ABSTRACT
The Spain of which Philip III became king in 1598 had been united under a single monarch since 1580, and remained so until 1640. But Portugal, joined to Castile in much the way that Aragon had been a century earlier, kept its separate institutions and economy; in Aragon rebellion aiming at separation had been finally defeated in 1572. The Netherlands war now left little hope of recovering the richest provinces there. The treasury was empty, the armed forces outmoded, the government corrupt, incompetent, and insecure. Between a peasantry kept down to subsistence level and the great consumers of riches there was hardly any commercial or industrial class making use of the opportunities for profit and investment that the colonial empire provided. The only consistently prosperous institution was the Church. Yet Philip Ill’s empire was incomparably the most populous in the world, comprising virtually the entire continent of South America and a multitude of settlements in Asia and Africa. The paradoxes were scarcely noticed. It seemed that a long reign of strife could be followed by one of stability and – for those at the top – of luxury.
