ABSTRACT
Carlos de Ayala Martínez requires us to situate Spanish military developments in this period within their European context and challenges traditional views of separate development in Spain. Whilst there were of course some internal factors that differentiated the peninsula experience, these were not so great as has traditionally been claimed. The waging of war in Spain occurred across a range of axes: dynastic, territorial and religious and a simple binary of Christian/Moslem was in fact only seen in a much later period. We are further provided with insight into how all political actors within the peninsula mobilized their military forces, building on feudal and tradition strategies with those of an increasing turn towards professionalization. Local mobilization together with the emergence of militarized sectors of society marked the new dispensation.
