Architecture in the Age of the Spanish Habsburgs

摘要

First published in 1949 and revised in 1966, Fernand Braudel's The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip Ⅱ offered a sweeping exploration of social history and geography in the late sixteenth century. Braudel used the long reign of Philip Ⅱ (r. 1556-98) as a temporal framework for his study. He also employed the image of the Spanish Habsburg king to push his analysis beyond the geographic limits of the Mediterranean Sea to the larger globe, given that Philip had overseen the "first economic and political system that spanned the known world." Building was one of the primary activities of this global political system and yet something that we know litde about in early modern architectural history, given the narrowing lenses of nationalist history. Through these lenses, Spain is defined by its modern-day borders and conventional period-ization, which, among other things, views colonial architecture in Latin America as always derivative of developments in Europe. In the same way that the age of Philip Ⅱ served Braudel as a lens onto a wider world, the reign of the Spanish Habsburgs from 1516 to 1700 offers a useful frame for understanding the dynamics of architecture and urbanism in territories across its vast domain.