Spanish Naval Power, 1589-1665.

Jago, Charles J.

Spanish Naval Power, 1589-1665: Reconstruction and Defeat, by David Goodman, New York, Cambridge University Press, 1997. xvi, 305 pp. $59.95 U.S.

The quincentenary of Christopher Columbus' famous voyage of 1492, combined with the four hundredth anniversary of the defeat of the Spanish armada in 1588, have brought renewed interest in Spanish maritime history. Indicative of this interest was the publication in 1986 of Carla Rahn Phillips's Six Galleons for the King of Spain: Imperial Defense in the Early Seventeenth Century, an insightful history of Spanish shipbuilding and shipboard life prompted by the discovery of a packet of six galleons' inventories housed in the James Ford Bell Library of the University of Minnesota. David Goodman's book complements this earlier study, but is far more comprehensive in scope. Indeed, his careful overview of Spanish naval history, by adding substantially to our understanding of Spanish military administration during the Habsburg period, makes his Spanish NavalPower, 1589-1665 an excellent companion piece to I.A.A. Thompson's War and Government in Habsburg Spain 1560-1620 (1976).

Drawing largely from the records of the Council of War housed in the Simancas Archive, supplemented by various other sources, including the municipal archives of various coastal towns, Goodman's examination of Spanish naval history is both thorough and imaginative. He charts the fluctuations in the advancement and decay of Mediterranean galley and of Atlantic galleon fleets beginning with the aftermath of Spain's crushing defeat in 1588 when the realization fully dawned on all contending powers -- Spain, England, the United Provinces, and eventually France -- that "investment in navies" was "the key to victory" (p. 14). And in the end the attempts to account for the fact that by the mid seventeenth century Spain had sunk from being the dominant to a third rate naval power.

The explanation is not simple. Spain suffered from chronic financial difficulties, administrative inadequacies and inefficiencies, command and recruitment problems, and perennial difficulties in the design, building, outfitting, and maintenance of warships. But so did the other developing states of western Europe with which Spain competed. Indeed, Spain had some comparative advantages, including an excellent supply of native timbers for shipbuilding, a strong seafaring tradition in Catalonia and along the Cantabrian coast, and a high degree of professionalism in government and in naval command. Without claiming to have found a definitive answer, Goodman nevertheless suggests that the severity of Spain's financial problems, the comparative low productivity of its shipyards, and a set of social values that devalued seafaring, taken together, undermined its ability to sustain a strong navy and naval tradition, particularly when compared to England, its greatest maritime rival.

Goodman's book transcends this central thesis. Through the porthole of early-modern naval history, he provides glimpses into a range of other subject matter including the administration of state finances, constitutional history, forestry conservation, the science of ship design, the organizational feat of getting a ship constructed, outfitted, manned and put to sea, and the social history of navy personnel. For example, through the use of local archival materials, he is able to provide detailed maps of Spanish deforestation and reforestation, thereby contributing to an understanding of Spain's ecological history. As a historian of science and technology, he contributes to Spanish intellectual history in his discussion of the debates that occurred between theoreticians, mainly mathematicians, and craftsmen over the design of the ideal warship. Similarly, his examination of recruitment sheds further light on Spanish constitutional history, particularly on the effectiveness of local liberties (fueros) in protecting citizens from the demands of the state, as does his discussion of the social promotion of naval commanders shed light on Spanish social history.

In summary, carefully constructed, well documented, and comprehensive, Goodman's Spanish Naval Power provides more than an analysis of Spain's rise and decline as a naval power. It also gives a fascinating insight into Spanish social, economic, political, and administrative history. It is to be highly recommended to anyone interested in the complex operations of the early-modern European state.