Volume 31, Number 14 · September 27, 1984
Holding Up the Empire
By Hugh Trevor-Roper
Alba: A Biography of Fernando Alvarez de Toledo, Third Duke of Alba, 1507–1582
by William S. Maltby
University of California Press, 376 pp., $29.50
Richelieu and Olivares
by J.H. Elliott
Cambridge University Press, 189 pp., $9.95 (paper)
The empire of Spain in Europe, unlike that in America which lasted so much longer, was not a rational construction, the effect of gradual expansion or conscious policy. Even more than most empires, it was built up by accident. It had no natural or institutional cohesion; but then Spain itself, throughout its 'golden age,' had very little of such cohesion. Its various 'kingdoms' or provinces—Castile, Aragon, Catalonia, Granada, and in the end also Portugal—had distinct histories and brought with them, into the common pool, their particular colonies. Aragon brought in Italy. Granada was a Castilian conquest. The Netherlands and Franche-Comté, the Burgundian inheritance, came by dynastic accident. So did Portugal, which brought Africa and Asia in its wake.
Review, 4502 words
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