Imperial Spain 1469-1716
J. H. Elliott
423 pages including notes and index
published in 1963

I got this in a second hand bookstore in Utrecht, for the princely sum of two euro. At the time I thought it would be a general history of the rise and fall of the Spanish Empire and as such also spend some attention on the Dutch revolt against the Philip the Second. All this turned out not to be the case. This is an economical and political history of how Spain, the country became an imperium and how it as suddenly declined as it rose to power. It only perpendicularly tells about the Spanish empire itself, when it is needed to illuminate what happened in Spain.

This does not meant this is a bad history, it's just not the history I thought it was. Indeed, as far as I can judge, it is an excellent treatment of its subject, the transfiguration of the two kingdoms of Aragon and Castille into imperial Spain and how Spain developed until 1716, when Hasburg Spain gave way to Bourbon Spain. Imperial Spain concentrates on Spain's rulers from the Catholic kings of Aragon and Castille onwards, through Philips II and his successors until Philip V, the first Bourbon king of Spain.

The author over and over again emphasises how Spain never became one country, how fundamentally it remained an union of two separate kingsdoms, each jealously garding its own habits and priveledges, each with its own forms of government, money and powers. It was this which was central to why Spain never managed to become a modern, centralized state. It did not help that during the time this transition should happen, the mid-seventeenth century Spain stagnated, politically as well as intellectually. This at a time when other European states, France, England, Holland did manage to profit from Spain's experiences in building their own empires. Spain's empire, in contrast was badly overstretched, with little contigency: most parts were isolated from each other by other countries.

However, the ultimate failure of imperial Spain should not obscure its successes. It was a worldpower for the best part of two centuries, for most of this time it was the engine which helped spur European civilisation in science, arts, politics and econiomics.

An interesting history, which could've been told far less interestingly in the hands of a less able writer.