Spain's Road to Empire
PENGUIN BOOKS
SPAIN'S ROAD TO EMPIRE
Henry Kamen has taught and lectured at universities throughout the UK, USA and Spain and was most recently Visiting Professor at the University of Chicago. His books include The Spanish Inquisition and Philip of Spain. He lives in Barcelona.
HENRY KAMEN
Spain's Road to Empire
THE MAKING OF A WORLD POWER, 1492–1763
PENGUIN BOOKS
PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
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First published by Allen Lane The Penguin Press 2002
Published in Penguin Books 2003
5
Copyright © Henry Kamen, 2002
All rights reserved
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
ISBN: 978-0-14-192732-9
Contents
List of Illustrations
List of Maps
Preface
1 Foundations
2 The Early Western Empire
3 A New World
4 Creating a World Power
5 The Pearl of the Orient
6 The Frontier
7 The Business of World Power
8 Identities and the Civilizing Mission
9 Shoring Up the Empire (1630–1700)
10 Under New Management
11 Conclusion: The Silence of Pizarro
Glossary
List of Abbreviations
Notes
Select Bibliography
Index
List of Illustrations
Black and white chapter illustrations and engravings
Chapter 1 The departure of Columbus's second voyage. From Caspar Plautius, Nova Typis Transacta Navigatio, 1621 (© American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, MA)
Chapter 2 The Entrance of Charles V into Bologna, 1529–30 (photo: Gabinetti dei Disegni e delle Stampe, Florence/Scala)
Chapter 3 Capture of the Inca Atahualpa by the Spanish. From Theodor de Bry, Grand Voyages, 1596 (photo: The Fotomas Index)
Chapter 4 Execution of prisoners after the surrender of Haarlem to the Spaniards, engraving, 1567 (photo: The Fotomas Index)
Chapter 5 Magellan enters the Pacific, engraving, c. 1567 (photo: The Fotomas Index)
Chapter 6 Early seventeenth-century map of South America (photo: The Fotomas Index)
Chapter 7 Pack train of llamas laden with silver from Potosí mines of Peru. From Theodor de Bry, Grand Voyages, 1602 (photo: Library of Congress, Washington DC/The Bridgeman Art Library)
Chapter 8 Tupi Indian dancers, Brazil. From Theodor de Bry, Grand Voyages, 1593 (photo: Library of Congress, Washington DC/The Bridgeman Art Library)
Chapter 9 The Battle of Rocroi, 1643, engraving by A. Boudan (photo: Mary Evans Picture Library)
Chapter 10 The port of Vigo in Galicia, 1702, engraving by Anon. (photo: Mary Evans Picture Library)
Chapter 11 The Inca Guyana Capac and a Spaniard discuss gold. From Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, The First New Chronicle and Good Government, 1613–15 (photo: The Fotomas Index)
Colour plates
1 Boabdil hands over the keys of Granada in 1492 to Ferdinand and Isabella. Sculpted relief from the choir stalls of Toledo Cathedral, c. 1492–1500, by Rodrigo Aleman (photo: AKG London)
2 Juan de la Cosa, Chart of the Western Hemisphere of the World, c. 1500 (photo: The Royal Geographical Society, London/The Bridgeman Art Library)
3 Pedro de Alvarado besieged by Nahua warriors. From Fray Diego Duran, History of the Indies, c. 1580 (photo: Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid/The Bridgeman Art Library)
4 A Tlaxcalan ally pulling Cortés out of a canal during the battle for Tenochtitlan. Mexican School, sixteenth century (photo: Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris/The Bridgeman Art Library)
5 The Taking of Tenochtitlan by Cortés, 1521. Spanish School, sixteenth century (photo: The British Embassy, Mexico City/The Bridgeman Art Library)
6 A Spaniard killing Indians in battle. From the Humantla Codex, a Nahua chronicle, 1519 (photo: Mary Evans Picture Library)
7 Francisco Pizarro. Undated portrait by Anon. (photo: Museo de America, Madrid/AKG London)
8 Capture of the Inca capital Cusco by Pizarro and his soldiers in 1533. From Theodor de Bry, Grand Voyages, 1596 (photo: The Fotomas Index)
9 The Raising of the Siege of Vienna, 1529, by Giulio Clovio. From Triumphs of the Emperor Charles V, c. 1556 (photo: The British Library, London/The Bridgeman Art Library)
10 The siege of the fortress of La Goletta in the bay of Tunis, 1535. Engraving by Franz Hogenberg (photo: Bridgeman Giraudon/ Lauros)
11 Charles V. Anon., in the style of Bernard van Orley (photo: Galleria Borghese, Rome/Scala)
12 Charles V. Equestrian portrait by Titian (photo: Prado, Madrid/ Scala)
13 Map tracing Magellan's world voyage, once owned by Charles V, 1545. By Battista Agnese (photo: John Carter Brown Library, Brown University, Providence, RI/The Bridgeman Art Library)
14 Galleass and galleon. Anon., nineteenth century (photo: Museo Naval, Madrid)
15 The Battle of Lepanto, 1571. Venetian School, sixteenth century (photo: Museo Correr, Venice/Scala)
16 Francisco Xavier visiting Japan. Lacquer screen by Japanese School, sixteenth century (photo: Musée Guimet, Paris/The Bridgeman Art Library)
17 Portolan map, 1570, by Fernao Vaz Dourado showing the coastline from India through the China Sea towards Japan (photo: Huntington Library and Art Gallery, San Marino, CA/The Bridgeman Art Library)
18 Philip II. Attributed to Lucas de Heere, c. 1570s (photo: Museo de Bellas Artes, Valencia/Index/The Bridgeman Art Library)
19 The execution of Flemish nobles by the Duke of Alba, Brussels, 1568. School of Zacharias Dolendo, sixteenth century (photo: The Stapleton Collection, UK/The Bridgeman Art Library)
20 The Spanish Fleet defeated by the English, 1588, c. 1600, by Hendrik Cornelius Vroom (photo: Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum, Innsbruck/AKG London)
21 El Dorado, or The Gilded Man. From Theodor de Bry, Grand Voyages, 1599 (photo: British Museum, London/The Bridgeman Art Library)
22 Gold figurine. Quimbaya culture, AD 1000–1500 (photo: British Museum, London/The Bridgeman Art Library)
23 Illustration showing how Negro slaves mine for gold in Varaguas. From Histoire Naturelle des Indes, French manuscript, c. 1586 (photo: Pierpont Morgan Library, New York/Scala)
24 Gold objects in an Aztec shop. From A General History of the Things of New Spain by Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, c. 1577 (photo: Biblioteca Medicea-Laurenziana, Florence/The Bridgeman Art Library)
25 View of Potosí, 1758, by Gaspar Miguel Berrio (pho
to: Museum Charcas, Sucre/AKG London)
26 Fernando Alvarez de Toledo, by Alonso Sanchez Coello, mid-sixteenth century (photo: Archivo Iconografico, SA/Corbis)
27 Alessandro Farnese, c. 1590, by Frans Pourbus the Younger (photo: Galleria Nazionale, Parma/Scala)
28 Ambrogio Spinola, 1625, by Peter Paul Rubens (photo: Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museums Braunschweig. Kunstmuseum des Landes Niedersachsen/Berndt-Peter Keiser)
29 The Surrender of Breda, 1625, c. 1635, by Diego Velázquez (photo: Prado, Madrid/The Bridgeman Art Library)
30 The Defence of Cadiz against the English, 1634, by Francisco de Zurbarán (photo: Prado, Madrid/The Bridgeman Art Library)
31 Indians on the road to conversion by the Spanish: meekly presenting themselves for baptism by Friars Angel and Martín de Jesus, and the punishments for crimes such as witchcraft, licentiousness and murder. From Pablo Beaumont, Cronica de Michoacán, 1792 (photo: Archivo de la Nación, Mexico City/New York Public Library/The Bridgeman Art Library)
32 Antonio de Mendoza, undated portrait by Anon. (photo: Museo de America, Madrid/Scala)
33 Panel showing the succession of the kings of Peru from the Inca Manco Capac to Ferdinand VI of Spain. Spanish School, c. 1750 (photo: Nuestra Señora de Copacabana, Lima/The Bridgeman Art Library)
34 A Couple with a Little Girl, by Miguel Cabrera, eighteenth century (photo: Museo de America, Madrid/Scala)
35 Idealized portrait of the emperor Montezuma. Spanish School, seventeenth century (photo: Museo degli Argenti, Palazzo Pitti, Florence/ Scala)
36 The Battle of Almansa, 1707, by Ricardo Balaca (photo: Palacio del Senado, Madrid/Scala)
37 Tumacácori Mission, 1855, by Henry Cheever Pratt (photo: Phoenix Art Museum, Arizona, Francis Hover Stanley and Carolanne Smurthwaite Bequest/The Bridgeman Art Library)
List of Maps
1 The European inheritance of Philip II, 1556
2 Northern Italy, c. 1650
3 Southeast Asia
4 The Caribbean and mainland
5 The viceroyalty of Peru, c. 1650
6 Population of African origin in the Americas, c. 1650
7 Southern North America in the eighteenth century
1. The European inheritance of Philip II, 1556
2. Northern Italy, c. 1650
3. Southeast Asia
4. The Caribbean and mainland
5. The viceroyalty of Peru, c. 1650
6. Population of African origin in the Americas, c. 1650
7. Southern North America in the eighteenth century
Preface
The young Alexander conquered India.
All by himself?
Caesar beat the Gauls.
Didn't he even have a cook with him?
Bertolt Brecht, ‘Fragen eines lesenden Arbeiters’
What would the whites do without the Indians?
A Guajiro Indian, New Granada, eighteenth century
When we contemplate the magnitude of Spain's hegemony, and compare it with the poverty from which it arose, we should not let ourselves give way to pride.
Ramón Carande (1969)
This book was born, in a way, on the battlefield at St Quentin, a small French town close to the border with Belgium, where in the year 1557 the king of Spain, Philip II, scored a notable victory over the army of the king of France. In my study Philip of Spain (1997) I gave a short account of the battle, based both on documents and on recent research. A distinguished historian, in reviewing the book, suggested that my account was ‘not anti-Spanish, but nevertheless surprising’ because it stated that the Spanish contingent in the battle had constituted only one-tenth of the troops, thereby undermining the classic view that St Quentin was a Spanish victory. The Spanish troops may have been few, he pointed out, but they were more effective than the rest, making it a Spanish victory. In any case, he added, the victory belongs to him who paid for the battle, and that was Spain. One way or the other it must have been, and therefore was, a Spanish triumph: ‘the battle was won by the Spanish contingent’. These objections seemed perfectly reasonable, and set off in my mind a series of questions that have resulted in the present book. Who did what? Who paid for what? They are queries to which answers are not always offered. Did Cortés conquer Mexico? The surprise of Bernal DÌaz del Castillo at reports b an official historian, Gómara, suggesting that Cortés had almost single-handedly overthrown the mighty Aztec empire, was no greater than mine at finding similar claims being made by scholars about the creation of the Spanish empire.
This study, then, pursues a few questions – and only a few – related to the rise of Spain as a world power. It is the fruit of a meditation not only on the battle of St Quentin but also on the evolution of Spain's history, and in that sense follows the direction of much of my research in the past thirty years. Some years ago I published, by way of homage to the people and land in which I now live, an examination of the family life, society and culture of the people of Catalonia in the age of the Counter-Reformation. The present study repays other long-standing debts: to the peoples of Spain, who over the years have allowed me to know, to appreciate and to question the complex characteristics of their culture and their history.
Many notable works, from R. B. Merriman's four-volume survey, The Rise of the Spanish Empire, to Salvador de Madariaga's well-known volumes on the same theme, take Spain as the central point around which their presentation has been created. In this view, a small nation startled the world by its incredible imperial prowess, and then relapsed into an inevitable ‘decline’. The emphasis on the role of Spain – and more particularly Castile – in the creation of empire has a very long pedigree. This essentially imperialist and Eurocentric perspective has dominated traditional history writing. Castilians were from the first proud of their part in the empire (which they usually referred to not as an ‘empire’ but as a ‘monarchy’) and therefore tended quite fairly to glorify and exaggerate their part in it. It became normal to believe, as a leading Spanish scholar of recent times did, that ‘the Spaniard occupied Italy, and marched victoriously through the heart of Europe and over the heights of the Andes’.1 Castile (‘Spain‘) was seen as the universal colossus, the conqueror of peoples, the winner of battles. The nations with whom it came into conflict, such as the Portuguese, Mexicans, Italians and Catalans, also preferred to overstate the case in order to demonstrate their own ability to resist, against overwhelming odds, the might of Spain. The English did it magnificently in their folklore about the Spanish Armada of 1588.2 The Dutch were even better. A well-known burgomaster of Amsterdam, Cornelis Hooft, stated around the year 1600 that ‘in comparison with the king of Spain we were like a mouse against an elephant’.3 For both Castilians and non-Castilians, the image of a mighty Spanish empire was a convenient one that they carefully cultivated in their folklore and their history books. On closer examination, however, it is difficult to perceive the elephant. Indeed, perhaps the most pertinent observation of all on this matter comes from the faraway Philippine Islands, where the Sultan of Jolo pointed out to a local Spanish official that ‘although it is true that we may be likened to a dog, and the Spaniards to an elephant, yet the elephant may one day find the dog on top of it’.4 It is hard to beat oriental perspicacity.
Much of our view of the past is permeated by myths and, as with those among us who still cling to the view that the earth is flat, there is no reason why we should not be allowed to go on cultivating them if they are harmless. The story of Spain's empire, however, is not harmless. The past, for Spaniards of today, is not a faraway country, it is an intimate part of the polemics that constitute their present and continues to be central to their political and cultural aspirations. The great age of empire is a crucial battleground in this area of myth and controversy. To the general reader the word ‘empire’ implies conquest and the extension of national power. Sixteenth-century Spaniards were quite conscious that in applying the word ‘conquistador’ to the adventurers of the American frontier they were claiming impe
rial status for the enterprise. The notion of power passed into general use, and with it the use of terms such as ‘the Spanish conquest of America’. More recently, however, historians studying imperial history have begun to call in doubt the ‘nationalist’ interpretation that views expansion as a simple projection of the power of one country. They have preferred to ask questions about the nature of that power.5
‘Power’ does not necessarily mean just the capacity to apply force. More exactly, it can be applied to the underlying structures that made empire possible, factors such as the ability to supply finance and services.6 In other words, who gave the men, who supplied the credit, who arranged the transactions, who built the ships, who made the guns? For example, few nations in the early modern period – as we know from the example of seventeenth-century Sweden – had the resources to launch a policy of conquest in Europe without the help of allies. In the same way, Spaniards alone never had the resources to subjugate the continent of America. They drew on the help of others, both Europeans and natives of the Americas. ‘Conquest’ and power turned out frequently to be of less importance than ‘business’, or the ability to marshal resources, and at various stages the Spanish world enterprise took on many of the aspects of a ‘business empire’.