An End to Conquests: Military Debates and Political Culture in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Spain

Conquest and territorial expansion were very much leading features of late medieval and early modern European societies.  Iberian Christian kingdoms and the resulting Spain of the Catholic Monarchs experienced these traits with particular strength because of the long, southwards tradition of the Reconquista against the Moors and the eastwards expansion of Aragon and Catalonia in the Mediterranean. As soon as the Reconquista came to an end, by 1492, new horizons for expansion opened up: northern Maghrib, which eventually proved unsuccessful, and the New World.  The conquistador, along with the missionary friar and the legally trained secretary became characteristic figures of Spanish Renaissance society. By the 1560s, though, as territorial expansion slowed down in the New World – both in northern Mexico and Chile –, a new awareness grew among high officials at home on the growing difficulties of ruling over such a far-flung Empire.  A law issued by Philip II in 1571 put an official end to further conquests in America, at least under that formal term.  War, however, did go on in the Old World, mostly against Protestant countries.  These campaigns were to be understood and practiced as a defensive, rather than offensive war.  Meanwhile, following Giovanni Botero’s influence, a major debate developed in Europe on the appropriate size of large territorial states.  This paper aims to deal with this political, military and cultural evolution, covering the fifteenth to the late sixteenth centuries.  In doing so, the paper aims to bridge the traditional chronological boundaries between medieval and early modern history, following what Professor Teofilo Ruiz has brilliantly done in several of his books.