Great Expectations of Themselves

Anthony Pagden

• Spain’s Road to Empire: The Making of a World 1492-1763 by Henry Kamen
  Allen Lane, 609 pp, £25.00, November 2002, ISBN 0 7139 9365 0

At its height, roughly between 1556 and 1640, the Empire of the kings of Spain stretched from the Philippines to the shores of the North Sea. The 19th-century Russian Empire covered more territory and the British had a larger population, but no other European empire was spread so widely or embraced so many different peoples. This behemoth has conventionally been called the Spanish Empire. At the time, however, Spain described two united, but in many respects distinct kingdoms, those of Castile and Aragon, and the Empire was widely believed to be, and was represented as, the creation of Castile. By the middle of the 17th century, it had reached its furthest extent, exhausted its vast resources, and was already beginning to crumble, consumed by rebellious subjects and economic forces its rulers were powerless to control. A hundred years later it was all but finished, a bit-player on an international stage dominated by its old enemies, Britain and France.