In Defense of Spain

Hugh Thomas’s World Without End is the final installment of his trilogy on imperialism in the century after Columbus. It focuses on what Thomas calls the “age of administration,” the age (in the words of the Economist reviewer) “in which professional officials, many of them clerics, gradually took over from conquistadors.”

Thomas isn’t satisfied with standard accounts of Philip or the Spanish empire: “Lord Thomas wants to rehabilitate both. He portrays the monarch not as an intolerant control-freak but as a cultured and modest man, devoted to duty, though one who was also cautious and mistrustful. Philip liked all information to be presented to him in writing, which helped the development of postal services. . . . Its establishment of an administrative structure and the work of its missionaries to convert millions of indigenous people to Christianity were equally successful. By the 1580s, for example, Lima boasted a university, a printing press, fashionable shops, “fine private houses with heavy studded doors beneath elaborate coats of arms” (some of which survive) and several convents, which were fortresses of culture and feminism.”

Though the reviewer thinks Thomas balances things, he finds him “over-zealous in making his case,” pointing out that “Philip II is criticised in contemporary Latin America for the burden of regulation he bequeathed.” Yet, the review concedes that “the Spaniards ‘went to great lengths to analyse the moral basis of their conquests.’ Many of the friars and bishops learned, preached and wrote in native languages and tried to defend their converts from ill-treatment. In these respects, Spain’s empire in the Americas bears favourable comparison with that of Britain.”