ABSTRACT

Iberian history holds invaluable keys to Europe's relations with its neighbours and eventually with the rest of the world. The peoples and political formations of the peninsula had much in common—the ‘reconquest’ of territory from Muslims, a ‘frontier mentality’, early practice in colonialism and eventually the impetus for exploration and discovery. The seeds of the consequent ‘new world order’ were sown in this period; but it would be dangerous to see the process from too teleological a point of view. Diversity and disunity are the dominant characteristics, which should not be brushed aside just because we can see the later consequences of the developments of the period. For example, the partial fusion of the crowns of Aragon and Castile under Ferdinand and Isabella in the late fifteenth century—and the fact that this proved to be a preliminary stage in a fuller state-building process so dramatically visible under Charles V—can leave the impression that it was the ‘destiny’ of ‘Spain’ to dominate the peninsula. Yet the area that in the event remained outside the growing Spanish hegemony, Portugal, played its own key role in Iberian and European development as well. Even within ‘Spain’, with its ethnic and cultural diversity, it is dangerous to assume homogeneity. The standard and enduring generalisations about the history and temperament of the Spaniards (their pride, their poverty, their faith, their reluctance to engage in commerce and industry) are misleading caricatures which have at most a partial and regional basis in fact. Indeed regional differences are still extremely striking in Spain. Even today a visitor may find the contrasts between Seville and Oviedo yet more marked than those between Marseilles and Lille or between Naples and Milan.