monarchical, but under seigneurial or clerical jurisdiction. The regime of the señoríos, a mediaeval relic dating from the 12th and 13th centuries, was of more directly economic than political importance to the nobles who controlled these jurisdictions: yet it assured them not only of profits, but also of local judicial and administrative power.39 These ‘combinations of sovereignty and property’ were a telling survival of the principles of territorial lordship into the epoch of Absolutism. The ancien régime preserved its feudal roots in Spain to its dying day.
1. The phrase is Vicens’s. See J. Vicens Vives, Manual de Historia Económica de España, pp. 11–12, 231.
2. J. H. Elliott, Imperial Spain 1469–1716, London 1970, pp. 111–13.
3. The Aragonese Kingdom was itself a union of three principalities: Aragon, Catalonia and Valencia.
4. Elliott, Imperial Spain, p. 37.
5. The spirit of Aragonese constitutionalism was expressed in the arresting oath of allegiance attributed to its nobility: ‘We who are as good as you swear to you who are no better than we to accept you as our king and sovereign lord, provided you observe all our liberties and laws; but if not, not.’ The formula itself was perhaps legendary, but its sense was engraved in the institutions of Aragon.
6. For the work of Ferdinand and Isabella in Castile, see Elliott, Imperial Spain, pp. 86–99.
7. The only step towards monetary unification was the minting of three high-denomination gold coins of equivalent value in Castile, Aragon and Catalonia.
8. See J. A. Maravall, Las Comunidades de Castilla. Una Primera Revolución Moderna, Madrid 1963, pp. 216–22.
9. Maravall, Las Comunidades de Castilla, pp. 44–5, 50–7, 156–7.
10. J. Lynch, Spain under the Habsburgs, II, Oxford 1969, pp. 19–20.
11. Marx was aware of the paradox of Habsburg Absolutism in Spain. After declaring that, ‘Spanish liberty disappeared under the clash of arms, showers of gold, and the terrible illuminations of the auto-da-fé’, he asked: ‘But how are we to account for the singular phenomenon that, after nearly three centuries of a Habsburg dynasty, followed by a Bourbon dynasty – either of them quite sufficient to crush a people – the municipal liberties of Spain more or less survive? that in the very country where of all feudal states absolute monarchy first arose in its most unmitigated form, centralization has never succeeded in taking root?’, K. Marx and F. Engels, Revolutionary Spain, London 1939, pp. 24–5. An adequate answer to the question, however, escaped him.
12. G. Parker, The Army of Flanders and the Spanish Road 1567–1659, Cambridge 1972, p. 6.
13. Lynch, Spain under the Habsburgs, I, Oxford 1965, p. 128: prices had also risen greatly in the interval, of course.
14. J. H. Elliott, ‘The Decline of Spain’, Past and Present, No. 20, November 1961, now in T. Aston (ed.), Crisis in Europe 1560–1660, p. 189; Imperial Spain, pp. 285–6.
15. Lynch makes this point very well: Spain under the Hahshurgs, I, p. 129.
16. Pierre Vilar, Oro y Moneda en la Historia, 1450–1920, Barcelona 1969, pp. 78, 165–8.
17. Vilar, Oro y Moneda, pp. 180–1.
18. Noel Salomon, La Campagne de Nouvelle Castille à la Fin du XVIe Siècle, Paris 1964, pp. 257–8, 266. For tithes, dues and rents, see pp. 227, 243–4, 250.
19. It is a Portuguese historian who has underlined the implications of this extraordinary occupational pattern, which he believes to hold for Portugal as well: Vitorino Magalhães Godinho, A Estrutura na Antiga Sociedade Portuguesa, Lisbon 1971, pp. 85–9. As Magalhães Godinho remarks, since agriculture was the main branch of economic production in any pre-industrial society, a diversion of manpower away from it on this scale inevitably resulted in long-term stagnation.
20. For the reactions of contemporaries by the turn of the 17th century, see Vilar’s superb essay, ‘Le Temps du Quichotte’, Europe, XXXIV, 1956, pp. 3–16.
21. Alva characteristically commented: ‘In our nation nothing is more important than to introduce gentlemen and men of substance into the infantry, so that all is not left in the hands of labourers and lackeys.’ Parker, The Army of Flanders and the Spanish Road, p. 41.
22. Parker, The Army of Flanders and the Spanish Road, pp. 27–31.
23. Philip II limited himself to reducing the powers of the local Diputació (where the unanimity rule was abolished) and of the office of Justicia, and introducing non-native Viceroys in Aragon.
24. Lynch, Spain under the Habsburgs, II, pp. 12–13.
25. Lynch, Spain under the Habsburgs, II, p. 11.
26. Parker, The Army of Flanders and Spanish Road, p. 6.
27. Elliott, Imperial Spain, p. 343.
28. For the financial record of the Italian possessions, see A. Domínguez Ortiz, Política y Hacienda de Felipe IV, Madrid 1960, pp. 161–4. In general, the role of the Italian components of the Spanish Empire in Europe has been least studied, although it is evident that no satisfactory account of the imperial system as a whole will be possible until this lacuna has been remedied.
29. The best discussion of this scheme is provided by Elliott, The Revolt of the Catalans, Cambridge 1963, pp. 199–204. Domínguez has argued that Olivares had no internal policy, being exclusively preoccupied with foreign affairs: La Sociedad Española en el Siglo XVI, I, Madrid 1963, p. 15. This view is belied both by his early domestic reforms and the breadth of his recommendations in the memorandum of 1624.
30. Olivares was aware of the magnitude of the risk he was taking: ‘My head cannot bear the light of a candle or of the window. . . . To my mind this will lose everything irremediably or be the salvation of the ship. Here go religion, kingdom, nation, everything, and, if our strength is insufficient, let us die in the attempt. Better to die, and more just, than to fall under the dominion of others, and most of all of heretics, as I consider the French to be. Either all is lost, or else Castile will be head of the world, as it is already head of Your Majesty’s Monarchy.’ Cit: Elliott, The Revolt of the Catalans, p. 310.
31. Elliott, The Revolt of the Catalans, pp. 460–8, 473–6, 486–7.
32. A. Domínguez Ortiz, The Golden Century of Spain 1556–1659), London 1971, p. 103.
33. Lynch, Spain under the Habsburgs, II, pp. 122–3; Domínguez Ortiz, The Golden Century of Spain, pp. 39–40.
34. See Henry Kamen, The War of Succession in Spain 1700–1715, London 1969, pp. 84–117. The main architect of the new administration was Bergeyck, a Fleming from Brussels; pp. 237–40.
35. It was in this epoch that a national flag and anthem were adopted. Dominguez’s dictum is characteristic: ‘Smaller than the Empire, larger than Castile, Spain, precellent creation of our eighteenth century, emerged from its nebula and acquired solid and tangible shape. . . . By the time of the War of Independence, the ideal plastic and symbolic image of the Nation as we know it today, was essentially complete.’ Antonio Domínguez Ortiz,
