The European World 1500-1750 Theme 3: Power The Habsburg Empire Jonathan Davies (Powerpoint and handout are on the website)

At last to me empire (imperium) has been conferred by the single consent of Germany with God, as I deem, willing and commanding. For truly he errs who reckons that by men or riches, by unlawful canvassing or stratagem the empire of the entire world is able to fall to anyone’s lot. For from God himself alone is empire. Nor have I undertaken that charge of such great measure for my own sake. For well was I able to be content with the Spanish Empire (Hispano imperio) with the Balearics and Sardinia, with the Sicilian Kingdom, with a great part of Italy, Germany, and France and with another, as I might say, gold bearing world . . . But here befalls a certain fatal necessity concerning matters which urges me to take sail. Furthermore decision must be taken out of proper respect for religion, whose enemy thus far has grown so that moreover neither the repose of the commonwealth, nor the dignity of Spain nor finally the welfare of my kingdoms are able to tolerate such a threat. All these are hardly able to exist or be maintained unless I shall link Spain with Germany and add the name of Caesar to Spanish king. [The Address of Charles, King of the Romans to the Spanish Cortes, immediately before his Departure, 1520, trans. John M. Headley, The Emperor and His Chancellor (New York, 1983), pp. 10 –11]

As a global emperor with legal claims to be “ruler of all the world,” Charles V represented a central crossroads in the history of European politics: his empire, although rooted in the medieval European and Mediterranean worlds, took the first major steps on the new road toward the creation of modern European global empires. More concretely, his possessions constituted a new hybrid empire that was actually the fusion of three empires: two old empires that were rooted in medieval Europe and a new empire taking shape in the New World. [Thomas Dandelet, The Renaissance of Empire in Early Modern Europe (Berkeley, 2014), p. 76]

The Spanish Empire