At the beginning of the 17th century, the combined Spanish and Portuguese Empires - from 1580 until 1640 they were under one ruler and known collectively as the 'Catholic monarchy' - included, beyond the Iberian peninsula, Italy, the Netherlands, parts of southern France, the whole of America from California to Tierra del Fuego, the shores of West Africa, the Philippines, and regions of India and Japan. It was the most powerful and by far the richest empire the world had ever seen. 'How strange a thing it is,' one English observer reflected in 1609, 'that all the states of Europe have been asleep so long that for a hundred years and more the wealth of riches of the East and West should run no other current but into one coffer.' But now England, he went on, having been locked for more than half a century in intermittent combat with this behemoth, was struggling hard to emulate it. 'So let the sovereign Empire be increased,' wrote a hopeful George Chapman,

And with Iberian Neptune part the stake
Whose Trident he the triple world would make.

LRB 2 November 2006 | PDF Download