Spain: The Rise of the First World Power

This book proposes to describe Spanish society on the eve of the discovery and conquest of the New World. This is a worthy objective and a difficult one. Since the appearance in 1963 of J. H. Elliott’s masterful survey, Imperial Spain, Hispanic scholars have published a number of important monographs that force a reconsideration of the classic interpretation of fifteenth-century Spain. The book under review, after a brief survey of ancient and medieval Spanish history, examines in detail the political history of the Castilian monarchy in the fifteenth century, the economy and technological development of early modern Spain, Castilian intellectual and religious attitudes, and the Spanish Inquisition. Readers of such classics as W. H. Prescott, R. B. Merriman, and J. Mariejol will find the content and analyses of the book familiar and, for those interested in more recent analyses, there is an up-to-date bibliography appended at the end of the book. The author’s style is a pleasure to read—fluid, logically organized, and well-balanced between the specific and the general. Appropriately for a broad survey, neither archival research nor scholarly apparatus interferes with the flow of the narrative.