Imperial Spain, 1469 - 1716 Quotes

“These men were dedicated fighters – tough, determined, contemptuous of danger, arrogant and touchy, extravagant and impossible; examples, perhaps a little larger than life size, of the kind of man produced by the nomadic, warrior society which inhabited the dry tableland of medieval Castile.”
― J.H. Elliott, Imperial Spain 1469-1716

“Columbus sent home shiploads of Indians to be sold as slaves, but the theologians protested, the Queen's conscience rebelled, and enslavement of the Indians was formally prohibited in 1500. Exceptions were made, however, for Indians who attacked Spaniards, or practised atrocious habits such as cannibalism, and Cortés had no difficulty in finding pretexts for the enslavement of numerous men, women, and children.”
― J.H. Elliott, Imperial Spain 1469-1716

“From the legal point of view it was early established that the Indians were the proprietors of all lands which they possessed and cultivated at the time of the Spaniards' arrival, while the rest of the land and all the sub-soil became the property of the State.”
― J.H. Elliott, Imperial Spain 1469-1716

“While the conquistadores possessed an important advantage in the superiority of their weapons, it is in their personal characteristics that the secret of their triumph finally lies. A few small cannon and thirteen muskets can hardly have been the decisive factor in overthrowing an empire more than ten million strong. There must here have been a superiority that was more than merely technical, and perhaps it ultimately lay in the greater self-confidence of the civilization which produced the conquistadores.”
― J.H. Elliott, Imperial Spain 1469-1716

“They were the supreme representatives of the Catalan nation, acting as spokesmen for it in any conflict with the Crown, and seeing that the laws or ‘constitutions’ of the Principality were observed to the letter; and at times they were, in all but name, the Principality's government.”
― J. H. Elliott, Imperial Spain 1469-1716

“The kingdom of Aragon possessed an official known as the Justicia, for whom no exact equivalent is to be found in any country of western Europe. An Aragonese noble appointed by the Crown, the Justicia was appointed to see that the laws of the land were not infringed by royal or baronial officials, and that the subject was protected against any exercise of arbitrary power. The office of Justicia by no means worked perfectly, and by the late fifteenth century it was coming to be regarded as virtually hereditary in the family of Lanuza, which had close ties with the Crown; but none the less, the...”
― J. H. Elliott, Imperial Spain 1469-1716

“The origins of Aragon's independent history, and of the fundamental characteristics which differentiated it so sharply from Castile, are to be found in the long struggle of medieval Spain against Islam. The Arabs had invaded the Iberian peninsula in 711, and conquered it within seven years. What was lost in seven years it took seven hundred to regain.”
― J. H. Elliott, Imperial Spain 1469-1716

“Spain, for so long a mere geographical expression, was somehow transformed into an historical fact.”
― J. H. Elliott, Imperial Spain 1469-1716