FILIPE I IN LISBON

Many biographies of Felipe II of Spain have been written by Spaniards and by foreigners; in English alone, at least five have appeared since 1960. This is perhaps not surprising, for the king presided over the Spanish monarchy at the peak of its power and prestige. But, with a single recent exception, no one has ever written a life of Filipe I of Portugal – a stark reminder of the country's diminished standing after union. For regardless of Filipe's confirmation of Portuguese rights sealed at Tomar in 1581, Portugal was now politically and constitutionally a mere peripheral part of a much greater Castilian-dominated whole. Autonomy within the union could never be complete and would arguably always be more apparent than real. It was a situation that required of the Portuguese major psychological readjustments and raised important questions about national identity.

Nevertheless, by restoring the sovereign status quo as it had supposedly existed before the Muslim conquest of the eighth century, the union of crowns fulfilled an old dream. An idealised past, Roman and Visigothic, had finally triumphed. Hispania was reconstituted. At the same time, the union of crowns also represented the realisation of another, newer, more ambitious dream. Filipe had become the ruler of two great empires: the Castilian primarily in Europe and the Americas and the Portuguese scattered through maritime Asia, Africa and Brazil. As such, he presided over imperial possessions that were indisputably global, far exceeding in size what Rome had ruled.