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c h a p t e r s e v e n Critical History or O≈cial History? Rest assured, there have never been more nor more heroic deeds than those the Spaniards have achieved. But the Spaniards have written about them poorly. Most of their histories are little more than bacon fat that in two bites cloys the senses. —Baltasar Gracián, El Criticón (1657) [The king] should have historians whose writings are validated by nothing except his royal authority and protection. These are to commemorate in perpetuity a record of the past that inspires good will, represses passions, and improves the e√ects [of good government]. —Pedro de la Puente, Los soldados en la guardia (1657) At the close of the seventeenth century, o≈cial history, in Spain at least, was nearing the end of what had been an extraordinarily successful run. Starting in the thirteenth century with the workshops of Alfonso X, it had taken many different forms: sprawling general histories centered on both the Reconquest of Spain and the conquest of the New World; biographies highlighting the res gestae of individual rulers; pamphlets touting the benefits of specific monarchical programs ; and more. But whatever its subject, o≈cial history, whether as historia pro persona or historia pro patria, drew much of its energy and inspiration from the ‘‘politics of reputation,’’ the monarchs’ ongoing e√orts to enhance their image, and ultimately their powers, through various media. Toward this end successive rulers assembled teams of artists, architects, and humanist advisers, together with clusters of chroniclers prepared to write narratives both long and short representing the rulers’ interests and concerns. Concurrently, these same chroniclers created, again starting in the Middle Epigraphs: Baltasar Gracián, El Criticón, in Obras Completas, edited by Manuel Arroyo Stephen (1651; Madrid, 1993), 1:593; Puente, Los soldados en la guardia, 233. 252 Clio and the Crown Ages, a model of kingship that coupled the idea of territorial expansion with religion. Other rulers, as far back as Egypt’s pharaohs, had also justified dominion over conquered territories on spiritual grounds, but in Castile, as well as in Aragon, this model helped fuel the struggle to restore Hispania to Christianity, along with the octane necessary to launch an overseas expansion that culminated in the discovery and conquest of the New World. In later centuries the same model allowed Spain’s Habsburg dynasty to link the defense of their possessions in northern Europe, the Low Countries in particular, to the defense of religion and the church. The role of written history in this enterprise cannot be underestimated, because the chroniclers’ task was essentially to reach a domestic audience who needed to learn about, identify with, and ultimately celebrate the manifold bene- fits—honor, glory, wealth, and renown—that conquest would bring. Nebrija was right, therefore, to encourage Ferdinand and Isabella to have their history written not in Latin but in Castilian, inasmuch as this language was certain to o√er their vassals a better understanding of and thus a stake in the global imperium they were eager to construct. By the reign of Charles II (1665–1700), however, even the most ardent advocates of expansion recognized that the cost of maintaining imperium on a global basis was beginning to outweigh its benefits. Already in 1619, Sancho de Moncada , a leading arbitrista, advised that ‘‘conquest of remote nations in the Indies and the conservation of the royal patrimony in the kingdoms of Naples, and Sicily and the duchy of Milan, and the state of Flanders, have been a natural cancer in the body of Spain,’’ the very source of what many of his contemporaries feared was its imminent ‘‘declinación.’’∞ Despite such warnings, the Habsburg monarchy , both in Europe and in the Americas, remained a formidable power, but a fatal combination of economic weakness and lackluster leadership at home and imperial overstretch abroad led gradually but inexorably to what Charles II, on his death bed, referred to as ‘‘diminution,’’ that is, the dismemberment of the monarchy that Moncada had previously referred to as ‘‘decline.’’≤ Actual diminution began in 1640, the year marked by revolts in Catalonia, then Portugal, which achieved its independence in 1668 following a war hard-fought on several fronts. Diminution also entailed the loss of the northern Netherlands (in 1648), the island of Jamaica to the English (in 1655), and the western part of Hispaniola to the French, starting in 1664. It also manifested itself in the monarchy...

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