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Fontana History of Europe
Europe Divided, 1559 - 1598
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432 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1968
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About the author
J.H. Elliott
60 books83 followersSir 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
October 7, 2021
Politics of Religion
6 October 2021
One of the things that I love about history is that it unfolds like a novel with heroes and villains and epic battles. However, the problem with looking at history like this is that one person’s hero is another person’s villain. For instance, being your typical White Anglo-Saxon Protestant I’ll generally view Queen Elizabeth I as being a hero (or heroine), and the likes of the Caliph of the Ottomans, Catherine de Medici, and Phillip II of Spain as the Villians. There are certainly going to be a lot of other people that will have differing views.
Actually, before I go any further, if you are looking for a somewhat entertaining history channel, History Matters is actually pretty good, and this video goes over what this book covers, at least where France is concerned. Yeah, that’s the other problem with history, particularly with European history, and that there is just so much going on that it is impossible to explore all of it in a 400-page book.
The author suggests that this period of European history was wracked by division, that being between the Catholics and the Protestants, the nobility and the merchants, the Christians vs the Muslims, and even the Western European powers against the Northern European powers. However, since at this time we have Spain pretty much the dominant European power, there are a lot of events that are simply brushed over, such as what was happening in the North. Also, the culture at the time, since we are are in the period of Shakespeare and Montaigne, gets brushed aside to focus mainly on the politics, and I have to admit that the politics were pretty nasty.
What is interesting in this period are the number of influential women. England starts off with Bloody Mary, who got the name because she had a habit of burning protestants at the stake, but she died and Elizabeth became queen. What is interesting is that she had quite a number of suitors, which probably shouldn’t surprise anybody because hey, who wouldn’t want to marry a queen. However, this is before the days of the British Empire, but you can pretty much see the beginnings of this period, especially with the decisive victory over the Spanish Armada.
Actually, it almost sounds as if Elizabeth was a Pirate Queen, particularly when it comes to Sir Francis Drake. Yeah, he’s pretty famous, for being a pirate, though he is probably more well known for circumnavigating the world (even though he wasn’t the first to do that). Yet, he did prove to be pretty annoying towards Spain, but then again Spain’s power pretty much came from the fact that they had control over the silver mines of the Americas, and the weakness was the fact that the silver had to be shipped from the Americas over to Europe.
Yeah, Spain was a superpower, but by the end of this period we are starting to see it in decline. It wasn’t just the fact that they lost a fleet to the English, but that they were fighting a losing war in the Netherlands. In fact, I remember one history lecturer suggest that the US’s experience in Vietnam reminded him a lot of Spain’s experience in the Netherlands, and this was before Afghanistan and Iraq. The main reason that Spain withdrew was because, well, they were broke. Pretty much all of the silver that they had gained from the New World, pretty much went into the endless money pit that happened to be the Netherlands.
Actually, the revolt in the Netherlands had a pretty interesting beginning. It actually started in the South of France. Like, at this time Geneva was pretty much the Rome of the Protestant world. Lutheranism had sort of settled down, but the Calvinists were are a lot more proactive and was actually growing pretty fast. From its base in Switzerland, it had spread across France creating what had become the Huguenot’s. The pressure from them was that Calvin had promoted a peaceful religion, but they claimed persecution and wanted to fight back, and when Geneva relented you could say that the proverbial gloves were off.
Anyway, the Netherlands started off with a group known as the Sea Beggars, and they basically travelled to Holland and converted the towns through peaceful means. Their followers certainly weren’t in the majority, but they had friends in the towns who would open the gates to them, and they would enter and pretty much force the towns to convert to Protestantism at the point of the sword. The thing was that the Spanish retaliated somewhat heavy-handedly, which drove many of the Dutch over to the protestants.
The French Wars of religion somehow reminds me of the wars that are being fought between the Christian nationalists (they call themselves Evangelicals, but I call them fanatics) and the secular society. They claim persecution, and instead of spreading their message of peace and love, they get violent. This is pretty much why France had descended into civil war over this period, and is also the reason why there aren’t many protestants left in the country, or at least there isn’t a national protestant church, unlike the case in England, Scotland, Germany, and the Netherlands.
I just realised that I got sidetracked from talking about the women of power in this era, and ironically, even though the French had the Salic law, which basically said that only a male could inherit the throne, and that only the male from the male line could inherit the throne, didn’t mean that women were powerless. Like, Catherine de Medici pretty much ruled France with an iron fist (or at least tried to, if it wasn’t for those damned Huguenots), it was just that she didn’t have any official title. It wasn’t even that the King was too young to rule, it was just that she was able to pull the strings, and to pull them pretty effectively. However, it probably also had a lot to do with the fact that they didn’t want a protestant on the throne.
There is certainly quite a lot more I could talk about, such as the war with the Ottomans, and the fact that despite the power of their empire, and their modern way of appointing people to roles (based on merit as opposed to being based on family ties), one thing that stood out was how Europe was moving towards the modern economic world. In fact, this period opened with Europe in recession, namely because the great powers had wasted a bucket load of money on wars that didn’t produce any noticeable results. Then there is also the question of inflation, which many suggest was because of all the silver that was flowing in from the Americas, but the writers suggest that there was a lot more going on behind the scenes than just that. This is the case that most of the silver didn’t land up in the hands of the peasantry, but rather in the hands of the nobles and the merchant princes.
Yeah, there is so much more that I could write about this, but I’ll leave it at that. However, I’ll certainly be trying to get my hands on the book that covers the defenestrations of Prague.
6 October 2021
One of the things that I love about history is that it unfolds like a novel with heroes and villains and epic battles. However, the problem with looking at history like this is that one person’s hero is another person’s villain. For instance, being your typical White Anglo-Saxon Protestant I’ll generally view Queen Elizabeth I as being a hero (or heroine), and the likes of the Caliph of the Ottomans, Catherine de Medici, and Phillip II of Spain as the Villians. There are certainly going to be a lot of other people that will have differing views.
Actually, before I go any further, if you are looking for a somewhat entertaining history channel, History Matters is actually pretty good, and this video goes over what this book covers, at least where France is concerned. Yeah, that’s the other problem with history, particularly with European history, and that there is just so much going on that it is impossible to explore all of it in a 400-page book.
The author suggests that this period of European history was wracked by division, that being between the Catholics and the Protestants, the nobility and the merchants, the Christians vs the Muslims, and even the Western European powers against the Northern European powers. However, since at this time we have Spain pretty much the dominant European power, there are a lot of events that are simply brushed over, such as what was happening in the North. Also, the culture at the time, since we are are in the period of Shakespeare and Montaigne, gets brushed aside to focus mainly on the politics, and I have to admit that the politics were pretty nasty.
What is interesting in this period are the number of influential women. England starts off with Bloody Mary, who got the name because she had a habit of burning protestants at the stake, but she died and Elizabeth became queen. What is interesting is that she had quite a number of suitors, which probably shouldn’t surprise anybody because hey, who wouldn’t want to marry a queen. However, this is before the days of the British Empire, but you can pretty much see the beginnings of this period, especially with the decisive victory over the Spanish Armada.
Actually, it almost sounds as if Elizabeth was a Pirate Queen, particularly when it comes to Sir Francis Drake. Yeah, he’s pretty famous, for being a pirate, though he is probably more well known for circumnavigating the world (even though he wasn’t the first to do that). Yet, he did prove to be pretty annoying towards Spain, but then again Spain’s power pretty much came from the fact that they had control over the silver mines of the Americas, and the weakness was the fact that the silver had to be shipped from the Americas over to Europe.
Yeah, Spain was a superpower, but by the end of this period we are starting to see it in decline. It wasn’t just the fact that they lost a fleet to the English, but that they were fighting a losing war in the Netherlands. In fact, I remember one history lecturer suggest that the US’s experience in Vietnam reminded him a lot of Spain’s experience in the Netherlands, and this was before Afghanistan and Iraq. The main reason that Spain withdrew was because, well, they were broke. Pretty much all of the silver that they had gained from the New World, pretty much went into the endless money pit that happened to be the Netherlands.
Actually, the revolt in the Netherlands had a pretty interesting beginning. It actually started in the South of France. Like, at this time Geneva was pretty much the Rome of the Protestant world. Lutheranism had sort of settled down, but the Calvinists were are a lot more proactive and was actually growing pretty fast. From its base in Switzerland, it had spread across France creating what had become the Huguenot’s. The pressure from them was that Calvin had promoted a peaceful religion, but they claimed persecution and wanted to fight back, and when Geneva relented you could say that the proverbial gloves were off.
Anyway, the Netherlands started off with a group known as the Sea Beggars, and they basically travelled to Holland and converted the towns through peaceful means. Their followers certainly weren’t in the majority, but they had friends in the towns who would open the gates to them, and they would enter and pretty much force the towns to convert to Protestantism at the point of the sword. The thing was that the Spanish retaliated somewhat heavy-handedly, which drove many of the Dutch over to the protestants.
The French Wars of religion somehow reminds me of the wars that are being fought between the Christian nationalists (they call themselves Evangelicals, but I call them fanatics) and the secular society. They claim persecution, and instead of spreading their message of peace and love, they get violent. This is pretty much why France had descended into civil war over this period, and is also the reason why there aren’t many protestants left in the country, or at least there isn’t a national protestant church, unlike the case in England, Scotland, Germany, and the Netherlands.
I just realised that I got sidetracked from talking about the women of power in this era, and ironically, even though the French had the Salic law, which basically said that only a male could inherit the throne, and that only the male from the male line could inherit the throne, didn’t mean that women were powerless. Like, Catherine de Medici pretty much ruled France with an iron fist (or at least tried to, if it wasn’t for those damned Huguenots), it was just that she didn’t have any official title. It wasn’t even that the King was too young to rule, it was just that she was able to pull the strings, and to pull them pretty effectively. However, it probably also had a lot to do with the fact that they didn’t want a protestant on the throne.
There is certainly quite a lot more I could talk about, such as the war with the Ottomans, and the fact that despite the power of their empire, and their modern way of appointing people to roles (based on merit as opposed to being based on family ties), one thing that stood out was how Europe was moving towards the modern economic world. In fact, this period opened with Europe in recession, namely because the great powers had wasted a bucket load of money on wars that didn’t produce any noticeable results. Then there is also the question of inflation, which many suggest was because of all the silver that was flowing in from the Americas, but the writers suggest that there was a lot more going on behind the scenes than just that. This is the case that most of the silver didn’t land up in the hands of the peasantry, but rather in the hands of the nobles and the merchant princes.
Yeah, there is so much more that I could write about this, but I’ll leave it at that. However, I’ll certainly be trying to get my hands on the book that covers the defenestrations of Prague.
May 12, 2019
This was very strong narrative history which showed the complexity of the politics of the time without confusing the reader. Concern over the balance of power could weigh more than religious differences at times. I really enjoyed this.
March 10, 2014
Fascinating examination of the Counter Reformation, the Spanish super power and the religious wars that kept France weak and drained the Spanish treasury. Of particular interest to readers from the Anglosphere is how vigorous, successful and clever Phillip II of Spain actually was, of how the defeat of the Armada was a disappointment, but not a crushing defeat for Spain and how ineffectual a military leader Francis Drake actually was.
January 31, 2019
Had to read it for my undergraduate essay and investigation scholarship, so it was a pretty quick and to the point read. However its style was light and its contents (though basic) bring a general image of Europe at this time, so I wouldn't mind reading it thoroughly and more slowly again.
March 8, 2021
La Eurooa de Cateau-Cambrésis supuso una tregua en las relaciones europeas de 1559. Pero pronto, las ambiciones y pugnas religiosas iniciaron nuevos conflictos. Los 3 grandes actores (España, Inglaterra y Francia) siempre temieron la alianza de dos de ellos. Los conflictos religiosos provocaron problemas a España (Países Bajos), Inglaterra (Irlanda y Escocia) y Francia (Hugonotes). España, dueña del siglo XVI, dilapendió el dinero, dejando a Felipe III en una situación frágil.
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November 4, 2025una puta merda al igual que l'assignatura.
May 23, 2021
Succinct and readable history. Nice sprinkling of intellectual and economic history to make the political narrative less ... bewildering. Much of the late 16th century history we see focused on Elizabeth I and maybe Germany/North Europe, so centering on Spain’s relationship with the European powers at this time was a nice change.
I’ve been doing this series and it’s a wonderful way to get a sort of college minor in European history quite quickly. Would generally recommend.
I’ve been doing this series and it’s a wonderful way to get a sort of college minor in European history quite quickly. Would generally recommend.
January 8, 2019
An overall too scattered approach to the times so I found it hard to follow. Things happen and then we backtrack with no dates or personages gives, and then sometimes it is the reverse. There are small nuggets of gold in here, but mining for them is steep and not worth my time.
February 4, 2021
Dreadfully dry
October 31, 2025
Lo he leído para la universidad.
llegó el momento en el que sentía que se repetía, y hacia como forshadowings(como se escriba) y por ahí hasta me perdía.
bueno, ya lo volveré a leer con más tiempo.
llegó el momento en el que sentía que se repetía, y hacia como forshadowings(como se escriba) y por ahí hasta me perdía.
bueno, ya lo volveré a leer con más tiempo.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews