The Spanish Resurgence, 1713–1748, by Christopher Storrs

Abstract

Christopher Storrs has written a good book. The best books are those that afford keys to ongoing reflections about open debates, either by providing new insights or revamping known arguments. Storrs does both. His fine work rests on two main pillars. First, he is a past master of Spain’s archive sources and those of other European countries (especially Italy and England). Secondly, he knows how to bring the Spanish picture into relation with general issues such as state construction and the diplomatic and imperial dimension. The upshot is a fresh and thought-provoking approach to an under-analysed theme: Spain’s eighteenth-century resurgence. For most historians around the world, Spain’s history is tied in with the rise and fall of its empire. In this view, Spain’s inability to shore up its empire, both in the Americas and in Europe, is depicted as an inevitable result of its confrontation with other emerging nations, Holland or Great Britain, a struggle that had dragged on since the early seventeenth century. The trouble is that this idea of ongoing crisis has traditionally been linked with the start of the nineteenth century, when Spain’s state and its American colonies both caved in. Even today, therefore, international historians view the eighteenth-century Spanish state as locked into a persistent crisis, and any possible improvements as being either driven by outside influence (notably French) or stillborn, as shown by the rapid loss of the colonies or (to put forward a much vaunted argument in this school of thought) the Battle of Trafalgar.