The Journal of Military History

The reign of Spain's King Philip III (r. 1598-1618) was witness to a phenomenon called arbitrismo, the writing of a massive number of what essentially were memorandums to the crown suggesting myriad ways the country could pull itself out of its economic, demographic, and military morass. One such arbitrio is the subject of this book, whose aim is to illustrate "the imbrication of military defense and society" (p. 19). The document in question, which apparently went missing soon after its composition around 1600, is a proposal to reorganize and refinance Spain's military forces and establish what author/editor García Hernán considers an antecedent to a modern standing army.

Indeed, the fact that a copy of the document was said to be in the library of the Count-Duke of Olivares, favorite of Philip III's successor, Philip IV, is significant: Olivares in 1625 made a daring proposal, called the Union of Arms, to revamp Spain's military forces by forcing all the monarchy's components, not just Castile, to contribute. The plan failed, largely because the monarchy overestimated its resources and underestimated opposition outside Castile and among the nobility.

Rafael Barreda y Figueroa wrote his arbitrio at the start of Philip III's reign, a diplomatic crossroads for the monarchy, which had to decide whether to continue warfare with England, France, and the Netherlands or back off. The so-called "pacifist" option won out for much of the first two decades of the century, during which time Spain and its enemies rearmed as best and quickly as they could. Reform proposals such as Barreda's therefore were probably read with keen interest. Basing himself on a defense of order and the common trope of good government (buen gobierno), Barreda, the descendant of a long line of aristocratic military figures, offered little to distinguish himself from the rest of the arbitristas. He suggested new methods of recruitment that clearly were unworkable, thought invading Northern Africa (Berbería) would solve Castile's fiscal woes (by allowing the elimination of the millones, one of Castile's most important taxes), and concentrated most of his attention on the nobility, who had given every sign of not being interested. Its significance, therefore, is unclear, other than that it may have influenced Olivares twenty-five years later. Whereas it is always nice to have available a clean transcription of a hitherto forgotten document, one wishes it were one that taught us something new about the era. [End Page 1247]

García Hernán's essay, which takes up half the book, discusses early modern Spanish military institutions and practices and their historiography. Unfortunately his prose and citations are littered with typographical errors, and the poor syntax and punctuation, or lack thereof, make it almost as difficult to read as the document he is presenting, which, other than its long absence and recent appearance (it is now at the Simancas archive), appears less noteworthy than García Hernán thinks. Though containing many useful references and facts, the essay is repetitive and poorly organized. Readers interested in this period are lucky to have a wide range of English-language works available: Paul Allen, J. H. Elliott, Geoffrey Parker, and I. A. A. Thompson are among the best writers on the period, and García Hernán, to his credit, cites them all.