Volume 55, Number 12 · July 17, 2008
A Tale of Two Empires
By Linda Colley
Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America, 1492–1830
by J.H. Elliott
Yale University Press, 546 pp., $50.00, $22.00 (paper)
The polymath and politician Francis Bacon wrote his 'Short View to Be Taken of Great Britain and Spain' in 1619. At this point, Spain laid claim to the largest, most widely dispersed, and by far the richest empire in the world, but Bacon detected frailties in the giant. Philip III, king of Spain, might be 'accounted the greatest Monarch of Christendom,' he argued, 'yet if his estate be enquired through, his roots will be found a great deal too narrow for his tops.'
Review, 3974 words
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