Volume 37, Number 3 · March 1, 1990
The Shivering of Empire
By J.H. Elliott
First Encounters: Spanish Explorations in the Caribbean and the United States, 1492–1570
edited by Jerald T. Milanich, edited by Susan Milbrath
University of Florida Press, 222 pp., $16.95 (paper)
Commander of the Armada: The Seventh Duke of Medina Sidonia
by Peter Pierson
Yale University Press, 304 pp., $25.00
The Adventures of Captain Alonso de Contreras: A 17th Century Journey
by Alonso de Contreras, translated and annotated by Philip Dallas
Paragon, 193 pp., $19.95
Dutch Primacy in World Trade, 1585–1740
by Jonathan I. Israel
Oxford University Press (Clarendon Press), 462 pp., $72.00
Art and Death at the Spanish Habsburg Court: The Royal Exequies for Philip IV
by Steven N. Orso
University of Missouri Press, 214 pp., $32.00
Bourbon Spain, 1700–1808
by John Lynch
Basil Blackwell, 450 pp., $39.95
As we contemplate the vast historical changes unfolding around us, there is a certain fascination in looking back to earlier ages, when old empires were seen as threatened with collapse, while new ones took their place. This, too, was happening in the seventeenth century, when contemporaries speculated on the long-term prospects for the increasingly ossified Spanish empire, and on what would happen in the event of its collapse. One of them, Sir Francis Bacon, sagely reflecting on the rise and fall of states, drew a not very comforting conclusion from his reading:
Review, 3649 words
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