La génesis ibérica del moderno poder naval

Abstract

At the end of the 15th century, a revolutionary approach to the use of the sea for its own benefit emerged from the two Atlantic Iberian peoples, characterized by having to face the challenge of ocean navigation and the exploration of new lands, something never even conceived previously. As happened in the previous historical stages with other protagonists, the main motivation to jump into the sea was economic. However, the geographic scale of the endeavor on this occasion ushered in a new era, characterized both by accelerated scientific development and by a globalization of commerce, politics, technology and culture (language, education and Christianity). Portugal conquered the oceans with the aim of establishing a network of commercial enclaves, creating the mold of what has since been considered the logical procedure for maritime powers in order to move freely through the seas that link the colonies with the metropolis. Accordingly, what for just over a century has been called sea (naval) power was nothing but the part of maritime power that was responsible for protecting its own trade from the ambition of others. Spain, however, undertook a similar epic with a more territorial (and patrimonial) mentality, due to which the oceans themselves came to be considered an integral part of the crown possessions as a link that united the different parts of the kingdom. That assumption created a new concept of naval power, by which in time of peace it complemented maritime power, which became at the same time a tributary of the former in the event of war. What the classic Anglo-Saxon writers (Alfred T. Mahan and Julian S. Corbett, in particular) described as maritime and sea power when studying the new history in British documentary sources is nothing more than the transposition of the principles that governed the constitution of Renaissance Portugal in a thalassocracy of planetary scope. The Spanish case is much more complex, since it was not only equally ignored in late-nineteenth-century and later historical-strategic studies (not only Anglo-Saxon, which is even more inexplicable), but it remains in the mist of the unexplored by not having had recognized historical continuity, which has contributed to preventing an adequate understanding of the historical dimension of the success (due to its resilience, durability, prosperity…) of the “empire” of the Hispanic Monarchy.