Allies, neighbors, and enemies of the King of Spain : The powerful weakness of the Spanish Monarchy (1580-1620)

Résumé 0

By the end of the sixteenth century, there was an increasing perception in Europe that the king of Spain and his monarchy were in a position of hegemony. Many small states, as well as multiple insurrectional movements, requested his military and financial help to combat their enemies and avoid being absorbed by their neighbors. In this way, the Monarchy’s capacity for political intervention beyond its borders increased, as did its potential to incorporate new territories in Europe, Asia, and Africa—at the very least, the Iberian power became an active force in the domestic affairs of these states and an additional factor in the local political scene. On the other hand, this impression of Spain’s hegemony could also feed into a powerful rejection: across the globe, anti-Spanish feeling was used to discredit political rivals and bolster the claims of victors in the civil conflicts of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Yet Spain’s hegemony was to some extent an illusion: it did not depend on the military forces that the king could mobilize, but rather on an overly powerful image constructed by those who projected their own hopes and fears onto him. An analysis of this discrepancy between representation and reality allows us to understand two important points: that political domination results at least in part from representations and common interest; and that its rise and fall are strongly conditioned by the illusions, frustrations, and divergent expectations it generates.