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The Grand Strategy of Philip II
In the second half of the 16th century, Spain's Philip II ruled over the original empire on which the sun never set. In Europe alone, he held power over Portugal, the Netherlands, and about half of Italy (including Sicily, the Duchy of Milan, and the Kingdom of Naples). On the African shores of the Mediterranean, he controlled Tunis and Tangier; further south were Guinea and Angola. There were holdings in India and--well, naturally--the Philippines, and in the Western hemisphere, there were Florida, Cuba, Brazil, Peru, and "New Spain," which occupied the modern American Southwest and all of Mexico and Central America.
Most historians have claimed that, in overseeing this empire, Philip had no "Grand Strategy," but instead occupied himself with perpetual reaction to events. But Geoffrey Parker believes that there was a "strategic culture" that influenced Philip's reign, and he makes extensive use of surviving correspondence from the period to demonstrate how that culture revealed itself in Spain's attempts to hang onto the Netherlands and in its relationship--diplomatic and martial--to England. The Grand Strategy of Philip II is a richly detailed history, which will reward any student of modern statecraft with its insights into geopolitical power.
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First published January 1, 1998
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About the author
Geoffrey Parker
98 books171 followersGeoffrey Parker is Andreas Dorpalen Professor of European History and an Associate of the Mershon Center at The Ohio State University. He has published widely on the social, political and military history of early modern Europe, and in 2012 the Royal Dutch Academy recognized these achievements by awarding him its biennial Heineken Foundation Prize for History, open to scholars in any field, and any period, from any country.
Parker has written or co-written thirty-nine books, including The Military Revolution: Military innovation and the rise of the West, 1500-1800 (Cambridge University Press, 1988), winner of the 'best book prize' from both the American Military Institute and the Society for the History of Technology; The Grand Strategy of Philip II (Yale University Press, 1998), which won the Samuel Eliot Morison Prize from the Society of Military History; and Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century (Yale University Press, 2013), which won the Society of Military History’s Distinguished Book Prize and also one of the three medals awarded in 2014 by the British Academy for ‘a landmark academic achievement… which has transformed understanding of a particular subject’.
Before moving to Ohio State in 1997, Parker taught at Cambridge and St Andrews universities in Britain, at the University of British Columbia in Canada, and at Illinois and Yale Universities in the United States, teaching courses on the Reformation, European history and military history at both undergraduate and graduate levels. He has directed or co-directed over thirty Doctoral Dissertations to completion, as well as several undergraduate theses. In 2006 he won an OSU Alumni Distinguished Teaching Award.
He lives in Columbus, Ohio, and has four children. In 1987 he was diagnosed as having Multiple Sclerosis. His latest book is Imprudent King: A New Life of Philip II (Yale University Press, 2014).
Parker has written or co-written thirty-nine books, including The Military Revolution: Military innovation and the rise of the West, 1500-1800 (Cambridge University Press, 1988), winner of the 'best book prize' from both the American Military Institute and the Society for the History of Technology; The Grand Strategy of Philip II (Yale University Press, 1998), which won the Samuel Eliot Morison Prize from the Society of Military History; and Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century (Yale University Press, 2013), which won the Society of Military History’s Distinguished Book Prize and also one of the three medals awarded in 2014 by the British Academy for ‘a landmark academic achievement… which has transformed understanding of a particular subject’.
Before moving to Ohio State in 1997, Parker taught at Cambridge and St Andrews universities in Britain, at the University of British Columbia in Canada, and at Illinois and Yale Universities in the United States, teaching courses on the Reformation, European history and military history at both undergraduate and graduate levels. He has directed or co-directed over thirty Doctoral Dissertations to completion, as well as several undergraduate theses. In 2006 he won an OSU Alumni Distinguished Teaching Award.
He lives in Columbus, Ohio, and has four children. In 1987 he was diagnosed as having Multiple Sclerosis. His latest book is Imprudent King: A New Life of Philip II (Yale University Press, 2014).
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
February 13, 2022
A compelling mix of biography and strategy, one of the better historical books about strategy that I've read. The greatest strength of this book is its design/structure: Parker starts with 100 pages or so of thematic biography, focusing on KP's strategic situation, decision-making style, and sense of religious mission. There are rich sources on this guy, so he's able to paint a vivid picture of a somewhat neurotic, micro-managing, and yet messianic leader. It's a weird combo: the personality of a stickler accountant who meddles in his employees every move who also believes he has a special mission from God to protect the borders of Christendom and stamp out Protestant heresy. You can see KP hunched over his desk, trying to work through a mountain of paperwork to manage his sprawling global empire, and never going back and questioning his core assumptions no matter how many defeats he suffers.
Parker's critique of KP's grand strategy starts with the classic Paul Kennedy argument of imperial overstretch, but he both challenges and specifies that argument. In a brilliant conclusion on agent v structure in history, Parker argues that while overstretch played a role in the decline of Spanish power, KP's own agency and idiosyncratic leadership style was equally if not more important. KP drew up complicated strategic plans that were hard to execute; he failed to delegate authority and trust to military experts even though he could barely communicate with them over huge distances; he rarely consolidated or retrenched, preferring to fight everywhere rather than focus his resources or retract from certain obligations; and he stepped in confirmation bias all over the place, straining out info that didn't fit his plans or worldview. His messianic and almost fanatical religious faith was also essential for explaining his strategic errors. He let God's will and the personal sense of chosen-ness fill the gaps of shoddy planning under the logic that "God will provide." Mistakes were attributed to God's disfavor, leading to a failure to learn lessons. Finally, his faith contributed to overstretch, as he felt he had to protect the Pope and Catholics everywhere against both the Turks and Protestants. You can really see, given all the interference in sovereign states that KP and other monarchs of this era did, why the norm of Westphalian sovereignty arose in the 17th century and how necessary it was to tamp down endemic warfare.
Parker uses some cognitive psych to argue that while KP's almost constant waging of war was essentially defensive in mindset, even though it led to offensive actions like the attempted invasion of England. He argues that KP inherited a large and somewhat unwieldy empire and merely saw himself as securing its borders and internal integrity. In all likelihood, this empire was simply too big and diverse for one proto-nation state to control, and yet Parker shows that he almost won many of these conflicts, pointing out the contingencies in the wars with the Dutch and the English that could have gone his way.
The second half of this book goes into the details of those conflicts. These aren't as interesting to me, and at times the details get a little numbing. Still, this is an excellent although highly specific study. I'd recommend it not to the general reader (Parker assumes a basic knowledge of geopolitics, religion, etc in the 16th century) but to any student of strategy in history as well as early modern Europeanists. It's brilliant as a giant case study of strategy, but not necessarily accessible. It's also 300 pages of fairly small print, so it's not a light read by any sense.
Parker's critique of KP's grand strategy starts with the classic Paul Kennedy argument of imperial overstretch, but he both challenges and specifies that argument. In a brilliant conclusion on agent v structure in history, Parker argues that while overstretch played a role in the decline of Spanish power, KP's own agency and idiosyncratic leadership style was equally if not more important. KP drew up complicated strategic plans that were hard to execute; he failed to delegate authority and trust to military experts even though he could barely communicate with them over huge distances; he rarely consolidated or retrenched, preferring to fight everywhere rather than focus his resources or retract from certain obligations; and he stepped in confirmation bias all over the place, straining out info that didn't fit his plans or worldview. His messianic and almost fanatical religious faith was also essential for explaining his strategic errors. He let God's will and the personal sense of chosen-ness fill the gaps of shoddy planning under the logic that "God will provide." Mistakes were attributed to God's disfavor, leading to a failure to learn lessons. Finally, his faith contributed to overstretch, as he felt he had to protect the Pope and Catholics everywhere against both the Turks and Protestants. You can really see, given all the interference in sovereign states that KP and other monarchs of this era did, why the norm of Westphalian sovereignty arose in the 17th century and how necessary it was to tamp down endemic warfare.
Parker uses some cognitive psych to argue that while KP's almost constant waging of war was essentially defensive in mindset, even though it led to offensive actions like the attempted invasion of England. He argues that KP inherited a large and somewhat unwieldy empire and merely saw himself as securing its borders and internal integrity. In all likelihood, this empire was simply too big and diverse for one proto-nation state to control, and yet Parker shows that he almost won many of these conflicts, pointing out the contingencies in the wars with the Dutch and the English that could have gone his way.
The second half of this book goes into the details of those conflicts. These aren't as interesting to me, and at times the details get a little numbing. Still, this is an excellent although highly specific study. I'd recommend it not to the general reader (Parker assumes a basic knowledge of geopolitics, religion, etc in the 16th century) but to any student of strategy in history as well as early modern Europeanists. It's brilliant as a giant case study of strategy, but not necessarily accessible. It's also 300 pages of fairly small print, so it's not a light read by any sense.
October 14, 2019
Most of the accounts I’ve read of the Spanish empire during the reign of Philip II have been from the perspective of Spain’s enemies or rivals (e.g. Elizabeth I’s England, the Venetian republic) so it was interesting to read about these events from the Spanish perspective. This book is extensively researched and well-written but (be warned) is also exceptionally dry. The main slant of the book is exactly what strategy Philip II had for managing a 16th Century global empire, Part I is general in scope; part II goes into great detail on uprisings in the Netherlands, war with England, and the “Enterprise of England/”Spanish Armada; part III deals with specific flaws and failings in Grand Strategy. Parker chose to focus narrowly on conflicts in the Low Countries and British Isles because Philip failed to achieve his goals in this region, conflicts in this area were a huge financial/material drain on his empire, and also because Parker was able to obtain (and read in original language) documents from all the powers involved. The book tends to deal with conflicts in the Mediterranean only so far as victories over/treaties with the Ottoman Turks allowed Philip II to free up money and ships for use in other areas – or as defeat or pending actions laid greater claims on his resources. In the areas that his book goes into detail, it goes into A LOT of detail, including an entire chapter about whether the Duke of Parma deliberately sabotaged the invasion of England (“Was Parma Ready?); detailed comparison of the English and Spanish navies, down to individual ships and armament (The Guns of August), and 16th Century espionage (The Worst Kept Secret in Europe?). Anyone who has done even a cursory study of the period know that Elizabeth I was often a horrible ruler to work for, but in this book, Philip II comes off as even worse. While very intelligent and hard-working, the Spanish King was a horrific micromanager, frequently ordering distant subordinates to take no actions that he didn’t specifically authorize or sending highly detailed instructions that became drastically out of date before they even arrived. While he liked to be informed and prepared before giving orders, he worried so much about making a mistake that he would take forever to make a decision, demanding “just one more” report or document. As he got older, this got worse. At the same time, he would sometimes make NO contingency plans, telling his subordinates to "trust in god". 3.5 Stars (4 for information; 3 for readability).
June 7, 2014
Geoffrey Parker is the best biographer on Philip II. I have read several of his other book that deal with this maligned and often misunderstood king. What makes his books better than others is that he doesn't step into the extremes and paints the complete opposite of what his political enemies did of him at the time; he is no devil but he is neither a saint. And he makes that clear by explaining his failures and achievements. Most notably he spends the first chapters speaking of his upbringing and how this shaped him for the coming years when he would spent hours, sometimes days without sleep and a fixed schedule where he would eat his meals in his study, overseeing letters, making sure nothing passed him by. He was one of the kings that spent most of his time reading letters and left nothing to his secretaries that he couldn't handle, but as a result he was became very reclusive, especially after his third wife Isabel of France died. His favorite children were his daughters by her, Isabel and Catalina whose letters to them still survive. Among Philip's many achievements was the management of his colonies and the improvements to his navy, in spite of the humiliating defeat with the English with the Armada incident, there were other battles where the Spanish under Philip II's able commanders were able to prove themselves. But there was a dark side, as there was a dark side to all these 'successful' monarchs. As what came to the monarchs of this age, Philip was very religious, he loved to boast of his Catholicism but didn't think twice when it came to bully the popes to submit to his own will and contrary to popular belief not all Catholic kingdoms were united, even when he formed a union with other countries such as France to fight England, his attitude made it difficult to work with these countries. The popes during his lifetime never forgot what his father did to Clement and how his soldiers had sacked Rome in 1527 -whether under his orders or not, they were unlikely to forget that incident and because of this, they didn't trust Philip. One of the popes even declared that he felt sorry that he was on Philip's side and that Queen Elizabeth I was not Catholic, or else he would support her instead. As his attitude became more overbearing, it became nearly impossible to keep the papacy on his side, part of the reason the Armada incident ended the way it did was not only due to bad weather but because the papacy two years prior refused to lend Philip any more money.
In spite of this and many other things, Philip managed to govern his land well and when he died, he left Spain to his surviving son, Philip III who with James I would later signed an agreement ending the war between both their countries.
In spite of this and many other things, Philip managed to govern his land well and when he died, he left Spain to his surviving son, Philip III who with James I would later signed an agreement ending the war between both their countries.
July 6, 2011
Everyone in a position of senior management in any organization, public or private, should read this book.
August 9, 2012
Great companion to Garrett Mattingly's The Armada.
June 29, 2017
Perhaps not as compelling as his more biographical work on Philip or narratives but still a good read.
August 31, 2025
A good work with an interesting, well-argued thesis. Parker does not shy away from details but he also doesn’t lose focus on the bigger pictures. This is an excellent book that allows the reader to understand how the choices of a single powerful person can be magnified and distorted across the entire world. The writing is clear and frankly I didn’t think it was dry at all.
My largest complaint about this book is that it is quite unbalanced. Parker writes extensively about the Spanish Armada and its failed attempt to unseat Queen Elizabeth I. He has only one chapter on the Dutch Revolt and only discusses in passing Philip’s adventures in the New World, Portugal, North Africa, Italy, and France.
Nevertheless, even with this narrow scope, it becomes clear how the strategy (or lack thereof) created by Phillip II and supported by his close advisers had adverse consequences for the Spanish Empire.
My largest complaint about this book is that it is quite unbalanced. Parker writes extensively about the Spanish Armada and its failed attempt to unseat Queen Elizabeth I. He has only one chapter on the Dutch Revolt and only discusses in passing Philip’s adventures in the New World, Portugal, North Africa, Italy, and France.
Nevertheless, even with this narrow scope, it becomes clear how the strategy (or lack thereof) created by Phillip II and supported by his close advisers had adverse consequences for the Spanish Empire.
February 22, 2015
The final chapter of this book cites Don Martin de Padilla, commander of the Armadas that sailed in the war against England in 1596 and 1597, dismally observing that Spanish strategy held "our eyes on the stone that harmed us and not the arm from which it came." The sharpest criticism of Philip II as the head of a global empire, is that he had no long term strategy at all, but only reacted to events in a struggle to hold on to the scattered lands that he had inherited. And, as if that would not have been enough, that in doing so failed to be realistic in matching up ends and means, literally resigning himself to hoping for a miracle when the gap became too large.
Parker's account, after an introduction that investigates the administrative means by which the king sought to reign his empire and the challenges of communication and finance that he faced, focuses mostly on the war in the Low Countries and the failed invasion of England in 1588. He provides a great amount of detail on these events, trying to show how information flowed and decisions were reached, and how misinformation, misunderstanding and bad judgment contributed to shaping events. This is a book destined for readers who already have a reasonable amount of background knowledge, for it focuses strongly on the fragile machinery of Spanish decision making, and does not provide much context for it. But Parker's investigation of the extensive archives left behind by the king and his secretaries gives a lot of insight.
Parker writes of Philip II with some sympathy but with a caustic condemnation of the king's management style: Secretive and distrustful, hardworking and unwilling to delegate, Philip swayed between entrusting great power to his commanders and viceroys, and trying to micromanage them in an absurd way. At a time when a letter between Brussels and Madrid would usually take more than two weeks to arrive (but was sometimes much faster, and sometimes a lot slower) the king's insistence that his position at the center of the information network gave him the superior knowledge that justified this micromanagement was absurd.
For all its remoteness in time and place, this book brings these 16th century decision makers close to us on their human experience. The Duke of Parma grumbling about impossible orders, the king trying to correct spelling and syntax errors in the documents sent to him, his ministers wrangling about who should bring his majesty some particularly bad news: They are all instantly recognizable.
Parker's account, after an introduction that investigates the administrative means by which the king sought to reign his empire and the challenges of communication and finance that he faced, focuses mostly on the war in the Low Countries and the failed invasion of England in 1588. He provides a great amount of detail on these events, trying to show how information flowed and decisions were reached, and how misinformation, misunderstanding and bad judgment contributed to shaping events. This is a book destined for readers who already have a reasonable amount of background knowledge, for it focuses strongly on the fragile machinery of Spanish decision making, and does not provide much context for it. But Parker's investigation of the extensive archives left behind by the king and his secretaries gives a lot of insight.
Parker writes of Philip II with some sympathy but with a caustic condemnation of the king's management style: Secretive and distrustful, hardworking and unwilling to delegate, Philip swayed between entrusting great power to his commanders and viceroys, and trying to micromanage them in an absurd way. At a time when a letter between Brussels and Madrid would usually take more than two weeks to arrive (but was sometimes much faster, and sometimes a lot slower) the king's insistence that his position at the center of the information network gave him the superior knowledge that justified this micromanagement was absurd.
For all its remoteness in time and place, this book brings these 16th century decision makers close to us on their human experience. The Duke of Parma grumbling about impossible orders, the king trying to correct spelling and syntax errors in the documents sent to him, his ministers wrangling about who should bring his majesty some particularly bad news: They are all instantly recognizable.
July 17, 2014
Parker has undertaken an enormously in-depth study of the "grand strategy" of Spain's Philip II, ruler of an empire on which the sun never set. Yet despite the heaps of documents he obviously trawled through, this book remains interesting. The author draws apt parallels to other portions of history - Cold War, Vietnam, World War II - and to modern business models, showing that the subject, though seemingly arcane, is actually relevant. He does not spend much time on a broad outline of historical events, but his discussion of details doesn't descend so deep into the minutiae as to lose the reader. Still, it would probably be best to start with a more general history before launching into this examination of Why Philip Failed.
March 10, 2014
It is amazing to actually read of how an absolute monarch governs and makes decisions, and then, in the 16th Century, communicates them. This is an in depth analysis of the decisions in the Netherlands and for the ill-fated invasion of England in 1588. Seemingly obscure, this book is a real eye opener. Its weakness is that it doesn’t really tell what happened in these places, just how the decision was made.
December 11, 2022
The moral of the story is that one's ambitions must be commensurate with the means at one's disposal. Do not try to do too much with too little. If one has ambitious objectives but lacks the means to achieve these ends then the goal must first be to patiently build up one's means until symmetry between means and ends is reached.
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July 16, 2011Masterful.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews