knew it, a world crossed by the golden path of the treasure fleets that linked Spain to the riches of the Indies. It is this world, with Spain at its center, that forms the subject of this book. J.H. Elliott, the pre-eminent historian of early modern Spain and its world, originally published these essays in a variety of books and journals. They have here been grouped into four sections, each with an introduction outlining the circumstances in which they were written and offering additional reflections. The first section, on the American world, explores the links between Spain and its American possessions. The second section, "The European World," extends beyond the Castilian center of the Iberian peninsula and its Catalan periphery to embrace sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe as a whole. In "The World of the Court," the author looks at the character of the court of the Spanish Habsburgs and the perennially uneasy relationship between the world of political power and the world of arts and letters. The final section is devoted to the great historical question of the decline of Spain, a question that continues to resonate in the Anglo-American world of today.

Genres: History, Spain, Nonfiction, Essays

316 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

About the author

Sir John Huxtable Elliott, FBA, was an English historian, Regius Professor Emeritus at the University of Oxford and Honorary Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford and Trinity College, Cambridge. He published under the name J.H. Elliott.

Elliott was educated at Eton College and Trinity College, Cambridge. He was an assistant lecturer at Cambridge University from 1957 to 1962 and Lecturer in History from 1962 until 1967, and was subsequently Professor of History at King's College, London between 1968 and 1973. In 1972 he was elected to the Fellowship of the British Academy. Elliott was Professor in the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey from 1973 to 1990, and was Regius Professor of Modern History, Oxford between 1990 and 1997.

He held honorary doctorates from the Autonomous University of Madrid (1983), the universities Genoa (1992), Portsmouth (1993), Barcelona (1994), Warwick (1995), Brown University (1996), Valencia (1998), Lleida (1999), Complutense University of Madrid (2003), College of William & Mary (2005), London (2007), Charles III University of Madrid (2008), Seville (2011), Alcalá (2012), and Cambridge (2013). Elliott is a Fellow of the Rothermere American Institute, University of Oxford, of whose Founding Council he was also a member.

Elliott was knighted in the 1994 New Year Honours for services to history and was decorated with Commander of Isabella the Catholic in 1987, the Grand Cross of Alfonso the Wise in 1988, the Grand Cross of Isabella the Catholic in 1996, and the Creu de Sant Jordi in 1999. An eminent Hispanist, he was given the Prince of Asturias Prize in 1996 for his contributions to the Social sciences. For his outstanding contributions to the history of Spain and the Spanish Empire in the early modern period, Elliott was awarded the Balzan Prize for History, 1500–1800, in 1999.

His studies of the Iberian Peninsula and the Spanish Empire helped the understanding of the problems confronting 16th- and 17th-century Spain, and the attempts of its leaders to avert its decline. He is considered, together with Raymond Carr and Angus Mackay, a major figure in developing Spanish historiography.

Reviews

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book, a series of essays composed by the wonderful Spanish historian, provides a glimpse into the golden age of Spanish empire, and then its rapid decline and the golden age of its arts. Starting with Cortez, He lays out the remarkable success of Spanish bureaucracy. In an era where it could take 2 years for communication between Lima and Madrid, the Spanish monarchy provided and expansive and surprisingly stable government. The bureaucrats themselves were generally older and the system of patronage also guaranteed not just stability, but stagnation. As the flow of American silver started to drop, as did the demand for Spanish products in the new world, so did the fortunes of the empire. Beset by Wars, emigration issues, and Iberian politics, the leaders of the Spanish government were unable to right the “sinking ship” as contemporaries referred to it. In particular the interplay between the writer Quevedo and the government is particularly insightful. If you are a student of colonial era history or European history in general, you will find this collection very interesting.

See my other reviews here!

[Lauren Albert · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent collection of essays which manage to give a very good picture of 16th and 17th century Spain although they are not designed to. Elliott discusses, among other things, the ideas of empire and revolution, the Habsburg court, and the notion of decline in relationship to Spain.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Spain and its World by J. H. Elliot is an attempt to look at Spain from the height of its power to the decline and the rise of Britain and France. Elliot is a known master historian of the Atlantic World and I have enjoyed most of his books. This book is a collection of Essays that show the triumph of the Spanish Bureaucracy and the pillaging of wealth from South and Latin American that once it dried up so did the trade between the areas which began an economic downslide in Spain. This book does go on some tangents about the Spanish court and other areas of Spain that do not necessarily tie to the wider Atlantic World but if you are interested in an academic book by someone who knows what they are talking about then this is an excellent choice!

[Alessandro Rizza · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bueno, un inglés escribiendo de España, que más se puede decir.

[Cheri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Spain and Its World is a fascinating collection of monographs which focused on the sixteenth and seventeenth-centuries Spain. Essentially, these essays were J.H. Elliott research papers on various topics of the Spanish Monarchy. Some of the topics presented in this book were very interesting and hasn’t been published or discussed in J.H. Elliott’s previous works, such as a conciliar governmental system intended to hold together the disparate and distant territories of the Spanish Monarchy staffed only by the elderly, how Hernán Cortés portrayal of his conquest of the Aztec to Charles V might contain more elaborate lies than the truth, the fatalistic way of thinking in the seventeenth-century Spanish officials, the intricate and detailed court life of the Spanish Monarchs, the use of painting and literature as a propaganda machine in the times of Olivares, and the flourishing cultural arts in the times of Castilian’s economic decline.

Of these interesting topics, I’m most intrigued by the evolution of Spanish court etiquettes throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth-centuries.
J.H. Elliott describes Charles V as the virtuoso of political stagecraft where he imported the Burgundian royal court ceremonies to raise his own standing politically. Charles V stood as an impressive and visible monarch to induce awe from his ministers and foreign dignitaries, psychologically making them dependent on royal favour. Whereas Philip II altered the court etiquette into an imposing and restrictive yet inaccessible by settling up his court permanently in Madrid. It was interesting that the court of Charles V and Philip II actually reflected their own personalities. Unfortunately, Philip III and Philip IV were unable to yield this rather solemn court etiquettes to their own advantage or mould it according to their own personalities.

“The ceremonial designed for the court of Spain by Charles V was well calculated to make kingship at once impressive and remote. The effect of Philip II’s adoption and adaptation of that ceremonial was to make it impressive but withdrawn. Charles, with his peripatetic court, combined grandeur with a high degree of visibility. Philip, in settling his court and government in Madrid in 1561, reduced the degree of visibility by withdrawing himself geographically to a central location in Castile. But the process of withdrawal was more than merely geographical. Philip also engaged in what might be described as a psychological withdrawal, as he moulded Spanish kingship to the forms of his own temperament and style of life. The muted style of the court under Philip II, underlined by the gravity of the king’s deportment and the sobriety of his dress, found an appropriate embodiment in that mausoleum of monarchy, the Escorial.” ~Chapter VII: The Court of the Spanish Habsburgs, page 154.

It was the Count-Duke of Olivares who saw the rigidly court etiquettes as an instrument, a sort of weapon that can be wielded to impose the king’s might and policies. Since Olivares also wanted to transform Philip IV to be el Rey Planeta or the Planet King, he saw fit to borrow a kind-of theatrical style of Seville into the more sombre traditions of the Spanish Habsburg style.

“Not surprisingly, the frozen ritual of Spanish court etiquette was also reflected in the deportment of the king. Foreign observers were struck by his impassivity. Philip IV was described by Francois Bertaut in 1659 as a ‘statue’. The pattern of a royal audience was always the same. Those admitted to the king’s presence would invariably find him arrimado a un bufete — standing at a console table — as they entered the audience chamber. He would raise his hat as they came in, and then stand motionless throughout the audience. The studiously non-committal remark that closed the audience at least indicated that the statue talked.” ~Chapter VII: The Court of the Spanish Habsburgs, page 150.

The Chamber of Felipe IV (Philip IV) in the Buen Retiro Royal Palace by Vicente Poleró y Toledo

Almost all the essays in this book are informative and interesting except a single chapter where J.H. Elliott discussed the revolutionist tendency across Europe during the Early Modern period. It was not directly related to Imperial Spain but could benefit in our understanding that the revolution or the rebellion inside the Spanish Monarchy might not be an isolated case but a widespread discontentment across Europe. But for me, that chapter was rather tedious. Overall though, this is an enjoyable book and one more example of J.H. Elliott’s brilliant work in introducing us the sixteenth and seventeenth-centuries Spain.