The life of Charles V has a certain fascination for anyone familiar with it, not the least because of its almost tragic quality. But to Spaniards and Germans it is particularly fascinating. Historians have continually devoted their best efforts to unraveling the Spanish and German elements which entered into the career of that Hapsburg who was both king of Spain and emperor of a largely German empire. Were his political concepts dominated by the broad notions of foreign policy consonant with the German imperial tradition, as Karl Brandi and Peter Rassow argue; or did they stem from the more conservative Spanish monarchical tradition exemplified by Ferdinand and Isabella, as Ramón Menéndez Pidal alleges? It is to this question that José María Jover Zamora addresses himself in his book. Fortunately, his work is more than a mere partisan polemic and sheds considerable light on the question.
Jover’s book is composed of three essays originally written and issued separately. Nevertheless, their incorporation into one volume is not an artificial device as is so often the case with collections of essays. They were all composed within a short time of each other; all deal with some aspect of the foreign policy of Charles V between 1528 (when he left Spain) and 1538 (when his empress, another Isabella, died); and all utilize epistolary evidence from the correspondence which passed between Charles and the empress during their separation. Jover publishes ten of the letters with the essays. The main fault of the book is that the essays overlap, so that the reader is forced to cover some of the same ground in each essay.
Jover’s thesis is that the traditional foreign policy of Spain, primarily that of Castile, modified and was modified by the larger imperial policy of the emperor. The letters which Charles received from his empress in Spain represent the native Castilian voice calling him toward the traditional Spanish policies of isolation, permanent frontier, and holy war. His letters in return present his own point of view. Charles accedes to traditional Spanish policy whenever possible, but is usually faced with the necessity of adapting it to his worldwide interests. For him, the Spanish policy of isolation, which conceives of Spain in terms of the peninsula and the adjoining area necessary for its immediate defense, must be accommodated to include the notion of empire. During the Reconquista the nation of permanent frontier had meant the acceptance of a continually shifting, fluid policy, designed to take advantage of any situation. Charles modified this notion, for he continually sought to achieve once and for all a fixed, status quo situation favorable to a satiated empire. In the face of dynastic necessity the policy of holy war, which had meant war only against infidels or at most against heretics, came to include war against Catholic neighbors who disturbed the status quo situations which he devised.
The interest of Jover’s book lies in his carefully detailed analysis of the distinctive elements in traditional Spanish foreign policy, an analysis which shows Charles in concrete historical circumstances, such as the third Hapsburg-Valois War, trying to balance these off against imperial necessities. Jover’s conclusion is that Charles respected the wisdom of traditional Spanish policy and went to great lengths to avoid direct breaks with it, but that in almost every circumstance he was forced to sacrifice it in favor of greater imperial needs. Therefore, in a qualified sense one can say that historiographically Jover aligns himself with Brandi and Rassow on the origin of Caroline foreign policy.