F
Ernand Braudel, in his classic book The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean world at the time of Philip II, reminds us that in the fifteenth century the territorial states were displacing the city-states from the commercial and military domain of the Mediterranean, axis of the development of the Christian West. The first states to consolidate as such are France and the Iberians, and in this process, the enormous potential of Castile is turned towards the Mediterranean and not towards the ocean, by uniting with Aragon and not with Portugal (something that around 1469 was the same as viable, promising and difficult). In 1495 Ferdinand the Catholic engaged in the wars in Italy, and Braudel argued with the great Hispanic historian Carlos Pereyra, who “reproaches Ferdinand, the astute and highly skilled Aragonese, for this deviation towards the Mediterranean, which leads him to turn his back on the true future of Spain, inscribed […] in America, this unknown world, abandoned in its beginnings by the owners of Spain at the chance of adventure in the worst forms. But the wonderful adventures of the conquerors were due precisely to this abandonment of the overseas world in the hands of private initiative.
For many reasons, the Aragonese policy towards the Mediterranean is almost natural. One fact: in 1503 The big captain Aragon wins Naples at the head of more soldiers than there were Spaniards in New Spain in 1550. Aragon drags Castile into an intermittent war with the other Mediterranean empire: the Turks. Imperial, holy, commercial war that no one won and that lost prominence around 1580, when the Turk turned to Persia and the Indian Ocean, and the Spanish to the Atlantic and America.
Fernando’s grandson, Carlos de Gante (Carlos I of Spain and V of Germany from 1516 and 1519), continued to turn to the Mediterranean and Europe, as we explained 15 days ago. Felipe II, without a titular emperor like his father Carlos, had a more extensive, coherent and solid empire but less deep in Europe, more focused on Spain. The essential character of Philip II’s empire is its Hispanic nature.
Both by choice and because the political crises and economic bankruptcy of 1557-59 forced him to do so, as well as to sign peace with the French and Protestants. Felipe would only continue at war against the Turk, until the next bankruptcy (1575).
Twenty years of prudent politics cease in 1578-83. Two facts are central: the annexation of Portugal to Spain (1578-80) that would last 60 years, and the silver boom from 1579 to 1592. Felipe, now owner of unsuspected resources, unifies the two crowns: “Now, and only now consciously or not, but of course by the force of things, the mixed empire of Felipe II will begin to lean on the ocean […] base of the Spanish pretensions, to what will be called, already in the life of Philip II, the Universal Monarchy”.
I hope I have highlighted the magnitude of these wars and the little or no importance of America for the European horizon prior to 1580. Let us leave Braudel and quote Hernan Cortesby Jose Luis Martinez: Although it sounds incredible, in the memoirs that Carlos V dictated in 1550 and 1552, destined for Prince Felipe, and that cover the years 1515 to 1548, there is not a single mention of the New World or the Indies, neither of Mexico nor of Hernán Cortés
.
Although it is difficult for us to understand today, in 1521 there was only a handful of Spaniards in Mexico with medieval weapons who partially succeeded in joining the Mesoamerican war (whose elites were no more divided or in conflict with each other than the Italians or Germans of the time). We have insisted, the specialists have insisted, that neither the weapons, nor the animals, nor the political thought of Cortés and his friends had, by far, the exaggerated importance that we usually give them. And before 1580, neither Spain nor any European power would have been able to bring to America a fleet like those fighting in Europe.
In short: only if we subscribe to the essentialist theses and those that believe in a single model of development (from which the conclusion of the conquest liberating
either civilizing
) Mesoamerica can be equated with the Neolithic societies in Eurasia. To do so, neo-imperials or essentialists base themselves on two or three pieces of information that they decide are key, absolute (for example, the non-existence of metal tools or weapons) and disqualify others (such as hydraulic engineering, lithic art, goldsmithing and great literature that in the last century became part of our consciousness thanks to authors such as Miguel León-Portilla). Likewise, they disqualify Mesoamerican forms of warfare as barbaric and savage, but they call European wars civilized, much more destructive when it comes to a final balance: it is called double standards… or essentialism: in wars are normal
looting, destruction, murder and mass rape, but not the sacrifice of captives…
We would need to talk about the meeting between China and Portugal; above all, return to the proposals of the resistance indigenous, black and popular
which was articulated to counter the commemorations
of 1992. If interest is maintained, we will continue with these issues, which are not historical: they are present. I hope with this to raise some doubts about our certainties and propose more questions than answers.
