The empire ballooned, but the Spanish mind closed in on itself. Religious fervor hardened into ceremony; the vast bureaucracy stifled ambition; a rigidly hierarchical society replicated itself in all its colonies.
To take only the humblest example of the iron bureaucracy that rued men’s lives in the empire: In Panama or Havana, poor men needed state-approved licenses simply to beg on the streets.
Source:
Talty, Stephan. “The Tomb at the Escorial.” Empire of Blue Water: Captain Morgan’s Great Pirate Army, the Epic Battle for the Americas, and the Catastrophe That Ended the Outlaws’ Bloody Reign. New York: Crown Publishing Group (NY), 2007. 30. Print.
pitenius ago
I'm king of the river bank we ceded to the Delaware because they were older than us. A noman's land of deportation I share with methheads who think I'm great because I have a truck and give them rides to sell the scrap they looted. Hardly a career, there. I'm thinking about getting a job, though.
pitenius ago
Hey, it's just my professional calling to be a peevish shit. Fumble an etymology? I'm there. Confuse an Arsacid name with an Armenian name? I'll never forgive, never forget. Botch a chronology by dropping an intercalary month? I will fuck you up. You think this is a game?
Also, Talty has a job. I just take pot shots on the int0rwebz as I compile an etymological dictionary for a language with few than 50 readers. I'm not bitter.
ArsCortica ago
They think that is bad? They never had to deal with German bureaucracy....
(Honorable mentions to the Swiss whose laws often are so absurdly worded that they send the parliamentarians into fits of hysterical laughter when brought to parliament).
pitenius ago
Ok, LockeP, I'm telling you, because you're you: this is not good history. This is pompous stylistics and foregone conclusions.
Well, there's the sound and the fury, but damned if I know what he means. I'll read on...
Is the author British? No... but he is Anglo. I'd say religious fervor got pushed in some weird directions that had little to do with "ceremony" but I know how much Anglos loathe "ceremony". Did Loyola stand on "ceremony"? If so, why isn't he, say, a Benedictine?
Is the author a Republican? What were these ambitions, anyway? To be king or to be a bureaucrat? A historian ought to outline the portion of GDP dedicated to bureaucracy. Funny that no one says Germany is an economic failure because of bureaucracy.
I wouldn't say that it "replicated itself" so much as second sons were exported out. The pedant in me wants to find the single counter-example that negates the "all". Oddly, I basically agree with this sentiment.
Oh, please. This is far from the "humblest" -- this is a cherry-picked shocker. If we're only giving one example, why not pick something... representative? Even here, the example is limited to one town and one country. I'd like to hear more about the circumstances. Were such licenses actually granted? Remember when the US sold marijuana sales tax stamps? Perhaps these licenses were part of an anti-vagrancy policy. Perhaps something else was afoot. We'll never know -- Talty has his joke and has managed to gainsay his point through rhetoric.
Great anecdote, shit historian.