Olivares 1587-1645

by J.H. Elliott, Bartolomé Bennassar

Ce livre de J. H. Elliott, l'un des grands historiens britanniques contemporains, dont l'enseignement enrichit des établissements prestigieux, est un modèle de biographie historique : l'aventure de don Gaspar de Guzmán, comte-duc d'Olivares, est l'occasion d'une réflexion profonde à propos de la décadence d'une grande puissance politique, l'Espagne du XVIIe siècle. Tandis que ses contemporains - Charles 1er d'Angleterre, assisté de Laud et de Strafford, et Richelieu, avec le soutien de Louis XIII ou malgré lui - travaillent au renforcement du pouvoir royal, l'Anglais au prix de sa vie, le Français en brûlant la sienne, Olivares, de 1621 à 1643, cherche de toutes ses forces à faire de Philippe IV un véritable roi d'Espagne : non pas le souverain de royaumes juxtaposés - la Castille, l'Aragon, le Portugal -, étrangers, voire hostiles les uns aux autres, mais le roi d'un seul royaume, frontières abolies, lois harmonisées. Tel fut le sens du vaste plan de réformes qu'Olivares avait conçu lors des premières années de son gouvernement et qu'il tenta de réaliser à la faveur des victoires de 1625, lorsque Philippe IV pouvait se croire le "Roi Planète".
Ce livre réhabilite avec discrétion le rôle de l'événement en histoire. John Elliott ne méprise ni la "longue durée" ni le poids des "structures". Mais l'événement, parfois imprévisible, détermine la chronologie, chahute le calendrier, bouleverse les projets. Bien plus encore que l'histoire d'Olivares, un grand chapitre de l'histoire de l'Europe, lu du côté espagnol.
Bartolomé Bennassar.

940 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published September 2, 1992

About the author

Sir John Huxtable Elliott, FBA, was an English historian, Regius Professor Emeritus at the University of Oxford and Honorary Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford and Trinity College, Cambridge. He published under the name J.H. Elliott.

Elliott was educated at Eton College and Trinity College, Cambridge. He was an assistant lecturer at Cambridge University from 1957 to 1962 and Lecturer in History from 1962 until 1967, and was subsequently Professor of History at King's College, London between 1968 and 1973. In 1972 he was elected to the Fellowship of the British Academy. Elliott was Professor in the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey from 1973 to 1990, and was Regius Professor of Modern History, Oxford between 1990 and 1997.

He held honorary doctorates from the Autonomous University of Madrid (1983), the universities Genoa (1992), Portsmouth (1993), Barcelona (1994), Warwick (1995), Brown University (1996), Valencia (1998), Lleida (1999), Complutense University of Madrid (2003), College of William & Mary (2005), London (2007), Charles III University of Madrid (2008), Seville (2011), Alcalá (2012), and Cambridge (2013). Elliott is a Fellow of the Rothermere American Institute, University of Oxford, of whose Founding Council he was also a member.

Elliott was knighted in the 1994 New Year Honours for services to history and was decorated with Commander of Isabella the Catholic in 1987, the Grand Cross of Alfonso the Wise in 1988, the Grand Cross of Isabella the Catholic in 1996, and the Creu de Sant Jordi in 1999. An eminent Hispanist, he was given the Prince of Asturias Prize in 1996 for his contributions to the Social sciences. For his outstanding contributions to the history of Spain and the Spanish Empire in the early modern period, Elliott was awarded the Balzan Prize for History, 1500–1800, in 1999.

His studies of the Iberian Peninsula and the Spanish Empire helped the understanding of the problems confronting 16th- and 17th-century Spain, and the attempts of its leaders to avert its decline. He is considered, together with Raymond Carr and Angus Mackay, a major figure in developing Spanish historiography.