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C H A P T E R 5 Imperial Contenders and Spain’s Grand Strategy of Punishment, 1621–1640 In the late sixteenth century, Spain was the preeminent world power, and its wealthy overseas empire was the envy of the emerging European states (G. Williams 1966, 9). In 1580, Madrid’s claims became even more allencompassing when King Philip II of Spain secured the Crown of Portugal and its overseas empire in Brazil, Africa, and the East Indies, adding them to Spain’s global empire. Spain found itself in an unrivaled position, dominating the world’s trade routes, markets, resources, and strategic lines of communication. The Spanish Crown became the largest handler of bullion and accounted for nearly all of the world’s deposits of good quality marine salt, provided the bulk of Europe’s sugar, and became Europe’s leading emporium of pepper. This great wealth allowed Spain to extract resources and borrow money at short notice and in large amounts to ‹nance extensive forti‹cations and fortresses, a large standing army, and a big navy for the defense of its Continental and overseas empire. Spain’s imperial wealth and its scattered empire also attracted challengers for regional hegemony. As early as the 1570s, emerging states began to encroach upon Spain’s global interests at uneven rates, in disparate regions, and without the expense of imperial defense.1 On the Continent , Spain confronted England, France, and the United Provinces (Dutch), as well as periodic challenges from the Ottoman Sultan.2 In the East and West Indies (Asia and America), and in Africa, Spain’s empire was challenged by English and Dutch assaults. Attacks by the Barbary pirates and from the Ottoman Empire harassed Spanish shipping and trade in the Mediterranean and North Africa. During the Thirty Years’ War, in Germany, Spain supported the Catholics against the Protestants, in France, the Catholic League against the Huguenots, and its Austrian 123 cousins against the Turks. As Paul Kennedy notes, “[Spain’s] price of possessing so many territories was the existence of numerous foes” (1987, 48). Within Spain, opposing economic nationalist and liberal factions competed for control over the declining state’s grand strategy. Their preferred grand strategies clashed on important issues such as taxation, vellón coinage (Madrid resorted to the coinage of copper to save silver), army and navy construction, royal absolutism, international peace settlements and truces, and Empire Unity. The constituents of the economic nationalists coalition included the military, King Philip IV (1621–65) and his CountDuke of Olivares, Gaspar de Guzmán (1622–43), the Council of States, the Council of the Indies, the Council of Portugal, and the supporting administrators. The economic nationalists’ desired grand strategy called for restoring Spain’s power by punishing France, England, and the United Provinces through (1) greater military preparedness and engaging in offensive military operations, (2) creating new exclusive trading companies, and (3) increasing societal resource extraction by expanding the king’s ‹scal powers and absolutist claims (over the Cortes of Castile) and unifying the kingdoms of the monarchy. In 1621, Olivares and his advisers called for the renewal of the Dutch war because the humiliating Twelve Years’ Truce of 1609 had undermined Spain’s international reputation (Elliott 1989, 121). Even the president of the Council of Finance argued that the truce was “worse than if the war had gone on,” while the cost of maintaining a standing army in peacetime was not much more than in wartime (Elliott 1963, 321). Economic nationalists argued that the failure to extract additional resources to augment the nation’s military capability would undermine Spain’s national security, leaving it weak and vulnerable to attack by France, England, and the United Provinces. Cooperation was resisted because it risked strengthening the war-making capacity of these challengers, eroding Spain’s reputation for predation, undermining Madrid’s exclusive trading companies, and, most importantly, strengthening the contending liberal faction who would push for a more accommodative grand strategy. In opposition, the members of the liberal coalition included the ministers in Philip IV’s Council of State, the deputies of the Cortes of Castile (the Cortes existed to vote taxes through the millones, a sales tax on basic foodstuffs, that were granted to the Crown), Ambrogio Spínola (commander of the Flanders army and chief proponent for the original 1609 truce with the Dutch), Spain’s archduke in Brussels, Seville’s business community and merchants, Castile’s aristocracy, and industry (textiles, metallurgy , and shipbuilding). Concerned with lowering the cost...

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