3 - Spain and America in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries

Summary

In addition to the general studies by Domínguez Ortiz, Elliott and Lynch, listed in essay II: I, there are a number of more specialized studies of Spanish government and society which ought to be taken into account by anyone interested in following the relationship between Spain and its American possessions in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The best brief account of the reign of Charles V is by H. G. Koenigsberger, ‘The empire of Charles V in Europe’, in vol. 2 of The New Cambridge Modern History (Cambridge, Eng., 1958). There are two biographies of Philip II: Peter Pierson, Philip II of Spain (London, 1975) and Geoffrey Parker, Philip II (Boston and Toronto, 1978). But incomparably the most important study of the age of Philip II is by Fernand Braudel, La Méditerranée et le monde méditerranéen à l’époquede Philippe II, 2 vols., 2nd ed. (Paris, 1966); translated as The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, 2 vols. (London, 1972–3), which is especially useful for tracing the shift in the centre of gravity of Spanish power from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic during the course of Philip’s reign. I. A. A. Thompson, War and Government in Habsburg Spain, 1560–1620 (London, 1976), is a pioneering piece of research into Spain’s organization for war and the strains imposed by warfare on the Spanish administrative system. For a study of the general who personified the ‘black legend’ for most of Protestant Europe, see William S. Maltby, Alba: A Biography of Fernando Alvarez de Toledo, Third Duke of Alba, 1507–1582 (Berkeley, 1983).