Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America, 1492-1830 (review)

In this sweeping comparative history of the British and Spanish empires in the Americas, Sir John Elliott (Regius Professor Emeritus of Modern History, University of Oxford) has taken on a project explored by other historians (James Lang, Claudio Vélez, and Felipe Fernández-Armesto, among others), but none has achieved the richness of detail or persuasiveness of explanation about how and why these disparate and often conflicting empires possessed sometimes similar and other times very different experiences from the initial Spanish intrusions into the Caribbean in the late-fifteenth century until the end of the revolutionary era.

In comparative history, methodology can be critical. Rather than reduce the salient topics of each empire into distinct compartments or to follow Max Weber's dictum of explaining differences rather than focusing on similarities, Elliott has chosen instead the more formidable task of continually comparing and contrasting these two empires, weaving together a fragmented history over three centuries to show how the development of one in a particular era provides us with an understanding of the other. The result is a masterfully written and accessible history filled with telling quotations and insights. A few examples may suffice to illustrate the point. The Spanish were deeply affected by the legacy of the Reconquista, and the character (and numbers) of peoples and places they encountered favored the conquest/subjugation approach tempered, Elliott explains, by the continuing efforts of crown and church to rein in the conquistadores and their successors. The British, contrastingly, not only commenced their imperial experience almost a century later, but were more deeply influenced by economic philosophy and commercial enterprise. Aspirations and problems in empire-building may have been similar, but the timing and environment in which the Spanish and British operated in the early stages of settlement meant that inevitably they would develop differently, particularly in the respective roles of the crown and in the relationship between newcomer and indigenous peoples. Thus, whatever the salient issue—the role of the crown, labor systems, slavery, emigration, local government, rebellion, revolution, or independence— Elliott deftly provides the reader with sufficient detail and comparative analysis to answer a continually vexing question: Why did the British and Spanish colonial experiences in the Americas develop so differently?

In a reasoned Epilogue, Elliott provides an explanation that should satisfy even the most critical student of the comparative method, as well as a reminder that the contemporaneous negative views of the Spanish empire—a judgment held by Simón Bolívar—persist and are, frankly, unfairly drawn. Some of the author's most persuasive passages relate to the impact of dramatic changes in both empires in the eighteenth century and their legacy for the revolutionary years. For example, both experienced heavy immigration from about 1750, yet for British America the percentages of white immigrants were significantly greater. On the eve of revolution, both empires were swept with often, convulsive debates about freedom and servitude, inequality, racial division, and the intellectual ferment associated with the Enlightenment, yet in British rather than in Spanish America the prospect for political change appeared brighter.

Though he is not uncritical of the British experience in the Americas, Elliott is sufficiently mindful of the importance of the British pluralist tradition, the relationship between king and people, and especially the liberties enshrined by the common law to illustrate a persistent theme in this seminal work—the importance of initial choices and conditions. Things might have turned out differently if Henry VII had sponsored Columbus's enterprise. Henry VIII might have followed with a dispatch of an expeditionary force to subdue Mexico, and the mineral riches of the Americas might have flowed to the British, not the Spanish, crown. In these circumstances, an absolutist English monarchical rule in the Americas might have been the outcome. The fact that the comparative history of the two empires did not follow this pattern, Elliott wisely...